sometimes someone reads your words and responds in a way that says they understood... that is the magic of communication, the wonder of sharing language... words do not mean the same thing to everyone... when I put a string of words together it might not even express what I am actually thinking and feeling (if I even know all of it myself)... when you read a string of words you might not see the meaning I put in even if I did know and express myself to my satisfaction...

it is a subtle art, a continuous process of thinking and feeling and interpreting these energies into language, then expressing the energies as well as possible... that is the best I can do... this is my part...

then comes your part... even more variables, even more subtly you use your mind to read the words and depending on your mood, your interest, your experience, and so many other factors that come together in these few moments that you are reading, you interpret what you think and feel as you read my words... that is your part...

and then, should you choose to respond, you offer your interpretation and add your thoughts and feelings in the hope that you've understood enough of my meanings to be able to share the thought/feeling and help clarify it in both our minds...

some people have a gift for doing just that, for reading and sensing the meaning another is conveying... it requires a sense of literary empathy, a visual cortex that can focus on the language, the potential meanings, the person in the words and not just the words themselves...

it starts with trust...

when reading a novel, poem, or any word of fiction, you can suspend your sense of reality and enter a safe zone, a world of words where your mind can imagine the reality, but still, deep down, secure in the fact that it is not dangerous to you, that it is not real...

some of us can suspend reality well, read a book, a poem, watch a movie or TV show, and become absorbed in the story, get lost in the world the writer (and in the case of visual medium, actors, musicians, and thousands of others helped to create for those moment our senses are focused on the story and the rest of the world goes away)...

some of us are afraid to do that, have nightmares after scary movies or unpleasant stories, because the separation between self and the world, between inner reality and out there, between me and them, is not so clear, clouded, confused, or in some way not secure... this, perhaps, is the basis for what we call mental illness when it becomes so insecure or confused that it interferes with survival skills needed to be independent in this life...

but we all experience the insecurity, the blurring of the lines between ourselves and the outside world, between reality and fantasy... and that is healthy, that is the source of creativity... the bolts and welds on the roller coaster are not really going to come apart and fling us off into space, right?... the angry people or creatures hurting and killing each other in the words or on the screen are not really going to come into our lives and hurt us, right?...

that shred of doubt, the possibility that fiction could express our experience or become real in our lives, is the excitement of reading, listening, and watching words, sounds, and moving pictures... that is what the entertainment industry banks on, that anything is possible and we, the audience, will let the possibilities get to us, warm us, scare us, excite us, make us feel something... and though there is superficial disputes and subtle differences in most everything artists might create, these can be overlooked if the heart of the matter, if the gist of the story, if the point hits home... or as Dan Fogelberg said, if some kind of message gets through to you...

and then there are diaries...

in many cases, the offerings in an online diary, journal, blog, or any website, are pure fiction, art, something that someone releases from their mind with little or no intention of actually communicating a personal sense of self with others...

but sometimes the diary is primarily an expression of the person writing, and extension of their daily lives, an attempt to express the thoughts and feelings of being alive in this world from a personalized, real perspective... in this case the reality we suspend for works of fiction needs to be adjusted to take the work seriously... the expressions of life in a diary based on the writer's actual life are real and can actually touch you in your life if you choose to reach out, connect, and become part of the writer's life...

I have some diaries and websites online that are based in fantasy and while, as a creative expression, I take some of them very seriously, I do not expect (or want) anyone to actually approach me in my daily life expecting me to think or feel as I might have expressed in those writings that were mostly or even partly fictional... the romantic falling in loves, the sensual lusts, the depressing pity-parties that can be found in candora, perversions, or mostly dead do have some basis in my real-life experiences, but they are not the primary me person that you'd get to know if you chose to enter my physical daily life... on the other hand, there are depths in those mentioned and all of my journals, past and present, and all of my writings that beg for attention and conversation because they are born of very real parts of me or my experience...

here though, in this place behind the candoor where my primary intention is to share in words my life in black and white, my daily experience in this world without too much frill or pomp or creative play (though I am quite incorrigible and must dance, sing, play, and above all else tease even in my physical daily life and that spills over into this text, hopefully to make it even more real even when the tease has you wondering just what I meant) that I encourage in myself and my words in other writing places...

when I write here about other things, about politics or religion or things I see happening in this world that are not necessarily directly part of my daily life (suspending the reality that everything is connected at some level for a moment to make this point), I am pondering, wondering, wandering through possibilities and my own sense of right or wrong or logic or madness... my opinions are just that, my opinions and mostly momentary for unless my thoughts have permanent effect on concrete objects, they are transitory and not prepared for permanent lodging in the final biographical information about who I am (as I am always becoming and therefore open to change)...

some of my perspectives have much more time and energy devoted to them and therefore have a history, a track record of opinion that may or may not be consistent over the course of this lifetime... and some things remain most consistent, more core ideals and beliefs I choose to represent and attempt to be as me... honesty, innocence (the intent to do no harm), curiosity, sensitivity, openness, creativity, passion, caring, sharing, these are some of the words representing concepts I believe in and believe to be right... concepts and ways of being that undermine or oppose these basic concepts are those I consider wrong... it's as simple as that and yet, as each moment has infinite possibilities and variables are always changing, it's as complex as that too...

I was going somewhere with this entry, really I was...

I wonder how many of you are already there J

this entry was inspired by the song that started it... it demonstrated a few of the points I tried to express here most effectively... I read the lyrics a couple of times and smiles, sensing more than meets the superficial eye (and that's all I gave it at first due to lack of time and some self-defense mechanisms)...

I got on with life as I usually do and shared my sincere wishes for positive lives with everyone who calls me a favorite here at Dland and many others I read here and elsewhere... I focused on my daily life (which takes a bit of effort these days) and got to the gym five times last week and hopefully that will continue (even as we snacked and partied all weekend cuz, after all, it was the biggest party weekend of the year on this planet and I feel all that energy and am not completely isolated or alien to the human race)... I rambled on in the past couple of entries (after finishing yet another personalized introspective Things list, which, as I do them, are starting to feel closer to the experience of correspondence, of exchanging personal letters with people, that so filled my literary life in the late eighties and early nineties)...

and tonight I returned to the routine, to work, and after taking care of a few incidents (mainly that one of the kids who has enuresis {bedwetting issues} apparently went into the shower, sat down, fell asleep, blocked the drain, and flooded her room {and all the clothes and stuffed animals on the floor) and the hallway... we noticed the water in the hallway as we came on our shift and found the kid in the shower, much to the surprise of the previous shift) that did not need to happen (but happen because staff supervision gets lax around here on weekends) and all that's left to do is finish washing one of the kid's clothes (not part of the technical job description, but caring doesn't really need a job description), I sat down here and opened the primary babbling file on the floppy disk I've started taking to and from work...

ironically (or subconsciously planned, if my subconscious is some sort of genius, that is... hey, anything's possible and I'll believe it if you do... yes, that was ego showing off, we'll put a bag over his head now and get on with this entry), the previous entry (which already flashed it's fifteen minutes of fame, ah, how the controversial ones burn out so quickly) was not moved on to this disk as I was rushing out to work as Precious had just come home from seeing The Producers (dang it, I needed sleep) and was all bubbly to tell me about it but I had just woken up and had fifteen minutes to make myself presentable and leave for work... so instead of continuing and finishing the previous entry (which will be done when I get home), this entry was born kinda sorta by accident...

I found the song lyric was all that was left in this file... the two prior to the previous entries (after the three part 202 Things entry) were extracted from this file and uploaded the day before New Years (as you might have noticed)... don't I know how to set myself up well (and tease myself about it to boot)...

and so, in spite of the distractions around me, I read it (the song lyric) with my heart (instead of with my eyes) because I wanted to give it respect and decided that avoiding it was getting a little too obvious for my comfort... avoiding it?... that's probably an entry (or who diary) all to itself, but suffice to say I, as most of you know, have gotten too dang good at sleepwriting and resting in a rather numb complacency (that I sardonically call the land of the mostly dead)...

and it touched me, it knew me (as only a song can know, ya know?... well there's a whole other entry/diary for us too... I started one once... and the Bee Gees {again?} come to mind with I Started a Joke... know the song?... how about Patti Smyth's I Should Be Laughing {or was that Tanya Tucker?... Bonnie Raitt?} and there's always Harry's Laugh Man to fall back on... shhh, we're not up to Jackson Browne's The Pretender just yet, but we sure are getting good and distracted, eh?) and I realized that (apparently not), either through time consuming research and sensitivity and good guesswork or with that gift to be able to read words and sense what someone is meaning (and often some of both), someone had heard a voice in my writing that I do not speak of much these days... the voice usually comes out in other writing places (like the roller coaster heart-based places mentioned above) and I've not given the voice or those places much time at all in recent months...

but on Xmas even of last year I did get to the gym which is the link that takes me back to this place because that place is intended to be where I dig into the pits of despair to get my feet out of the mud that accumulates there and actually take the steps (literally and physically) to climb out of a sedentary rut... in other words, to explore depressive thoughts, to cleanse and link wounds, to confront my poor-me voices, to cry, and simultaneously to keep track of, in concrete statistics, just what I am doing to this body I inhabit in this life... there you'll find rivers or tears and blood and sweat (and perhaps some of my odd sense of humor as well after I get through beating the crap out of my laziness, apathy, procrastination, and ambivalence)...

and there were flits of moments when my heart seemed to beat it's deeper beats, the ones that are beneath the surface of romantic fantasies, the ones that are more meaningful than libido stimulations, the ones that matter above all else... but not many words rose from those depths as there is no reality of intimate romance in this life at the moment, so the depository for such words, this place, remained mostly sleeping, but I sense a touch more hope glowing deep down (and thank you beautiful people in loving relationships who unabashedly share your beautiful hearts, {prime example} for the wonderful inspiration to believe true love does exist in shared reality and it might actually happen for me again {and from the peanut gallery a reciprocal voice mischievously pipes up with: do I really want it to?}... ah, those reciprocal voices from the peanut gallery all think they're comedians... you do have reciprocal voices in your mind, don't you?... ummm, a peanut gallery?... perhaps it's time to close this parentheses and get on with the entry)...

yes it is better to have loved and lost and don't you dare forget it... that goes for the rest of you too... and me, I'll stand first in line for this reminder...

wow, when I get on with an entry I don't fool around, huh?...

self-mockery is such a saving grace...

now maybe dandy noticed and consciously sent me a message in that song or maybe her gift for reading a person in words is as most gifts are, deep and somewhat subconscious (after all, trusting intuition and instincts is the first step toward discovering and enhancing such a gift... even when it is reflective), but the fact is she chose that song that started this entry and after I finally decided to read it (notice, I still have not heard it with my ears), I heard it much deeper than the five senses can express... maybe you can too, pronouns aside...

so I wrote this entry to explore the nature of what we do here, these exchanges of words with our eyes and our fingers... I realize there are many different levels of sharing we can (and do) do in this life, in the arts, through words, on this internet, and in personal diaries... and I wrote this entry to applaud publicly and personally thank dandy for her gift of song, but much more, for her gift of insight and caring to share that sensitive part of herself... thank you Hannah, for giving me a very comfortable smile to wear today...

I am sending my good thoughts to you...

I wonder how comfortable I'll be actually exploring what the song means to me (sure, I couldn't just end this entry there on that good thought without poking a good tease at myself to go deeper, huh?... sheesh, I could definitely use a vacation from my brain... like a coma for a week or two, or something like that)...

I am not one to play at manipulations, so I don't swap spit to gain effect from a third party (swapping spit is holy... he smirks at the truth in his heart expressed in that parenthetic aside), but the deeper message, to move on, get out, get on with life, that speaks to me... something I think I should have done once, when the song would have touched on every day life so precisely it would have been very scary and wonderful, like so many songs have been... but now, something I can no longer do...

my dream of the one is disembodied these days, there's no one from my past I'd like to try again with... though almost all would definitely be welcome in my life and all are welcome in my heart... ultimately I almost wish there was someone to get over, to move on from... for me, love songs have become a dream... hurts have become a history... and passion's romance has become a memory... yeah, a memory (pow) that won't ever seem to break or bend... and the lyrics reminds me of a time before the music was lost (guess I should find a way to listen to it, huh?)...

perhaps, as Bob (as played by Bill Murray in What About Bob?) said, I am temporarily disconnected (perhaps?)... the fact is, very metaphorically, but viscerally based on the pain that continuously came through the wire for so long, my phone has been busy for a long long time... gotta hang up the phone... a reminder that what I seek is out there, the truth, true love, the one... and I am not going to find it studying hermitology and irreverent couch-potatoism (oh wow, did I say that?)...

truly, madly, deeply, thank you all for your caring and sharing and inspirations and today, right now, thank you most of all for the gift of song...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)