another train

I was actually feeling kind of awful about coming back to this blog, after a week of not writing.  The longer I feel that way, I fear, the longer I'll stay away.  So here I am, with not a whole lot to say.  But I'll say a few things now, so it'll be easier to come back tomorrow.

Have you ever had that experience where, when you feel bad about something, you have trouble going back to it?  That's a feeling you never outgrow, and I guess that's why I've moved around so much.  There are a few places on this planet where I still can't imagine standing, because the last thing I experienced there seared through me so much, and I am convinced that that one location has retained my pain so fully, that the minute I put my foot there, I would feel that pain sizzling into me again, like a hot poker.

So I just don't go there.  Those places include: Paris, just outside Notre Dame, where I saw a child get hit by a car; Athens, outside a coffee shop underneath the Parthenon, where I had to say good-bye to a man I loved dearly but could not stay with; Jakarta, in a wide open square where I was abandoned by someone I thought was a friend; El Salvador, on a bridge at the border, where I was stopped and questioned by a group of men in fatigues with large guns. 

Often, sadly, those places are also linked with my sweetest memories.  So I want to return, to see if the traces of those good memories are also still there still.  But I get frozen in a loop of bittersweet.

We could be chilled to stasis by the sadness of our lives. 

I wouldn't advise it, though.

I posted a song here a little while ago by a man named Pete Morton.  I have another song by him running through my mind that I'd like to share right now.  And then I won't say anymore.  I want to write more soon!  But this 21st Century is such a drag.  Everyone drains me, trying to get me to do the work they are too lazy to do themselves.



(Don't you love the giant ram's head behind him?  And the extra singers on the chorus.  I've sung so much opera in my life, I find the roughness of this all to be so rich.  I want to sing for you who take the time to read me.  And I will, when summer comes.  Because if you're reading this, I love you. And I sing for people I love.)