Well-remembered notes

Moonrise over November, when day escapes us as soon as it’s matured. From growing morning to dimming night, we are in constant transition, shrouded quickly under the curtain of darkness, giggling underneath the newness of it, as a child in the playfully stolen coat of its father. When you’re little, you feel good as a matter of course, and only disturbances do you encounter. As an adult, it’s so often the good you encounter on your daily disturbing course, so you chase after it and around, under self-pity, back to childhood, past beloved occupations and into spirituality at last. Sometimes I feel like the reanimation of Billie Holiday, singing away with all her might in her single octave range. Irrespective of beat, there’s a song to be sung here, and I know these notes almost as well as I know my life story, maybe better. So I’ll warm up once more, and try again, the little tools at my disposal perhaps sharper than the last time.

Just realizing now that there is a difference between expressing oneself and displacing oneself. Expressing empties the cup, so that it may be refilled again in greater, more poignant vintages. The other buries the brightness in outwardnesses, refusing to acknowledge the reality of its imperfectness, as if it were an illegitimate child. I am my imperfections, and I am changing, as they do; changing partners in a great dance, spinning round the same room until all steps have been conquered, and nothing remains but to head home. There’s a full Moon tonight, and November’s not nearly so cold as the next few months promise to be. A fine night for walking, for chasing happiness, for singing out loud in familiar keys, for simply expressing.