Sometimes I get so involved in living I don't to do anything else. I don't want to sleep or eat or write. I just want to surround myself with people who exude vibrant spirit, who are unbothered or untormented... and music, lots of music and an endless horizon. Yes, I need a horizon that stretches beyond every imaginable mountain range.

I often think I belong somewhere else. Another country maybe. Another time. Another era. Another face. It's not that I dislike who I am now or what I am and what I do, but I believe it's WHO I am that makes me crave for a universe more freeing, a time more fantastical. Sometimes I think San Francisco maybe, 1974. Or maybe Iowa City, 1995. Asuncion, Venezuela, 1643. And the faces I imagine excite me: A young fisherman. A settler on the Prarie. A budding movie star. A prince in a large east African dynasty. The lead singer in a rock and soul band. A spirit assessing life from a parallel world.

It's not every day I feel this way. But somedays, it sweeps me off my feet. This impulse to do nothing be sniff through life and unturn rocks, see what creatures scurry there. See if I see myself scurrying. Somedays I even imagine myself somewhere far into space, the final frontier. Beyond Jupiter, Pluto, beyond the boundary of this solar system. I'm not sure what I actually do there. Maybe find a planet, explore and taste, and love anything willing to love back. Or maybe I just fly through the blackness, soar high above unnamed stars and super-novas, above inquisitive yet cautious alien life.

But then I drift back down to Earth, because sometimes it overwhelms me, too. Its beauty. Its impossible yet miraculous physics. Salt, dirt, tree, bug, man, woman. Sky, cloud, cool breeze, orange butterfly. It all overwhelms and at times brings me to my knees in complete disbelief, in complete awe. God, Divine Order, Supreme Creative Entity. It helps the awe, the overwhelming. Well, temporarily at least. It quiets me and helps me remember to eat and sleep and write.

Sometimes I get so involved in living I forget there are two sides to it: the one where one must survive and endure; the other where one can invent and expand and explore the gifts. My journey continues to be how to marry the two. And I like this journey. A lot.

Until next time,

Keith