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Once you realize, it is already gone. Slap your pockets all you want. Retrace your steps. Try to convince yourself that your senses are deceiving you. It can't be. It couldn't be. But it is. Acceptance is freedom. Suicide is a choice. That choice is always available. 

Sometimes memories bubble up to torment you. They confuse the process. You question these memories now because they have proved that you are fallible. 

There is something to be said for minimalism. For not tying your happiness to objects or things or money. Money is potential things. All this can be a burden, but it feels like security. You have to determine for yourself what safety means for you. 

Maybe there is freedom in loss. Lose your things, lose yourself. See what you find. Isn't that what the hippies were yapping about before they became plastic-loving financial advisors? Before they bought their Beemers. 

I like water because it is a lost and found. Water is the life giver. Water is a playground. Water takes so much, but it always gives it back. Speaking of which, I didn't know that dropping out also meant filling your kids with micro-plastics. Choking out sea turtles.

Live and learn.

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Lay your head down, right there in the pine needles. Feel the mottling of the sun as it passes through the branches. Close your eyes and listen, smell. Sight is cheap and easy for most of us, but we are multi-sensory by design. 

There will be crawling things in the needles, but they are not your enemy. Imagine going about your day, doing your work, getting something to eat and then a giant comes and lays down on top of it all. The red ant's will bite, but everything will bite in the right situation. 

Life bites harder than anything.

You can trace the indignities down your body, feel the deep muscle bruises that don't rise to the skin. On the surface, your skin is pure, healthy. Inside of that skin is a collection of pain that never leaves. 

He knows how to hurt you so it won't show. 

Imagine that. Imagine having that kind of thought process about someone you supposedly love. How can I hurt you and get away with it? These sick fuckers are everywhere. I don't know how they rationalize their actions, but they do. 

I recently found out about "blanket training" - the idea is you put a baby or a toddler on a blanket on the floor. Then, you place a favorite toy off the blanket. If the kid tries to get off the blanket, you slap them. Pinch them. HURT them. Apparently, this is all the rage in some very conservative religious communities. 

What does this teach the baby? Babies are supposed to be immune to the ugliness around us. They are supposed to feel safe with the people who are responsible for them. I can't imagine hitting a grown kid, but a baby? That's so fucked up it makes me want to cry. 

Sometimes I wonder where school shooters come from. And, sometimes, there is no doubt in my mind .

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Let me tell you about the muffin man. Little Jack Horner. That bitch with the spiders. That motherfucker who jumped over a candle. They were all bullshit, and you swallowed it thick. Those stories were seeds to plant inside your mind to see what would grow. 

When they told you about the golden rule, they left out some important info. Gold is malleable. I would much rather have a steel rule. A titanium rule. Fuck gold...the bane of indigenous people. How many innocents had to be killed because folks were enamored with a shiny, soft garbage rock? Not suitable for work or defense. Valuable only because of rarity. And because we like shiny things, just like crows. 

We are a murder all our own. Don't even think about African diamond mines and they way they abuse, use, kill. (but...but...SHINY! RARE!)

Maybe you should just focus on wellness. That's the new panacea. That's the bandaid we're expected to wear to help us deal with the fact that we fucked the world up for momentary comfort and ego. Yoga will make it OK that migrants die in the desert hoping for a tiny portion of what you take for granted. Don't worry about the moral implications. Worry about Instagram. Worry about the drag queens.

Keep letting politicians grab power by pitting normal people against each other. Keep doing that Pavlovian shit when they ring the bell. Sit up straight. Look presentable. Bark when you are told to bark. Be shiny. The shinier you are outside, the less they will notice that there is rottenness inside, eating you slowly while you traffic in paranoid misery. 

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The cool of the evening settles on the valley. Day animals burrow and nestle and scurry in for the evening, while the night animals sharpen their claws. The sky is clouded, and the night is made for deception. The shadow sounds move swiftly, and they do not follow the rules that light enforces. It is night. Night is death. Death is coming.

This is the cycle, and it is what you make of it. Depending on your resources, this is bounty or famine. You may test your mettle against the night. That is part of what the night is for. But, be careful.

If you are lucky enough to see the sun rise, put food in your belly. Hope that the sun comes out. Let your full belly sit in the sun and be alive. This is what the sun is for. This is what the full belly is for. 

This is why you come to the light.

2 Minutes. Go!

It seems to me like there are some people who just shouldn't die. I don't count myself among those people. When my time comes, I'll still be lucky I made it as far as I did. The problem, for me, is not that I am alive or that I will be dead. My problem is that good people keep dying, and a bunch of shitty people keep living, and that's hard to come to terms with. 

There is a dread that lives inside me, but it is not about my death. I dread the death of people I care about. I dread that empty, hollow, unbelieving feeling. Yet, I know that it will happen to everyone eventually. Still, it's easy to push that to the back of your mind until someone you love dies. 

The pain from losing a friend starts with anger for me. Not anger at the person, but anger at the cruel path that nature walks us down. Gradually, it shifts to sadness and, finally, it settles to live in my gut. That empty feeling. That cheated feeling. 

It's a drinking feeling, but I don't drink anymore.

When you lose someone you love, it is hard to remember that you knew it was coming. I close my eyes and rub them hard and try to switch things up, but nothing happens. Just silence. Just void. Just that ache. 

I've accommodated the ache, but the random stabs of painful memory get to me. Sometimes, I feel panicked even though there is nothing to panic about. 

They say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never love at all. I believe that, but in practice...man, sometimes I just want to leave civilization behind. Be the hermit - not like Leland who loved everyone, but a real hermit with no ties to any place or any humans. The loneliness would kill me, but at least I would never feel that pain again.