the lexington-area has very few redeeming qualities, but here’s a little list:

- rachel (when she visits), joey, and robin
- san joses
- country roads
- lake murray, at night
- my mommy
- my puppies
- downtown columbia, late, on a cold night
- krispey creme
- jamestown
- a town where you know everyone, including the man who you buy gasoline from and the kid bagging your groceries at the food lion


however, lexington also holds my poetic memory which often-times blurs the line between happiness and sadness, tricking me into thinking the bad-times were actually the good times and that the nostalgia of those days is what is causing my heart to sink and that my sinking heart is actually the feeling of love, and there’s not much difference between love and lust anymore - and afterall, i just need someone who knows the difference between living and being - furthermore, do i still know the difference? am i still that fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain? was i ever?

to love, to caress the turmoil and the destruction was to amplify pleasure? i do not think so. i don’t remember pleasure. however, i remember my own strength, my own striving, my own insecurities and dark thoughts and i remember thinking that to vacillate between death and life was possibly the only way to live - i remember a vision of myself as a pioneer, making my way through uncharted territory and clinging desperately to the idea that despite my striving, perhaps there was still nothingness ahead.

and make no mistake, i wouldn’t return to the specifics. i’m not fooled enough to think i would want the when and the where and the who and the what - but perhaps i long for the elements? like all of us, i arise from the ashes like a phoenix and after a year of soaring i go back to inspect the burnt debris. a fascination with the existential crisis of the time - the gritty knowledge that somehow, i’m a free agent, completely responsible, even if i am just some chemicals growing out of a dirty petri dish. more than the fashionable coming of age angst, but somehow more was at stake - and more was at stake, namely, souls i didn’t think existed even though i felt them burn many nights

and so i now understand: “In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”

despite all, give thanks to my Deliverer. i might sometimes stop in the desert to long for Egypt’s chains, but He is teaching me.