Lakeside Candle & Soap Company

There are candles burning at my bedside tonight. The window is ajar so that I can hear the rushing wind. What a stormy season in San Diego. James Taylor is singing about Carolina and my mind is wandering. It takes me back to another stormy season - two, maybe three years ago. High school, I drove to the Lakeside Library and laid outside in my white Tacoma, Milly, reading, parked under the pepper trees. A wandering spirit overtakes me when it rains. I wandered that day, climbing trees and talking to strangers. My restless feet took me down the street, past the post office and into the Lakeside Candle and Soap Co. on the corner of Woodside and Main. I meandered through, touching everything, smelling some, talking to Bobo, the parrot who occupied a man-sized cage in the corner. I was enjoying fairy illustrations on some greeting cards when the tallest man I've ever seen stepped in from a back room and introduced himself as Tomas (TOH-mas). He was around thirty-five with broad shoulders and a disproportionately small head. We shook, his massive hand engulfing mine. Over the next hour, Tomas told me his story - how he had dressed as a monk for a book report in elementary school earning him his nickname (what his real name was, he wouldn't say) and about his two-year-old daughter. We talked about God and about Lakeside and about my literary aspirations. I bought a candle that day; round with a colorful, stained-glass pattern. I went back to visit Tomas twice after that. His shop closed before the end of the subsequent summer. But that candle is burning on my table this night, and I am thinking about that stranger who is, in a way, my friend.

"Everywhere, in every town, in every street, we pass, unknowing, human souls made great through love and adversity."

-Frank Borzage "Street Angel"

Maybe I don't want to be Bohemian afterall

The Day - October 26, 2010
The Place - Santa Barbara City College
The Moment - the most confused of my entire little existence.

Thoughts are danger. Not an hour ago I seriously considered turning on a TV show, getting on Facebook, and rotting my brain into mush so that it would just go quiet. There is something desperately appealing about being a lemming; no worries, no internal struggle, no decisions. But that's no way to live. A sentient person cannot just live in the system without questioning its validity. I have, unfortunately, encountered too many sentient people to allow my brain to atrophy in such a manner.
I try to spend my Tuesday evenings on State St. at the farmer's market where a group of anarchists have a table to raise awareness and funds for a worker-owned worker-run coffee shop that they want to call Bonfire Cafe. There is one in particular who I love to ask about the things he believes. His name is Zach and he seems to be the unofficial head (being, of course, anarchists there is no official head). This boy is a little older than me and so much more informed. It may well be that his information is crap, but he knows more of it than I do of truth. He is an honorable human being. He's wrong. But his spirit, the bit of God in him, is dying to make things right; it is a spirit that remembers Utopia, that remembers Eternity, and he is trying so hard to make that here. His methods and his politics won't work - if only because he is wrong about innate human nature. But his motivating beliefs are beautiful. He is looking for God - in that he is looking for freedom, for generosity, for justice, for compassion, for mercy, for basic human rights. He is looking for a world where people aren't hungry when there is food that no one is eating. A world where people aren't living on the street in front of empty buildings. A world where a few don't decide the fate of all. He is a tragedy. He thinks that he just wants to be left alone. If they would just stop trying to impose their (fill in the blank)... If there just wasn't a centralized group of elite executives ruling in their own interest... If we could just decided for ourselves how we want to live our lives... Oh Zach, how disappointed you'd be if you got your wish. You can't govern you. I can't govern me. People are not the creatures you so hopefully believe they are. Those morals that you don't like, they have to be there. They protect - they lovingly limit in order to protect. If you only knew the One who gave them to you.
He would not be of any real influence in my life if the above was all that there is. However, today he said things that pricked a sore spot in my heart. I know no better way to put it than this: some of his words crushed the Dan in me who keeps watch over the Darcy and she is running amuck inside my head. Dad has to be the most powerful part of my mind because Mom is not stable. She is a revolutionary. so easily inspired that she makes romantic even some of the ugliest men and barbarous movements in human history. He is a pillar of logic and knowledge and he remembers what he knows even in the face of the most powerful emotions. Balancing the two is my life's great challenge.
I wish I could quote what they boy said to me tonight. I can't do him justice. We talked for a half an hour or so at the end of which he got a little bit lost in his musings. He said that maybe none of the systems of the world are truly sustainable. Maybe it doesn't matter whether or not he can make his ideas last from one generation to the next. Maybe all he can do is fight to carve a niche in the world and make it as close to freedom as he can while he lives. Maybe all he can do is try one of the things that hasn't been tried yet. Try, at least, to make life different. And if he flies too close to the sun and goes down in flames, then he'll be either a lesson to those who come after or an inspiration.
The Darcy in me began to tremble. I left. And when I got around the corner and safely down the street, I sat down on a bench and cried. Never, at any intellectual crisis of my life, have I known the people I want to talk to to answer their phones. So I called on my God and cried some more. My insides are shaken and I don't know exactly what to do. I need to know more, I need to have more answers. What can I say to him, and to the others like him who have yet to become part of my story? I couldn't do it by myself in the first place added to which is a handicap deliberately set up by my Jesus.
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing... For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.'"
As Alicia would say... "What the world?"

The Break-Up: Epilogue

We were right to fall in love. He and I, children though we were, though we are, we were right. We didn't choose each other haphazardly. We knew that there was something to be found here that was nowhere else. It may have been foolishness, but it wasn't crazy. There was something to be found. We had a meeting of minds and hearts, in some ways. He couldn't go with me everywhere my mind went and he wouldn't go anywhere new or difficult. But he met me sometimes. "And I won't regret, because you can grow flowers from where dirt used to be."

Our Horror Unfounded?

Dear Friend, please do not take this post too seriously. Remember and believe that I will never leave the Island, never forget the way, and never become as ordinary as Jenkins minor. However, I think the terror to which we cling bears questioning. Consider the moment in Finding Neverland when George grows up. He worries about his mother in a very mature sort of way and J.M. Barrie says, "Magnificent. The boy is gone. Somewhere in the last thirty seconds, you've become a grown-up." He tells George that he should be the one to talk to his mother about her illness. George says, "But I don't what to say" and J.M. Barrie replies, "You'll do fine. You'll do just fine."

I live four hours away from the nearest grown-up who cares about me. And I'm doing fine. I'm doing just fine. Sometimes I am afraid and often am I lonely. But some days I walk around and think, "Gosh, this is sort of easy," and have to think real hard to remember what it was that I was afraid of. Be brave, friend. Bedford Falls is an imaginary place. Neverland is not. But neither of them can take us away unless we go there on purpose. You'll do fine, I promise.

Let's make a new place, a new way to be. Let's be betwixt-betweens, like Peter. We'll think like grown-ups and laugh like children. How about it?

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

I sat in a seat in a church, swallowed up by anonymity, thriving. Oneness in a room full of strangers, our hearts faced the same direction. It makes me tingle. In the silence that overtakes a room when a man prays, the train whistle sounded loud, just outside the walls, echoing in the done-over-warehouse acoustics. Somewhere in that hour my soul realized that ever elusive thought which mind has mulled over a thousand times; none of it is mine.
I possess nothing. That to which I cling with every last thread of strength and insist upon fretting over time and again does not belong to me. I have nothing. And yet I am unable to give this nothing up. The pictures of what is to come, what lays before me, they are not real and they are not mine. I claim ownership of nothing. Not even the illusions I struggle to grasp.
"So let Me have them."
"No, Lord," as my eyes begin to prick, "I can't." I did not give life to the people I love; I did not dream up the concept of them, nor did I shape them or even choose them for myself. They are mine to enjoy only by gift (though, I suppose, even the enjoyment does not belong to me for that too was gifted by Another). I have no right to anyone. They. Are. Not. Mine.
"So let Me have them."
Tears flow in earnest now and I literally stifle sobs for I know that I never can resist Him for long and before the end of the next hour I will be without every single thing I thought I had when I awakened just a little while before. What will I do without "my" dreams? MY face, MY hair, My brothers, MY fears, MY car, MY time... "Let Me have it." My composure barely held until the pastor finished talking. What am I saying? Composure abandoned me long before then. Quiet barely held that long. I squeezed my way through the packed row of seats, apologizing, and probably dripping tears on people. My bare feet protested the temperature of the floor. But then, they are not even really my feet, apparently, so what was I worrying about? I dropped to the floor in the front, literally unable to keep my face off the carpet, and sobbed.
I could not form the words. What evil lives in my nature swelled up into my throat and squeezed it shut. How can I let go? I know I don't actually control a damn thing. But oh the power of that illusion. If I let Him have them, He might take them. He might destroy everything. But He isn't a destroyer! The only thing I know in all this vast silly world is that His intentions toward me are good. "You can have it. You can have it all... Only promise me that what You say is true! Only promise me that You are who You say You are, and You can have anything You want. Anything."
But this place isn't everything. It isn't even anything. What is Bedford Falls? Fiction. Nothing more. A made up place. So what if I get wrinkly die? This that I am so frightened by is, in and of itself, nothing. I am not tied here. It does not end here. Childhood is not the end all be all of all things. It is not everything. It is not anything. Everything is what comes HereAfter. That is where I am tied. That is Neverland - the home of beauty, joy and neverty. I transcend this. That is now what is true. It always was, I am just to stupid to see sometimes.
I transcend this.

Unhappy Hello to my old Companion

Depression is like anesthesia that starts in one's extremities (fingertips, toes, ends of one's hair) and creeps so gently and slowly up one's veins, ever working its way nearer and nearer to one's heart. That creep is familiar to me and I become aware of it before it reaches my first knuckles, sometimes before it even leaves my finger nails. There is no stopping it; just the thought, "Hello Old Friend, how I loathe you." It makes my bones heavy. It urges me softly to sit still, to put my book down, not to answer my phone, not to move, not to think, just to sit perfectly still and do nothing. Even now, I force my fingers to move though they creak in protest. They are so weighty.
They say (whomever they may be) that Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Not that I had hope, really. But when a person such as myself builds up a fantasy and then real life feeds it with tiny tidbits, a person such as myself is unable to resist a small semblance hope. I never really had a chance. An interesting manchild paid me the slightest bit of attention and my made up world reeled. He is too much more muchier than I am. He has too many other options. He is more lively than a girl like me could ever be. I give up before I begin.

I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air.

The whole world is different. I noticed it first a week and a half ago when a family who is usually striving and stressful became peaceful and emitted a spirit of harmony when plucked out of their daily surroundings and transplanted in the beauty of Santa Barbara. And then I looked around me and saw gentility, strength, passion, excellence, all the traits of God demonstrated in people. The world began to glow that gorgeous gold just like it does at my favorite time of day. I felt Love. And then I realized - it's me. I am glowing, I am different. I trace it back just a few weeks to the day I spent pouring through old photos looking for one of my Mama to take away with me. That day I remembered my child self; "little-I" as E.E. Cummings would put it. I remember that little girl and I fell in love with her. And then I remembered that she is me and in that moment I learned to Love me. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I know this. But if it is really true then, until I know how to love myself, how can I love my neighbor? I have fallen in love with my own truest self and since that moment I have been loving. Oh the glory of Love! How many songs are devoted to it? What a life, to live in Love. Leave Romance out. Perhaps Love really is all you need. "If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, 'tis now."

Echo the Sounds of Silence

My pen is silent. There is little more tantalizing than the length of a blank page. I long to fill it, ache really. A pen perches comfortably in my right hand, its tip rests on the smooth paper; yet I cannot write. Full heart and inspired mind ought to flow easily out through ready fingers and yet the words will not form. So many thoughts, so many fanciful imaginings. Perhaps I should keep them to myself and the depths of me know it. But that cannot be. I have to get it out! The satisfaction of a full page drives me to grab hold of at least one thought, just one. There is a song that says, "If I get it all down on paper its not longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to." I am going to pin down one thought today. I send up a prayer and go to it.

Faithful One,

I depend on you. This is a hard day. Please be near me. Though my heart is in shambles and I feele like dying, teach me to say, "It is well with my soul."In your name and with your permission and power I banish self-hatred, that unloving spirit, and declare that it is not welcome near me. I banish dread and send it to fellowship with self-hatred instead of with me. I will not play cards with devils today. I will call on you all this day, again and again. For you, O Lord, are a Shield about me, my Glory, the Lifter of my head. I love you, I honor You. Be not far from me, O God. I will not leave You. "All through the storm, your love is the anchor. My hope is you alone."
Yours, Acceptance With Joy

The Break-Up : Wallowing

As a strong advocate for wallowing, it has disturbed me that thus far I've done very little. Being a cut and run, pretend it's not happening kind of girl, I have filled my days since the break-up and banished most of the sadder notions to the far reaches of my mind. However, now that everything is a bit more settled and the boy is no longer trying to change my mind and providing situations where I get to fight against him and subsequently trade my grieving for anger, it is time just about time. To Wallow: to indulge in an unrestrained way, to roll about in mud or water. I am going to draw a bath and roll about in my indulgent tears in an unrestrained way until I feel I have grieved appropriately.
As much hope as I have, as much as I enjoy the freedom, as much as I appreciate being able to read philosophy and not have to consider how I would try to explain it to the boy if I could even bring myself to try to share it with him, this is a sad sad business. The last thirty hours have been exceptionally emotional. It hits me in waves when something triggers an unexamined knowledge that I've shoved away; a picture will come of Matty curled up in bed late at night crying, a realization that someday I will have a wedding and I won't be marrying him, a strong memory of his smell will fill me, or I'll use a saying that I stole from him. I hate thinking about all the wonderful things I am going to do and not share with him. I miss him. It is still the right thing to do, but I miss him so very much.
Seeing him is mostly ok now, until the end. Leaving him is very awkward and very very hard. I want him to hold me, I want to kiss him, I want to assure him that I love him, make him laugh. I want him to be happy when he walks away from me. But there is no way that can be. We have always been terrible at saying goodbye, even for the shortest of intervals. Now it is pure agony. I didn't fully value how much I love his neck; I fit perfectly under his chin and his neck is so smooth but manly and it smells so wonderfully Matty-like. It makes me cry almost every time he hugs me. I don't like this. I don't like it one bit.
So leave me to my wallowing and send me your most sympathetic thought.

I can still recall our last summer
I still see it all
Walks along the Seine, laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

We made our way along the river
And we sat down in the grass
By the Eiffel tower
I was so happy we had met
It was the age of no regret
Oh yes
Those crazy years, that was the time
Of the flower-power
But underneath we had a fear of flying
Of growing old, a fear of slowly dying
We took the chance
Like we were dancing our last dance ...

And now you're working in a bank
The family man, a football fan
And your name is Harry
How dull it seems
Are you the hero of my dreams?

The Break-Up : In Summary

as told by The Postal Service.

Boy - Will someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you're deserting for better company?
I can't accept that it's over...
And I will block the door like a goalie tending the net
In the third quarter of a tied-game rivalry
So just say how to make it right
And i swear I'll do my best to comply
Tell me am i right to think that there could be nothing better
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together

Girl - I feel I must interject here you're getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself
With these revisions and gaps in history
So let me help you remember.
I've made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear.
I've prepared a lecture on why i have to leave
So please back away and let me go

Boy - I can't my darling i love you so...
Oh, oh
Tell me am i right to think that there could be nothing better
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together

Girl - Don't you feed me lines about some idealistic future
Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures

Boy - I know that I have made mistakes and i swear
I'll never wrong you again

Girl - You've got a lure i can't deny,
But you've had your chance so say goodbye
Say goodbye

Like-Minded. Mate for the Soul.

Make My Heart Sit Down

or "Mattison Tried To Kiss Me Today." Whichever you prefer.
My exhaustion is complete. You know I haven't been sleeping properly, but last night I only slept a few hours and I worked all day today. Combined with that are the intense emotions and spiritual happenings of the middle of last night and the turmoil caused by my lately-ex boyfriend's doings an hour ago. In what state of mind would a person think that kind of action would ever be acceptable? Large rolling tears have been the result of my last four encounters with him and never do I see or talk to him without suffering from aching nausea afterword. I need to get away.
I am going to get away. In the fall, I am moving to Santa Barbara in search of education and sensational experience. It will probably be only one semester, but who knows what will befall me there. You know what Bilbo used to say, "It's a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to." There will be danger and discomfort and intrigue and joy. An interesting precedent is being set here; my desire is stronger than both my fear and apathy. In my current exhausted state anxiety is getting the better of me, but I am generally thrilled. My thoughts are ever bent toward the fall.

The Break Up: Week One

I have managed the first week with remarkable simplicity.
I cried. I grouched. I kept busy.
There hasn't been much sleep involved, thus my moods are becoming increasingly dicey and sharp. Hopefully tomorrow I will figure in a nice nap to catch up on some of my heavily decreased shut-eye. I just cannot manage to go to sleep at a reasonable hour regardless of how close I am edging to the line between plain tired and weary or fatigued. Each morning I wake up and think, "Tonight I'll be asleep by nine!" or "Today is the day for that nap." It makes no difference; I always find something to do instead. It could be that I am afraid of the moments before I have reached the shores of sleep when I would be laying in bed with only the company of my thoughts. It could be that I've lost my sanity, or perhaps just my self-will. Whatever the reason, I remain resolutely awake.
In the past few days I have delved into a bit of research on the actor Christian Bale who has been somewhat intriguing to me ever since I discovered him in "Little Women" as the beloved Laurie. His fierce privacy agitates my propensity to want to know everything. That propensity coupled with my persistent fascination with things I can't know or places I am not allowed to go, is a compelling force in my psyche. However, I am at this moment regretting the aforementioned propensities and fascinations. The ever-so-interesting Mr. Bale made a movie called "American Psycho" which I am relieved to report that I did not watch but also very sorry to say that I did extensively read about. The resulting state of mind can be described by no other word than disturbed. Why is it so easy and thrilling to ignore the kindly voice in my soul that warns me to stop reading... or not say... or don't do...? I do hope that the day will come when it has become my guide rather than the silly thing that tells me what i should (oh curse that word!) do.
I began this post with the intention of detailing my first single week in two years. Perhaps tomorrow... After all, tomorrow is another day.

All That I Hoped Against/ The Break-up

Yesterday, the girl broke up with her boy.

It was a sorrowful affair. The night before, the girl called the boy's dearest friend out of concern that the boy wouldn't tell anyone and would hole himself up in his bedroom with no one to help him through his hurt. Early in the morning, the friend called the boy to give him fair warning. When the girl arrived at school, the boy met her half way to class and asked, "Are you going to break up with me today?" The girl answered, "Yes." They walked to a semi-secluded area and proceeded with a long and tearful discourse. Many sad things were said; the boy projected his hurt onto the situation, viewing it through the lens of all his fears and insecurities. He said many hurtful things, but the girl was prepared and refused to let them into her heart. She struggled against the guilt that assailed her and was more silent than she should have been, probably. Finally, the boy held the girl and kissed his fingers and touched them to her face. Then he made her say the words, "Mattison I am going to break up with you." and gently pushed her from his lap. She said, "I love you" and walked away, beginning to sob. A kindly young man stopped her to make sure she was alright. She assured him that she could make it to her car and would not drive anywhere until she was composed. A moment later, the boy caught up with her and took her hand. He walked her most of the way to the car before realizing that he shouldn't hold her hand anymore. They talked a little bit about what it was going to be like now. When they reached her car, he lightly kissed her and she drove away.

All That I Hoped Against : Prologue

Once upon a time, a fairy blew her dust in the face of a girl and the girl fell in love a beautiful boy. The boy had a heart of kindness and a uniquely golden soul. The girl watched him, her admiration growing daily. After a time, the boy loved her back. They started a friendship abounding in affection and play. Every day they saw each other was new joy; each night they said goodbye found them both in tears. Very soon they had committed their hearts to each other and, not long after that, their lives. Many promises were made; many quiet warnings from wisdoms learned long ago nudged at the edges of the girl's mind, but she brushed them aside. So swept up was she in the glory of first love and the wonder of the boy that she allowed many things that were once important to her to fall by the wayside. Time passed and the romance grew. The boy and girl soared through the air in a colorful hot air balloon. They rested in the shade of trees and watched the clouds. They kissed each other endlessly. The girl filled a book with adorations of the boy. The boy never stopped praising the girl in her beauty. They formed the perfect plan; marry immediately and run away. A long life of blissful togetherness and, more presently, Europe stretched before them. Early on the boy hesitated and found many reasons to doubt the plan. He shoved these aside, however, determined to make the girl happy and never spoke of them to her. Soon, he was just as enthused about the plan as she. They were racing along toward a life neither of them had ever imagined for themselves but could not wait to start living. They were untouchable; wrapped in each other and laughing at the world as it passed slowly on...
And then, as life generally goes, the girl woke one day with a strange sense of deja vu. She felt oddly like she had felt nearly three years before. She shook it off. But the next morning it was still with her. Over some months she grew to feel strongly like her former self. This very much interrupted her new-er (though by now, not so new) life, being as her former self felt that many things her new-er self was disregarding were, in fact, NOT to be disregarded. And she began to see again. She saw the faults of her beloved boy; faults that she had spent recent years ignoring and smoothing over. She saw her old dreams in all their splendour. She saw reason and wisdom. She saw the folly of path she was hurrying down. She saw herself. And everything changed.
The boy did not come to a similar self-renewal. He remained an advocate of the new plan and continued to ignore the girl's faults and problems. He was crushed when she confessed to him her new (in other words, old) feelings. He saw the life he planned fall to ruins around him and was deeply wounded by her betrayal of trust and failure to fulfill her promises. He felt stupid for trusting her, for baring his soul to her; and especially for overriding his good judgment in order to secure her happiness. He felt great sadness and longing for the girl he used to know and thought he understood. He couldn't see how she could change like that. He didn't know if he could stay with her like this, but he had always sworn to himself that he would never be without her. He didn't know what to do.
The girl was confused. On the one hand, she loved the boy with every fiber of her being. She thought he was the most precious and excellent person in the world. She believed that the best parts of God were inside of this boy. She never wanted to be without him in her life. The thought of not holding his hand, not breathing his smell, not hearing him say "Silly 'ol bear" any time he did something silly, not knowing what he was doing every day was devastating to her. But on the other hand, with her vision clear she could see that there were some discordant, even opposing, differences of worldview and personality between them. When thinking clearly, she was fairly certain that the healthy and right thing to do was to break it off and live her own life, cherishing quietly the hope that they could one day come back together and have the life they imagined, but satisfied if it wasn't to be. But how could she leave him who she loved so dearly and hated to hurt above all other things in the world? She didn't know what to do.

To be Continued.

5 Reasons for Fall In Love With John Krasinski

1. See "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" (particularly his final scene)

2. See "The Office" season 2 episode 20 "Drug Testing" and watch his face.

3. Played and sang Billy Joel "Just the Way You Are" in "Brief Interviews..."

4.Quote: "A good part is a good part and I think I've learned that from everyone I've been a fan of, from Jimmy Stewart..."

5. Overall "Jimmy-esque"

.

I need a holiday...

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea we are now afloat and must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures."

I should very much like to avoid shallows and miseries. I do feel the swell of the tide around my ankles and I fear that if I do not begin to wade out I will indeed be bound to the shore and spend all my days straining to see what is beyond the curve of the horizon. I want to BE beyond that curve; to touch and smell whatever is there. The time is almost come when I know that I am to cut the ties that hold me here and set out upon the ventures I have always talked of. Just a few short weeks...

Ode To The Mean Reds / Ginny Victorious

Dear Mean Reds,
I hate your stinking guts. Last night you had a hold on me; today I am rid of you. You are potent; a tiny dose of you works wondrous feats of havoc on a heart. I am over you. Consider this the end of our relationship. Yes, I am breaking it off with you. My new affair involves Someone full of life and grace and deep true love; Someone ever so much more moving than you. You will find Him a formidable opponent. Indeed, I have great hope that when next you peak your ugly head around my corner, I will hide behind Him and He will banish you. Farewell, my old companion. Best wishes and may you find yourself obliterated from the face of this earth, never to torture another soul.
Most Sincerely,
AvaGinevera

May it be. And soon.

John Darling was probably not a lucky one in the sense that when he closed his eyes tight and the pool of pale colors he saw there took shape he probably did not see the Neverland. He did however surpass the good fortune of even the lucky ones - he really went. He walked the shores and slept in the little home underground. He played the mermaids' bubble game and there he became my idol. John introduced a new way of hitting bubbles that the mermaids adopted for themselves. "This is the one mark that John has left on the Neverland." Though I find him in no way and exceptional character (neither clever nor outstandingly brave nor endearingly pathetic), the Neverland remembers him. He was there and he left something of himself behind.

Dear friend, please do not misunderstand me. I know that I matter; I know that my life has meaning and purpose and no matter what I do with it, great or small, my soul and my existence is significant simply because I am. But.

But. I want to leave a mark on this land. I cannot go to the Neverland; Peter did not come for me nor will he. But I am here and I want this place, this world, this life to remember me. Someday I will not be here and I am mostly at peace with the inevitable "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" concept. But even though John is no longer in the Neverland and it is safe to guess that none there remember his name, the mermaids almost certainly still bounce their bubbles on their heads when they play their game. In that same way, I have a driving need to leave something, some mark, some fingerprint, some remnant of myself, of what I did while I was here.

I need a cause. I need a task. I need something fill endless notebooks with and stay awake for days until I collapse working on. There are worlds of unturned rocks, undiscovered magic, unspoken epiphanies for me. Where they are, what they are... I just know they are. I have to find it; my mark. What ever it may be.