Night Owl

so it's late at night. I always seem to find my muse late at night. The dark hours, when everyone is sleeping and I can hear the clocks ticking. There's something magical about night that I would never trade for anything, not an early morning fog or an early evening twilight. I'm what some would call a Night Owl. I prefer not to think of myself as a glaring-eyed mouse-bones-regurgitating avian fellow, but rather something less substantial. Like a shadow, or the flickering dream-tendril just before you truly fall asleep. Something that craves the night time, because that is when it is most alive, most free to do what it wishes. The darkness hides me, envelops me, takes me up into it's chilly arms and whisks me away to places I know I'll never be again.

If you are more of an Early Bird, you probably think of me as silly. Nighttime is for sleeping, you dingbat, you keep whispering but I can't hear you. I'm swallowed up in crisp autumn night, traipsing like a fairy across the falling leaves. The leaves which burst into flames seemingly overnight, and then you wake up the next morning and everything is red, gold, orange, yellow, simply astounding. You see? Magical things happen at night. Even if you can't see them.

I've been told that trees have souls. I don't think I've agreed with such a statement more whole-heartedly than I did with that one. Probably not poison ivy or the crab grass that my dad hates, but definitely trees. There is nothing more majestic, more worthy of a soul, than a tree. How tall they stand, how straight and erect, their beautiful emerald leaves stretching towards the sun. They never ask anything of us, just a little bit of our exhales, of our CO2, not our oxygen or nitrogen, but the stuff that we can't use. Then they change it into something that we can use, into the most precious thing that has been given to us since the moment we were born. Life. The trees ask for nothing, will never ask for anything. They will never beg and plead for us to stop cutting them down, never shower our heads with acorns and squirrels when we bite into their bark with our axes and our saws. They do not cry out in pain as they are ripped literally limb from limb, chopped into sections and shipped to the Home Depot so that we can make floors and cabinets and burn them for a showy little fire that lets in more chill than heat.

These trees, to whom we owe the very air we breathe, are silent, sentries on the horizon, chopped down one by one, each tree a home, shade on a hot day, a sorce of food, somewhere to hide. And, like everything that we can make a profit on, we are exploiting them, bulldozing rainforests so that a few wealthy homes can have exotic wooden floors and cabinets.

Every blog seems to turn into a lecture. I just have so much to yell at humanity for. We are getting so many things wrong. But make no mistake, we're doing things the right way sometimes, too.

I'm craving chapstick. My lips are burning, frazzled by the lack of moisture that I've been torturing them with. It's getting to the point of pain.

I don't know why I'm still going. Honestly, it's 1:42 AM. Tomorrow is a Monday. No school, of course, but it's still 1:42 AM. And I wonder why Physics makes me sleepy. I need to start taking care of my body. Quit stuffing it full of fruit snacks and pretzels and sitting around my house licking my lips until they burn and listening to the clocks ticking. They get louder when I concentrate.

So I'll go now, and we'll meet again another time, maybe when the sun is gharishly bright and we have to squint to see the computer screen. Listen to the music of the night sometime. and The Music of the Night. Listen to both at the same time. Then listen to them alternatively until you're lulled to sleep. Then wake up and comment on my blog and shower me with virtual love.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

It's really a sad thing when I can't find the time to write.  Not only is it sad, but depressing.  Depressing to my soul.  I find myself unable to concentrate in class because there's something festering and it simply will not leave me alone until I write it down.  Even then, it usually sucks me in and distracts me until math class is over and I just missed all of the notes.

Do you have that happen to you?  Probably not.  Just a Dain-ism, I suppose.

I can hear a train moaning far away.  It's moving further and further away...  I wish we had more trains.  More train tracks.  More giant, polluting, noisy things that would house parties of shotgun toting East Coast gentlemen that shot buffalos from the comfort of their hissing train.  Maybe we just need more of the old style, when the earth was greener and we were all less aware and less tainted by the nasty things that inhabit the world today.

I've had moments, more and more frequently, where I can see myself for what I truly am.  Where my mind is no longer polluted by those noisy trains that shoot down any good thought I have.  They're driving my good thoughts to extinction, like the white men drove the buffalo.  Except the buffalo are back, so maybe my mind has hope. 

But anyway, I have those moments.  Where I can look at my face and not think, "ew, look at those ugly brownish-poop eyes.  They're too small for my face."  Or "ew, look at all of my freckles.  Ew look at how pale I am.  Ew ew ew ew ew."  But I just see a person, with different characteristics and traits that are all sewn together to make one Me.

The train is back again.  Perhaps it's going the other way?  Probably not.  Trains never go backwards.  They just chug their way to their destination then they have to get turned around because they're too stuck to the tracks to do it themselves.  Those degrading thoughts are always on a track, as well.  And they just keep chugging and chugging until you reach the station and you're feeling awful about yourself and wondering how long you would survive if you just crawled under a rock and never came out again.  whooo whooo.  

But the train isn't getting to me today.  It sounds mournful.  A mother searching for her child.  whoo whoo who took my baby?  Whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo.  Getting further, getting lost, still searching.  I feel bad, because Momma Train can't get off of her track to find whatever it is she's missing.  But I'm a freebird.  Maybe I've been denying my wings for a long while, my whole life even.  But I've just rediscovered them, and although it won't be easy to remember to beat my wings, to remember that if I want to fly I'm going to have to do a little work, at least I've noticed my feathers and wondered why I have them.

This is all over the place, I know.  Sorry.

Not all people are beautiful, and I know that.  I'm a very aesthetic person.  I don't like ugly things.  But even I cannot deny that there is a time when everyone is beautiful, even to me.  And this is when they're doing something that they love.  They may be the most gnarled old crone you've ever laid eyes on, with spotty, leathery skin and bloodshot, squinty eyes, but if they're doing something that they're passionate about, they become transformed.  Maybe that's why I'm such a sucker for theater and things like that.  Because you can see the excitement the actors have when they perform, or the dancers when they dance, or the musicians when they play, and I find myself wondering if I have ever seen a more perfect person.  It makes me happy to see them so content, so in their prime, so masterful.  The women are gorgeous, the guys are heart-breakers, and I'm just a member of their audience, wishing desperately that I knew them, could point up and say "that's my friend.  That beautiful person right there is my friend."  But it is hardly ever the case.