the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.

...i'm in kansas.


can i go back now?


suppose i'm ready for home.


how small the world is that we can fly a day and end up so far away... in a completely different world.
have we really become that big?
if we have then i daresay much of humanity has forgotten its humility...
suppose that i view stewardship of nature in the same way i view stewardship of campers.
you live with it, respect it, treat it like it deserves... and resume your role when something needs done or something bad is happening.


today as i laughed at the graffiti (plankton from spongebob in converse. 'so crazy' as our wonderful bus driver says.) and looked at the rainy sky i drifted off with the music. tired.
one last bus ride before the planes... 
one last look at Germany.
i gazed out at the trees and apologized to the landscape for not being alive.
i love the outdoors here...
there, i mean...
so much; yet i wasn't alive out there.
suppose i was playing frisbee in the park that one day...


somehow as we stood in line to load the plane for the long flight home i felt fine.
overwhelmingly so.


it was odd...
and welcome.


the flight didn't seem as long as it had ocming over, of course i took a sleeping pill.
worked for maybe three hours, but that's better than nothing.


during a layover, lounging about with the rest of the band, luggage strewn everywhere, i thought of how odd changing realities is...
my reality a few hours ago was jazz band.
concerts, jokes about our song numbers and titles, quoting the bus driver, making music to touch people.


as i wrote in atlanta:
i find changing realities to be...
odd.
my reality right now as i sit in atlanta is the jazz family i have been with for weeks, months rather.
when i step off that last plane that reality is over.
some people i will never see again.
sad?
perhaps.
yet somehow it's okay.


(why i wrote this in mixed tense... who knows...)
i sat there near the ending, gazing up at the ceiling of my gate in atlanta; 
so many endings and beginnings in life, some people say that to make a coherent story you must flow seamlessly from event to event...
life isn't always like that.
it jolts, startles, disrupts, it's inconvenient.
i suppose how 'seamless' the story is depends on what distance from which you are looking at it.
until then i sit at the 'end' and 'begin' tomorrow.
...ah metaphors.
i always find that we are one.
four years...
i sit at the edge looking over...
and it feels wonderful...




it still feels wonderful.


i am me.
i look into the mirror and see those blue eyes looking at me, i smile and talk to myself...
to You, Lord...
i will mess up and dislike what i do,
i will stray from who i am,
i will be awkward, 
i will mess up...


but i'm human.
i can't be perfect and i can't expect myself to be.
and i can't let it bother me when someone comes along and rips me to shreds because i trusted.
that's part of the risk you take in any kind of relationship.
i accept that.
but that doesn't change one thought i have ever had about it.
and it doesn't change the betrayal.
or the feeling of being lied to.
because i was.
and all of the truths and the lies hurt, there is no difference.


i will hurt, yes.
the pain may be all i can extract to paper, yet that isn't all that there is.
sometimes, yes.
that's part of the addiction of pain; where pain is all there is what do you do when it is gone?
perhaps time heals all wounds because slowly various other things take its place. 
the pain heals, but it can't leave if there is nothing else.
but it will not always be that there is only pain.


it will be almost 4 by the time i get to sleep...
getting up to leave for camp by 9:30...
*sigh*


i deconstruct at the cost of my own sleep and sanity.


perhaps i'll wake up at 10 instead.


random:


...


great scot, just realized this.


so that whole relationship thing, i say you have to value yourself before you consider being in a relationship, you cannot rely on someone else to give you worth.
well.
i did value myself.
the hard part was someone else valuing me.
learning to let someone else give me worth.
...
and then that being so brutally crushed shook everything.
or at least that's one aspect.
because i do value myself...
Lord, You value me...
i didn't realize how different it was for another human to value me such.
suppose i wasn't used to it.
or at least not that much that quick, i suppose i went from nothing to drowning.
and what do you do with that?


ah well.


so tired...


it's 10:32 in germany.