Porch Reunion

These last warm autumn days and these perfectly cooled nights are appropriately celebrated on a front porch and with a cold beer. Best friends side by side and silence greets my conscience with calm, renewed, understanding.

It's been approximately nine years since we last sat on this porch and enjoyed the same feeling. Not a word is uttered, but our hearts slow to a beat that fits the "new experience". This front porch has now become a poetic justice and something witness to a full circle event.

Years ago we used to make fun of computers, technological gadgets, and cell phones. Today we, my best friend and I, sit here using our laptops side by side and are listing to music pouring out of my cell phone. It hasn't even been a full ten years and the things around us seem so foreign, but our laughter and sense of humor has not changed a bit.

We fought for this friendship, on this porch. We kissed once, on this porch. We cried, on this porch. We got drunk and danced, on this porch. We watched parents and siblings grow older, on this porch. We watched the paint chip and the wood bend, on this porch. We saw neighbors scream, weather change, and lights flicker on this porch.

People wait their whole life to understand their memories and we are sitting here building on top of ours. With wisdom from travel, time, mistakes, and heartbreak we are building a new porch.

This is our porch. We invite you to sit and stay a while.

A place to sit

For the first time in my life I feel like I don't need to live anywhere in particular to find a place to sit. Finding a place to sit, in this context, simply means a place where I can think a little clearer. I am out exploring all the new places in my home town that my generation has created and I'm finding an overall creative thread. With creativity, for me, comes comfort.

Currently I am sitting inside the Friendly Fox, in Fort Wayne, IN just off of South Wayne Avenue. The coffee is sub par, but I'm a brat in that arena. The music this mid-morning is actually really good. It's raining heavily and there isn't a more accurate state of gloom on earth like the sky overhead. It's a great day for different food and a great rainy day view.

Here I have found it, the want to write again. To simply let these thoughts fly, and to let them fly without caution or care.

Moving home has been a relentless roller coaster of emotional situations. One run in after another with old friends, older friend's siblings, and people/situations that I'm just completely unprepared for. I should be focusing on the now, the emotions I need to battle, but I am focused and targeted to things that squander away my useful energy. Although I have been sort of nudged off my initial path I have been extremely productive.

For the first time in years I am surrounded by people that really care and go out of their way on a daily basis to help out everyone around them when ever they can. It's the multitude of people, all at once, that really overwhelm me. My husband has NEVER experienced community on this scale and was completely taken back by all of this as well. Since I grew up here I can imagine that it still exists and I can hope to find it somewhere else, but I've really only found this level of camaraderie in Denmark, but I was there for such short period of time that I might be subject to people disagreeing all together. I hope that my husband can find a place to sit someday too.

We all need a place to sit, think, create, or just digest. This is the type of place that may not be perfect, but I'll find another. The Friendly Fox is just around the corner and if my coffee machine is broken I won't hesitate to take a walk to this corner nook.

Between death and life there might be a coffee shop where we can all contemplate the next step, bolt of energy, or just watch from an afterlife laptop what our families in this world are doing.

Hard Work is the best kind of Abuse

It's been a while since I have had the chance/opportunity to get my hands dirty. Not only did I get to break a sweat today, but I was given the opportunity to learn a new skill. It may be small to some people, but I love learning how to fix things within homes so that when I need that skill I can use it properly. I was taught how to make plaster, really easy, and then patch holes, also really easy. It really wasn't the difficulty of the skills, but doing it correctly. I then got to sand with a compression sander. I know there's a better term for this, but I can't remember what my husband said.

When I go through rough times I tend to look for physical pain to confirm certain feelings. This is all very subconscious and never harmful. I have found a trend in tattoos, piercings, physical labor, and high compact sports when I process pain, stress, depression, or anger. This time I've gone through the tattoo & labor stage.

I have a house full of projects to complete and I plan on playing soccer as soon as possible. These things are my personal form of mental process and a major aspect of my own survival.

My grandfather, my Dad's father, passed away last Sunday. I have a peaceful outlook on all of it, but him passing so shortly after my Dad passed away is tough. We all have a long journey when this kind of chapter takes place in life, but I know I am fortunate to understand my own person well enough to take charge of my needs in order to get through it all in a healthy way.

To each their own path and to each person their own process.