What I love about my city

I love the mountains to the north and how the sight of them means home.

I love the way the wind smells of sea salt when it blows from the south.

I love sunsets over the ocean.

I love how the change of seasons always sneaks up on you, until one day you notice it's suddenly spring/summer/fall/winter.

I love all the trees everywhere, and the multitude of green things that make this city gorgeous year round.

I love that the air is fresh and breathable.

I love how, on overcast nights, the clouds above downtown are coloured orange from all the lights.

I love how you can find any kind of food, from Mongolian to Korean to Indian to Greek.

I love how you can hear five different languages just taking the bus home.

I love being able to go to the beach, the woods, and the mountain all in one day.

I love the rain and how it keeps all the green things extra green.

I love that smell right before it starts raining... heavy and wet and delicious.

I wonder

I wonder, in my weaker moments, if I'll have nearly enough strength to last another year and a half, possibly even two, before I get to be with you for good.

I wonder if anyone reads this blog, and can't decide from one moment to the next if I care.

I wonder what you'll look like in 50 years.

I wonder if I'd be a good mother some day.

I wonder how much gas will cost in a year.

I wonder if I'll ever find a career that will both sustain and support me, and fulfill and delight me.

I wonder where I'll be in five years.

I wonder if (and hope that) you'll be there with me.

I wonder if I'll ever live to drive a hover car.

I wonder if I'll ever lose touch with my best friend since first grade.

I wonder if the red I see is someone else's green.

I wonder...

The memory of sleeping together

Once again in darkness, but this time I'm with you. We make love and talk ourselves into silence, and the calmess of sleep slowly descends. I'm nestled into you, the combined warmth of our two bodies spreading lethargically from my centre down my limbs, making me sink deeper into the bed. I listen to your breathing, take the pattern into myself and match you inhale for inhale, exhale for exhale. I decide that your pattern doesn't really suit me for sleep, and that's okay. I return to my own, and let my eyes close on the soft darkness around us.

Your surrender to the unconsciousness of sleep is heralded by your twitching fingers, and I sense the moment you slip under, as your body relaxes completely and your breathing deepens. I long to slip with you into oblivion, to travel hand-in-hand with you through the dream world and wake knowing our souls have been intertwined all night. I feel the boundary where my body ends and yours begins start to blur, and lose track of what is me and what is you. Here in the comfortable coccoon of darkness, it makes no difference if we are seperate beings or one melded together. I sigh softly, and let myself slowly relax and follow you into oblivion.

A Discourse on Dreams

I've come to a point where I'm rather fed up with my indecision. After working hard and studying for two years, I now sit inactive and out of practise as I have been for the last six months. If my dream were truly my dream, would I not be pushing every day to achieve it? Dreams are supposed to be a wonderful thing you hope and strive to achieve. I have everything I need to start working my way towards my dream, except evidently the willpower to start.

Is this because I'm scared of failure? An easy answer, a simple way to explain it all. Or is it because I chose my dream out of a desire for glamour, fame, and fortune? And because my dream is based on superficial craving, now that it comes to hard work and perserverance, my passion falters. It was fun in highschool and college, the community and support and understanding is amazing, but now I'm in the real world and I have to be realistic about myself.

But is all this merely an easy way for me to back out? Is it really just simple fear of failure that is causing my inactivity, and I'm simply making up all these more complex issues to mask my fear? If I decide to let my dreams go, will I live the rest of my life in regret for not pursuing them? If I do pursue them, will I regret later the choice to follow something I don't truly want?

I have to find the answers within myself, and soon for my own sanity. Unfortunately, my inner answer-giver seems to be rather silent on the subject.

Once the light goes out

Each night after I turn out the light and settle down to sleep, my thoughts turn to you. I think about so many things - about what our life could be like together, the hard times, the happy times, the realities of day to day life with you and how trying and wonderful it would be. I think about the change in me you've effected, how I feel stronger, more patient in a way, and so hopeful. I feel beautiful and amazing and cared for and loved in a way I've never been before. Loved for who I am and what I can be, for what I've been and done, loved with such an understanding and openness that I feel so blessed to have it.

I think about the lessons I've learned from the difficulties we face through this distance and your fixed situation in the army, from the depth of emotion I've felt for you and from the maturity we've both displayed since our first meeting. I think about the pain and fear I will feel when you're deployed away from me, when you are no longer a quick phone call or text message away, when I can't look at your face on webcam each day and see the love in your eyes. I think about being reduced to letters and the occasional email, about watching the news with terror in my heart while praying I never see your name.

I think about the way it feels to be in your arms, how it's a complete justification of everything we go through to be with each other. I yearn to be in your arms once more, to listen to your breathing as you fall asleep - always before me - and to feel the touch of your lips on mine once more. I can almost feel you there beside me, as if I could simply stretch my hand out across the bed and touch your warm back, feel the way you instinctively open yourself to me even in your sleep. I never move my hand, because I know I would feel nothing but cold sheets and emptiness, and my fragile dream that you lie beside me would vanish with the imagined heat of your sleeping body.

There aren't words with enough power and emotion to describe the way everything is now that I'm with you. There is a rightness to my world, and it feels like everything is a secret that is shared solely between the two of us. I can't wait for the day when we are no longer apart.

I miss you, and love you.