The decisions we make

(The Boathouse, Central Park)

The trip is over. 

Today involves some packing and then the long flight home, a return to normalcy. There is a connection through Phoenix, one of the most hellish cities anywhere, on any map. Why don't I just pay the extra money and get the non-stop flights?

In the airline industry they use a term for a flight in which the plane will stop in another city to change some passengers then continue on to the destination city. If you stop and think about this term for a bit it should enrage you: direct. They call those "direct flights" and that is how they are sold. It is an industry-wide term and has been that way for as long as I've been flying.

To make matters worse, with most airlines you will only get the frequent flyer miles as if you were flying a direct line between the two cities on the itinerary. Perhaps this is where they derive the term. Who knows.

Well, perhaps that is a topic for another time. I try not to get myself too worked up about flying before I have even arrived at the airport. 

It will be nice to return to the valley of Sonoma. The humidity in Florida is impossible and it is still early in the year, the soupy denseness has just arrived. I was told that last week was the last of the cool nights and clear days.

I do not know exactly what I face on returning to Sonoma. Something has changed. There has been a shift, I can feel it. We are both afraid. Afraid of what will happen next. It need not be so devastating, particularly if neither of us is doing anything to avoid it, which would indicate that we both invite it. What else should we expect in such circumstances. 

If only it were more simple to make love work. If the pleasure that can be derived from caring for another person could be achieved in an easily sustainable and consecutive fashion. It all sounds so simple, but everybody struggles with it. All relationships require work and willingness. All the love in the world can not save a connection that lacks an open enthusiasm for it to succeed. There must be a faith of sorts, a belief that it can and should be preserved. 

Without that, nothing.

Who knows, perhaps everyone will be happy to see me, ecstatic even. Rachel as well. Maybe she will run to me to hug me and hold me longer than expected. Perhaps she will tear up with happiness upon seeing my face, as if I have returned safely from sea. That would be nice, to feel deeply loved and missed. The imaginary components of love are always the easiest to achieve. 

Though fear is also imaginary, and that seems to work in the opposite way.

I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. 

This should be easy enough to verify, just listen to me for a little while, etc.

Excerpt from "the crunch" by Charles Bukwoski:

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

.