kundalini

Here it is folks, I'm deathly short on people to share meaningful things with, so it goes on here for you to read. Sadly, you all know more about me than my mother...

At the gym this morning, I ran into my old boss from Meijer back when I worked there in my salad days. We see each other there every once in a while, and we're always cordial. He's only about four years older than me, and we've always had a lot of respect for each other, but anyway, we talked for a little while. He just lost one of his best friends, his lifting buddy whom I'd seen him spotting there at the gym a million times. The man, his roommate for three years in college, was diagnosed with liver cancer two months ago. He died on Sunday. Married for five months, and 33 years old. The man was fit as fit could be, no excessive drinking, no smoking, ate right... Just got sick and died. I guess I'm sensitive enough to feel it a little when someone I've known and been well acquainted with for 10 years loses a good friend. I know how shitty I'd feel if I lost the guy I lived with in college. He and I spent 5 years together, and he still doesn't hate me. I'm his first born son's godfather, and I love that kid as if I'd been the one who'd carried him for nine months. And I'm going out to Allegan early tomorrow morning to help his mom and dad move. We don't talk like we used to, him having two kids and a full time job and all, but I'd still run into a burning maze for that guy. I'm loyal like that...

I've got my plane tickets, my hotel and my rental car all lined up and I'm spending Tuesday through Saturday of next week out in southern New Mexico with my younger brother. I'm really excited about it. He's still one of those lights in my life. He was one of those kids who didn't fit in, and got marginalized in high school. He never saw the point of it, and he was so smart it bored the shit out of him. He hated school, so he hasn't done much since he graduated a couple of years ago. As many of you know, good jobs are hard to find, college degree or no. I did everything I could do for him while I was away at Western getting my degree and living my drunken party life, but he stumbled the same way I did, ended up on anti-depressants and in the hands of a professional counselor, just like I did...
He left for New Mexico this past June, the day before his birthday to go live with a friend in the Air Force because there just wasn't anything around here for him. It's the bravest thing he's ever done, and far more brave than anything I've ever done. He and I have always been close, except for those years when he didn't say anything to anyone, lost in the muddy mire of unescapable depression, the same way I was after arriving at Western and all those times I tried to drink myself to death alone on the top floor of Eldridge Hall. In the last couple of years, we've gotten close again, and I was the first person he called after he got settled in out there. Neither one of us can drink (it makes me sick, he's only twenty) but we're going to have a hell of time out there fucking with the locals and playing stupid tourist running around Roswell (where the UFO crashed) and Area 51 (Groom Lake where the US covert SkunkWorks are located.)
On that note, I'm more than just a little south of Tuesday night's manic state. I'm depressed that dreamgirl and I aren't going to have anymore classes together, since she and I are both interning in a couple weeks, but I sent her an e-mail telling her to reach out and touch me sometime if she ever just wants to chat about poetry, school, or our internships. I couldn't say it to her in class because she finished the final exam after I did, and I felt like it would be weird if I waited outside the classroom for her so I could walk her out to her car again... Damn she's amazing. We've been sitting next to each other in class most of the semester and today I just sat and watched her play with her hair and pull it back behind her ears and twirl it absent-mindedly while she considered the questions on her exam... I really couldn't focus after that... After I left, I had to stop halfway to my truck and scribble down some lines of poetry that her inescapable beauty brought to my addled mind. She moves like a poem, she's so beautiful it is scary, so smart it is double scary. She intimidates me like no woman ever has before, and I told her so. She and I have had several classes together by this point, and we've actually worked together on a lot of stuff, but I didn't start to have these feelings about her until a few months ago. She was just a pretty smart girl I knew. Since about March she's been a pretty, smart girl who's on my mind more often than not... and the weird thing is, it's not even about sex or how indescribably gorgeous she is. I first noticed her because she kept raising her hand in class and saying all the things I was thinking when we were discussing things in class. As much time as I've been around her, it's not enough. I have this growing hunger, this increasingly insatiatiable thirst... She's in my head like no one has ever been before...