The River of Dreams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_vn_Ilsu8

Her name means River.

Things didn't work out. But I feel good. I'd say they might still, but that's not what I feel good about, nor to I feel good about those odds.

I did the right thing.

Anyway.

I realized I don't look at love the same way other people do.

I don't think you fall in love. I think you fall out of it.

The usual way it seems to work for people is that they meet. They spend time together. They build something, and they find something they love about that thing, about each other, that they put in effort and dedication to keep and protect. It's progressive, and I can see why it's the way it works.

But it doesn't make sense to me. It's not how I work, I guess.

I fall in love with everyone, every minute of the day. I find something that just makes me shine, something that I see and go "wow, that's it. Right there." And that pushes me forward, it gives me this overwhelming drive to be around that sparkle, to be able to share in it. To be part of why it happens.

And usually, I get to. And it's always awesome. For a while.

Here's where love comes in. After a while, it seems like that shine usually dulls up a little, and while I usually try to polish it back out, it's difficult to make something old and everyday seem bright and novel.

Love, real love, for me, is always finding that thing novel, no matter what. Never not shining just because things are always shining.

Lisa said for her, it was like breathing. Despite our differences in what we want out of life, I think that's a good way of putting it, and actually pretty close to my line of thinking. She's a clever one.

Of course, both statements imply there's no work involved in this, which isn't the case. There's always going to be something. And people can always change.

But I think so long as you never lose sight of the glow, things work.

I don't think anything is happening with this, now, but I think if I'm wrong, and it does, things will work. I'd rather do things the right way, to try to make sure it plays out that way if it plays at all, than to just play around because it's a chance to be in the game.

That's what I think love is, anyway.

But here's what it actually looks like these days, because my beer is a little bitter, and it imbues a guy with that trait pretty easily. Let's turn to the more realistic side of this situation, and just the way existence allows for things in general, lately.

It sucks to even bother to worry. Or think. Or try. Like. What's the point?

Everyone can shine somehow, everyone can look right, not everyone, or rather, nearly no one, can keep it up. Not in the long term.

Anyone can keep it up for a night. Easily.

And that's amazing in it's own way. It's permanent. That one night light, it doesn't really dim or go out, because it exists alone. It's separate from reality. It's just a splinter of a moment that gets left behind when everyone is finished up and out the door. And it's all that gets left behind.

There's a beauty there, in what is left and taken.

When you let someone stay the night, or the day, or the week, or the year, you are opening a very different door for yourself. No one who is leaving is just leaving a good memory behind, and no one who enters is doing so just for that potential.

You're opening you. and anyone who comes in is going to see you, and everything that happens from there on out is going to, in some way, be about you.

When it's only one night, it's not like anyone actually really knows you. So they leave a shine.

When it's not, then you can't deny they did. And then they just leave you.

So really. Love.

Behind the building with Katie the Bartender doesn't seem like the worst place to find it sometimes.