This is hard for me to admit, but I so rarely feel safe. I used to think I did, and then tasted, once, and fleetingly, what it was really like to feel utterly secure and at home and relaxed.

I remember nearly crying at how foreign the sensation was, how alien and strange, and at how foolish I’d been to blithely preach my imagined belief in the basic trustworthiness of the world. I realized my regular state is more akin to a child, just given to hold the most delicately ethereal bubble, worried that a forceful breath or unskilled jolt would burst it. This is what the world feels like to me–so beautiful, and so transient, and so gently and briefly entrusted to us, or rather to our briefly-lived experiences. And even though the lack of safety I feel is not some deep insecurity, even though it’s more a breathless anticipatory tension about a certain inevitable loss, it’s still hard.

There are moments, though. I feel safe when I’m held; I have an almost troublesome need for physical human contact, and an equally troublesome inability to relax into embrace. I feel safe when I’m writing; I have an inescapable need to put into words the beauty I see around me, and a parallel worry about my attempts to share being rejected or just misunderstood. I feel safe when I’m present, but this, sometimes, is the hardest thing in this world to be.

You.

I'd like to get to know you, the creature sitting on the other side of the screen reading these words that were drummed out in haste by some obviously-earlier version of me.

I'd like to know what you're thinking now, and where you'll be going after your online respite is over, and what you're looking forward to. I'd like to know what you're concerned about and what regrets you've suffered in your life. I'd like to know what you need most, and what you want, and what it is you're here to give. I'd like to know where you're sitting as you read this, and what's scattered around you, and I'd like to know what connects you--what shared thread there is--with all the other 'yous' of this entry, past and present and future.

And yes, I suppose it doesn't matter; I'm not sure any human being can fully know another. Still, we can try, and still I suppose there's some delight to be had in this, that the quest for understanding can never be totally complete.

From Samme:

Using only song titles from one artist, answer the questions below. Try not to repeat a title. Repost as "My Life According to [ Artist Name].


Are you a male or female?
Everybody Knows

Describe yourself:
You Know Who I Am

How do you feel?
Humbled In Love

Describe where you currently live:
Passing Through

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Way Down Deep

Your favorite form of transportation:
Undertow

Your best friend is:
Last Year's Man

Your favorite color is:
Iodine

What's the weather like?
Light As The Breeze

Favorite time of day:
Closing Time

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called?
In My Secret Life

What is life to you?
God is Alive; Magic is Afoot
or
Improvisation

Your relationship:
Love Itself

Your fear:
One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

What is the best advice you have to give?
Be For Real

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
The Gypsy's Wife

Thought for the day:
Tonight Will Be Fine

How you would like to die?
A Thousand Kisses Deep

Your soul's present condition:
Waiting for the Miracle

Your motto:
Dance Me To The End of Love