From A Million Miles

The ocean is inside us--a single percent of salt mixed in with the water and oxygen containing hormones and neurotransmitters and enzymes, life within life. I've been trying to delude myself that I've been on dry land for the last several months, basking in the sun, watching all the dark things revealed under some blue sky and dying in the light.

I've been working dog hours and earning more money. I've been flirting with attractive Korean women in martini bars and the kewpie doll cute file clerk with a button nose at work. For the most part, this has kept me on even keel, distracted me from the oncoming tides.

But there are days like today, where anger from work, anger at fuck ups and incompetence--mundane anger but anger nonetheless--drains me so that when I arrive home, I can't keep my eyes on the sky and my body away from the tide. And as the ocean starts rising again, on days like today, I grab onto the past, hold it too tightly, using it not as hope for the future or something warm on a cold night, but instead as something I yearn for now. I want that Korean financial advisor with a coy smile at the end of the night to give me a call now instead of treating that memory simply for what it was--good conversation with little probability of leading to anything else, exercising my innate charm that had been so quiet with Her. I want to so take back the missteps with CNN Asia woman and have her sitting on my lap again instead of learning my lessons and moving on.

So tonight, I will hold my breath, shiver and hope that the tide recedes soon. And tomorrow, I will work my dog hours and earn more money and flirt more and live more and hope that is enough for now.