temporary is all we have

I haf returned.

That's not a typo. It is a dual metaphor, because on Wednesday I both have and half returned from nine days in Oklahoma. I desperately needed the trip. That word—"desperately"—is over-used; it implies 'quite' or 'very much', but I needed the trip in the more precise sense (see #2, here). Not to put too fine a point on it, but...there was some stupid shit that I had to deal with, and I thought that to be several hundred miles away from it would facilitate that dealing.

The trip was wonderful. Relaxing, fun, quiet, funny, sweet, surprising, educational (in a personal sense), and truly unforgettable. That being said, it was also an outstanding failure in my above-stated goal. I found out today, to my imbecilic, childlike surprise and disappointment, that the stupidity and shitiness remain—only my body went away, only my mind and my mood changed (and even then, how temporarily?), only I am accountable to me for any of this, so why do I bother explaining?

That's the really funny thing about this: I am left with the strongest sense that to blog about it, to write about it or talk about it, is pointlessly painful. It's recently been brought to my attention that I am 'surprisingly' open to talking about my feelings. My initial response was, "What's wrong with that?!" When it happened a second time, by a different [good] friend, within a couple of weeks, I thought, "How strange! Is my 'willingness' to talk about my feelings really that unusual?" I got my answer in a store in Norman, Oklahoma on Tuesday when a clerk at Cookies 'n Cards--in the process of yapping my ear off for an hour and a half while I swear to God I was just innocently trying to shop!--told me the same thing. Now, I have to emphasize that none of the three of them expressed any negative value judgment about it. In fact, if anything it was suggested to be some sort of positive trait, like being 'honest' or 'friendly.' Perhaps it was the coincidence, though, or the emphasis by repetition, but it felt like I was supposed to learn something from the experience. Like, shut the hell up, because the universe is listening, and it heard you already.

So why blog at all? Why do I do this? Am I sharing, or performing? Are those of you that I know are there, the ones for or to whom I'm 'doing this': are you my friends, or some more vague 'audience', at least in this regard? I don't know that I had a clear goal when I started writing this blog, beyond "getting it all down" and writing as much as I had time to write. I seem so far from that now.

I'm not looking for props, so please don't bother. Prehaps it's preciously ironic, but this might be the most real writing I've done in a while. 'Real' in the sense of "valuable," in that I might learn something from having done it.

Well, either way, here's the way Chicago's O'Hare International Airport's ceiling looks near Gate H3B [Terminal 3] on a sunny morning, and a bit of Oklahoma City's Lake Hefner....