And the world just turns around.
Nothing stops. Not for a second.
Time is always moving, which makes me sound like a broken record because I always talk about the immovable presence of time.

The clock never stops ticking.
Or think if anything, I think about it like this:
A second is always a second and a minute is always a minute.
There will be no change or negotiating this fact.

Time does not stop.
And maybe this is not always a bad thing.

It makes sense to me how someone can lose their mind and yet, you hear things about cruel and unusual punishment and how this is not allowed. Perhaps not, but still, cruel and unusual punishment exists.
Yes it does, and rest assured, cruel and unusual punishment is alive and well.

Time for reflection . . . .
Sitting in a small cage, and secured by concrete walls with a wooden bench, a steel commode, and black-barred door that opened and rolled shut, there was an ungodly smell to the place. The smell was filthy like the sewer; bodies reeking, and the smell of other bathroom functions filled the air with a solid and steady mixture of cleaning solutions that failed to mask or disinfect and solve the odors.

The corridor is eerie, let alone the sound of overhead humming that comes from the fluorescent lighting, which warns that even light is remanufactured and stolen from its freedom.

It is April, the day after Easter Sunday.
The sky was beautiful as ever this morning but the winds were cool and the winter refuses to leave without leaving a few chills behind.
I noticed the sunrise is taking the stage earlier now.
I love that.
I noticed the return of the red-breasted robins as well, which I am far from opposed to because the robins spark the beginning of springtime, which is fine for me.

I think it was a long time ago.
Yes, it must have been.

I think this was back when the age of innocence was still innocent.
But somehow, I know that purity exists. I know there are good people out there.
I know because I have seen them arrive at times when I was alone or facing the consequences of life-long decisions.
I was that one too.

I know that I was better and smarter.
Perhaps maybe this is why I swore that I was stupid because deep down, I knew better. Of course, I did.
See, no one talks about the results of trauma or the symptoms of depression.
I knew that I was being lazy.
I knew it all too well.

I cannot say that I know what I believe or that I “definitively know” that yes, there is a God or that my God is right and yours is wrong.
I don’t know these things.
I don’t know if your God is stronger or mightier or that somehow, we’ve all been fed a narrative that draws us to believe in something stronger when we feel weakest.

I don’t know if we need to fight about the relevance or the existence of God.
But we do.

I wonder though.
What does it mean to go crazy? And when I say crazy, I don’t mean to go crazy in a bad regard or in the sense that this becomes clinical or sadly dangerous.
Not at all.

When I say crazy, I mean this in the best way possible. I say this because if I want to be one thing, or anything, I want to be the one who knows how to do this.
I want to know how to have fun.
I want to know how to let go and to let it all hang loose.
I want this.

There is no place like home
I agree . . .
Home
I love that world.
I love the feeling of it.
I love the idea that has been famously said, “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
And once more, I agree.

I can say that I have lived in different places. I have lived in different apartments and houses.
I lived in different areas, and I have lived in different spots for a decent amount of time.
I lived where I lived, but out of any of them, I would not call too many them home.

Do you know what I miss?
I miss the vibes. I miss the energy.
I miss the late nights and the gas tank, which was my ability to go all night long and somehow, I could still make it to work the next day.

I miss my younger years in the city.
I miss the feeling that came over me when the music turned loud. And I remember this well.
I miss the dance floor, crowded with bodies.
Everything was hot about this, including the bodies that moved and swayed with each other, like, up close and all too personal.

And so, in the case to find myself or to retrace the missing pieces of my life, I had to search through different dreams to see exactly where it was that I lost my place.
“I lost my place.”
Yes. That’s a great way to put it!”

I identify with these words.
And I have identified with these words for a long time.
At the same time, I identify with the ideas of losing my place differently now. Or maybe I relate to them differently each time I lose my place.
And each time I say that hey. “I lost my place,” I realize that this has happened more times and, in more ways than I could possibly count.

What do we know? And by the way, I think this is a fair question to ask.
What do we really know?
Let’s see . . .

What do we know about anyone, aside from what they’ve told us or what we’ve seen or what we’ve been shown?
And even still, even if we see something or even if someone shows us who they really are, do we still know as much as we think we do?
And again, I think it is fair question.
I think this is fair to ask and to assess this thing which we call truth.

And truth is a funny thing because in all fairness to myself and to anyone else—there is only one truth. Any variation of truth becomes opinion, and opinions, of course, are neither truth or false.
They just are . . .