There is not much between you and me. There is not much between us or the world. Nothing sets us apart aside from who we are, which, and let’s face it, I am me and you are you. The world is the world. The questions are the questions and to each their own.

Everyone has their own path. But I get it. There is no more time to waste and no time to argue or find a reason why things happen. There is no way to soften the hard edges in life. There is no way to pause the clock. There is only hope and the means to find this thing we call sanity.

There are new formations of clouds each morning. I think this means each day has the chance to be different from the last.
Each day changes. The weather changes, the news, the way we coincide with each other is different now; the way we interact and our crazy future is different too. Yet somehow, we sink to the gravity of our past, as if the past is the only thing that holds us down. Most often, this has nothing to do with our past. Usually, this is all on us.

My collection began on June 1, 2006. I was alone for the first time and unsupervised to say the least. This was the first time I was single.
There was no one in my life to help guide or govern my decisions. I had moved back to my hometown to find a sense of comfort in an uncomfortable time.
All that I had known was gone. My list of friends and social influences were different. My finances were different and so was the structure of my day. There was no one but me and a small place of my own.

It seems like this must have been a lifetime ago. The group of us have all moved away and branched out in different parts of the country. Some of us grew older. Some of us grew apart and some submerged in the winds of anonymity.
There are rare occasions that come up which incline us all to get together. But aside from this, life has taken shape for us all. People moved on. They found careers and built lives for themselves. They built homes and families and yet, somehow, no matter where we go or how far we move away, we will always be old friends from the neighborhood.

The city is so different to me now. Or maybe this is only me. Maybe she is exactly the same, which, let’s face it. She really is.

The streets have the same names. The names on the buildings might have changed. The decorations are a little different now, but the avenues are still the avenues and the cobblestones downtown are the same as they’ve always been.