time lapse.

This last weekend I found myself in the middle of a massive, shaking crowd; people sweating, lights flashing, music thudding and blaring and pumping. I enjoyed it at first, and then as a longer moment passed I found myself doing more staring than dancing. Many times I feel like an observer, internal to my own body, external to everything else. Fully into adulthood, tall and broad, and I stare like a little child in wonderment. A kindly near stranger pulls me out of the street- the anarchists come rushing by, hooded, blackened, pushing at the gates, the linked fence.

"Be careful," she warns, patiently and without condescension. I needed (and heeded) the warning.

I am welcome among strangers, at home among friends.

Sometimes I worry about being alone, but I have to laugh at myself as I walk to the car, hoofing it for 45 minutes past apartment buildings and over interstates buzzing in the heart of a new city. This is not an easy thing, to be as transient as I am. I wonder if I will ever meet anyone who's interesting in keeping up.

I can smell the sweetness of the blossoms on the branches just as well alone.

There's so much I don't know. The more I learn, the more I see, the more there is before me. Life is an inexplicable container.

A car sits off to the side of the freeway, and a man gets strapped to a backboard. The traffic thins out on the otherside, the slipstream picking me up and shuffling me on. The ride home is peaceful, and the islands rise up out of the water like massive, old stones glossed with moss and trees. The mountains wait patiently on the shore.

I think about leaving a lot. There is a wildness here that I love, a newness and oldness that marries up into perfect reflection, tall evergreens doubled from glassy lakes into heavy gray skies. I'm always restless inside, like a little stone in the bottom of a boot. I can never get quite comfortable. But I'm not looking forward to it. Sometimes I think I love things too hard, because I can never let go cleanly enough.

Time lapse. Another year runs by, and I stare into the beyond.