Why do we armor plate our memories? Dress them up in disguises, fanciful affairs? What better way to understand life than to strip it naked and lay it bare? I don't want you to paint a picture of the past. I want you to take me there.

"Am I helping, once again, to kill the things that I love?" - Anthony Bourdain

 We're all just star seeking starlets and this is our murmuration. We forage as far as we dare, rank and file, hither and higher, a swirling dancing cloud too proud to be close, too scared to be stray, making and breaking affiliations on a wing and a whim like some disaffected social network. In the dawn of our days we return to the roost, back to the comfortable, the dependable, the familiar. Leave the outliers to the predators. To those who feed on the flesh of the unfamiliar. The creeps. The weirdos.

Tipped the black spot - that ever elusive, blurry dot. It blots the mind, a blind despot, clouding vision in a tyrannical flurry of split decisions. She longs to crush it under foot, or at least to hold it there. It's bean a long, hard year. She's good at this, she tells herself. Bartender, another beer!  I'm waiting...

Ibid, your honor.

The ship was a present - built on eastern seas to be set adrift in Venice presently. See-worthy, worthy of great seas (the currents of our memories more so than those it sailed toward currently). For just a moment it was momentous - setting sail toward unknown shores with great expectations tucked securely in its patterned sail. An ark of sorts, lion and tree and her and me, arcing out into a steadier stream - fanned by much fanfare and the rising glint of a lavender diamond. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the craft capsized - or that you'd be in so readily to right the vessel crafted at your hands. A guardian of life, you never struck me as one to live life guarded. Because of you that ship will sail time and again, til the ocean of the mind meets its end.

Why does it take this calendar flip to stop and think of the steps that led us here? Why does our past, when called, stand forth so reluctantly? What does it take to make a lasting memory? So little. So much. Much thanks to those who go the extra fathom, who weigh the anchors of the mind. For 2012 - a focus on the little things.

We'd planned to do the Adirondack Hustle and some Portland Truffle Shuffle, get away from all the hustle and bustle. Ended up highway side, no way high sigh. Feelin' loose, back to the moose. Sometimes life passes you by as you're making grand plans. Other times it stops to give you a ride. But rarely, rarely, do you get to steer. And yet somehow, always, you end in the clear. 

JK gets a vision. JK shares his version.  JK loses vision. JK listens, visionless, to the voice of unreason.

Been thinking about beginnings, and that sweep of nostalgia that escapes from under the rug with it. About ape drapes and bowl cuts and bad clothes and mix tapes. Being tossed into the air, being tickle tortured, being backhanded for being bad. About how nothing from the past seems painful. Been thinking about moms and dads and how the things they push to teach us push us out into the great wide world - and further from their lives. About how the simplest things surprised us, how sailing ships down rain swept gutters provided hours of entertainment. How that backyard seemed so big - an entire kingdom emerging from a swingset, a shed, some shrubs. I think about the tiny town I grew up and out of, of tiny towns everywhere, and the myriad ways in which people end up settling there. I watch ThingsGiven videos of walmart crowds trampling each other for two dollar wafflemakers, and maybe for a minute I wish my world could be that small, but I've taught myself to want it all. Been thinking about how I'm thankful for it all.

Becapped and vested, deeply vested in this self sought venture. His enterprise may be a front for more fermented ventures, but this son of essex has a spirit that can't be found on any top shelf or under any table. The moon shine here is from the orbs of his eyes - crinkled pleased as the request is appeased. He springs to life and prepares the remedy - and when he makes the exchange he watches carefully to judge the effects. He has a genuine affect, a sweetness that seems to seep its way into the amber of his efforts, which he slides across the counter to the taster. A flick of the tongue, a curl of the lip, a nod of the head, and he's all smiles. A quick detour well worth its while.