On Those Nights

There are nights when they come. Uninvited and unannounced. They sit in a circle around me. They light up cigarettes and cigars, choking the air out of the room. They pour themselves cheap drinks. They take off their shoes and put their feet up, leaving their awful imprints on my furniture. And then, they start telling me stories.

They tell me stories that that I have heard again and again. I tell them to stop. I have written new ones and don't need the old stories anymore. But they insist. They whip out the knife of memories and start carving, all the while chanting remember, remember, remember!

It is usually past midnight when they finally leave, tipping their hats and waving a cheerful farewell. See you soon. I tell them to send a postcard the next time. Don't bother making the trip. They say that's half the fun gone. I crawl into bed and surrender to the exhaustion.

On those nights, I do not open my bedroom window.

Choices

This morning I woke up and a thought appeared. It flew straight out of the brilliant blue sky, through my open window and landed right on my lap.

I have a choice to love today. I loved yesterday and I may love again tomorrow, but I am able to decide whether I want to do that today. And so The Thinker received this text from me at the grand old time of 8.30am.

Every morning I wake up with a choice to love you. Every morning for the past 6 months I have chosen to fall in love with you all over again. It's a conscious, deliberate choice - not habit or coincidence. So understand that I choose you. That I want you. That I love you.

You always have a choice. Don't waste it.

Getting A Fix

Sometimes I feel like someone has taken me apart to see what I'm made of, decided that they don't like what they see and walked away without putting me back together again.

These are the times when I wish I had a better pranayama practice.

From The Oddest Places

One of the pictures on my vision chart is that of Yoda. It is there to remind me that wisdom comes from the strangest places and to be open to accepting it in any shape. Last week, these little pearls bounced straight off the necks of the women in Lipstick Jungle and into my living room.

1. "Who asked you to protect me from my own life?"
2. Never use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled desires.
3. More powerful than I Love You is Thank You and I'm Sorry.
4. One fantastic girlfriend is worth more than an entire Armani collection.
5. It's absolutely fine for a woman to propose.
6. Cling and you lose, release and you set yourself free.
7. Love is about taking turns.
8. "I can't quit the cheerleading team just because you don't like the captain."
9. Nico: Let's move to the country away from the city.
Kirby: It sounds like you're trying to fix something. What's broken?
10. "There's leaving and there's fleeing. What are you running away from?"