110.

this morning i've been thinking on the weight of a thought.


when i was younger, an angsty nineteen, i'd wake up in the morning, brew shitty coffee and sit on my balcony on mornings like these. i'd smoke Camels, sip that coffee, and write in my journal. measuring my time with a filling ashtray i'd try to find comfort in a solitude that a part of me resisted.  glancing up from my adolescent questions into a parking lot - the dumpsters, flip-flopped walkers, SUVs - my wondering was inexhaustible. i'd think of wars i was learning about in history, my family's history, stories i had read and been told, love stories, my own loves. there were feelings connected to those thoughts that were big enough to demand time before i possessed the language to recognize that is what they were doing. this was the beginning of my relationship with slow, extended mornings. college life granted the privilege of weekday mornings that allowed that slowness. the kind of slowness i can only find in weekend mornings now. 


age has brought experience, which has delivered a language to better explore these curiosities. this morning i realize that the spirit of those dumpster-gazing mornings has not left me. the difference is that i've had to learn to reserve the weight of thoughts for moments that are now fewer and farther between. time doesn't afford the same exploratory lifestyle as we grow up, and responsibility asks us to live at a faster pace. getting older demands answers, even if we've not allowed ourselves to intimately know the questions we're asking. it all moves so quickly, unnoticed, and forms stockpiles hidden behind shoulds and musts.


but this rush of living leaves fragments of thoughts; casualties of a lack of time, of subway schedules, of dinner parties and drinks with friends. i carried some with me on a plane to DC last weekend, through the airport buzzing with strangers' concerns, into the mountains of Virginia, fishing with a family of strangers in the Potomac. The casualties lay beside me on our blue blanket in the shade of an oak as i read of journeys into and out of the idea of home. i guess these fragments, these thoughts i truly want to make space for, are going to be there whether or not i move over and let them in. we carry the weight of unknowing in our pockets, the desire of wanting to know in our suitcases; questions upon questions in our hearts.


i wrote a song last week and in it i sing that i'm learning that questions aren't answers in disguise. my love affair with questions allowed me to trick myself into thinking that the secrets only lived in the asking. ask, acknowledge, and walk mightily into the next day's demand. but this morning, with my Stumptown roast, my french press, my American Spirits, with myself and my silence, i realize that thinking through the questions is the only way to shed some of that weight. to empty our pockets. i've carved out time to greet that heaviness of not knowing that i've been dragging behind me, beside me, within me. i am reminded of the importance of time for being silent, time for allowing myself to think the thoughts that have hung around after the show's end.


my ashtrays are emptier these days, my coffee's fancy, and my language more equip to support the weight of such questions, but the essence of the college journal writing days lingers in a remarkable way. it's refreshing to learn that that essence is a part of me. my time is my possession, my thoughtfulness a gift i must remember to give myself.