Take…

…what comfort you will from this song.

Pillar’s “You Will Lose It All” off their album Confessions

Can you tell me why
We all run from the hurt inside?
There’s no need to cry
Dry your eyes and take a breath
It’s life or death
Can you tell me what you’re waiting for?

If you lose it all
And it just won’t feel the same
In the fight to carry on
You stand and face the rain
And as you watch it fall
You learn to live again
It isn’t all that bad
When you’re still standing in the end

Give this one more try
Take my hand and let your heart decide
Hold your head up high
Close your eyes and take a breath
It’s life or death
Can you tell me what you’re waiting for?

If you lose it all
And it just won’t feel the same
In the fight to carry on
You stand and face the rain
And as you watch it fall
You learn to live again
It isn’t all that bad
When you’re still standing in the end

And all the voices cry out
They pull you up tear you down
Then that One voice
Whispers your name again

If you lose it all
And it just won’t feel the same
In the fight to carry on
You stand and face the rain
And as you watch it fall
You learn to live again
It isn’t all that bad
When you’re still standing in the end

Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark.

The phrase has been bouncing around in my head for weeks.  I saw it on a sign and it just stuck in my head.  It seems especially appropriate right now as I stand on my porch smoking my favorite; Romeo y Julieta.  Alone.  Dark.  A bolt of lightning suddenly lights up the night and for a second it’s almost like daylight.  So it’s not completely dark.  I take another drag and pull my leather jacket close.  It’s starting to get cold but I don’t want to go inside.  Another flash of lightning lights up the world and I can see the shape of the clouds as they roll across the sky.  The storms here are different from what I’m used to, there’s no wind, no rain, just lightning and thunder.  And even though it feels chilly to me I know the temperature is pushing 70, 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  Still, I’ve managed to fall in love with this place.  It has a certain charm, the baked brown earth, the tall cacti, the lizards, spiders, scorpions and birds.  I moved here for school, to get an art degree, the ultimate “what-are-you-going-to-do-with-that?” degree.  The saguaros captured my artist’s heart, the rest of the place took the rest of me captive.  Now I’m here, alone in the dark.  No friends or lovers to speak of, at least not human ones, for the desert has become my lover, the flora and fauna, my friends.  Another serpentine stream of lightning separates the sky for a moment and the thunder growls along after it.  In that instant I can see some of the native inhabitants scurrying for cover in fear of the rain that will never come.  In many ways they are as alone as I am and as much in the dark.  One of my old friends used to joke that she always expected that some day I’d mysteriously disappear and become a wolf or a saguaro or something like that.  I’ve always thought it would be more likely for one of those things to become human because they seem so much more alive than some people I know.  And when I’m out in the middle of the desert I can feel a pulse thrumming through everything, a heartbeat of existence.   There is so much life out here.  I’m amazed by how much is out here and thriving in the seemingly dead desert.  I take another drag.  The lightning brings another flash of daylight and an empty threat of rain.

Alone.  But satisfied.  In the not-quite Dark.