These...are the days of our lives.

Sometimes, I feel like my life is a spanish novella. Or a bad rerun of the Three Stooges in Portugese. How does it make so little sense but still make me happy? And really, who is the high-big poombah that determines the entire concept of "sense"? Hm.

I'm just thankful that I'm happy. Grateful. For life. For the beauty that's so big it can't help but have a tinge of pain at the outer edges, it encapsulates so much. Last night I had a pretty life altering experience, which is weird, because it was fundamentally simple. Someone did a vast array of things for me . . . parts of my heart that I didn't know were underdeveloped due to a lack of stimulation were shocked alive, beating against their premature size and aching for action. This someone, I know, is going to leave and never come back to this state. Back to me. I don't think it made the experience any more poignant than it would have been otherwise, but it makes me wonder about the paths our lives take us down. The "what if's" are endless. For the first time, I wondered what it would be like to explore God and faith and love with someone tangible, and I wanted it, badly. I might always, and maybe only with him.

All I know is that it's joining my list of inexplicably beautiful things that have happened to me that I haven't deserved and can only hope to earn with my future actions, and it's at the top. So beautiful there's a salty sadness at the fringe. I hardly know you, and as sure as I am of our relative mystery to each other, I'm going to miss you every time I wish for your touch. And I'll never resent the missing, or regret the memories that are its fodder.

So, on another note, my friends came out in force when I needed them recently. I was hospitalized for nine days..details aren't important.. and a handful of sacred loves were there every day I was in. My Mattie, my dearest, sat with me for four hours through the damn national ice skating championships just to be there. Kathleen was there almost every day with her husband and/or familia. My Italians called every day. How can I be so blessed? How can I ever pay back the love that is given so freely to me? It always makes me think of John Mayer's "Wheel" lyrics.. "I believe that my life's gonna see the love I give returned to me", but an inverse. I've learned how to love by being loved infinitely more than I ever thought possible, and I can only try to consistently give it back as fully. My heart overflows, everything within and all spillovers my truest connection to God.

I started this so flippantly and finished so somber, but just as joyous. That's all that's important, methinks. All of my hopes for your happiness.