I’ve been Away for a while, but I’m back. Some things are the same. Some things have changed. The dog’s absence is very loud. The cats’ presence is sometimes audible, but more often manifests in a subtle shift of energies.

I’m writing. I remind myself it’s not my job to decide if it’s good or not. My task is to create. Others can judge. Or not. I have written a story recently that’s from my deepest self, but it may not be my story to tell. Self-reflection can be such a trap.

Friends have been dying. Objectively I know this is going to be happening more often; subjectively it feels like I should be able to concentrate *REALLY HARD* and *poof* it’ll be 1986 again, or still, and I’ll walk from the library to a particular tree and they’ll all be standing there; if I just focus, my body will be moving with those fluid easy steps and those songs will be on the radio, and the laughter will lift us and potential will swirl around us and how can it possibly be 40 years have passed?

I wouldn’t wish to undo the years. Too many much-loved people have been born, and I’d never wish them away. I am yearning for that kind of immediacy, though, the vividness of my life experience in those days. What is this feeling, that if I just reach hard enough, though, my friends are all still here, and there’s just something lacking in me that keeps me from really *getting* their presence?

I am sober, I promise.

Days, energy, people, though. They all feel like they’re just out of my sight/sound/touch.

It’s so frustrating, and it’s painful. I have an impulse to tear all the books from the shelves, hurl things around, scream at the top of my lungs. It won’t help, logic says. But my body feels my conflict. My jaw aches where I’ve been clenching it unknowingly. There’s that pulse twitching my eye again. I’m giving myself five minutes to sit in grief. Then I must, I *must* focus on now, who is still here, what is still possible. I must not miss today from longing for a different day. Past or future.

Five minutes of grief. Starting now.