7 Are we human, or Dancer?

Do you ever have moments when  you're just walking along minding your own business enjoying the cool summer night air and the world is so peaceful and quiet but then your mind turns on and the quiet is shattered?
Now is one of those moments.

 


I always felt like I was seconds away from losing it.
now I feel like I've lost it all.

Before her,
everything was a long endless stream of emotion.
Overwhelming, muddled, mixed together emotion that was hard to tell which was which        but still emotion.
And then in just one weekend, a night and a day really.
it all changed.
Now I lack emotion. 
everything is disconnected.
I still feel,
I'd say I feel like everyone else now,
but I don't know how everyone else feels so there isn't much point in saying it.
unless you want me to lie.

It's hard to explain.
happiness comes and goes.
sadness is the same.
anger is gone, fear is gone.
I feel like I'm just watching everything.
like I'm just barely scraping the surface of what I could feel.
I watch people feel and do people things, I see the beauty of their lives,
and realize I have none of what makes them smile,
all I have is the emptiness of feelings I've felt and might never feel again.
that.
and the hunger to feel it again.
to feel her again.

I'm packing up on a deserted street corner tonight. it's late, my tip jar is full, that's rare.
but it's tourist season so I've caught a lucky brake.
maybe now I can afford the train ticket out of this town.

I paint for a living.
Paint and draw and doodle and spray paint and chalk.
I've done a few tattoos.
Hundreds of cartoons and characterchures.
Romantic scenes and heart crushing scenes.
abstract and realistic.
I've used every color known to man.
and a few that aren't.
I make enough to buy supplies, and to get me from place to place.  
I've been all over the US and I've even spent some time In parts of Europe.
But what I really love doing is photography,
I keep all my photos.
Shots of dogs, shots of people--or people and dogs.
cats and birds.
children.
elderly people.
couples so painfully in love and people you can tell just by looking at them that they are very lonely.
normal streets and fields.
dawns and sunsets.
anything and everything that catches my eye.
but the idea of selling that Intimate frozen moment is something I can't stand.
That's why I do what I do.
 freeze beautiful moments with my brush or my pencil or my camera lens.
because I can't freeze it with my eyes 
Because the next moment its gone forever.  
I do not mind being forgotten, but to forget is terrifying to me.

I never had any interest in art or photography until I met Brinn
until Brinn disappeared.
after that all I could think about was freezing life and the moments I spent with her.
and just living there forever.
Over and over, in the place I was happy.
so I left school and quit everything but my art.
because
this is how I do that,
as best I can anyway.

and after all this time.
all the portraits I've done.
All the photos I've taken.
All I want to do is Photograph her.
I want to draw her.
Not the Brinn from my memory.
I can't draw her.
I won't draw her.
It seems like I'd be giving up on ever finding her again.
of ever drawing Brinn in the flesh, In the moment, right in front of me.
close enough to touch,
close enough to do anything.
warm and alive---
and dancing.