"You call yourself a free-spirit, a wild thing..."

At any given moment, my affections spiral off in a dozen different directions. My need to multi-task has officially flooded my emotional state. Suddenly, it seemed that polyamory was the only reasonable way for 6 billion + people to attempt to survive together. (Thank you, Dan Savage)
I can't imagine being in love with one person for the duration of my life. Marriage seriously misses the mark in my mind. The only person I've been in love with for a substantial amount of time, does not return the sentiment. Maybe then, all of this is a compensation for that fact. One gigantic distraction divied up between a handful of people who never asked for it in the first place.

Perhaps: My unattachment is merely a guise for the fact that I'm overly attached in all the wrong ways Maybe: My ideals of free love allow me to skim the surface. Very likely: by being unattainable, I can slip away from anything that may prove meaningful.

It's entirely possible that I'm running away.

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. ~From the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's

But it's also possible that I do truly love many people, and love them enough to not keep them or try to keep them. That I can't focus on one person, when I met a dozen fascinating people a day.

The other day, I met a guy who was an arborist, who's job it is to climb trees, all day, every day. He spoke about his work like it was poetry. Within 30 seconds of talking to me, he told me how quiet it is at the top of a 100 year old tree. And part of me loved him right there, on the spot.
And I fall for the ones that make me laugh until I can't breathe. And the ones that are patient and sincere and are as considerate to strangers as they are to their best friends. I love the people I see by the riverside, who lean into the wind and smile.

And yet, for all the love I know I'm capable of-- for all the facets of people that I fall for-- Something in me still searches for someone that's more than just one or two of those facets. I accept most people at face value and even love some within seconds, but I can't help hoping that I'll come across someone that I can spend years discovering.

The Best Love Story

The best love story I ever heard sounded something like this:
"I'd just met her and she was headed back out east to Brooklyn. She'd graduated from college here in Portland and was headed back. Even though I'd just met her, I wanted to spend every possible moment with her, so I quit my job and offered to make the 2 week road trip across the country with her."
"All told, the trip took 8 months"
"We wandered through the entire country, stopping at anything and everything that caught our attention. We worked odd jobs, washing dishes for scraps of leftover food and sleeping in our car or in a beat up tent. New York became a far off deadline and then faded into obscurity as we fell in love."
"Eventually, we blew into New York. But before we even set our bags down, she'd stumbled upon a cheap flight to Sweden. We did right by her family, and stayed with them for a couple days before tucking our passports in our bags and taking off. After all, her folks had already waited months to see her, and, well meet me."
"By chance, on the flight to Sweden we sat next to someone who knew a farmer who took in strong backs like ours. After a stint on his farm, we travelled the country for the summer as WWOOFers, hopping from farm to farm."
"As it started to get cold and dark up north, we trickled down through Europe. But nothing matched the countryside of Sweden."
"Eventually, we found ourselves back here. Maybe New York is still a far off deadline, too obscure to even understand anymore. I've lost track. But I loved that woman from the moment I saw her wake up stiff after 3 days of sleeping in a beat up old grey hatchback full of shit from college. Tonights her birthday and I've been stockpiling presents for her all year, but every year, I realize how little "stuff" has played a role with us. So I stayed up all last night, working on a painting for her. In comparison it all falls flat, you know, but maybe that's exactly how you know."

Dismantling

My New Year began two months ago. On November 1st, I dropped my bags, a couple boxes and a motorcycle down in Portland. This New Years is just an accessory to that. All of the change and transition one person can muster, already occurred. New Years was just a matter of propriety, an official declaration of change long after I'd already surrendered to sweet upheaval.
On the long, glorious drive out to my new city, someone I love most dearly said to me "remember that your cup isn't full yet, you still have more to go and take in."
A lot of the time, I have a way of expressing myself so definitively and matter of factly that it seems like I a) know what I'm talking about (lie #1) or b) cannot be dissuaded (lie #2) or c) I think I'm enlightened (big fat lie # 3 & #4). I only sound that way because I come from a long line of jewish men who are not to be bested in argument and believe, wholeheartedly, that I would have made a damn fine lawyer.
Yes, I've learned certain things, gained certain perspectives that I hold up high... but those glimmers of "faith" or "knowledge"only resulted from a shake down of what came before.
Therefore, in the name of dismantling, I'm resurrecting this blog. So that, every single day, something will be posted here. Be it words, pictures, video or otherwise, it will represent some sort of kinetic process and keep my cup constantly filling to the point of overflowing.