#402

It's a day to scream it from the proverbial rooftops before I go on a walk: I am alive, right now. Right now. I have lived upon this earth. I have walked upon its surface, breathed, and seen. I have borne witness from my singular and inimitable perspective. I have read thousands of books and listened to tens of thousands of songs, often at the same time I was watching movies or playing video games, all intersecting projects which have occupied I would say conservatively like fifty thousand of my waking hours. These hours have forged me into something powerful and unique. I have won vicious knock-down fights and lost them; same with chess matches, contests on the field of sport and gaming tables, in digital realms, and the court of public debate. I have wandered and driven all across my stomping grounds and the land which I inhabit, and I have crossed oceans and visted many ancient places across the continents. I have met many people, helped as many as I could and hindered as many as I saw fit, and been helped and hindered by many of them in turn. I have listened to them all with all the attention I could spare and observed them as closely as I could in the time we were given. I have tried to be here for my own life, whether turned inward or outward or suffering deeply or outside of myself or wild with ecstasy and maybe going to die of the sublime, of the incandescent light that being in this life may let you see, bathes you with its radiance whether you are aware or oblivious.

All of this was worth it, by any measure. I say yes to it unequivocally, and would not change a second or a thing. I would be excited and thankful to do it all again, infinite times. Yes, yes to this life, to this world, to this universe, to all possible universes. All things becoming, all things enduring, and all things receding--yes. A hundred more years to endure before I rest? Yes. Whatever. Anything. Here I Am. 

Yes to a world without end. Yes to heaven and hell permeating all creation. Yes to the unquenchable flame at the fundament of all being. Here I Am.

*

Took most of the bookshelves out of my office, and the one I left is in the corner I have designated for non-book crafts and projects, as well as whatever decorations cannot be dispensed with, whatever is necessary for me to entrain my eye and weave my defensive enchantments. Plus like, crap. Instruments. Whatever has to go there and not somewhere else, you know?

My purpose is to seek shelving solutions that optimize the space while keeping the total weight bearing down on the structure as low as one may.

--JL