Everything's made to be broken

Chicago is bitter cold. That walk outside-inhale-burn. It hurts to breathe. Then you think about the absence of that biting cold burning your nasal passageway and you relax because you're breathing and acutely aware of how alive, functioning, feeling, and reasoning is your body. Perhaps that something only a girl raised in the South would think about.

I am up late again. I do not know how to go to bed early. Nor do I ever want to, minus my dire and unrelenting desire to be an early riser. Since childhood, I've dreamt of having these clockwork-like elaborate evening and morning rituals. With compulsive tendencies, small routines have always settled me greatly. I have always reasoned with myself if I would commit to the same thing every morning and every night, it would open up a world of possibly and spontaneity; as the beginning and end would be constants. Without constants, one incessantly attempts to turn what should be variables into constants. There's much beauty and joy in know what is to come and the longing for it.

I'm having a Matchbox20 night. Somewhere around 1997 a copy of "Yourself or Someone Like you" fell into my possession. My 8 year old self spent much time mulling over the lyrics trying to make sense of it and contrasting that sharply with the interruptions of today is amusing me greatly. It's still hard for me to think about packaging anything or wrapping any present without hearing, " I'd store it in boxes with little yellow tags on everyone" in my head. I loved that line and the image of rain stored in tiny boxes. Yellow is the color you're not supposed to like. It's for neither feminine nor masculine, nor striking on anyone. It's not the blue of the ocean, the red of fire, the orange of the sunset....yet I love it for how clean, light, and similar to gold without being gold it is.

 "It's 3AM and I must be lonely" always struck me as odd as "must" is typically used to express certainty, necessity, but here it was used as self recognition. I recall wondering why being alone at 3AM meant that one must be lonely.