Look at the stars

"Where I'm seeing you there,
with your hands in the air,

waiting to finally be caught."

Between The Bars (live, video) :: Elliott Smith
Between The Bars (live, video) :: Metric
Between The Bars (video) :: Madeleine Peyroux

Another night with the same patterns, the same ice clinking in a cold, damp glass, and those same un-named expectations. I look next to me and wonder how I got here again. No matter how much older I've become I still feel those pangs of adolescent nerves pulsing just under my skin. This does not feel all that different than some High School dance in a dimly lit gym - we all stand to one side, lingering, hoping for something to happen.

The anxiety builds as the room becomes smaller. The drinks come and go, we lose track, and the music rises and falls. At some point we all decide what will happen by the end - don't lie to yourself, we all think about it. There are trade offs and negotiations that go on silently, sometimes outside, leaned up against the wall, smoke billowing between exchanges of lights and a witty repose.

There are pieces of ourselves that we lose in those dark rooms, and parts of ourselves that we lessen, trade down, and let be slashed at - as if some drunken fumble in a backseat, or a set of numbers typed in to our phone, mean anything at all. It is all a case of loneliness, of time ticking away, and of the same self-deprecating game that being single sometimes becomes.

Every so often we find something real in all that masqueraded personas, but what have we lost to get there? Can it be repaired, your soul?

"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose"

:: Charles Bukowski