cold fingers, loud palms

Walked to a friend's holiday party tonight. Wore my black wingtips, the ones that click when walked in, but only in quiet rooms. I stepped carefully along the few patches where the recent weeks' ice had not yet been fully melted by the day's ingress of above-freezing air. One of the houses along the way had a tree displayed in the front window, a bushy pine covered entirely in blue christmas lights. On the outside of the building just below the second floor balcony hung a large wreath covered entirely in orange christmas lights. The rest of the house was dark, at rest. It sat serenely among the rest of the homes on the block. It sat without burden.

Friends and new friends gathered to clink the rims of red and green plastic cups. The apartment was right proper. Pictures in the right place, beds and bathrooms free of blemishes and not a single unreplaced light bulb to be accounted for. Cider, then beer. And laughs and smiles, and the usual eyes about strangers. Meeting and being met. Some women, available or maybe not, some definitely not. Thoughts of hope and frustration, want, wanting and being wanted, sin and decency... all hung about the place like moistened spider webs in a cave.

Perilous is the mind of the self-reflective man. Oh to be stupid and unaware. How eagerly do I strive to achieve the bliss such attributes endow. Genuine ignorance is genuine mercy. I strive to be present. I live with one foot in the past and one foot in the future and I am completely lost. I am not me. I have never met myself, nor have I ever been introduced to anyone as a whole person. I am a dog hair stuck in the bristles of time.