yeah, so here i am, enjoying myself and life on another one of those nights when i should be sleeping, but i don't want to miss a thing... i suppose i could glance up at the tv and dream of an adventure like the fifth element where innocence and true love come together to save the universe (and a cynical societal reject), but then, such an egocentric trip is not where my head is tonight...

of course there is the cheap masturbatory fantasy, but that isn't good for the keyboard...

what i am doing is wondering what i am doing here, i mean, why do i come to myspace and sing my songs of slippery nonsense and would-be wisdoms only now and then... note the lack of question mark... everything means something, even the absence of something, which is not always nothing, even though sometimes it is...

of course one reason i come back is to adore you, but your attention and ego strokes may be mostly in my mind... so do i fawn over another of my favorite writers as if the connection i feel for her through her words makes us soul mates and leave you wondering if that is all in my mind too?... i do return to read as my love of reading and hunger for the written word remains intact (if somewhat neglected in recent years) and is often soothed and nurtured right here on the web...

but the depths, the way words touch me, move me, feed me, that is real for me as i feel and even when they are not shared, feelings are real things... as cynical and irreverent and superficial as life can be (or is that just me?), there is infinite power in emo for those who dare experience the heights and depths of the emotional journey possible in these bodies... and even as i laugh, i love it when the hard old curmudgeon  melts into words and i treasure the people who can do it to me...

and do it to me one more time...

so why am i hear again?... here in the sense of awake in the middle of the night on a week night during a time in this life when i am working day shift and commit to being awake and alert and productive from nine to five... here in the sense of sleeping less than four hours a night on a consistent basis when i know the body i inhabit would be much happier with more sleep, but the mind i inhabit laughs and continues enjoying the synaptic rush of perception through all of the senses and word processing too...

someone asked me, just the other night, why i am as i am... alone... over-indulged in the culinary arts (there's a metaphor in the making)... acting lazier and stupider and more pathetic than i am...

and i thanked him for his perception as i wonder sometimes if humans have lost the ability to use their senses, to see beyond the facade, to truly know what they are experiencing...

but did i answer his question, i wonder... or perhaps i am still pondering and answering or just dancing in the dark because that has become my habit of late, dancing by myself, even in a crowd, because i tired of the games and gave up, at least temporarily, on making the effort to scratch through the surface defenses to actually get to know someone...

and i wonder, more than ever, if anyone really wants to be known... how rare it seems, to me these days, that one trusts enough to openly allow themselves to be truly loved... to laugh, to cry, to feel freely, to be honest, open, and innocent...

so much fear, so little love gets through...

or as the Beatles said, all the lonely people... so maybe i am here, awake, this late, reading and writing words on the web, here at myspace, because it gives me the illusion that i am not alone and i can believe you are here listening, reading, hearing, feeling, caring, wanting to know, and wanting to be known...

is the next question something about being more than words or is that too extreme?...

some of you may even get that almost unintentional pun, but the real question is does it inspire your laughter or your tears (and if neither, oh well, next time maybe and if both, welcome. please come in, you know my name, and you don't even have to look up my number, it's right there in my profile)...

all ancient lyrical references aside, i appreciate you even when you are not here... writers, thank you for being my friend in words in the middle of the night when i don't want to close my eyes, when i know how amazing life can be and am fool enough to believe the sharing could re-start again at any moment so i don't want to fall asleep...

oh, that wondrous rush of intimacy when unconditional trust is shared, how i long for such experience again, how i remember it so well, so warmly, so sensually... and memory is enough, sometimes, but not all the time... i know you're out there somewhere and you feel these words too... so that is why i am still here writing this one for you...

so much hope, so much love, so much believing in an energy beyond and above this simple moment, all there is, and yet when shared is becomes eternity, infinite, magical, fantasy becomes reality simply by sharing honesty... so much hope and belief that everything will work out fine, that everything is beautiful in its own way, that all we need is love...

and trust...

meanwhile, i write much less than i used to because i am out almost every night with strangers and strangers-becoming-friends from meetup dot com, the best social networking site i've come across... so when i am writing, i am sleeping less (and redundant more, aye?... but wait, i thing there was a point somewhere in the babbling flow)... so i am out more being social and the question posed to me just the other night was really, why do i leave all this hope at home?...

and fool that i am, i found myself laughing at myself as i was caught in the act of playing human, cynical, fraudulent, slouching buffoon standing behind an invisible, yet all too effective defensive barrier made of smile and easy wit and clever repartee...

who me?...

so i took a night off from the semi-social merry-go-round (wanna see my social calendar?... butterly that i am sometimes) to collect my thoughts (and dirty laundry) and ponder the present and how it effects the future and whether i am doing what i really want to do or just copping out and settling for superficiality because i have been disappointed (and hurt) enough by the heights and depths (and do the words on the web substitute for the physical sharing i used to treasure (at least i did a few paragraphs ago, right?... wow, how time flies when we're having cathartic eruptions... how much have i aged in this one bit of babble... and how can i know for sure, in this world that's constantly changing?)...

as usual, i laugh at myself and the wonderful world of words i play in... because everything is alright (everything's fine) and even though it will be for less than four hours once again, i will sleep well tonight... i always do, when i finally lay down and give into sleep...

maybe i am approaching that moment when i once again decide i no longer want to sleep alone... wouldn't it be nice... yeah, if i lay here, if i just lay here... it was real, and true, and unconditional... trust, honesty, seldom ever heard...

but still the only thing i need from you...

good night my friends, real and imaginary, and may you find amusement in sweet dreams and pleasure as you make them come true...