"Icarus thy aim is true."

I went to start this post.

Wrote the title.

Turned Pandora on "The Misfits."

Then realized something was missing.

Pause.

Walk into kitchen. Pull The Sailor off the shelf. Spin cap off. Take pull. That is a start. That one is for me because I'm selfish.

This pull...

...For Ja.

This pull...

...For her brother I'll never meet.

This pull...

...For her.

She calls me today.

The first words out of her mouth are, "Have you read Ja.'s blog lately." I hear the hitch in her voice. There is a moment that I panic. That maybe he has written something that I haven't read, and that things took a drastic turn for the worse and for some reason he didn't bother to tell me this time. And that I have failed my friend. So as she is bursting into tears, I'm pulling up the site and looking to make sure that I didn't miss something else.

When I see that it is the same thing that I have already read. That I have already talked through. That I have already been assured isn't going to happen any time in the near future, and that if it is I will be told. I breathe a little sigh of relief and start to listen again.

This pull...

...again for me.

Right now I'm thanking Jesus for Black Flag and 92 proof rum, and the ability to actually organize my thoughts into sentences and words.

This pull...

...moving to the brother again.

She has told me about him so many times. This man that was her brother. This death that affected her life so much. How it is surrounded by tragedy and pain and regret. And what it means to her to tell someone, to love someone enough to call them a brother.

These men that she calls brother, they don't replace him.

They never will. That kind of loss can never be covered, or filled. But in some way they stand in for him. They are men that she feels safe with, protected by, protective towards. And in all those ways she cares about Ja. So she reads his words and spins. Her heart swoons, and not in the romantic sense, in the drunken bed spins don't want to get up off of the floor because the world is moving and you aren't sort of swoon.

And she doesn't know how to tell him that.

She doesn't know how to tell him that he is her brother. Not her "brother". But her real honest to god brother.

So she breaks. Her heart opens and out pours pain and bitter anguish. She hurts. And though it is because she is afraid for Ja. And because she wants to know some way to help him. It is also because she feels her brother with her again. She feels that man that she lost so long ago. Just like we all feel the lost, the sleeping.

This pull...

...Para Pops y Grandma.

I don't know if either of them would approve of me anymore.

That makes me a little sad.

Just because I don't know.

But I look to them for advice all the time still. Their different way of looking at the world. How they were open to helping the poor out of their own poverty. How they were loving towards each other in their faults. How they loved even their wheto grandson, even when he showed up with a new tattoo and a wheta wife that hated beaners.

J. was pregnant with b. when I got the call from my dad. He sounded like her. He wasn't talking about a blog, but there was that pain there. That anguish.

"Your grandma she went to be with Jesus."

I don't know that I really cried.

I know that I sat on the stairs and acted the part. But I just didn't feel anything. I knew that my grandma's soul would somehow be in my daughter. That they were the same, and that she wasn't lost to me. sounds like some bullshit now. And I feel the tears that I missed that night. here, and now.

This pull...

...Again for me.

And as I'm writing all of this. Nearly midnight. Ja. texts me. And I dump on him how alone I feel right now. Everyone that I want to be with, I can't be with. And it isn't distance. It is complication. My kids are a divorce and a new relationship away. She is a marriage away. My Pops and grandma are a death away. My friends are real lives, real carers, and relationships away. That is how I feel tonight. I have these words, I have music, and books. I watch Serenity to keep me company. I have a bottle that loves me in its own way. I have a book that tells me of heroes and villains and how to live like either one. I have art, and dreams, and love, but this night reeks of solitude and black hearts.

I never want to shut down like I used to.

I never want to have the hard heart.

But some times would it be easier?

This pull...

...Wake up heart. Feel. For fucks sake do not give up on me again.

This pull...

This pull...

This pull...

...Where are my promised lands? My promised answers at the bottom of this bottle?

This pull...

...Is for living a life with no regret, and still finding a way to keep my head up.

This post is so selfish. Like all posts here. Like I've stated clearly they would be. I try to not focus on myself all the time, but I can't seem to help it. And tonight is no exception. But I have to say that these people that are out here. That talk to me, and tell me things. That encourage and lean and trust. You mean the world to me.

The fact that you can be open with your feelings, with your pains, with your fears, fuck with your plans to kill yourself. That means that you consider me a least enough of a human to love you back. To pray for you. To talk you down from the cliff side. To agree that Icarus has true aim, that we should aim for the brightest most brilliant thing we can see, even if it costs us everything that is in us, even if it costs us our very lives. Because we have become a rare breed. Us high flyers. We who dream and shoot for the stars. The whole fucking world has forgotten how to do that. I see it in the faces of bums on the bus, and in the words of a girl so alone that she will talk to the first stranger that sits down next to her. I see it in the men lining up to use the internet for free in the library, and in one of my best friends telling me that alcohol is going to kill him if he doesn't stop drinking.

I see it in that same man telling me, that in spite of the fact that he has a beautiful wife, and a amazing new son, that he doesn't feel like he is worth anything. That his life has no meaning, no drive.

And sometimes I can see exactly what he means.

This pull...

...It is for "our war."

Against contentment, complacency, against standing about and just letting life happen, instead of living it. Our anger and our hope is all gone.

And I don't want to just stand aside.

I want to take the girl I want into my arms like the hero.

I want to stand in on the soap box and tell you all what I think.

And honestly I'll do that whether anyone wants me to or not.

This pull...

...Is for Ja. Is for life. Is for Icarus. For brothers. And what we learn from them. For death. And what we learn from it.

Lets aim for whatever the fuck we want. Pain and fear be damned.

Lest we be damned for wasting what we have.

File under both.