love

I’m In A Walmart State Of Mind–Doors

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Soundtrack by Pat Metheny “Last Train Home”.

I’m in a Walmart state of mind. The fluorescent lighting gives the vast yet cluttered place a harsh two dimensional appearance. It’s a landscape crowded with cartoonish characters wearing thousand yard stares.   I’m staggering my way through this cathedral of capitalism, a place where everything has its price, but negligible value. It required the consumption of two tall boys and a shot of Jameson in order for me to enter these doors——I’ve come here to hopefully find an old friend of mine.

I do my best daydreaming while wandering through these isles of meaningless shit. There’s something about the endless isles of blurred colors and the monochromatic shopping muzak that puts me in a walking meditation. I peruse my way through the shameless drooping bra display, past the old ladies laid out in the pedicure highchairs, the in-house McDonalds with ketchup smeared tables, the strange optometrist alcove next to the restrooms and then past the immaculately arranged shiny fruit and vegetables, through the wall of HD TV’s, housewares, hardware, sporting goods and the disheveled toy department. I feel myself being swept away into a Fellini plot with its array of bizarre looking zombies.  It’s a nightmarish funhouse of warped mirrors, insane laughing clowns and Andy Warhol’s stacks of Campbell soup cans. The deeper I’m pulled into the bowels of the store, the more surreal my thoughts become——— Maybe I’ll find her in the shoe department.——

Why is there no three quarter life crises? It’s a misunderstood age ignored by a world consumed by youth culture and the next “big thing”. At this stage of my life, it’s no longer what I’m becoming, or who “I’m supposed to be” I know these things. Today, it’s more about “What have I done”. Or, “What haven’t I done?”  If you’ve aged well, you no longer give a damn what other people think, you are——–(good, bad or indifferent) uncompromisingly “you”.  Time strips away vanities, insecurities and pretentiousness. There’s comes a forced introspection knowing there are more days behind me than in front of me——-

The mirror has become a contemptuous tool of fucking deceit. My internal mirror has me forever young.  When I smile at pretty young girls they offer up blank stares,—–Just for kicks, I give a sly wink====”Better to be the one who smiled than the one who didn’t smile back.” Adam Smith

From the corner of my eye I catch the blur of something flittering amongst the exposed heating ducts, light fixtures and skylights. I scan the upper regions of the massive ceiling. I hear a sound reminiscent of a bird chirping. I follow the sound into the infant department. Could she be here?

My children are now grown and on their own. I carry their old memories frozen in time, but as I’ve grown older they’ve begun to thaw and slowly drip into my consciousness. Out of nowhere an old memory will surface and I will suddenly be consumed by a sense of nostalgia—- I’m taken back in time to cartoon gibberish, ski trips on snowy days, nervously letting go of the handlebars as she wobbles off without me, contentious teenage arguments with my son, teaching them how to swim, drawing the line “because I said so”, sleepless nights listening for the sound of the car returning in the driveway, holidays, family get togethers, loud parties——-tears and laughter——-I wonder, did I do it right? Did I do the right things for the right reasons? Did I tell them how much I love them? Did I say it enough? Did I show it enough? The past is malleable, I wonder about the memories they now carry of me???? Those were the best of times…….irreplaceable, irretrievable, irreparable, pressed like rose pedals within the pages of my heart——-

Perhaps she is by the water fountain near the layaway counter. Haughty shoppers offer up smirks as they jockey past me. They’re in a hurry to fill a hole left on their shopping list. The hunter gatherer gene lingering in their DNA causes them to stalk the shelves with a competitive killer instinct. For some, enough is never enough——hoarders of
“things” forget that everything they purchase comes with an expiration date…….

Have I failed god? Is he mute or am I deaf? Why are we born, why does everyone we love have to die? When I was young I was reckless, such things didn’t matter, back then I was unbreakable, irreverent—— There was always more time, time to say the things I needed to say, time to make up for the things I did wrong, time to apologize to those I’d wronged. I never looked at my watch or a calendar as a fuel gauge, or as an alarm to go off as time grows shorter.

I use to think I had control over my destiny, but not so much anymore. My grand designs flip flopped so many times that I’ve forgotten where my ego ends and my destiny begins.  Life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs, two way mirrors, dead ends, trap doors and enigmatic mysteries. I use to take credit for my successes and make excuses for my failures, but time has humbled me. Someone must have been looking out for me, a higher power, God, grace———Thank goodness that the divine takes pity on little children and fools….

Such a beautiful disaster, filled with prophetic accidents and comical mistakes, the art of life, falling apart and coming back together, riding the wave of brief eternal moments……recollecting all the people I’ve found and lost along the way. There’s always been more room for love. I should’ve hugged more, forgave quicker and been slower to anger——-

I follow the sound through the doors leading to the Yard and Garden Center. I know that she likes it out here where there is sun and fresh air. It’s an atrium of sorts, here I’m surrounded by chain linked fencing and a netted ceiling. I whistle hoping to coax a response from my shy friend.

Did I make them proud. After all their sacrifices and compromises had I come up short? Did I become a better part of their dream. It makes me wonder how others perceive me and what are the blind spots I fail to perceive in myself. Unconditional love, like the air I breathe, has always been there, taken for granted, worse yet——-expected.

Youthful enthusiasm kept me running in scribbled circles, impatient, forgetful———memories of sitting on my folks couch, with the evening news in the background, they leaned into me, listening as I explained my scrambled schemes and how I was going to have things my way.  It must have taken monumental patience on their part to allow me my fanciful indulgences.  In spite of all my false starts and wrong turns, they were behind me, no matter how cocksure I must have appeared. I hadn’t counted on all the fractured relationship, career stumbles, strange lonely towns, sucker punched failures, bad days, night terrors, faltering steps and stumbles——-but I always carried with me the knowledge that there was a place I could still call home, someone who would answer their phone no matter what hour of the day or night, they’d see me through—what a beautiful complete love——

In the corner of the atrium there’s a nest behind a flood light fixture. And there she is, sitting above the rows of patio chairs, barbecues and artificial plants. Her nest is constructed of candy wrappers, recipes and colorful strings gathered from the clothing departments. I’m reminded that to adapt doesn’t always mean to evolve……

I’d first noticed her several months ago perched upon an exposed vent. She must have accidentally flown in the store when the electric doors were open. I’ve continued to make occasional visits to see if she was still making this place home.  I’m not sure if she is trapped, or if she has found this way of life to be more predictable then what lies beyond these walls—-Life without surprises leads to complacency, and complacency compromises ones soul.

She must subside on the fruits and vegetables and other tidbits tossed into the trash cans.  The water dispenser has become her birdbath and drinking fountain.

This Walmart will be her chicks only world, all that they will ever know. It seems cruel and unfair that this sterile box-store will be the extent of their universe. But, if this is all they’ll ever know, then I suppose it makes no difference.  They don’t know—-that they don’t know——-that they’re captive birds.

To know that you don’t know, is where wonder collides with wisdom. I reach in my pocket and pull out a handful of birdseed and place it in the plastic rubber plant.

Leaving the store I’m filled with a sense of freedom. I inhale a deep breath and look up at the sky above me and wonder what doors may be hidden up there. I suppose we are all captive in one way or another ——-insnared by gravity, stiched to space and time, enslaved by our beliefs, stalked by our memories—-and ultimately, entrapped by the limited time we are here and alive………..

Forgotten

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Soundtrack Van Morrison “Oh The Warm Feeling”.

I was there, you were standing right next to me, I swear I could hear you breathe. I felt everything so deeply—but that’s nothing new. I desperately tried to get you to see, but you saw nothing———to get you to hear, but you heard nothing. You wore the expression of someone waiting on a ghost taxi, you wanted to be anywhere but here——-alone with me. The gulf had grown to wide to bridge, the fortunes walls to high to scale.

Life is not a book, a poem, a movie or a song. Life is a cold clammy messy ball of unformed clay, a mine field of misconstrued words and veiled emotions, its harmony pitted against dissonance, it’s pages of dull descriptions with no plot or character development, it’s being locked inside someones illusion of you, it’s giving yourself to fate cause freewill failed, it’s a sledge hammer to a diamond shaped heart, it’s junk mail when you deserve a love letter, it’s spam when you crave intimacy, it’s holding hands with a memory, it’s french kissing a specter, it’s a text message when all you really want to do is lie on your back with someone in the middle of a quiet meadow and count falling stars, it’s asking for your secrets back, it’s cutting down a tree with a dull ax, it’s blunt answers when all you need is a soft touch, It’s a relentless wind whistling through your window pane on a sleepless night, it’s finding a beautiful feather after the bird has flown, it’s waiting in the wings, it’s a gray and rainy January day in California, it’s missing someone who has long ago forgotten you…..

 

Mini Deaths (Fade Into You)

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Soundtrack “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star

I think of you when it snows, because that’s what the sky was doing the last time I saw you—the last time I felt your warmth—-that was back then, when I thought I’d always feel you. Little pieces of whiteness falling gracefully from the heavens, collecting in your hair, clinging to pine trees and covering the tired backstreets of our hometown, back then, this pale city was ours for the taking.

We were becoming one, one with the sky and the ground, as our bodies clung together, our eyes pure and childlike, as we shared a common breath that fused into  a cloud of steam, immaculate and white, it felt like eternity, like that moment would last forever, as if time stood still, but time stops for nothing and takes pity on no one. Life is a dissolving vapor, love a dream.

I can hear the passage of time in the strange silence that accompanies a fresh layer of snow, I recall the sound of your voice, the way you listened to my stories, the little pieces of you that still inhabit my soul, your smile, your laughter, your eyes, how you moved through the ether, giving shape to this void we call life.

I love you in that place where there is no time or space, in that mini death between heartbeats, in the stillness that separates each breath, only you have the power to take me to that place where eroticism and ecstasy collide.

Is time real, or man made, is it linear or circular? Time without you is meaningless—-I walk through the vacant snowy streets like a ghost, invisible as white on white. Is this real? Am I real? I fade into you——-

Worth It???

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Soundtrack “Sideways” by Sheryl Crow.

“Don’t you believe in love? Sure, I believe in love, I just don’t believe in people.”

People will let you down, they’ll offer up a thousand promises and then forsake you as they play dumb, as they stare past you with those faux naive eyes——- People are fickle, love is temporary, time is fleeting, —-lipstick stains while french kisses fade—love letters are scribbled in disappearing ink

yet love is always good. I didn’t say that it’s always worth it, but it’s good while it lasts.

Love, it brings out the best and the worst in us all. It has caused some to take their own life, while others in a jealous rage take another’s life, and some will sacrifice everything for a believed to be one and only———it’ll leave you with blood on your hands, it’ll lead you down dark blind alleys, leave ya stupefied broken and adrift—-

yet love is good. I didn’t say that it’s always worth it, but it’s good while it lasts.

It’ll make ya feel invincible, immortal, it’ll pull back the drapes covering your parched heart and let in all the colors you never knew existed, it’ll rock your world like a shot of tequila burning the back of your throat——-causing your eyes to water as your face contorts into a squinted fist, as you let out an involuntary “Ahhhhhhhh”—-

yet love is always good. I didn’t say that it’s always worth it, but it’s good while it lasts.

It’ll come to you exulted, wearing the robes of royalty, rose pedals line its path——- only to reduce you into a beggar, a panhandler, a homeless heart aimlessly wandering the bleakest of city streets. Just when you think you’ve figured it all out, you’ll realize you’ve been chasing a mirage, you’ve been kneeling before a charlatan, duped by a chameleon. You’ve drank the potion, taken the cure, only to find that the miracle drug is snake oil.

yet love is always good. I didn’t say that it’s always worth it, but it’s good while it lasts.

She speaks to you in a slow deliberate voice, a whisper, so precise, so careful, like a priest giving a crowd of strangers a eulogy for someone who’ll never be seen, heard from or touched again. And, that’s how this thing called love works. A hundred years from now, who will know, who will care, who will miss you?——

yet love is always good. I didn’t say that it’s always worth it, but it’s good while it lasts.

“Don’t you believe in love? Sure, I believe in love, I just don’t believe in people.”

No Room For Love

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Soundtrack “Oh My Sweet Carolina” by Ryan Adams

It’s the kind of love reminiscent of a house that’s been neglected and is now ghost infested. . Like a room no longer dusted, every surface has lost it’s shine and luster. No one has paid attention to the accumulation of times tiny cruelties. Things have gone messy, unsightly, rundown and tired——entropy, a law of physic’s leading me to loneliness.

The floor is stamped by a stampede of scuff marks across its hardwood planks. It’s as if the inhabitants had walked in endless circles never reaching a place of compromise. The windows now clouded by years of harsh weather . There’s no longer a way to see out, nor peer in, it’s as if the house has lost its vision—a dark place of shadows and gloom. And, if the eyes are a mirror to the soul, then this room should be bloodshot and stained blue.

She left her finger prints on my door knobs, her dirty dishes fill my sink, her wrinkled clothes on the floor, yet the passenger side of the bed is always neatly made up, not so much as an indentation leaning to my side. No matter how hard you clean a tomb, it’s still a place that reeks of death.

I once read that before a big battle, civil war solders would sew their name onto the back of their shirt collars—-along with the regiment to which they belonged. I’ve tattooed the same on my heart, cause with its last beat, I want someone to know it once belonged to someone——somewhere.

The wind whistles through the cracks in our walls. The fireplace has only fine ash from a fire that’s long ago gone cold.

Bad things have befallen this room. “To be perfectly honest, I can’t live like this.” Such mean things we screamed at one another. Honesty is overrated, please tell me nice things even if they’re a stone-cold lie. A temporary lie is better than an irrevocable truth.

tRuE lOvE oR dEaD FloWeRs

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Soundtrack “Finish What You Started” Van Halen

I hate it when someone says “I love you”. It’s like repeating a sentence over and over again until it becomes indecipherable. The words resonate with all the conviction of “Have a nice day”.  It’s the default we fall back on when signing everything from a birthday card to a “To do list”. It’s as overused as the adjectives “awesome” and “amazing”. Now, sex can be “awesome” or “amazing” but pizza, not so much.  Its like saying “I’m sorry” with the frequency of commenting on the weather—–after a certain point it loses its sense of contrition. They don’t want to be forgiven, they want to be excused.  Some folks don’t really mean “I love you” nor do they really intend to “Bless you” after a sneeze.

Love isn’t sending dead flowers to the funeral tomorrow, it’s hand delivering hot gooey cinabuns today. Love is sharing a couple of beers on a bench while staring out at the ocean and talking about life, the good parts, the bad parts and still finding reasons to smile—-even though the sea air is damp and salty, their words help lift the fog. Love isn’t loyalty, it’s not cooking a good meal, it’s not being a good provider or a great housekeeper. Love is being understood. That’s it—–period. Love is grace, it’s given to you, even when you don’t deserve it.

Love isn’t a word. A word is an approximation. A word is a metaphor, it’s saying something is kind of like this other thing. Love is like nothing you’ve ever known, seen or felt. And once you try and make it happen, or try to make it stay, it suddenly vanishes. Love doesn’t “try” love “is”—-because—–“it is”.  Love is counting the freckles on her back, sprawled out on tangled cool sheets, strolls on damp rainy days, morning coffee flavored kisses, getting lost on drives to nowhere—it’s comprised of corny love poems and sappy love songs—–and its got you singing along to the car radio with unrestrained gusto…….

Don’t let them tell you that love takes work. Cause that’s bullshit. Once it becomes a chore like making your bed or brushing your teeth—–then you might has well be whistling while trudging along on a treadmill, so much sweat and effort for so little distance traveled.

The opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite of love is indifference. It’s the difference between living your life in black and white or seeing it in 3D, HD—-in living color baby. Real love is like cake batter that you lick off the beaters until you tongue is sore from straining to get each and every hard to reach dollop.

I know most will say I’m an hopeless romantic. Well you’re right about that. I still believe in true love. One day of a true love is better than a million years of a love that’s full of fillers and mystery meat. Real love is rare, it’s the exception, not the rule. Ya see, I don’t want five okay steaks, I want one beautifully marbled, aged, charbroiled steak. I don’t want five cheap stogies, I want one hand rolled cuban cigar. I don’t want five cheap ass beers, I want one ice cold top shelf bottle. I don’t want five fair weather friends, I want one trusted best friend. I don’t want a butt load of half assed sex.  I want some “amazing”, “awesome sex”——and then maybe some “swell” pizza. Compromise is the road to mediocrity.

Hate is in some ways more accessible than love. Hate has legs, it will shake your ass up. Hate will get up off the page it’s written on and slap you across your appalled face. Hate is like stepping in dog shit when you’re wearing a pair waffle stompers. Once it makes its way into your treaded soul, it becomes tougher than hell to get off you. Sometimes ya just have to wait until it drys and then scrape it off with an old rusty nail. Even after you’ve meticulously cleaned all the shit off your soul, it will still take time for the smell of hate to fad away——hate isn’t worth it.

Love is worth it. If you can believe in democracy, and in politicians, and god, and truth and justice and science, art, and karma and some version of reality—–then surely, there must still be room left in your toy box for the idea of true love.

Repeat until it makes ya smile “ice, bank, mice, elf”.

FAKER (lessons in love)

Soundtrack, “Do What You Want, Be What You Are” by Hall & Oats

Lesson #1

Life goes on, with or without me. Fads come and go, hit songs become golden oldies, all my insecurities and self-conscious tendencies slip away leaving behind silent movie memories, like puddles evaporating in time—— seasons never end, they just change, a circle of revolving eternities….again I’ll wait for you to come round again—I’m no longer in a hurry, infinity is patient.

Lesson #2

I use to give a shit what people thought, but I’ve come to realize that everyone is so self-absorbed that no one gives a damn about anyone other than themselves—-just a cavalcade of egocentric, narcotic sons of a bitches———And they move through life as though everyone else is a hollow prop, a means to an end, a thing to be manipulated for their own good. Why is it so hard for us to see this life beyond our own selfish experiences and desires?

It’s not that far of a walk till dawn, until Mr Sun bumps his head up against that dogged horizon. Ya see, light can’t wait for time to give birth to another day. I awake to find that I’m still here, alive and ready to breathe. I”m not afraid, nor sorry, cause that’s just waisted time, let the sky creep towards blueness and let the dew sparkle like diamonds to decorate the glory of forever forgetting, rebirth brings amnesia——Who were you before this? I think I must have known you from some other place and time, maybe a lover, a brother, mother, my child, aren’t we all somehow connected? Fools are the bitter ones, dismissing miracles, failing to see the expression of god within stars and dust——the lucky ones grow closer to the day, to themselves, to others,——to what is…….

The bathroom mirror mocks me. I dip my chin and turn my head one way and then the other. “Here I am——this is who I am, what I’ve become through choice and consequence. As of late I’ve become keenly aware of my two selves. My private self and my public self. I’ve lived a divided existence, a chameleon, a shape shifter, camouflaging myself into an unchanging innocuous background. I’m struck by the notion of congruency.

Somewhere along the way I’d lost myself. I’d allowed myself to fracture into a million faux personalities. I did this to please others, to protect myself, to fit in, to avoid indiscretions, to appear normal, to simulate appropriateness——I’d been a faker, a fraud—-These days I’d rather be notorious than anonymous. Authenticity comes with a license to be free, to be crazily sane, to be who ever you choose to be!

Lesson #3

As I’ve grown older I’ve begun to allow my layered selves to coalesce into a unified me. Such a task requires practice, but at the end of the day it has liberated me. One of the blessings of aging is that it has stripped me of my vanities. I am who I am, no more pretending——the sky is the sky, my dog is my dog, life is life, what is “is” and so on and so forth….The simplest of ideas are the most difficult to grasp!

I’ve been thinking about friendships and it has occurred to me that my closest friends are the ones who allow me to be myself without pretension or expectation. They know me, they get me, and in spite of my faults, failures and foibles, they forgive me. Needless to say, these days I have fewer friends, but the ones I have help me become a better me.

To be understood is to be loved.  And to be lovable requires honestly and vulnerability.

Breaching Your Surface

Soundtrack, “Sideways” by Sheryl Crow

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So often we forget to live.  Instead we carry on as if life were a drudgery, as if love were mundane, as if our time were infinite. That is the gravest of sins; to forget to be alive, to neglect the sensation that comes with breathing. Sometimes when I feel my life being siphoned away, I think of you. I force myself to think of the first time I kissed you. I think of how you tasted, the scent of your perfume and how your body fit so well into mine. I think about it in the most minuet detail, the way the morning sunlight fell upon your bare skin, the smell of ocean in your hair, the way your eyes locked into mine, your childlike smile. I stay in this place until it hurts, until I think I might lose myself in the undertow of your memory. It’s like that reoccurring dream I have where I’m trapped deep underwater and I’m struggling to reach the surface. I look up and can only make out what appears to be a distant blurry surface. And, I know you are there waiting for me. My lungs feel as if they might burst, my mind and body are starved for oxygen. Every cell in my body screams out for a sip of air. My legs and arms strain as I flail and kick upward towards the shimmering surface of you. Time passes agonizingly slow, I am stymied by fear and panic, and then suddenly, like the flick of a switch, I sit up in my bed and suck in a huge gasp of air—but you still aren’t there. I’ve forgotten how to pray, or how to be alive without you near me. I toss and turn in my bed, a stray dog incessantly barks against the night.

What’s Your Story

 

The soundtrack to this piece is “You & I” by One Direction. The post is to be read while listening to this tune.

Some will make you believe in love again, and cause you to hear bluebirds singing right outside your bedroom window and you’ll rise to crimson skies and smell the refreshing scent of lilacs floating on cool morning breezes. Love wakes you to life, and where there is love, there is no need for purpose, precautions or possessions, nor drama, pretense or pretending. When it makes no sense, that’s when it’s at its best. Give yourself to such moments, declare a union, commit to an alliance, scream it from behind your window blinds—-only fools limit themselves to those who are possessed by reason, logic and timid passions—— all their nothingness smothering their life force——what is love but the stepchild of fear—— a smoldering fuse waiting to ignite starbursts—-and if it should rain there will be rainbows, cause love is sappy and corny and ridiculous that way. It will cause you to use language in new ways, you will write love letters on unicorn stationary and sign off with X’s and O’s—— hearts——envelopes sealed with a kiss, embossed with burning red lipstick——dripping with honey…..

It’ll blind your eyes, like shiny shards of glass flashing and then suddenly exploding in tremendous balls of whiteness somewhere behind your eyes. I’m broken, I’m drained, but I’d know your face from past life dreams, a thousand lives deep, I wonder what’s beneath that skirt, cause I’m into that, I’d tell you lies if I thought they’d do the trick, to get you alone, to get you to discard your clothes and lay next to me, naked, damp and all a quiver—-and you’d only be wearing a perfect dirty smile—-

We won’t become like the rest of them. The ones bored to the touch of the other, forgetting how to hold, how to fall asleep in love and wake together in a tangle of sweat stained sheets.

This life is your story, nothing more, nothing less. Tell it with boldness, kiss no ones ass, go down swinging, don’t let anyone still your glory or run you ragged>>>>>>never waste time on the bland and the blind, cause you’ll never get that time back…..

Remembering To Feed The Cat

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Soundtrack Sparks by Coldplay.

When I was young I met a girl, she said she’d take care of me, but she couldn’t even take care of herself—— She burned Top Ramen, bled pink on my favorite button down shirt in the wash and was always telling me to get a “real job”. When my band broke up things got even worse. We stopped forgiving one another. We stopped holding hands. We’d lay in bed back to back, facing those bare opposing walls. She taught me how to say things I didn’t mean. In the darkness it’s easy to confuse how things are with the way things once were—-or, with the way things could have been. Once we realized that we were pretending, this is when the white lies lost their power to hold things together.

The stuff that drew us together——music, laughter, defying a world of clocks, money and the wanting of more—-came to be the things that pulled us apart. I went home one day and she was gone. At first I couldn’t breathe. She took her stereo and I was alone in my silence. For the first time I was on my own and alone, no family, no school, no job, just me. Life made no sense, everything was hard and cold—-I no longer had anyone to look after me. No footsteps falling in the other rooms. I suppose she took the cat, knowing that I’d forget to feed it.

Then I met a girl and I told her that I’d take care of her, but she soon discovered that I couldn’t even take care of myself. I tried to rearrange everything, but I ended up making a mess of things. I pawned my guitar and sold my keyboard. Something had ransacked my soul and smashed all the things I valued. I never wanted to take care of anyone ever again. It’s too much trouble. I taught her how to say “Fuck Off”. I laughed when she first said it to me. It sounded strange coming from her, but she was a quick study.

Love is like believing in aliens, it’s a crazy idea, but its better than feeling we’re all alone in this big universe.  Maybe love is having someone to look after—-someone to take out the garbage and mow the lawn, someone to make your supper and mend your shirts.   You can’t see love, you can only see its shadows.  For me, love is a practice, a discipline.  It requires patience, attention, and most importantly compassion.   I’m still learning these ways.  I do know this, spooning with someone is better than staring at your blank walls.