One Love

To Zach.

There were so many things that I never told you. I always thought that I would have the time.
I fell in love with you when I was fourteen years old. Some people might say that's too young to know what love is. Now, approaching thirty, I still hold that it was one of the truest, purest feelings I've ever known.
I remember how the sun followed you wherever you went; the air became springtime. Darkness turned to light in my heart. I remember how I felt alive, being near you. I knew that you had an addiction even then, even as kids, but you were so much more than that. You had such a powerful spirit. I thought it was bigger than any battle it was fighting.
I like to remember you sitting under a cherry tree playing Bob Dylan tunes on your acoustic guitar. We listened to punk rock but for some reason we both just loved that Live 1975 Dylan album. You loved poetry and lyricism. Half of the time you spoke in it without seeming to notice.
I fell in love with you and you were like the sun.
You moved away, back to Chicago, when I was 15 years old. It broke my heart like it had never been broken before. I retreated into myself, hiding in my room and only coming out to practice with my band, my lyrics getting more and more lost and angry. I wrote you letters every day. I never sent any of them. I kept a calendar on the wall where I counted the days since you'd left. I counted for a year, day by day. I listened to Leftover Crack and Bob Dylan. I waited. I sat on the floor and drew on my converse with sharpie. I might have done nothing but rock back and forth, a time or two.
But all of that's behind us now. We grew up, and we grew apart. And then, three days ago I ran into you downtown by the university. What were the chances in a city of millions of people? There you were. We stopped. We talked, and caught up. You said you were about to graduate with your degree in Philosophy. You always had loved wondering about the world. I hugged you, and I wanted to hold on longer but you started to let go, so I did the same. You asked for my phone number and sent me pictures of your guitar. You said you wanted to hang out and play some folk tunes. I said I would like that. It wasn't a nicety; I meant it.
But you died today.
When I had to pass along the news to others, they asked me: "But didn't you just see him last week?"
That's the thing about dying. You're alive right up until you do it.

I knew about the heroin, knew all the way back in high school. It was so foreign to me then. Death was foreign to me then. It's not so much, anymore. Zach, I hope there's a place where you still exist. Where the fundamentals of your soul are still together, in one piece. I hope there's a place where I can find you again. I hope there's a cherry tree in the sky where we can sit and sing folk songs together in our crappy patched punk clothes, because neither one of us ever cared if people thought our folk music was cheesy. We just liked it. We liked being alive together and noticing the things that were beautiful. We just liked noticing things that made us happy. Thank you for always being one of them, for me. I plan on seeing you again, so wait for me til then. One love.

All the time in the world

There's this sense of immediacy, when you're young.
Every moment is on fire. Every moment matters.
Nothing is too dramatic. Nothing is too over the top.

It's because we haven't had that many things happen to us, yet.
And we don't realize how much being that way can take it out of you, over time.
It just makes me wonder what's the better way to be.

Because when you're young, you feel things so intensely, good and bad.

And it's like... once you get older, you've been hurt so many times, and been burned, and been heartbroken, that you just don't let yourself feel as deeply, so the lows aren't as low when they come.

Because you're just exhausted from hurting.

I just finished watching 'Keith' again and I realized I would never react how Natalie did. I wouldn't want to hold on with someone who was dying until the last moment. I wouldn't want that kind of pain. But she just, without thinking, said she wanted every second. Because it was romantic, and dramatic, and the kind of love you feel when you're a teenager.

When you're older, you just want to be safe.
You don't make grand gestures anymore.
You used to make them because you literally could do nothing else.
But now they feel like work, instead of like a necessity.
Now you've calmed down, slowed down.
You know what you have to give, without burning yourself down, and you don't offer any more than that to begin with because you don't want to promise what you'll just end up taking away.

It's kind of a relief, and it's kind of a disappointment.

I don't know what's the better way to be.

Maybe someday I will find new grand gestures inside myself.
But for now, I can wait.