Fog

Tonight would be the perfect night to make a cheap horror flick up here in the major metropolis of Elk River. It’s about 40 degrees and just foggy enough to add a surreal atmosphere to all the leafless trees. The moonlight is just strong enough to light the setting so that the major details are visible, yet there are enough shadows to make you wonder what could be lurking within them.

In fact tonight would be the perfect night to find a nice old cemetery and go exploring. Check out all the headstones, lit only by the ambient glow of our nearest celestial neighbor, and wonder about the people who lie below them. Who were they? What was their life like? What were their hopes and dreams? Does anyone still miss them?

I like nights like tonight.

Why? I don’t know. I suppose maybe because it seems to be a near personification of what life seems to me to be. It’s this vast space of “what if’s” and “what could be out there’s” that is lit just enough to see silhouettes, yet not enough to see clearly. It’s partly scary, partly mysterious, and all beyond the control of anyone who is in it.

No matter what the reason, I feel at home here.

I’ve said many times, mostly in poems and stuff I’ve written, that I wish I could say all the things I really can’t quite say. Somehow though, when writing things out like this all those things never seem to come out right. All the perfect things that I wish I could relay turn out to be something less than what they are before I type them. All the questions I ask come out sounding hollow. All the feelings I try to put into writing end up sounding shallow and cliché.

Maybe this isn’t quite the therapy that I’ve thought it is. Perhaps it’s more like self-torture; striving to convey what I know I never can.

It seems that I’m in a bit of a peculiar place. It’s a place that people try to sympathize with, yet so few can truly understand. Even though I know the events that led to me getting here, I don’t know exactly how I arrived at this place.

I actually do have a picture of how things could be perfect. Although it does only exist in my imagination, it permeates my thoughts. The details change from time to time, but the essence of it all remains the same. It’s a perfection that doesn’t exist in what we consider “real life.” In fact, I don’t think it ever can.

Sometimes I wonder if this is possibly an extension of hell itself. Living a life where you are allowed to dream dreams that can and will never become reality. Perhaps dreams are just the worm on the hook of life, used to get us to bite, and all this stuff that we think is “life” is really just our vain attempts to break free from the hook and escape.

Or maybe I just ramble too much.

Either way, I’m going outside for a bit to enjoy the night before the daylight ruins it all.

*

“Foreclosure of a dream

These visions never seen

Until all is lost

Personal Holocaust

Foreclosure of a dream.”

*

Megadeath