A Thousand Kisses Deep

I can gath­er all the news I need on the weath­er report.
Hey, I’ve got noth­ing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only liv­ing boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of fam­i­ly. We eat break­fast at work or in the car to save our­selves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emo­tion, we avoid eye con­tact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our cof­fee shop romances — they’re just try­ing to fill that hole, that gap that’s miss­ing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t fig­ure things out. We don’t reflect and appre­ci­ate what we have.

Like straw­ber­ry cheese­cake ice cream with a thick gra­ham crack­er swirl. Like the seren­i­ty of the snow that falls around us, when heav­en decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of liv­ing.

And now I real­ize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been look­ing for love, but nev­er rec­og­nized it when I found it. All I ever want­ed to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I nev­er did. And now I won­der. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t cap­ture every­thing. You need to throw your­self in.

A thou­sand kiss­es deep.

5 comments

  1. Been qui­et­ly read­ing for awhile. You know, fire­wall, work, etc.

    1. Love the pho­tographs. I love how close, how detailed, how incred­i­bly hon­est your pho­tos are.

    2. This days post was melan­choly and hope­ful and roman­tic in one go. It made me feel warm and slight­ly salty, like I had been awash in tears for a bit.

    3. Despite your lack of con­fi­dence, I am con­fi­dent that peo­ple’s hopes and con­fi­dence in you will even­tu­al­ly instill this sense of active accom­plish­ment in your­self… I look at what you do, and how you do it, and I am sim­ply amazed by how tal­ent­ed, intel­li­gent, sen­si­tive, sapi­ent and sen­tient, you are. You give me hope that one day I might attain these qual­i­ties, and only be half as inspired and cre­ative as you are. I enjoy read­ing the things you say, because the give me the sense that I am not alone, that I will do great things with myself, and I am not half as droll as I think I am. And I thank you for the hope you give me.

    I believe you will achieve (already are achiev­ing) great things in this life, and in the next.

    4. I love the title of this arti­cle. It makes me want to crawl into cov­ers and sleep with my lips against the nape of N’s neck.

  2. I was going to say how much I am com­fort­ed by your … um.…..what would you say?. hedo­nism.? And then decid­ed I was going to change that to “lux­u­ri­at­ing in the small poet­ic joys of life.” …some­what of a com­bi­na­tion, I sup­pose. And then there’s the uncom­mon mood of still­ness in you that I love.

    I’ve real­ly nev­er man­aged to find a male who thought (or per­haps spoke) these things in quite this way except you.

    Damn. Why weren’t/aren’t there more such as you?

  3. @maeko — Thank you very much for your com­ment. Your words encour­age me to keep going, whether it’s in words, pho­tos, or oth­er­wise.

    The title is actu­al­ly from one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. Wonderful sto­ries could be weaved from his clever titles and lyrics.

    @Xibee — Guys like me are endan­gered cause we fin­ish last. But it’s some­what nec­es­sary. Otherwise, we would­n’t appre­ci­ate what we’ve lost/never had and we’d nev­er learn to feel this way.

  4. Beautiful real­i­sa­tion.

    It made me think about some­thing that was lin­ger­ing on my mind after the loss of my dad: “to con­stant­ly ques­tion life is almost like not liv­ing your life at all, even though, sim­ply liv­ing life lim­its the pos­si­bil­i­ties that life itself holds”. I dont know if it makes sense to any­one else but me, but I thought I should share it with you any­way.

  5. That makes per­fect sense, Em. On a con­trary note, Socrates said, “An unex­am­ined life is not a life worth liv­ing”. I sup­pose it’s a fine bal­ance we need to find for our­selves.

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