I didn’t go out yesterday.

I did get out of the house though, decided a walk would be a fine way to introduce myself to the new state. Learn my way around town. At least just get out of my house. The white walls stare at me all day. The books get boring. The internet dries up.

Sometimes I regret the move. Home might carry with it memory and weight – the memory and weight that made life so painful, that drove me from home. But it was still home. And while upsetting, I left behind a lot of equal good. It’s funny how equal parts pain and joy can seem so weighted, so one sided. Why should such pain get so much louder a voice? Why should the pain press further than the joy? Is it in the nature of the pain to be so moving, or is it in our nature and attitudes to recognize it as being such, that it’s inside us to become so consumed. If hurt is a monster, is it not just our own personal inner monsters, and if they’re left inside, are they at our control? Are they at our disposal? Or is it our emotions that run us, for many – me, at the least – the negative, eating up our existence, overruling happiness.

Maybe I believe that, all that talk there about the monster inside, and maybe that was the real reason to seek out Colorado, with its foothills and mountains, the sky that seems to go on forever, and its seemingly sporadic weather, to try to cure this negativity within by seeking what’s outside, a cure from the natural, from my environment.

Maybe it was with this in mind, or at least, deep in my subconscious – at war with the monster? maybe hiding in some unnoticed corner, scowling at the deep seeded grief – that got me out of the house last night, driving me away from the bars and the college scene, students getting drunk during free weekends, spending their paychecks on cloudy, stumbling distractions and miserable mornings. I’m tired of miserable mornings. No need to perpetuate that crap. It’s easy enough to awaken with a sick feeling in my gut and a groggy skull without help from alcohol.

So I went for a walk, finding a trail that ran below a street or two, following a stream that trickled cheerfully from the rain and latest snow we’ve just had, the water high along the shallow banks. It was chilly and wasn’t long before I was getting cold, but the blood was circulating, warming me slowly, and the cold wasn’t so different from cold I’ve known back east. Just later maybe.

I stayed late last night, slept most of the morning today, left the house as early as possible, deciding against groceries for the time being (I’ll need to buy some kitchen items first, what use are groceries if you’ve nothing to cook or eat them in?), and stopped in at some cute little coffee shop with tasty pastries and a delightful white mocha. My books tasted better outside of my house, on a too-cushy couch instead of the flat carpeting and hard floor. Emptiness for some reason is not conducive to the introvert. Perhaps not introvert. Introverts might find themselves inclined toward the empty, it allows for focus on the only thing you have at hand; yourself of course. This is true for anyone, human beings in general, I suppose. But it’s too easily overlooked, I think, that the emptiness might be  more interesting than yourself within it.

That’s what happens when you spend too much time alone like this, without distraction. Your mind wanders crazy places. I’m getting beyond myself now.

Anyway, I drove home after spending the afternoon in the lovely shop, and as the sun started low in the sky, breaking through those clouds that bubbled up, some threatening in the late day sky. Deciding to go for another walk, this time the other direction, perhaps north and west, I managed to travel a good ways from my apartment and get a little lost in the winding neighborhood roads not far from where I lived.

The night fell upon me in one of the most beautiful twilights I think I’ve seen in a long while. Where in Philadelphia, twilight is a moment that hardly lingers more than a minute or two, igniting William Penn atop city hall, before a quick drop to deep blue and then black, if you’re even paying attention – after the first two weeks, if you find yourself staring toward the sky you’re likely forever pegging yourself as a tourist. Here, in the wild, the twilight seems to envelop you, surround you and suck you in with it. The deep blue gradient that descended seemed to pulse or glow with its own life, a richness I’ve rarely seen in the sky, the kind that casts the trees into black silhouettes almost speaking with their own energy themselves.

Call me a tourist, call me a phony poet or a brand new outdoorsman – or just welcome me to the state – but it was a beautiful sight and I continued my wandering late, not getting back again until after midnight. Remarkable how you can wander neighborhood streets out here, alone, until midnight, without hardly a care beyond a rare and rowdy group of frat boys or college kids drunk and skipping along to the next party.

Passing my neighbors window, I peered in to see a man and likely his girlfriend watching a Will Ferrell movie – Stranger than Fiction? Good if I remember. They seemed happy, content to enjoy their evening inside, no need to venture out, to embrace the natural wonder, to quash out the sadness. I’m jealous. They looked so relaxed.

For a moment I wondered about them – still am, I think. I wonder if they’re as happy as they seemed in the ten seconds I stole, if a photograph from someone’s life, an image, a clip, can show you any hint of the truth, or if it’s as much a lie as my own wonderings put in place of what is as random as surfing channels over and over, the screen only a splash of color against a wall.

Is this blog so different? A series of snapshots, images of some person you think I am? That you make me out to be? Will you understand? Will you see? Like some film strip spinning in the back of a projector room, awkward sped-up lurching images parading across to rapid piano tunes. Or will you only see what you want to see? Loose impressions from your own life plastered onto a faceless girl, words along the parade, meaningless, without-personality, little more than just a monster inside, waiting, hiding, a vowel in the text, repeating, necessarily, over and over, establishing what you see and make sense of.