no escape from reality

My keyboard is dusty. I've spent the past few minutes subconsciously counting flecks, finding thought.

This morning's too-early rise and subsequent too-early arrival at the office was hard on my body. I ache, my eyes hurt, and thank you Lord for coffee. I stayed out past my bedtime last night. Way out. Boyfriend and I decided against seeing a movie (is everything shown in vomit-inducing 3D these days!? It appears so); we stayed up late in a conversation instead. Up Late conversations are my favorite.

This morning's news has added a heavy feel to the day. Moviegoers shot.

Rain outside. Seems fitting; like the clouds read the news before I did. The office conversations have all centered here: on the irony, on the sadness, on the questions. I scroll down the page and see stories from across the globe much like this one; no movie theatres, just streets and parking lots. Bombs and ammunition, and hate; so much hate. So much more disassociation.


I miss them, sometimes, those days of innocence. Remember when we were children? There were good things to look for, growth and joy to be found. Now, I know these things are still here, and will stay so long as we choose them. But I look at this shooter, I look at the bombs in desert sand, and the government leaders and the armies of men who fear difference and I wonder when good will win.

It might be easy, in a way, to gather these stories like armour, stack them up like brick walls on a house and stay nestled tight inside. But I'd rather take those stories, stones that they are, and throw them one by one into the ocean. So they disappear; so they push the water up so high it floods the land, healing many.

Naive though it may be.


Simple decisions change our world and the course of the days of many. What we choose, and when, and how we get there: these things matter. I am no longer innocent, but I am optimistic. What I do with my time here is up to me. Lord, may I use it well.

Fun Bathing by Tan Choon Wee of Singapore
Digital Camera Photographer of the Year, 2009.