The endless night and it's pesky neon lights

Sitting here, listening to "Iris". Reflecting on the state of knowledge and the way it derails your life.

Knowledge is an unbending, unyielding thing. It carves an unforgiving line in your mind, and anything which doesn't follow its linear path becomes automatically obsolete, impossible, whether you want it to or not. Before, I wanted the knowledge; I wanted a choice, the right one, to be pointed out in bright illuminating neon, to guide my path, to make my decisions. But now the lights are too bright, and I want the darkness back, because it was comforting in its possibilities, in preserving my imaginings. But knowledge is merciless that way, I suppose. How do you reconcile exclusive desires, when one is won at the expense of the other? How do you know which is right? Perhaps you never do, until it is too late, and all you can ever do is to choose the only one you can live with. Maybe.

I dreamt of Cajun last night. He was in my living room, one floppy ear and all. That big velvety nose pushed into my palm, the smell of his fur real as anything which ever was. Soft brown eyes. Funny bark.

I dream of Zeph too. It seems I will never stop dreaming of Zeph. Sometimes I don't want to wake up. And when I do, I always wonder if I will ever find my way away from the path Zeph set in my life. I wonder if there’s only ever one dog for me, and I had him, and he's gone, and that's it, the end. Because there's always the thought in my head. "But it's not Zeph."

Sometimes I wonder if all of life is like that too. That there's just one dog, one path, one man. That you only ever get one shot at it, and if you don't take it the first time, or you don't realize it while you've had it, it's gone, and everything after that will only ever be a poor substitute because you can only ever measure everything that comes after against that one person, one path, one potential lost ever after. Already, I feel time slipping between my fingers, one path becoming more ephemeral, and it scares me.

So faced with inexorable, unforgiving, unyielding knowledge, and the possibility of losing something which you were meant for either way, which destiny, which fate should you deny and regret?

Maybe the Boy is right, and I should scatter their ashes to blow in the wind, to let them run in open fields and under starry skies, to let them run in the rains and sleep on the grass, to come and go as they please, and maybe I will no longer dream of them any more. I don't know if I want that, but maybe I owe them that. To mingle with the winds rather than to lie under cold earth. Maybe an answer will come borne on winds, to whisper in my ear.