---

The Pangs. The Fucking Pangs.

There is a whole Opus Pistorum to be written on The Pangs.

The feeling: a sort of reverse-nostalgia.

A bittersweet, memory-like longing for something that hasn't yet happened. The girl you never knew that broke your heart comes to the party in the skin of a woman you've never met... will she ever understand that you already love her? Deeply, truly, thoroughly. Is this love any less valid because it exists in another dimension and has nothing to do with anything real* (*i.e. having any connection to that which actually happened in this lifetime)?

The relationships of the mind, whilst listening to songs, whilst watching the sun go down, whilst watching movies, sitting in the tub, are so full, so beautiful, so sad and perfectly imperfect. Inside of these images of imaginary love affairs, cinematically painful, slowly and quietly intense and dramatic, we always look beautiful when we're crying. Our faces are never red and puffy and pathetic, and if they are, they are adorably so, intensely so, sweetly so. Pain is a pang, a slide-guitar gut sensation, a minor note felt in the aorta, a heart choke. Eyes blink in the soft light, tears roll down the cheeks, always in slow motion, with a sound track, slow, with ringing harmonics which die away, open tuning, the sound of the metal rattling on the fret. Imperfectly perfect, and slow.

Behind, above, surrounding it all, there is the glowing specter of a heart, full to bursting with love, that grows and grows and grows.

The people-in-general, the hoi polloi, the vox populi go on about their business. Another day, another nickle. Back to work. Me too. Here I am. Senor Cog: Welcome to the Urban Junkyard! Your Civic Duties await you! Please report to the office and place your Cog in the Machine. Although the System runs quite smoothly without You (it is, in and of itself, a self-propagating, self-copulating, self-emulating machine) We sure do like having You around. All is Better Back in Line, waiting for your side-order of fries. Here we Go.

Need to get simple and monosyllabic for a minute. Yes, no, good, yes, ugh.... simple simple. Even simple has two-syllables. Too Many! Need the Ones: Plain. Good. Girl. Boy. Beach. Sky. Sea. Camp. Walk. Sleep. Read. Light. Dark. Beef. Fish. Eat. Love. Joy. God.

It is time to cry. Really cry. Not just weep that bittersweet lovesick weep that's burning in the throat 24/7, but fucking WAIL. Wail to the heavens in a combination of a "thank you!" and "why? fucking why?" A question and an exclamation. Why is she so beautiful? Why can't it last forever? Why would I want it to? Why do I deserve such light? Such feelings? Such a friend?

I love those days when one knows, beyond a doubt, that happiness is right here. Nothing more is needed. I could live in a dirt shack chicken coop, and so long as the face turns toward the sun now and then, happy is here.

And yet, simultaneously, that thought horrifies me.... this is it? this is all you want? this is happiness? no no not enough never never never enough.... I am the bitch of ambition! I am the slave of the self talking mind! I am the hog-tied POW of "not enough" "less than" and "falling short", and am a shit sandwich with a side order of failure and a self pity shake.

Those are The Pangs, mang.