Everything's different with my head in the clouds...

I should be sleeping but I'm listening to Volcano Choir and trying to decide if I like them. I'm finally feeling better. I'm also pouting because that's what I do when I get genuinely excited about something and watch it kinda not happen. The people around me, mostly June, don't really deserve to sit through my pout bouts but at the very same time I will never, ever, in a million years ever feel badly for being oh-so genuinely excited about something. It's kinda all I got.

I'm enthusiastic...ridiculously so at times, and I get oh-so sincerely thrilled right down to my probably average density bones structure sometimes. You know how there are those stupid internet quizzes that ask you all kinds of ridiculous questions about the up-close and personal this and thats of yourself...questions like, what do you like best and least about yourself? Well, my unequivocal answer for the best query would be the manner in which I am moved. I use the term "oh-so," very liberally throughout so many discussions because my sentiments demand that hyphenated term of emphasis. Ask anyone who has ever been weighed down by my company and they'll immediately laugh (some in a very flattering sense, and some with an antagonistic flair) and then nod their head in agreeement -- the triple e kind of agreement -- that yes, indeed, the Brian that they know could very well be defined by his enthusiasms. I'll never feel badly about that...even when I pout.

Why?

Because so many of the men I know are dead...not literally, but not quite figuratively either. They've quit on everything, at least all things amazing a long time ago. I think men do it far more frequently than women do. I haven't. I might never. I'd be lying to say that I don't try hard to see the world differently. I do. I won't apologize for that either. I can summon thirty or forty peers, men who are still young and vibrant, who should be full of ideas and affections and enthusiasms who have managed to wittle down their loves to just a few, and have then somehow figured out a way to undervalue even those. I have more affections than there are stars. I wrap myself in more ideas than blankets each night as I fall asleep and for that I'll never feel badly.

I wish I was the type who always wore his parachute, but the truth is sometimes I jump without it...most times I don't even venture to think that I might need one, hence the momentary pout. I bounce off of the earth better than anyone... you know, when things inevitably come crashing down, and then I dust myself off and climb up into the sky one more time. It's strange how often I can be made to feel badly about that. June gets it. She sees me and watches me step to the doorway of that plane, clouds whirring by, and she doesn't pull me back, or maybe she's learned not to...and she always meets me at the bottom of those doomed jumps, and allows me my curious, "wonder what went wrong," time, and even tolerates my sudden and sometimes irrational aversion to doing whatever it was that I was just bubbling about a moment before I hit the ground, but a lot of other people don't. I could acknowledge no less than a dozen people who have said something off-handed about me and my enthusiasms in the past month that lodged in the ragged, half-mended fence I built around my psyche a long time ago...I tend to leave them lodged there to remind me how careless people are with other people's heads and hearts.

The truth is that my inspirations and enthusiasms are absolutely the very best of me...they're the most natural, most comfortable thing I wear. I couldn't change them if I wanted to, and strangely, if I did I'd be assuaged by curious questions about what might be wrong? I get excited, so excited that I get flush and my eyes and palms get moist, and I can seem a fragment of who I am, even though, oddly, that might very well be my best moment...and I get disappointed when those enthusiasms, as simple as they might occasionally be, crash to the ground, or much worse, when they are misconstrued or devalued. I can handle flying into brick walls but don't manage getting shot down very well. What I'd like to say to most people is that someone has to do it...thank God someone is doing it...and if you could only feel the gentle hand at the small of your back, softly and sweetly pulling you into my excitement, and accept it for what it is, a gesture of the most sincere affection, then you'd never, ever watch it just fall to the earth again, and you'd never, ever make me feel like less of a man for flipping inside out over the things that surround you in this whimsical, weary world, that you don't even see.

I see them. I see them and blush because the very best part of me...the part that you, big bad world, so often miss or mock, is coaxing every incredible bit of imagination and indulgence out of this stupid short life.

I don't think I'll ever apologize for that. Pout...sure, occasionally, and not for long, but feel badly...no.

My name is Brian... I'm June's husband and Zoey's father, and someday when my boisterous heart stops beating, and the echo fades (and there will be an echo), the silence will make you wish you rode on my magic carpet one more time than you maybe did. There's still time. It makes regular stops. I think I've said it before but I'll say it again here just in case, if I share my thoughts with you...if I pull you into my random curiosities or weigh you down with my seemingly silly observations and miscalculations, it's only because I value you enough to share those things with you. The day I'm silent, and uninspired is the day you've lost me. I get excited because I feel excited, and that's something pretty great. The only thing I'm sorry for is that you can't always see it that way. No worries though, I sleep in the same bed as someone who can, and the little girl down the hall gets just as excited and talks just as much, and I wonder if she might jump from cloud to cloud with the same enthusiasm as her Dad...I hope she does. There are worse things. If I'd never pouted, not even just a little, I might never have written this down...and hey, if it's not exactly your bag...no biggie, just get off of my magic carpet and find your own ride, but let me warn you, in contrast, public transportation is a bitch.