Joys of Sex & Faux-Loves or: WWI Was the Worst of the Wars(Michael Taylor) Ah, the sweet smelling, beautiful day when you wake to realize you've got that old feeling again. That mild flutter caused by the fire inside as it burns a little hotter and the flames rise a little higher, but this time Tums with extra calcium won't stop the burn. You wake up early and start your daily activities and you wonder why you're starting to smile (you soon realize why) and it wells up inside you then you begin to contemplate if this time is as good as the last or maybe even better.

The atmosphere was one of the Argonnes Forest or Vimy Ridge; great trench wars between the Germans and the Doughboys of WWI; the ethereal scenes and stringy emotions making an existence in a foreign land, staying in a dusty but quaint Morroccan-style hotel just behind the North African front as the Big Red One marched into WWII; clouds and cousins and Woodrow Wilson, fishing not only in the mill pond but also in my mind, I wouldn't trade Canadien Prime Minister Borden or my suspension from work for a sunny day, I am meant to be here and now in these beautiful stormy and cloudy Carolina late-May days... and I no longer miss her.

They say you feel different if it's been a while since the last time and, man, after two years/ four months I was expecting some life-changing miracle but the next morning I wake up, do some abnormal activities in a normal way, and felt pretty much the same but somehow different and that difference grew until - pow! I wake up today and I slowly realize that I'm not the same as I was three days ago, everything's whacked. I mean, there's this warmness lingering and it feels like love, but I know it isn't love it's just a long standing desire, honestly. I think it could eventually be love but, honestly, only as a settlement type love if you know what I mean.

If today was not a crooked highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all
Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear her heart a-softly pounding
Yes, and only if she was lying by me, I'd lie in my bed once again.

I can't see my reflection in the water
I can't speak the sounds to show no pain
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps
Or remember the sounds of my own name
Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear her heart a-softly pounding
Yes, and only if she were lying by me
Then I'd lie in my bed once again

There's beauty in that silver singing river
There's beauty in that rainbow in the sky
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes
Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear her heart a-softly pounding
Yes, and only if she were lying by me
I'd lie in my bed once again
-- Bob Dylan

What better weather for Memorial Day than grey and drizzling like all hell's 'bout to fall, having stormed the night before, the wind blows a rather cool 62 degrees ending a two week string of 98 and 99 degree heated days and more than likely preceding just the same. Watching the History Channel and the all day tribute to wars and the veterans of them, almost all from the two world wars with some rare shows including Vietnam, Desert Storm, and even rarer Korea, but what was really cool is that they finally showed something about WWI which I have been studying recently. It is the type of day in which 9 a.m. could easily be 6 p.m. if you know what I mean. Like the weather we should be grey and rainy on the inside in remembrance of the pain and horror of war and those who bravely fought for their cause. Go! shed a tear for the veterans, the Billy Mitchell, Sgt. York, "Bud" Taylor, and Hawkeye Pierce of the bloody sagas. Those who fought for a cause never knowing that it was all causeless. I am a very peaceful person and I've come to one conclusion; no matter how pacifist you are, you can't justly condemn soldiers, those whose job is to die with sense in a senseless way / They that have crawled through "no man's land", a muddy nightmare; sweated in the jungles of southeast Asia; fallen in their homeland; walked on a ground covered with bloody bodies; never again to touch land from Jutland, Trafalgar, and Yorktown; Boer, Russo-Finnish, and Boxer Rebellion. No, do not blame the enlisted man, foot soldiers (minute men) grunts for they are innocent, instead blame the one's who make the killing senseless - those who control the armed forces. Remember and honor veterans, not only from this country, but from every country for the goal is always the same, they just start on different sides of the spectrum.

I don't have a bed in my room having taken it out to make more room for my collection, so I usually sleep on my floor. But I remember when I did have a bed and I slept on it. When the feeling invaded me, conquered me and left me broke. After this it took me five months to go back sleeping in my bed. Five more months of sleeping in a bed and we move, I put my bed in my new room subsequently taking it right back out because it took up too much space. A year of sleeping on the floor or the couch in my room and now I've come to the point where it doesn't matter; any bed, any couch, hell any floor will do when I need to rest my weary head. But one day the feeling will return ... and I'll lie in my bed once again.

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