I cannot actively remember the last time I posted here, although it is dated and an important film is referenced. Let's face it, I live a reactive life. Thanks to Lauren Majewski for reminding me I had this.

I have had a crick in my neck for days. A normal person would say this is because I stretch too little. But my first active thought is that I'm single and a girlfriend could provide some sort of context-appropriate massage. We all know about the other kind of massage, which I have both given and taken, and which only occasionally proves to be platonic.

I digress.

My neck hurts, and when a part of me hurts, I'm reminded of my age. When I'm reminded of my age, I'm reminded of my mortality. I'm also reminded that I've been saying since I was a child that I would die when I was 26. I'm 25 now. This is an increasingly morbid thought given that one of my best friends and kindred spirits passed only two years ago.

I told my friend I would write a poem about her tonight, but at this point I feel either too drunk or too tired. When you can't tell the difference, you know you've had too many late nights. Additionally, you probably drink too much.

Brittany May is one of those people men write poems about, love poems, but that is not my aim. Specifically, I'm writing her a not-love poem -- distinct from a slam/hate poem. I am writing her a poem about how wonderful it is to have a girl who is nearly as close as a lover even though she isn't one. Every time I see her I am reminded of how the feeling of love always dominates your consciousness and supersedes all other priorities, even your sense of compatibility. As I often profess, passion is the penultimate power in the human possession. It rules us, and allows us to rule ourselves in a sense of right.

Seeing Brittany reminds me of these things specifically because it is not so with us. We are partners in crime, in life, but not in bed. It is unique to have a woman in my life who I can treat as a woman and a kindred spirit, and lavish affection upon, without making her an entity of my desire. That is not to say I don't love her, or that I think she is not an entity of men's desires (rather the contrary, as I have predicted and watched men follow her around like they are lost puppies, such is her power over men), but for my part it is the kind of love one feels for the sparrow that sits on one's finger, or that the viking feels for the Valkyrie. She is simply a beautiful creature to revere, even idolize, to take into my confidence, but for whom I feel no sense of desire, of need.

Such things are necessity in romantic matters of the heart.

When you are single, feeling alone goes hand in hand with freedom. At least, that's the popular understanding. Being single is it's own special prison; the possibilities are not endless, because at the end of the day you always go home to yourself. Reinvent yourself as you might do, your faults and your virtues are corners you cannot surpass by your own accord. No. It is connections through which we become more.

And what connection is more powerful than a romantic love which fuels both parties into a state of chaotic nirvana? Therein lies a constant connection which facilitates changes in both, and changes together.