I still get scurred. Of lots of things—of the dark and of the unknowableness of the future and of the pain of death and losing those I love, and what the fear of that pain may lead me to do by way of defense or avoidance. I get scurred when I think I’m missing something, when my story-telling brain starts feeling out the tragedy inherent in my bad habits or carelessness. I get scurred when I feel powerful urges that seem to come from outside of me—urges to fight or flee or hurt myself—urges to suddenly go to a certain place, at a certain time, as tho it somehow means something, as tho I’m receiving a garbled transmission that I’m desperately trying to make sense of. I get scurred when I wake up from a dream with someone’s name on my lips…or letters or numbers that I suddenly can’t shake from my head. I’m scurred cuz I don’t know if I’m crazy in these moments or if I’m actually free—liberated by the Lord above to perceive those phenomenon which usually slip between senses and tenses—the curled up edges where sight leaves off and the hazy matrix of “that which is real” starts to break down. I get scurred cuz I don’t know if I’m missing something—if I’m not seeing the forest for the trees, or worse, the bomb for the terrorist.

I have notebooks filled with pages waxing poetic on those towers for the last year of their existence. I wrote poems about people falling from the sky all around them…all the while I never could have imagined what was about to happen.

I’m scientifically minded. No hippy dippy here. No auras or crystals or cards or lifelines.

Just me. And heaven…and the earth…and all the things within them that I never dreamt of in any of my philosophies.