Shadoe Stevens to Block

My web access has been maddeningly unavailable to me since the wee hours. I can't get or send email. I can't update my site. I can't even post to my blog, which makes this an exercise in futility. I guess there's value to it, though. It's like a mandatory simmering time. Time to rethink what you wanted to say. Time to think better of it. I was always one to delay acting on my feelings. I never trusted the immediacy of an impassioned moment. I never knew if I was really so very angry or so hurt or so happy. I often wait to proclaim anything I'm feeling until it is safe and rational and certain. There is always something flowing. Patiently stemming it keeps me from bleeding to death.

Messages in my outbox lost their importance and got moved to the trash like so much...well, trash. But I have to be very deliberate about such things. Sometimes, the fact that I've written it makes me think it's permanent. And words that have never been said go down in the history books as statements made and heard. It's a task keeping track. I start a lot of sentences with, "Did I already tell you...?" and, "I may have said this before..." In all honesty, I'm not always sure.

There are many tender messages I would have wanted to write in a soft hand, roll up in a secret compartment, and pass on to you with hopeful anticipation. When my eyes twinkle like a girl in a Japanese cartoon, it means I'm hiding something. And hoping it will be found. I frown when I think of all the things that went unsaid. I miss the sense that there would always be time to get to it later. It makes me want to treat every encounter like a round of Supermarket Sweep. The clock is running down, and I don't want to come up short. I always spend too much time in the cereal aisle.