You can't put your arms around a memory

Thursday started out with a bang: a gunshot to the chest on a drug deal gone bad. Heat, humidity, moonlight--all the elements in place for a long weekend. I was good at my job: there were periods when my hands moved with a speed and skill beyond me and my mind worked with a cool authority I had never known. But in the last year I had started to lose that control. Things had turned bad. I hadn't saved anyone for months. I just needed a few slow nights, a week without tragedy followed by a couple of days off.Paul Schrader "Bringing out the dead"

I'm haunted by a lot of ghosts lately. That's why I haven't written, I'm spiritually, intellectually, and physically tired. Tired of the fight, I just want to lay in a forest and sleep.

I'm tired of swinging punches for an audience that doesn't see the swinging. An audience with a ringside seat unaware of the fight going on for their benefit.

I'm tired of the sacrifices I've made in my life for people unaware of it, I'm tired of the stress I've put my body and heart through. I look into my eyes in the mirror and I see the ghosts of lives that could have been.

I sit in my chair and I see the ghosts of friends past walking by, friends who no longer shuffle to and fro on this globe.