I love to complain. LOVE IT! the sound of my drudgery sloughing heavy from my burdened tongue…I love that sound…of self indulgent luxury. ( Just mine..not yours)   Chocolate truffles of angst that I can share…ooh won’t you listen to my complaint, savour it. I will twist it artfully for you, and manipulate your eager soul with my puppy dog eyes and tales of woe.  You will bow down in praise and honor of all the fires I have made it thru..


What’s that?  The line at the grocery store was too long?  Your stomach does not fit into your own pants?  You stepped in what? 
Got bit by what? 
Fell off of, 
Fell into, 
Fell over What?  


Look at me! and all the obstacles I hurdle, look even closer at the hurdles I do not make, the ones that leave my knee cap skin trailing bloody snail marks of defeat…that’s what I want to talk of, tell the story of when we meet.


Last Thanksgiving I spent crying in the parking lot of the Golden Coral.  Not for lack of invite, not  lack of open doors and arms to take me in.  


I wanted to feel the Lone. 


I wanted to march inside the sadness and scrape the mud off of the walls. Explore it, eat it. rub my face and wallow in it. swapping tongues with my complaint.  


I saw a painting the other day. In passing, it stuck with me.  It was of a woman hugging the negative space left by the absence of a man.  I don’t know the artist and I have infringed upon the copyright….but I had to draw it for myself because it said everything that I love about Negative space. The absence of…the missing person. The empty hole that I embrace.  That loving something long gone creates a a hollow long gone place.


Kahlil Gibran 14 year old philosophical prodigy whos name I butcher like a Bad Barbie. says 


“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

As if we are vessels waiting to be filled up with experience, and only pleasure has substance, where pain gnaws away and defines the shape of your space.  


I am so thankful for the way that negative space has shaped my life.  That it has made so much room for the full gift of love.  And that you people, hear my stories. You listen to my dark sobs and fill me up, in turn with light. That I don’t need to fill a parking lot with tears, my self is shaped and it’s All right.