Melancholy & Missing Lighters

I'm a bit late on this update, but a lot has been going on. One of the things keeping me busy is the fact that I took on a stray kitten from Alabama. She was hanging around an unoccupied house we were fixing up, ran right up to the three of us, chattering away. A neighbor lady told our boss that she'd been fixing to call the pound to take the cat away, as she'd been causing some trouble for the elderly woman. So, at the end of the work day, I named the tiny calico cat Brown Butter, and we took her away with us. Staying on the boss's property with us, the kitten quickly grew attached to myself and my companion. We didn't have a hard time falling in love with her ourselves. So, now she's out gallivanting the world with us. She's wonderfully sweet and docile, but, boy, she can be a handful. Because of the time and energy I must dedicate to her, I'll have multiple writing projects paused. I will, however, continue posting poetry, but instead of Fridays...

  I have finally started studying Hinduism.  I was raised on Catholicism and Lutheranism; spent my teenage years studying neo-paganism, ancient European religions, and Islam; and now, in my twenties, I've been learning about Shamanism from various cultures, Buddhism, and now, Hinduism. Ever since I was ten years of age, I've felt drawn to religion and philosophy. I think this is because all of it echoes with human strife and joy. Religion and philosophy, I would say, embody the human essence; likely due to the fact that these are mostly concepts sprung from our perception of our experiences. Spreading myself out far and wide, immersing myself as deeply as possible in religion and philosophy, makes me feel closer to humans, to myself, and to truth, God. This is probably why, so far, I feel that Hinduism resonates the strongest with me. Aside from local variations of Hinduism, this belief system is rather flexible. It does not matter your religion, Hinduism can still be applied ...

How does it feel, To belong where you stand? Do you know the songs, Of the grass beneath your hand? What of blood spilled, Upon ground foreign and strange? Do your roots remember, Or does your story rearrange? We've long been displaced, Since man rose from ape, Long since diverged, From the ancestral hearth, Where are we now, That our bones have broke, Where are we now, That our old tongues choke, Where are we now, That future's without past, Where are we now, Will our roots settle at last?

 The older I get, the shorter the day appears to be. As a teen, I'd study, hastily complete projects, read, write stories, tend to a window garden, and still have the hours to burn away on contemplation and night-time wandering. Somehow, I feel that I had ran on less sleep. I have memories of day and night bleeding into one another, as I tended to the aforementioned pursuits. Then again, maybe all this can be attributed to the constant access to electricity. If you've ever gone camping, you've noticed that you have little choice but to rise and rest with the sun. Unless, of course, you've either built a fire, or brought a sizeable light source with you. Rarely are either of these options plausible for those of us who live outdoors. Fires attract too much attention, and carrying a light source any larger than a headlamp is rather cumbersome. Thus, I often find myself grasping at the final fleeting strands of sunlight. Just to finish reading one final chapter, or scrawl o...