Death cannot say what you've already lost,
hold on to those you hold dear - Jason Spaceman

I sat down at my desk to do some research on the constitutionality (or lack thereof) of income tax. My dad and I were watching MSNBC and somehow or another this topic comes up between he and I at least, oh, maybe once every two months. I always take the contrarian position - "but Dad, I TOTALLY saw this documentary on Netflix that says income tax is illegal cuz the constitution says that Congress can't impose any direct tax on the wages of the citizens." Dad - "jesus christ, you really think that Bill Gates, General Motors, IBM, guys who have attorneys on million-dollar-a-day retainers, would even let something like an income tax go if there was even a shred of a possibility that it could be overturned?? Jesus Christ. The common sense!" Finally, after we go back and forth for a while I hear the magic words - "prove it!"

It's just as fun to lob softballs at my dad as it is to Kevin. Reactions are similar, but Kevin is a little more in on it.

So I run downstairs and start googling things like "constitutionality of income tax" which invariably leads me to wikipedia, the source of all knowledge. Pretty soon I find out about this thing called the Sixteenth Ammendment and I give up any hope of finding a roundabout argument to present to Gary to repeal the income tax.

Now I'm trying to blog. I can't express how unnecessarily hard this is for me. I don't know why I bother. Bothering is not the point. You're just supposed to word vomit to the world and that's that. I will never allow anything to be easy.

I will say, though, that life is starting to rebound. Maybe it's the extra sun, the extra temperature, the extra getting to know people. Maybe it's just the passage of time. It doesn't heal everything, but it gives and creates perspective. Sounds obvious and cliche. But I guess people say it over and over because it has some truth to it. Some things, some people, can't be replaced. Shouldn't be replaced. What can you do if there's nothing to do other than remember? You hold on to what you have, I guess.

I've met some great people over the course of the last month or two. I don't know why but it's coming so easy. It never worked like this in Minneapolis. Maybe this means this is my home. This is my element. The base of operations. Where everybody knows my name. That sort of thing. I actually feel able here to not let little insecurities overwhelm me. This is where I know there are people in my corner. I hesitated last night when talking with a friend about this being my home. I should not have. This IS my home. It has no other choice. I am bound to it and it is bound to me. There's a relationship. There's responsibility.

And time makes it harder
where words already failed,
hold on to those you hold dear.

There's only so much time! This might be the most frustrating and obvious thing of all. Frustrating because we'll never have the personal experience until the end. Sure, we'll see it happen to others, but when it happens to you, when you're watching your very own last few grains of sand trickle to the bottom of the glass, when you actually know that they are yours and they are going and almost gone, it'll be too late to savor the experience. There's no pause button that we know of, Obvious because everything ends and maybe you'll have so many regrets of waking up in the morning lost, unsure, embarassed, and cotton-mouthed, stumbling. There aren't enough doors to get you through this. No one has an answer. No one even pretends to speak the languages you speak.

So if we can't be replaced, if your smile is unique, and your hair is a shade of black that no one else's is (because it is), and you hear something different in every song, or taste some beautiful new regret with every sip, I think we should hear about it. There's gotta be some kind of record for all this. A great book somewhere. We're writing in it all the time. I want to do more of this whatever the outcome.