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they're nothing but glorified bus drivers*,  said my father after i told him i wanted to become a pilot.

the opposite of love is not hate, but contempt.

what causes the kodachrome to fade little by little to grey? is it really bred of familiarity. the wear of gradually learning the truth about somebody. the minutiae of the everyday sanding away at the idealised, sculpural dream.

or is it triggered rather by the dull shock of an identifiable disappointment; the inevitable transformation towards sallow disgust justified by the devastation of slap-to-the-face betrayal or loss.

must we fulfill the dream simply to learn that it was only ever empty?

my father, a devoutly unspiritual pragmatist, had nevertheless as a young man fallen in love with the expansive embrace of the blue above. the son, grandson, and great-grandson of farmers, he worked his hands down to shredded red sores to put himself though flying school only to have his application for a commercial licence rejected due to a doctor's confounding eleventh hour diagnosis. colour blindness. an all-or-nothing man, my father never once returned to the enthralling blues, yellows and pinks offered up by the cockpit, and from that point forward became a farmer.

i gave up on the thought of becoming a pilot, and later, (much later), developed a fear of flying.
It’s good when we can distinguish between fact and fiction
but to actually know the truth is a much higher distinction.
________
From "Simple Observations" ongoing writings since the early '90's.
used to think I couldn't go a day
without your smile
without telling you things
and hearing your voice back.
Then, that day arrived and it was so **** hard
but the next was harder.
I knew with a sinking feeling
it wasn't going to be okay for a very long time.

because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event.
It doesn't just happen once.
It happens over and over again.
I lose you  every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug:
whenever that one song plays on the radio,
or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile.
I lose you every time I think of kissing you,
holding you, or wanting you.
I go to bed at night and lose you,
when I wish I could tell you  about my day.
And in the morning,
when I wake and reach  for the empty space across the sheets,
I begin to lose you all over again.
I would like to share one of my favorite poems. This is written by Lang Leav, part of her newly released book, Lullabies.
There are choices to make and*  choices  that make  **you
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