People To Hang Out With: The Broken Hearted aka BAD MOON

"For even as love crowns you 

so shall he crucify you.  Even as he is for your growth 

so is he for your pruning 

Even as he ascends to your height and 

caresses your tenderest branches that quiver 

in the sun, 

So shall he descend to your roots and 

shake them in their clinging to the earth."

-Kahlil Gibran

My friend with an aching heart says there is a bad moon when I comment there seems to have been a sea of broken hearts around lately.  C says "It seems unfair to blame the moon for such unhappiness".
I agree with her but who knows how we are truly affected by this globe we sit on and all the other other powerful bodies swirling around it.  At the end of the day it is kind of fun to go around saying bad moon and I am preferring it to saying "well Mercury's in retrograde", womp womp.  Traveling these days visiting friends, there seems to be a large amount of heavy souls and broken hearts in various forms from romantic to friendship to internal strife.  But alas this blog is about hanging out and not about your soul (or IS it?) , so let's move on shall we.

Indeed we've all been there, in this need to re-evaluate a situation a million times over to our friends or just to plain sulk for hours on end in plain view.  It's okay, it's part of the process.  But what to do with these poor love sick saps?  They need your hanging out skills more than ever!  You can't rush someone along to feel better, sometimes folks need a moment to stare at the ceiling.  Yet at the same time there is something nice about a friend saying, "Out of bed! Snap out of it dumbass, we've got plans!"  Do your best to find the balance between the two, providing a mix of low key (movie in bed) and high key (roller skating rink) activities.  And not enough can be said about the benefits to the heart of just being in nature, in the warm sun if you got it and at minimum some fresh air and cosmic zounds.  To ride with the broken hearted one must be willing to have an extended ear if they're a talker or the lovely ability of pretending that you can't feel the sadness emanating from them if they're not.  In the end, you just being around at all is so helpful in itself and surely  you will receive the same reciprocated assistance in the future.

"I've never had my heart broken but there's so many songs about it that I know that shit is real"- E

I am going to suggest a little beer and cigarettes for these hang outs.  Not for the friend with the broken heart because goodness knows their brains are not operating clearly enough as is but for yourself.  Hard feelings is a lot to take in some times so might as well sedate yourself a little so you can appear as if you are calmly listening.  And to you broken hearted,  if you know you are going to hang out to discuss such things for an extended period of time perhaps you should be the one bringing the bottle of wine.  Chin up everyone, tomorrow is another day and there will be a next time.

"Waterfall of love each time

 I fall in love I lose my mind 

Tear off all my clothes, get a bloody nose 

and jump out the window"

-Big Kitty, Waterfall of Love

Personal Note: If you feel I owe you a bottle of wine please let me know asap as I like to settle my debts.

Hang Out Song Break #8

Chattanooga, TN whilst drinking 

February: Hanging Out in Florida

                       
                 



                        
                                         

   

                                

                

             

  

       

                  
         
   
                  
 
            


      

TIME

Sitting, wedged in a shaded corner outside of Publix, eating some watermelon slices, an old white southern man asks me if I need a place to stay and if I am doing alright.  In mid-bite I look down at myself with my iphone on my lap and my apparent jogging gear trying to figure out exactly what about me would lead this man to believe I was in need of anything. "Do you want some watermelon?  I'm full." I lift up the last slice, offering it to him and he waves it off saying he is on his way to the doctor.  We smile at each other.  On my way back home I check the star fruit tree a block away to see if there are any new developments in my current addiction.  Still green. I'll come back in a few days.

Here in Florida again I try to determine what my plans for the next year will be and usually this specific thought pattern will lead to one idea after another producing a cranial traffic jam that makes me grit my teeth and if severe enough, lay down.  A friend invites me to come spend time in Oaxaca I respond "So many things so little time!" and she says, "I thought you had all the time in the world, or did I miss something?". What is often difficult for me to remember is that I do have all the time in the world.  I get so eager to do so many things that even pulling off doing one thing becomes paralyzing.

TIME.  When will we get it all in?  At what point will we really accomplish something? At what point will we have a,b,c complete so we can get on to x,y,z?  In the panic that is organizing our time for ourselves, the people we love, what we want to do and what we are obligated to do, time can seem to slip away.  Instead of developing time management skills, acquiring a life coach or personal assistant,  calling it all quits and curling up into a ball between whatever four walls you will inevitably be living in, in a panicked frenzy you are not accomplishing anything valuable and never will-stop your brain and value each present moment and what it has to bring to you. And then the next one and so on.