"Closing your eyes forces you to look at the darkness inside".- Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

"If you think nothing can get to you, you're lying to yourself. At best you're temporarily dead. A lightning bolt could re-animate you without a warning." - Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

"The genius of the hole: no matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant." - Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

"When you're waking up, the world is a blur. What was clear in a dream, suddenly makes no sense. No surreal rescues. No easy, magic way out. But you are awake." - Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

Its rare for me to find cause to quote fiction, but then there are exceptions, not Shakespeare or anyone seen on shelves in a book store or someone else's library. I have read enough to recognize the phrase even if it doesn't automatically occur to me.  I finished playing The Fall of Max Payne in a bleak phase of my life yet like Max said at the starting point in the game, it wasn't over.  Likewise, for all that I do, I'm still followed, troubled, bothered, and more by the past.  It hasn't totally swallowed me whole, but there are days where I can't seem to do anything except almost lose myself  to cascades of memories that spark and connect without knowing exactly why.  There isn't an ordinary, a normal, just you and the memories splicing together as you stagger to go forward even if the lights are on, but then maybe its not as potent today as it might been yesterday or might be tomorrow.  One never knows, but the hands grip the guns, the bullets in the chambers, but then she asks the question, the one I haven't the answer to except when the bodies collide, instead of the bullets impacting their intended victims.

All the same....

In a nightmare, every choice you make is a wrong one. - Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

Likewise this one haunts me the most some of the time...

All this time we got the fable of Sleeping Beauty wrong. The prince didn't kiss her to wake her up. No one who slept for a hundred years is likely to wake up. It was the other way round. He kisses her to wake himself up from the nightmare that has brought him there. The trouble with wanting something is the fear of losing it, or never getting it. The thought makes you weak. - Max Payne, The Fall of Max Payne

its still true or at least I think that's the case.  Nothing seems to last, but then you still want it, need it anyway. Maybe not necessarily an it, something, someone.  Only time will tell it appears to me as I type this one.

a title alone is suggestive though it bears little resemblances to a Tennessee Williams' play by name, by content it might be similar in some respects.  in one life, she was a wife, maybe a mother some day, in another life, she is a wanderer with sensual tastes in certain kinds of men.  in one life, he was a husband, maybe a father in the wings too, but in another life he is an unassuming, quiet, observer in a worn tailored suit.  she sits down across from him in the streetcar.  he elevates the paper high enough so that he only sees her crossing her legs, her sensuality gets his attention, she almost suspects he is looking down despite putting the paper higher to block her sight lines. she stands up and walks towards him despite the downward slope the car is following now. he drops his paper as she begins slip then she falls into his arms.

in the moment, she blushes then murmurs a thanks, then smacks him for looking at her in such a way.  the car is emptier where they are right now. he smacks her back on the hip, she groans lowly as if indicating pleasure.  she looks at him, he looks at her, and at the next stop she drags him off with her.  the apartment isn't exactly the best, but its hers. they leave the lights off and you can almost sense the intensity in the darkness of the sitting room. she urges him to pull off her heels, which he does with a visible grin on his face.  she puts his hands up her knee length skirt and he recalls she is wearing something that looks like lace at the top of her stockings. the skirt is on the floor and she climbs onto his lap, their pulses are racing.

she unhooks the suspenders keeping her stockings locked to her underwear.  he removes his pull over shirt, his suit jacket was already hanging off the back of a chair. she almost scratches him with her nails, he gently bites her, and she returns with a sharper one. he roughly yet slowly tugs off her stockings then she takes things a step further after her bra straps slide off to the side.  the rest one could easily imagine, but there are things one should leave to darkened and intense atmospheres.  As she and he are having a passionate encounter by moonlight.

so often is it that I have heard, thought, or spoken the phrase it takes only one.  the application of such a notion could range from anything like stopping someone from crossing a street when the lights change too fast to coping/dealing with the after fact night stand to talking people out of suicide and other things you could probably imagine could be dealt with from one person to another. I couldn't even really count on both hands how many times I have had people come to me certain that this would be their last hour, not because they were physically there, but because they were emotionally and psychologically readily to throw in the towel.  No I wouldn't be selfish or selfless to persuade them away from such a fatalism or whatever word really applies to their pending decision.

life is not something can be set by dictionaries or aphorisms or catch  phrases. nothing to be said for it, nothing to be done for it, except living an hour, maybe a day at  time, maybe more, depends on your method or your habits or any number of things coming together or falling apart, point of view perhaps.  In most cases, it had come down to things about their families, their friends, about the responsibilities and the pressures that seem to permeate their day to day, their routines. It had just gotten to them, into them, did things they could not undo alone, and so I lend an ear, lend time just because I had nothing else or nowhere else, even if I did, I still spare the time.

make a case for that facts or the notions that humanity as a whole is a species that suffers, that is miserable, that is many feelings or moods at once, all conflicting or colliding, perhaps I'm a touch of metaphysical on this count. there's something about being a writer that makes a writer unable to ignore, to deny, or not notice things that go amiss simply because no seems to notice.  when someone does, others dismiss, but those feeling it look at the writer with curiosity if they had seen his or her face or wonder just how the writer had come to that speculation. so take it all to the edge, will you pull back, will you stay there, or will you leap/fall into the seemingly empty space beyond the edge. far too much philosophy or thinking maybe, but then she comes along and somehow I can't pay more mind to her than the raging thoughts in my mind.

so our lives aren't what they could be, maybe they don't have to be, maybe it can just be two people having some kind of a life. so the world keeps on spinning as I note that another weekend is already on a roll.

she's attractive, she's gravity in more ways than one, but somehow it takes only one to get my attention.

she's sensual in ways only I can be drawn to and so my mind, my body could focus on her in the same regards as if she could be drawn to some things about me or in me.  a genuine need to be, to feel, just so you can wake or sleep knowing at least you and someone else have the magic of intensity and sexuality.