have their place.
For the most part, they are useless and do little more than induce a headache. They can quickly escalate from simple tears to uncontrollable sobbing.
While sobbing uncontrollably can be purging and purifying, it is one of those things that lands you in the back of a police car in the wee hours of the morning for a personal escort to the nuthouse.
I’m not guessing here, I’m telling it straight.
Tears sometimes come unbidden, unexpected and inexplicable.
No reason.
No provocation.
They come as they like because tears have that kind of power.
The power to overwhelm, discombobulate and wreak havok. They lie and pretend and make merry of themselves without any indication to their derivation.
I have plenty of things I could, were I so inclined, to cry over, but I choose not to because crying doesn’t change anything. And yet tonight, I find tears that I cannot define and have no understanding of running down my face.
I cry over many things, that is true, and sometimes, I cry just to be crying. But I know when I’m crying that it is for a specific reason or, as is sometimes the case, just to be crying.
I am not, as I am tonight, stymied by the origin of the tears or their purpose.
So I came up with the only explanation I could think of …
these tears aren’t mine.
I don’t know who they belong to, but I am rejecting ownership.
I cry when I need to cry; when the wind is right, when the clouds are perfect, when lightning finds its way into the lens of my camera, when someone close to me is gone, when my friends are hurting, when I miss someone, when I realize that I am an idiot, when leaves change in Autumn, when I’m mad (mad tears being the ones that get everyone in trouble), when I’m happy … well, this could go on for days, so lets just say, I know when I cry even if I don’t know precisely why I cry.
I’m not the one crying.
Not this time.
These are not my tears, but because someone is crying them, I will endure them for their sake and hope that the morning brings them solace.
I like to imagine that I live in a world where the few people close to me know me unconditionally. I realize that while they know me, they, in every likelihood, will never really understand me.
That is a constant that I have learned to live with over the years.
I can’t keep up with my own madness so how, pray tell, could anyone else.
There is no fault, no blame, no accusations.
Just the smack in the face of reality and reality, make no mistake, can pack a serious punch.
My drummer plays a tune that is out of sync with the real world. That’s how it is and I live with it.
But … since these are not my tears, I simply say wth, wipe them away and move on.
Or try to.
They are persistent, these tears that are not my own.
I have a life to live, photographs to take, places to see, dreams to dream, music to learn, piano to play and I don’t have time to play emotional games with players that apparently, since they can sic their tears on me, outrank me by a considerable margin.
It would be more conducive to rational behavior were the tear-sharer to make themselves known to me.
If I sound nuts, then all is right with the world at this moment, because I am, even on a good day, teetering precariously on that fine line between reality and insanity.
I don’t deny that.
But dammit, I know when I’m crying tears that belong to me.
I am what you see, what you see is what you get, what you get is what you see and there aren’t any games.
So … somebody claim these damn tears and face your own demons because my schedule is already full.
my depiction of an eye … a pencil sketch.
A Photographer's Heart 