That Song by David Gray, or, Defying Love

My brother is agonistic. This probably makes him stronger than I am.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

*****

It's been one of those weeks where I wondered where my head was at the end of March when I signed off at the last employer. You have to have a strong stomach to do this, I thought all week. Probably a stronger one than I have. It's not just a financial aspect. It's proving yourself to what you did last. If you are alone and have no coworkers, do you make a noise when you fall in the woods?

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

I went to bed last night completely sad. Not just "Titanic" weepy (although it probably didn't help that I watched that movie just before bed), but downright alone. My mind tends to tangle up in knots way too easily these days. About the only moment of clarity I've had over the past week was a friend stopping by while I wrote at a cafe (God bless FourSquare) and this morning staring into the irises of paintings at the deYoung. Worse, all this shades of sad and alone were very boxed in. I couldn't get away from them, save for that brief respite of bending someone's ear over coffee yesterday. He's a computer whiz. He showed me a page he created on the web that allows him to follow his friends without signing into all of the popularity contest of Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. He showed me how he could see me.

I was shocked to find that I wasn't invisible. And I knew that should something happen to me, someone would know. Someone would see a pattern.

I do leave footprints. I'll be damned. Or am.

When you are alone, and don't punch a time clock, that is very, very difficult to prove.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

*****

This coming week's agenda looks like this:

• Apply at all of the staffing agencies
• Lead writing groups on Monday and Tuesday nights (I am taking a break from the Wednesday group)
• Write a marathon of words on Friday
• Fly out of Northern California this coming weekend and go be with my family in Carlsbad

Oh, good, says the reader...she's off to where someone can shower her with love again for a little while, show her attention, make her happy. God knows we can't do it.

But my mother was here. Nothing is permanent, but occasionally she was here. She stopped in a couple of times this past week, and I believe she wouldn't have shown up if I would have been showered with love. Or showered with "like." Or acknowledgment.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

Damn, right there. Her footprint. While I led a group in moving their pens, or sat in the library with the immigrants and homeless, while someone somewhere crowed about what is only followed on Facebook--through all of that turning of the Earth, my mother was present and whispered something I either couldn't hear or couldn't understand.

And then I wrote down a controlled burn of the forest I stood in and was immediately shown my footprint.

Ain't no love...that's...guiding me.

Skipped stones splash, happily defying love of gravity.

P.S. - This song is where today's title of Life for Rent comes from. Guide me.