// sail away//

have you ever stared at something so long your eyes start to go out of focus? 

i remember walking through the mall as a kid when those magic-eye things were just starting to get popular and stopping in front of a store that had a bunch of them in the window. i picked one out and my parents told me to keep staring at it till the sail boat or dolphin or whatever it was magically appeared. that was before i learned the technique, but that tactic worked… eventually i saw that thang.  

so it’s been a long time since i’ve written about love, since i’ve even thought about writing about love. 2 years, actually. but i think i’m about to write about love. 

yes, the metaphor. 

they say love is blind; i say it’s more like this magic eye thing. at first, you stare at something so long it kinda goes out of focus. “out of focus” is probably a lot more accurate than “blind.” when i was falling in love everything was a blur. sometimes it was like one of those pictures you see where the subjects stand still in the middle and the shutter is left open long enough so that everything else is blurred out. sometimes it was like we were the ones passing the world by, the background stayed the same and we were the blur across the photo. it was that feeling where a hundred times a day you suddenly remember the person you’re falling in love with and think: “o my goodness i’m with her!” and you find yourself randomly grinning like an idiot all day long. and you can’t really remember how you called it “life” before. 

i love that stage. we all do.

but really, that’s just the stage where my little self is standing there in the mall, gazing intently at the window display, waiting for that pirate ship to pop out at me. 

cause you see, the real good stuff comes later. one minute you’re staring at a beautiful and hypnotizing mess of color and patterns, the next  a definite shape emerges, taking form before your eyes. and you feel special cause your’e seeing and appreciating things normal people don’t. 

that’s what i love about love. the point where the sailboat pops out at you and you realize that you’ve just seen that thang. for reals. 

it’s been a long time since i’ve felt that way, but i know that someday i will again. someday, a painting will come into my life, and i’ll stare at it till that sailboat pops into view. and when that happens, rest assured…. that’ll be the day that i start sailing.