Alfonso Flies

12:37 am and I can't sleep.  Or won't sleep.  Just let Alfonso out of his cage.  He's fluttering around like a crazy clown hopped up on ecstasy.  He's happy, to be free of the cage, swishing around in his water bowl and eating seeds strewn about on the floor.  Ecstatic. Whirling, chirping, tweeting hoot and hollering.

Looked at slews of grad school applications in the past 5 hours.  Tests and recommendation letters and essays and the immense difficulty of concentrating on something I know can hardly be truthfully me. Masters in International Affairs, Masters in Public Policy, Masters in Business Administration, Masters in Journalism, Masters in Creative Writing, Masters in Delay of the Inevitible Middle Aged Decline, Masters in Denial of the Unknown.  Rot.  And it all came down to: should I pursue something where only 60% of my heart is in it? or should I not.

I should not.

It just isn't me.  Why force something -- because I'll regret it someday?  What happens from today to someday?  Will those days be worth the day after someday?

So it comes full circle to what I already know.  That I'll attempt this writing thing or rot. That writing doesn't come from books and it doesn't come from degrees.  That it comes from life and the full force of living incandescently.   And rotting may be a good thing since after the rotting comes the planting.  And planting begats roots and roots begats the flowering.

Uncaged and unhinged.