i look down at my hand and see the fading remnants of a world i had hoped would not quickly be forgotten.

each stroke of brown dye that dances out from under my sleeve brings another memory that seems so tragically distant from the life that goes on here ... on this side of the world ... like clockwork.

each train passing. systematically.

familiar faces making the same routine patterns in their early morning commute that, undoubtedly, continued while i was joining the other side of the world in theirs.

i glance down again ... saddened that this all seems like a figment of my imagination. saddened that, in the end, this excursion led me right back to the mundane ... the predictable. perhaps even worse, that these strokes reveal that the true sadness ... the eminent dark hole that i feel pulling the breath out of me ... comes from a deeply routed discontent that simply can not be explained or resolved.

and that powerful sadness is quite possibly the only thing that is familiar about the beauty fading from the strokes on my hand today. because now, as i sit in this all-to-familiar place, i feel the pain of wanting so desperately to know why i was created ... just as i felt it when i sat in front of a woman in the middle of a picture-esque desert in a land so far from all of my worries, who painted this art on my hand like she was trying to give me the answer ... but i.just.couldn't. get it.

so these strokes will haunt me today. they reveal much of what my heart longs for, yet falls just short of revealing the answers i have been asking since my first visit to that place nearly three years ago. these strokes ... are the most elegant and graceful depiction of my great sadness. and when they have finally faded, perhaps this time ... so will the tears.