someone i love once told me that life isnt a puzzle like we tend to think it is. no, life is lego...
rather than being given the pieces and the challenge of figuring out how they fit together, we are given the chance to choose the pieces that look most appealing or useful and assemble them the way we like. the former challenge has a definite right and wrong outcome. if you find the edge pieces, the bits of the sky and finally that last piece of the tree trunk that makes all the other pieces fall into place, you've won. you have succeeded and your success is visible to not only you, the completer of the puzzle, but to all those who look at it. they gaze upon the completed picture that was once fragments on the table and they recognize that you did it right. you have found victory, you are legitimate. a fantasy... life isnt like that. life is lego. picture the little boy that lights up when under his bed behind the skateboard and the slinky he finds the piece he has been looking for for weeks. he knew he had it, so he looked and looked... it was the exact piece he wanted and no other would do. it is the piece that would make his dream legoland come alive with possibility. because, after much hard work and persistence, he had found the very piece he had been looking for, he could now progress with his fantastic structure referencing  constantly the blueprints in his head that noone could see but him. he chose every piece and assembled it meticulously. no other person could have created that legoland like he did. he chose, he built, he would continue to build until the day he ran out of pieces... or became content with the structure as it was. it was he that would decide, not the side of a box that read "1200 pieces."
if life were a puzzle, we would know immediately, with every step, whether or not we were doing it right. but it doesn't work that way. life is lego and the only way to do lego is to decide, to own your decision and then to keep building and making decisions based on the ones that came before. sometimes you can deconstruct, sometimes big kids come an knock over your tower, sometimes you have to change your mental blueprints for reasons you didn't anticipate but the emphasis remains on choice. in the end, you are the one who decides how high, wide, strong and beautiful your structure will be.  the trick is to not let yourself get so overwhelmed by the possibilities of what you could build that you find yourself for years and years doing nothing but staring at the box that holds all the pieces.

routine, pattern, monotony... the mundane goings on of a repetitious life. the same people, the same places, the same smells and sounds and sitcoms. the same alarm clock, the same stove clock, the same clock in the hall that is always five minutes fast. the same bookshelf, the same bathroom, the same "top forty count-down" on the same radio station. the same truck rolls in the same time every week to pick up the yard-waste the same as it always does. the same stairs creak, the same gate doesn't latch, the same dog barks at the same god-forsaken time of the morning. the same phone number, the same tupperware drawer, the same coffee from the same coffee shop. the same pair of jeans that i wash in the same washing machine with the familiar scent of the same fabric softener. the same gas station with the same friendly cashier, the same price for the same yogurt at the same grocery store. the same as always, day after day... what a novelty.
novelty is exactly the problem. i am realizing that for years now i have lived my life as though leaping across a stream from rock to rock trying desperately not to get my socks wet for fear of the discomfort and inconvenience of the inevitable slowing down and change of pace that doing so would cause. the rocks are the next adventure, the "new," the "exciting,"the "novel." The stream is every thing else... every thing that is the same... everything that to be genuinely experienced demands that i "take off my coat and stay a while."
living from novelty to novelty has become an ironic monotony that has begun to grate on the part of my person that needs others and needs them in a real way. iron sharpens iron and the monotonous grating of novelty has made my iron so dull one could use it to buff a classic car.
in a month i am going home, going back to the mundane normalcy of a quiet suburban life and staying there long enough to not only get my socks wet but to take them off and stand still, giggling at the tingly sensation of crystal clear glacier melt surprising and opening every pore. the thought of staying there long enough to really love and be loved is perhaps the most exciting thing i could imagine.

They call you Aurora… so appropriately untelling of the mystery you are Oh, Mona Lisa of the night.

The velvet sky with glimmering gems shrouded by your magnificent display

not oppressive - delicate and consoling.
I stand and observe but do more than observe; being still I join you in your dance.

To a melody all your own you pirouette allegro caressing Orion and flirting with Jupiter.
Wolves in dormant wheat fields somewhere beyond the great darkness bear witness to your splendor by adding their crescendo to your celestial narration of what it is to love and be loved.

You dance and dance until the music fades…sweat like dew drops on your brow fall and turn to frost upon my window pane so that tomorrow when I wake I will remember you and ask the question of old;

Mona Lisa, why do you smile?

You’re wisped away as quickly as you came and I sigh deeply, from the place where my soul meets my body…where my being resides. I say ‘goodnight, lovely lady, thank you for this dance'. I pray you will grace me with another just like it - and nothing like it - on a night quite punctual.