Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Every crack is big when you've only one road to travel

All of my life is a once in a lifetime opportunity, though I don't live it as such.  Everyday is new and I can't get one second back.  I don't live as one who seizes days and moments.  I feel more like someone who's sleepwalking through life.  I look back on what was and wish for it to be again.  I look back on the past and remember greener grass than there was.  Maybe if I could go back there it would all be better, I think to myself but know it's just a wandering thought.  None of it will be the same.  I'm not assertive enough to say anything to anyone.  I want to live my life today but I need someone to wake me up.  It's too comfortable here.  I'm getting sick of this comfort.  Everyone just feels so safe.  I want to take my seatbelt off but I'm afraid I'll get in an accident.

Others encourage me to think things through and so I do and then I think too much.  I think it's better to be safe than sorry but now that I'm safe I feel sorry for myself.  I feel useless in this restless nightmare.  Can I wait two years and then wake up?  In the meantime what am I doing?  I want to live.  I want to find my true passion and feel like where I am is either pushing me further from it or keeping me stuck in wet concrete.  Why did I ever leave a good thing?  It felt so much better when it felt temporary.  Was that even it?  Or was it that I had a good feeling about the newness of the situation or the exotic nature of the place?  Here it's just concrete and potholes.  It's not even a concrete jungle.  To swing from one building to the next is too great a gap.  The humidity wears me down.

The sun beats down on me and it's nearly November.  Many people are friendly but they seem to all know each other or have a mission themselves.  So I just wander aimlessly with nothing.  I think it's better to sleep than to realize how lonely I am.  I sleep all weekend and most of the night because I feel like that's what my life is otherwise.  Sure, I could travel back to old joys and once upon a time friends but it wouldn't be the same as my mind's tricks.  People don't flock to me and likewise I do not flock to them.  I like to dance but only when I know people enough or if I know enough to forget myself for a time.  I feel like where I am, I don't have enough time to forget myself and so I dwell for so long on long-forgotten hiccups.  I know a little bit of what I enjoy but I have somewhat convinced myself that I must be with others to enjoy it.  What is going to happen to me?  What can I do?  Everything is just so temporary and I fall in every crack in the road.

The moon has become my closest friend.  She's glows for me a couple times a month, reminding me she's there.  I look to her for guidance but hear whispers from the trees, "She's just a reflection, you know.  The sun is where she gets her light."  I tell them I know but it just isn't the same.  The warmth from the sun just bears don't too hard on me.  When I want her warmth I'm stuck shivering inside and when sweat drips down my forehead, she pours more onto my shoulders.  The moon directs me where to go. She points to the signs that say "Road Closed".  She lights the dark places.  The sun just hurts my eyes and drains me.  At least the signs tell me that they lead to nowhere.  The moon deceives me but I'm so quick to give in because everything else around is dark.  She's a light in the clouds.  She asks me to stay outside and walk with her a bit but I know I must sleep for tomorrow is an early morning.  "Why can't we play on a Saturday?" I ask her with a sigh.  She just grins and turns away, "Perhaps next week I'll try."

Monday, October 26, 2015

jumbled Cyrillic

I'm not everything.  Far from it.  However, inside me is not a vortex.  It's not an empty hole.  I have been created.  I'm not all that there is.  I think too highly of myself and those around me can't believe me.  Who is wrong?  Do I know anything?  When everything is crumbling and I just want to be a piece of someone else's puzzle, where do I go?  I don't fit well where I am, but I'm falling asleep in this cozy coffin.  Some people here seem to be so content sleeping in comfort.  Sleeping in the only place they've ever known.  Have I become them?  Have I forgotten my purpose in life?  Have I done anything worth noting in the last two years?  Have I done anything or will I ever even do anything?  Does any of this really matter?  Where are all of these words coming from but the tip of my nose or the nadir of my mind?

I'm more than nothing inside but less than any substance at the same time.  I'm an intricate circulatory map of organs and tissue.  I'm a product of migration, both mass and minute.  I'm a son of many men from moons ago.  We made it across an ocean but we deprived people of their lifestyle.  We have nothing to offer and yet we have thought we are more than others.  What are these invisible borders anyway?  What is it that society is telling me to be?  How can one be a true nonconformist if we're all products.  Products of what?  Of whom?  We're not goods to be consumed, we're not just dirt and magic dust, but what are we?

Can that be all there is?  Do we die and rise or die and fall?  Or do we rise and live or fall and die?  What are we?  Who are we?  When we fall asleep where do we wake up (both here and after)?  Do we just put on robes and bathe in the blood to be made clean?  Do we just sing?  What can it mean to worship unto infinity?  What is infinity anyway?  We all have our ideas and nothing is perfect.  Or is perfect nothing?  Is perfect a thing?  Is perfect perfection?  Is there a reason for all of this?  Are we more than morals and rainbow-colored songs?

Does God favor one gender?  I cannot think they do.  It is easier to call Him Him because that's what we've been taught.  Is that because that is all we could understand at the time?  Are we becoming wiser only to lose our knowledge and the drive to keep going?  What are we anyway?  Is there any meaning to all of this?  Who can really answer the questions if we're all living it together?  Why do I feel I must keep moving?  The seventh day is for resting but my fingers don't stop picking at sore wounds.  I'd rather pick my skin dry than to keep still.  Why?  And sometimes I fall asleep for lack of positive activity.  Who will save this evaporating soul?

Is there hope at all?  Can there be hope in anything here?  Who will pay attention to my vaporous words that mean nothing.  All of this is meaningless.  It might as well be jumbled Cyrillic to an illiterate Englishman.  If you can make sense of any of this, where do you come from?  If you make sense of it all, where are you?

Not even me.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Darker Clouds Than Rain

Have you ever had so much going on in your life that you wish you could just zap yourself away for a day or two?  Do you ever feel like all of your downtime is more up time than you wish?  Do you long to relax and then once you get to a quiet place, find that it's not the world that was loud, but it's your mind spinning circles?

Welcome to my life.  The last couple of years (and especially the last few months) have been out of the ordinary.  I would say extraordinary, but that would imply that they were superb.  While they have not been particular bad for any sort of circumstance or situation in my life, they have been largely dull and empty.  I have found myself sleeping away the prime of my life while other people continue to thrive.  I'm often not satisfied with my life but feel confined to my situation.  I'm stuck in invisible chains.

Most of me can't wait to leave Texas, though there is a rational side of me that says when I leave Texas I will not leave my problems.  I cannot set my mind free in Texas while my heart escapes to Colorado; life doesn't work that way.

I am blowing things out of proportion.  I don't let myself feel or I tell myself I've got to be stronger though I know I am weak.  I am weak and without motivation.  It's a miserable combination.  I've got pockets full of empty envelopes with letters I've almost written.  I can't escape myself and let someone else live for me even for a minute.  That's what I would really enjoy.  Just give me some time away from myself.  Some time to be who I want to be.  But who do I want to be?  Who am I really?

I don't like excessive exaggeration that exists only to embellish a story.  I take things literally even when others don't.  I read into things and extract meaning from "hidden" messages that may not even exist.  I judge others by my own unbalanced standard and expect them to be better, all the while knowing that none of us can reach that standard of perfection.  I want to be free but am told that I already am.  Why doesn't it feel that way?  Do the people who are on the wide road know it ?  Is this what it feels like?

When I fall asleep at night am I tucking myself into my deathbed?

Caterpillar Corrections

Don't tell a caterpillar she's just a worm, she may believe you.  She may think, perhaps that's something I never knew.  Maybe I've been blinded to this fact all of my years and I'm just now seeing the truth.  However, that is not the case, caterpillars are caterpillars just as a rose is a rose is a rose.  To take it a step further, caterpillars are butterflies in process.  Would you agree that it is more effective to refer to a caterpillar as a butterfly than it is to call her just another slug?

Why are caterpillars seen as so much less of a nuisance than slugs or other slimy creatures?  Is it because we know that they haven't met their full potential yet?  Perhaps when we look at the strange jumble of colors in a caterpillar we begin to marvel at the wings it is hiding within herself.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we started seeing our sisters and brothers this way? Instead of throwing confining words and simple terms around to describe each other, we saw the potential for colorful flight in everyone.  Instead of seeking to put the slimy slugs of our society in jails, prisons, and facilities out of site, we learned to embrace them as our own.  Yes, people do bad things, but the world cannot be divided into good people and bad people.  If we say that sometimes good people do bad things, wouldn't that mean that sometimes bad people do good things, which leads to the assumption that no one is completely good or bad?

So instead of pointing out the differences in others, let's learn to listen to each other's stories.  In a society that is heavily driven by morals (whether we care to admit it or not), it does us no good to push people to the sidelines to make room for ourselves.  When we do that, we may be attempting to make invisible a problem that has only been painted over.  We cannot expect selfishness and greed to save us.  What does it say about the world we live in when we hasten to punish the violent offender and shortly thereafter lose all hope in him?  We say that one must pay the price if he does the crime, however we are not willing to accept collective responsibility for our brother's rehabilitation.  He has to prove that he has changed or at least show that he is willing to change to receive our acceptance, we tell each other.  However, we take no responsibility for helping our brother begin to change.  We lock him up, treat him poorly, and tell him either you're unchangeable or you've got to figure it out yourself.  No wonder he has lost hope.

However, young caterpillar, I have faith in you.  You can change.  You can be a butterfly one day.  I know you have some colorful wings hiding inside you.  Sure there are slimy bits too, but I'll be honest with you, I've got some things in me that I'd be better without.  I make mistakes and I even do some things intentionally which are blatantly wrong.  I'm not a complete butterfly, though I'm not all slug either.  Please, promise me you won't poor salt on me just to alleviate your discomfort and I will work with you to help you find your wings.