Reasons, Causes, Effects, and Affects

In life we're forced to make choices and live with those consequences. Some of them follow us throughout our lives, and in our moments of solitude they come back to us and we revisit our actions. Did I do the right thing? Why didn't I do this? I could have done that, or this, or the other. Well, we do those things that we do in our lives for reasons that aren't readily known to us at the time. Later, the purposes become clear when we get to where we're going.
Some of our mistakes or bad momentary choices can put us on the path to our greatest of joys. I've made a few bad choices in my life, just like anyone else on this planet. But, I can't really say that I truly regret those choices. Had I not made some of them, there's a strong possibility that I would have never started this blog and I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'd never have gone on to produce some of the work that I've done as a part of my courses at Art Institute, or written some of the things that I've written in the past. I might never have met some of the people which I've met and come to count as friends if not for some of those choices that I made.
Life truly, is what you make of it. If you make a mess of it in the meantime, it'll work out in the long run. It might not be clear to you now, but in time...as you're walking through that darkest forest...eventually you'll find that sunny clearing where you'll be able to get your bearings and choose another path into a more gorgeous part of the forest.
It's been a strange trip for me. I've made a lot of bad choices in the past, but they've gotten me to a point, and brought me along the path that I needed to be on. I'm sure that those same things that you've done will do the same for you.

Sooner, or later.....you'll see.

Defeating the Distances

What connects people across the great divides? Technologies have given us the power to 'defeat the distances' between worlds and hearts. While our bundles of wires and glass windows on the world aren't a substitute for the closeness of a warm embrace, the warmth comes from our knowledge that out there, at the other end of a phone line, a keyboard, a screen, or microphone cable is a good friend, a companion, a family member, or some as yet unknown love which will one day walk with us through grassy fields.
Life, and living truly is what we choose to make of it. We can be happy or sad about our situations of distance, but we shouldn't ever give up that one day, all we've hoped for, all our dreams will come true. For, if we stop dreaming a part of our soul will die, you never give up chasing after what you're dreaming of in this life.

Many have thrown their arms into the air, and given up in fear of succeeding at finally capturing the butterfly which eludes them in their waking life. For any of our hopes and desires to be made real in this world, we have to take those risks needed to make them come about. Little that is great in life, is easy to accomplish. Whether it's a job, a love, a life, a career, a relationship, or climbing a mountain. We have to find those parts of ourselves, which are holding us back from our ultimate realities, deal with them on a firsthand basis, conquer them, and make our dreams a reality.

The distances which divide us, are small when we consider the gulf which dwells within ourselves at times.

Harmonies and dissonance

The great dualities of human existence govern our lives every day. We're born alone, and effectively we die alone. Is there a god, is
there not a god. We love, we hate, we're cold, we're hot, and the list goes on and on. Our nature is a dual nature. Within each of us, there are polar extremes to our existence. We are body, and spirit. We are mind, and heart. It's enescapable. The greatest trial of our lives is to find a balance between these two extremes of our conscious states. Finding this middle ground, and living within it, is something which mankind has sought from the first moments of sentience.
So, why is it when someone says that they've lost the love of their life can they not right themselves quickly? Would they be so distraught if they had lost the hate of their lives? Would they feel so empty if they could never experience true cold in their lives? Why is it that love has such the effect upon human beings that it is the penultimate governance of our consciousness? Is it that love is the most imporant part of us? Is our nature made for love, is it built from love, so much so that we are drawn to seek it in other beings?
I was recently in a chatroom where there was someone there who had lost the love of their life. You could hear the pain and sorrow in their voice, in the words that they spoke of this person. Is this how we combat those primordial feelings of being born alone, that we seek out the perfect compliment to our lives in the embodiment of another human being to fight off the fears of ever having to face that terror and loneliness again?
In our world, we are closer together than we have ever been as a race. We are connected in ways that we have never been. It's likely that at some point in the future we will be connected ever closer to one another as a race, will this need for companionship continue to rule our lives in that time when we can feel and touch from across the wide sea? My guess is yes, it's deep in our nature to seek out the comfort of another warm body on cold nights.

Ceasing Inactions

We spend a lot of time stopping ourselves. Censoring our own actions for the good of others, or for the self-satisfaction of saving ourselves from feeling like a fool for some reason or other. I think that's it's past time that everyone just puts their guards down and finally admits to the world, how they really feel about things. I don't mean that there should be some outpouring of built up angst, who would want that? That stuff is better held back for the sake of everyone, especially the self. Those negative feelings are probably best not expressed, maybe I'm just dancing around something that I don't want to admit. Maybe it's something that I've felt for a couple of years about someone and I don't want to tell her. Even though, I've this feeling that tugs at me, and calls to me that she feels something too. So, why not just go for broke, just put it all out there and say hey! Well, it's just not that easy when you've managed to build a great friendship with a person. You have to take things carefully, managing each of the progressions with all the intent of a four-star general.
But, that's not really living is it? Isn't life supposed to be a spontaneous thing which happens in those moments between our breaths? Are we supposed to take the 'bull' by the horns and go for broke in each moment that we're given to live on this rock?
I suppose that with everything, there is a medium which we have to be painfully aware of. Our mediums are different, because our grounds are so different. The levels we choose for ourselves are so different that the levels which we meet with others upon, but life is short. If we don't go for the things we want from life, then it could pass us by.
That would be sad wouldn't it, if our greatest opportunities just passed by us. Those great loves, the successes which we would miss, the parts of the world which we would miss seeing, and the people who would forever remain only a thought across the miles.
This is not the time for introspective meandering, this is finally the time for action. No more handwringing and soft-stepping, we must make our own destinies, fulfil our own dreams, and blaze our own trails. Our leaders have forsaken us for currency, so should we forsake them for our own currents.

'Tis time to paddle against the current.
We shall lay in might stores for the coming storm.
Our grainaries shall burst under their own weight
and our bellies shall be full with the zest we find in our lives.
This is our season to shine, and we shall be the brightest of stars

This is truly the time to put aside all our longings, all our shortcomings, and all of our self-pronounced doubts. We are at the crux of a mighty war for our very souls, and it is truly the domain of each of us that we take the charge to treat one another with the dignity which we so desperately desire for ourselves.

Your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed,
I would like to try your charity
until you cry, "Now you must try my greed."
And everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me

---Leonard Cohen "Take this longing"

Golden Rules

Why is it that human relationships are such a jumble? Is it that there's just some humongous obstacle between each of us? I have to say, my set of relationships haven't been that bad, at least when I've been lucky enough to find rational people to have relationships/friendships with. Why can't people just follow that golden rule?

Do unto others, as you'd have them do unto you.

That pretty well sums up the entire scope of a perfect utopian existence. Why's it so hard to follow that simple rule? Why can't everyone simply just stop and say, 'Wait a minute, if I act this way then I'm giving this person to act that way towards me.' It seems like such a simple act, like a logical progression to relating to anyone else on this planet. Yet, every day we are faced with the same set of bullshit from the other people in our lives where this simple axiom isn't follwed.

Sure, each of us, likely don't follow the rule to the letter either. But, we know we should. Or do we?

Would it be such a trial to live our daily lives in reciprocation for the kindnesses which were enacted upon us, as well as the evils? After all, the inverse of the axiom is true.

You are free to do unto others, as they have done unto you.

It has to be, the original rule, while the spirit of it likely communicates to us that we should be just and kind to others still grants the opposite within it.

I guess, if you take the golden rule and the laws of karmic retribution together as a belief system, then you're likely to do okay in this world.

Do unto others, as they do unto you, but beware. Your actions will come back to you tenfold.

Said another way, If you make an ass out of your neighbor, it's likely you'll be the one eating hay for the rest of your life.

Time, Time, Time

Why am I not sleeping?

Lately, the days haven't been composed of enough time. 2005 has been like a vapor. It hardly seems to have begun and now we are at the end of it. Perhaps time is accelerating, or my perception of it is growing, or maybe it's decreasing.

Is it that as we age our ability to sense time changes?



Rusted brandy in a diamond glass
everything is made from dreams
time is made from honey slow and sweet
only the fools know what it means
temptation, temptation, temptation

Jokes stored in jars

The funny things in life are best hinted at. At times, they are painfully obvious and it takes a great strength of will to avoid pointing them out to a potential victim. At others, depending on the situation it's perfectly fine to plunge that razor witticism directly into an unsuspecting neck. Those situations are myriad and they depend upon the involved parties. You have to admit though, it does take a strength of will to pass on one of those instances and put it away for the future. To simply bide your time until the proper moment comes along to spring it once more. By then, you've evolved the perfect delivery and point of entry to deliver it in the harshest way. Or, you'll choose to laugh about it to yourself for a while and treasure that little snippet for yourself. You sort of just put it up on a shelf, in a little jar in your mind. Sometimes taking it down and opening up the jar, smelling it to see if it's still fresh, then recapping it, and placing it back on the shelf.

A few cryptic words of advice for anyone thinking about it, acting acting like it, considering it, desiring it, planning it, scheming on it, or plotting to get married.

First, what's the big hurry?

Second, if you're going to do it don't go about telling your former spouses. Just do it, why do they really need to know, or why do they even care?

Third, don't go about telling your former spouses after you've told them once before and it didn't happen.

So, let's recap.

If you have the opportunity to say something hurtful to someone, sometimes you should do it, other times you shouldn't.

After someone divorces you, they probably did it for a good reason and don't really care if you are getting married again. The fact is, they are probably hoping you will so that you'll have better things to do than take all your angst out on them. Further, you should learn your lesson after the first time you tell them that you are about to marry someone and it doesn't happen. If you don't learn that lesson, you're bound to be the butt of countless jokes stored in jars on shelves for many years.

You might not get laughed at to your face, but there will likely be a lot of laughter and pity behind your back.

Nation of Idiots

We are a nation of slathering masses salivating at the moment when the delicacies of capitalism are revealed to us. We lose simple coordination if we don't get the products we need, soiling our clothing and our floors.
Advertisers paint the people in commercials to be stumbling and bumbling dolts. Consider the current commercial for the return of the McRib sandwich. The commercial is centered in a dry cleaner where a long line of customers are continuing to arrive with shirts and blouses stained with McRib sauce. The commercial cautions us to leave our good shirts at home. Are we really this moronic and incapable of having a meal without spilling or dripping foodstuffs upon our clothing? McDonald's marketing would like us to think that we are. I wonder, of you out there, how many fit into this psychographic niche. These fast food diners who can't seem to avoid staining their clothing.
Another good example is the campaign from Hardee's(Carl's Famous Star in the west.
Their campaign claims, 'Without us, some guys would starve.' Now, I've eaten at Hardee's on several occasions, but I don't feel like I would starve without them. I'm a guy and I'm perfectly capable of seeing to my needs for sustenance without the need of driving to their restaurant. A prime example of their target audience is depicted in the commercial that features an early morning thirtysomething who has foolishly allowed his coffeemaker to run over into the floor. The voiceover is painting a picture of his ability(and other of these guys who would perish) get a promotion, juggle three girlfriends, etc, but this 'breakfast' it's mystical and there's no way that one of these guys can actually manage to feed himself in the morning.

Are we really this nation of idiots?

And where is our portion control gene?

Perception

When we peel back the thin gossamer of our perceptions, what is it that we see there staring back at us? What is truth? Is the truth what we can see? Is it what we can touch, smell, or hear? Is it just that the truth, the reality is what is happening between our ears, inside the synaptic junctions flashing at light speed in our brains as we struggle to understand.
I think that I've hit bottom sometimes, and I feel that I can't string a few words together to describe a feeling or a thought. I write something most every day, whether it's a scribble in a notebook, a post in a blog, or something for my courses. But the words which I can attach to things, they seem to be coming slower lately, more labored, and perhaps with more difficulty. Perhaps it's the onset of old age at 33, or maybe it's an excessive imbibe of alcohol from time to time, who knows...it could be some bad hamburger, the ozone, the cleaners, or any environmental, physical, psychosomatic factor. All I know is that there are spaces, where the efforts to describe a thought, or a feeling, are growing more difficult. My perceptions of life, perhaps, are changing.
I think that at times, I try to stop thinking, to dwell in an empty-ignorant haze, just so I don't have to deal with some events which surround me. Maybe it's time to come back and pour all of that crap out. Maybe I should pull back the thick layer of gauze that I've covered over my perceptions of late, step back out of the shadows, and let the sun warm my face again.

Right Brain

Happiness is the qualification of your efforts by the right side of your brain.

Maybe I've been thinking about the dual nature of humanity lately. There's a creative side and an analytical side, so why wouldn't our greatest moments of happiness come from those moments when both sides of our brain are in complete agreement?

Left Brain

Where the heck does the day go? There you are working away on something, totally absorbed in it, and then suddenly it's 10 pm. Isn't the conscious mind a remarkable thing? How our perceptions fool us with linear time; making one moment of dread last forever as bliss passes in a wink.
I guess that's what is meant by, ignorance is bliss. Whether it's the ignorance that comes from being absorbed in the moment, or the ignorance born from unknowing. When the trappings of our analytical mind are prevented from intrusion upon coloring our realities we are left to our creative interpretations of what we see before us. How the sun sets in the evening, how the daisies grow in summer, and how the birds fly south in the winter. The mundane becomes remarkable without the harshness of reason.
The absence of creative spark, of inspiration, and joy leaves us longing. Inside of everyone there is a piece of the universe that is connected on some level to a world which is much larger than we can ever know. Those gossamer threads that run between hearts, connecting the far away together, and the close even closer; find purchase in words. Those threads are woven into tapestries, invisible, only to the unseeking. Those who never seek, shall never find, their anylitical minds forever dominating their view with shades of black and white.

Spiders on a Screen

I wonder what it's like sometimes to be a spider perched on the screen of a porch and suddenly you're brutally flipped away from an unknown force into a somewhat familiar environment of grass. It must be a sudden shock for that moment of time, though to the spider who likely doesn't have the same concept of time it must be an eternity to be falling toward the ground and to suddely be buffeted by blades of grass. I suppose that those same things happen to us in our own lives. We fall into our own complacency with how our lives are, the routines of our daily lives and then from nowhere a force comes into our perceptions and hurls us headlong into a new perception. At that moment we're given the choice to seek out new paths, new routes to success, new modes of being, and new horizons...or we can simply die there in the grass.
Yes, I've changed the perceptions of a few spiders in my time. It's a hobby of mine. When I see them on my screen porch, like a mischevious child I decide that I'm going to flip them off the screen. It's the closest that I come to affecting the lives of any other beings on this planet in the short term at least. I suppose you can make a correlation between the parent/child role also. Will you be a parent who supports the child like the blades of grass, or that which flips your child maliciously from the screen which they've climbed for so long to reach a perch upon? But, deeper still...there are other correlations which can be made. God, The Universe, The Prime Mover, Shiva, Allah, Buddah, or whatever you call the Supreme Being is essentially that same sort of mindset which I've expressed here.
We climb all our lives to reach a zenith, a precipice where we can look over into the abyss and see what we've been striving for our entire lives. When, at the moment of our greatest revery, after we've stalked our prey for so long, in a moment...everything changes and we're forced to start anew. It could be a death, the destruction of our homes, a divorce, a marriage, or some other major change in our own specific paradigms. Regardless, it happens to everyone, shall we just give up and die there in the grass...or seek out other screens, other points of superiority, and other vistas for our dreaming?

One more thing

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union have deemed it necessary to place unexperienced people in the highest positions of government. Sure, it's old news, but it's still irritating. Why is it that there seems to be a scourge loose where you don't need to know anything, but you do need to know someone?
Harriet Miers and Mike Brown spring to mind, they seem to embody that old phrase. Whatever happened to having hard work recognized and earning a position? Isn't that what it's about?

There are scary things happening in the world, but they're going to happen and we're powerless to stop them. Powerless that is, unless we choose to take steps to stop them.

I could go on about this, but I've got a country to run, I just got promoted.

My next _______ will be a _________

This whole game of life, sometimes it really kicks you square in the teeth. Somedays your up on the top of the game, and then next there you are stuck in the proverbial Monopoly jail with the bloody thimble. I guess that everything has it's purpose in our lives. Each of these silly incidents that happen to us are supposed to teach us a lesson, give some guidance, direct our path a bit through the maelstrom that our lives gradually degrade into, but c'mon. After you've already learned the lesson, when is the teacher going to step outside for a smoke break?
I'm not going to get into the particulars of what the lesson that I've learned is, or which one I'm studying another chapter of, but needless to say it's not a pretty lesson to learn. I shut down sometimes, I guess everyone does. You just get to a point where you've got all these things plugged into the wall, you're running full power, the blender is slinging crap all over the place, the television is blaring, the radio is playing some terrible ballad from the 80's, and in the middle of it all the washing machine is bouncing all over the living room.
What I'm getting at is, marriages sometimes end, and the obviously end for a myriad of reasons. But you would think that two people could find some way of getting along afterward, some uneasy silences that reach a peaceful settling of the dust. Although, there are instances, perhaps many of them where it's an impossibility for the people to get along. Such is life, such is the game, stalemate.
It's difficult to vent and not just spell out the reasons for why or what is at the root of the problem, but it's cathartic to approach it from another vantage point. One where you're describing it to yourself, but where anyone else looking into your life would be puzzled and wonder, what the heck?

Anyway, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. Hell, it's been a while since I've written much of anything that wasn't related to schoolwork. I started all of this blithering so I'd sit down and write in a forum that was new, something to jog the writing juices, give myself a forum for free-writing, but lately..I feel those introspective tugs. I think I've really been avoiding confronting some things, just because they irritate me so much. But, things aren't going away are they? They'll remain there, festering until you grab them out and shake them up in the light of day.

Again, I'm wishing that I was somewhere else. Far away from this point in life, in another part of the globe, in another time all together. Eventually, it's going to happen where I'm happy in the moment again. It only takes a moment for our rhythms to be upset and we're plunged headlong into madness, off kilter, spinning out of control, but it takes time for us to find that comforting pattern of routine to embrace us and silence the living that swirls around us all.

Wake Up From This

How do we know which are the right answers to our questions? What are the crossroads when each of our descisions are myriad? I've had so many things swirlling around me for so long, I just don't know what the right answer is for me anymore. Life, in all it's splendor is pretty damned confusing at times. I guess it's really up to each of us to determine which is our best path. That's the only answer that I've really been able to come up with for myself. I've picked and chosen which are my best paths, what course of action is the best for me to pursure, and which choice will lead to better choices. I've shirked the dead ends which are presented, worried incessantly about the possibilities, and become overly concerned about the future of current descisions. But, it's really all good. I mean, I'm still alive, I still have the memories I've managed to salvage from the last large life change which I endured, and I'm not neck deep in toxic sludge like a million of our neighbors.
Again, let me take a few minutes to contemplate the scope of what's happened in New Orleans. I went to New Orleans once. I went there alone and had an unfavorable experience. It's a tough city, the people are rude as hell. It's not a family environment, at least for outsiders or tourists. But, the people there have a reputation for warmth and joy. Who knows, perhaps it was me. But, there is a smell when you went to the city. It's a smell of piss. A smell of desperation.
Aside from any personal feelings that any of us have about the city and it's aura. It's horrific that the people of New Orleans would be cast into the mold which they've been given. Uprooted from their homes and cast out into America. The open arms of their fellow citizens waiting for them with offers of comfort and future. Yet, there's a great sadness which follows them, which will follow them always. They've lost their homes, their belongings, every last scrap of what they've experienced. Every Tangible Scrap.
The people of New Orleans, no longer have the first movie stub they collected when they had their first kiss at the movie theatre. They don't have the photos of their children when they lost their first tooth. They don't have anything which we take for granted every day when we wake up in our comfortable dry beds each morning.
Just take a moment to consider, losing everything. Everything which you own personally, everything that you have in your bedroom or your house, all of the useless bits of flotsam and jetsam which you've held onto for all your years. All of it suddenly and permanently GONE.
Perhaps all of us should take away a lesson here. It's not a new lesson, it's something which has been said time and time again. Live simply, so that others may simply live. We've all got a wealth of junk in our lives which we don't need. Some homes have 3 televisions, how many times a day do you watch each of those three televisions? A lot of us have clothes that we don't wear, are you ever going to wear them? Many of us receive gifts which we'll never use and we hold on to them, why?

I guess it's time that each of us should wake up and do something for our fellow man. Our government has left us to our own devices in this country. We're no longer a nation 'by the governed'. This nation is run as a business. We are the employees of USA, Inc. The board of directors meet in their boardroom and we hear the minutes of the meeting, but our input is relagated to a suggestion box which has little effect on the outcome. It's well past time that we take back this country and our rights as citizens.

No longer does the rest of the world look at us and see beauty, now the rest of the world looks at us and they see sadness they see an enslaved mass, servants to tyrants in red, white, and blue.

Doesn't Remind Me

You could if you wanted to.


There's so much power in those words. They mean many things, depending on when and where they are said. We can do anything if we set our minds to it, though....the spirit is willing, the flesh may be weak. We can if we want to...make ourselves better people, be more tolerant to each other, love more, laugh more, look to the stars more, and dream more. We can do many things if we want to. When those 'wants' become perceived needs, that's when we'll act.

We want so many things that our wants have lead many of us to bankruptcy, debt management, and worse. Yet, where will it end? Where will we take responsibilty for our 'want's and rein them in?

Sure, there are things that I want...it's a normal response. When we see something shiny, no matter if it's inside of a gourd, we want to grab it and never let it go.

This post doesn't remind me of what I want.