Friday, March 29, 2013

A Place Worth Being

I.  A Place Outgrown

A ship on the ocean had plotted its course. Its destination: a Place worth being.
It had measured the distance, used the most modern maps to help navigate
and even accounted for delays, like encounters with pirates or worse, seductive sirens.

This ship was staffed with the best mates the oceans had ever seen. You see that was the problem,
they were the best. They had seen it all.
They conquered every shore they set eyes on,
plucked from it whatever resources they fancied:
gold that looked like glittering fruits,
animals who names they couldn't pronounce,
people,
oh, the beautiful people-
colorful people they had, seen, and taken (if you catch my drift blowing north by north west...).
Yes, they had some fun
and had their fill of the cornucopia of exotic adventures.

But the thrill of plunder had a strange after-taste. Some said it was reminiscent of emptiness, apathy, and regret, or a combination of the three.
After a long night of plundering, sailors were know to be
puking out self- loathing
off the sides of the deck
and inhaling longing for enthusiasm the next morning.
Captains complained that their crew was falling apart like the wood of a dead and rotting tree. The issue was these places they had been were always fleeting, never feeling very real or substantial. They never felt to actually be in a Place worthy of being.

So, the admiral decided that he would solve this issue by gathering up those willing men and women to explore uncharted territory. The concept seemed simple initially, as they sailed away from their fleet...

II. A Place Unknown

A few weeks after they embarked on this journey,
something strange started to happen.

These able-bodied men and women,
who had seen creatures from the pits of hell's oceans dangling fairies on strings seducing some into caverns of jagged teeth,
who had fought off men disguised as fish twice their size and were three times as smelly,
who had seen friends vanish into whirlpools and ocean twisters, making their flesh and bone-bodies coil up like knotted rope,
these people
began to get
nervous.

This nerve was unusual because, it wasn't a fear of anything on these uncharted waters, no,
this was different because the nerve came from
within.
An incurable nervousness that had them acting strangely. Even towards one another.

It wasn't that they didn't know where they were going, but rather
it was that part of them knew that they wouldn't come back with the same stuff. The same
inside stuff, that is.
Because anyone who decides to search for a Place worth being has already drank the been infected with the ideas of change.
And whatever metamorphosis ensued, they would not be prepared for that battle.

The crew began to question everything. Some argued that they should just abandon all the tools and compasses which weren't helping. They wanted to learn to trust their sense of direction because no one knew exactly where there destination was, anyways.
Some began reading the maps like scripture. They even looked at out-dated ones and tried to navigate their course accordingly, believing this was the "One True Way."
Others gave up all hope and either jumped off the ship shouting "None of this is real!" or wrote down their ramblings of how nothing mattered and life was just a cycle perpetual chaos.

The crew was in shambles. Their captain, Three Eyed Willie was sobbing uncontrollably. His best mates who were also his brothers had declared mutiny and attempted leading a revolution. Willie tried to convince them to stop, negotiate, or come to some sort of truce to keep the ship's crew together,
but they would not comply.
 They were convinced that they had found the "Right Answer." Any other beliefs, like the "One True Way" were fundamentally different from their "Right Answer," and therefore needed to be eliminated.


III. A Place Worth Being

Maps and books were burned. Some people were about to be thrown overboard when this almost war almost burst open onto deck, but a voice (but no one remembers whose) shouted, "Land!"
Everyone paused and looked off silently for a moment.

They were approaching land.
People decided to put their differences aside and
opened the sails,
grabbed the wheel and worked together to
move full speed toward this unknown land.

Inside no one was ruminating over what had just happened, only that they regretted it. It was a foolish, dark and desperate side of themselves they did not want to revisit.
Instead, their hearts were pounding, feeling themselves approaching something big. 
 
When they reached the shores, things seemed to be normal. Sandy beaches,
some trees,
rocks, but
where were the  people?

They sent out some men and women to explore while others made camp on the beach. It was nightfall when they returned with some friends. In the shadows these friends looked to be about half the size of a grown adult, naked and holding hands.
As they approached the crew could see more clearly that these people were children. They came in giggling but the crew's faces were much more serious.

Willie stared in disbelief. He saw with all his three eyes, a three eyed child the spitting image of himself. In fact all these children appeared to be carbon copies of the crew. One by one the children came from the trees as each crew member stood with gaped mouth.

"Were are we?" Someone finally spoke.
The children looked up smiling,
"You've finally found yourselves. I would call that a Place worth being."

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Spring Solstice

Outside
Nestled in between brick and concrete,
the city block is breathing
heavy as people and cars circulate through its veins and capillaries.
This first day of spring is a cold one.
There are no flowers to greet us,
no green sprouting yet.
Just gray sidewalks filled with the ice of another New England weather mood swing.

This day has us wanting; the bitter desperation in longing for a warm embrace,
or any hope it might elicit.

I hear voices howling in between the sidewalk cracks and salty sand:

"When I found out I had cancer, I didn't realize that it would be extremely isolating. I am so grateful now for the support of my friends and family"

"Can you spare any change, Miss? I want to buy a tent."

"Why haven't I called you? I wish it could be that easy. Like how I fantasize about showing up at your door with flowers,
smiling spring onto your lips"

"Why is everything in this town so expensive?"


"It's almost funny ... I am worried about holding onto so many things,
when all I ever really wanted was to let go?"

"Why am I scared of how dirty my house is
when I came from
and will go back to
dirt?"

As I try weaving past them, I see a man crossing the road
stop and pretend to get on an imaginary bicycle. His motion is perfect,
as he mounts the invisible bike seat, I can almost see him ride thin air down the street, until an impatient car growls at him. He pushes down on the pedal one last time and arrives effortlessly back onto the sidewalk.
It is here I imagined myself
and all these voices as children.
I pondered what these children had dreamed of their lives,
who they had wanted to become
and how we actually got here.

Maybe living our lives is like this man on this day trying to ride that imaginary bicycle. We can't see it, and we don't really know what direction it will take us, but we have to keep going and have faith that spring will come and we will eventually make it back onto the sidewalk.




Saturday, March 16, 2013

Avdocating Adversary

I am always playing devil's advocate
even with
 (and especially with)
myself.

It can be crippling.

The artist whose mind can paint pictures of forests full of poppies
sleeping Dorothy, dreaming 
skies full of sparkling glass
shattering, singing until their dust creates a pulse of life
in every object it encounters;
who can give voices and songs to silence
and hears music in teardrops which water the seeds
of loss making room for growth of the new and unknown,

this artist can be halted

The devil can critique,
find worms to eat black holes into any argument
even the most magical or inspirational.

He can complain of 'what is the point
in writing all this?'

You're a worn down pencil
with barely enough carbon to smear out a word,
white knuckled hands clutching
onto an idea escaping like water through grains of sand back into the always constant, eroding and all-consuming ocean.

Why make the castles?
It's completely illogical. 

Your ideas are all flawed.

And like a delicious red apple who
you go bite
and find that worm hollowing in brown decay,
you toss it completely, before you realize that the other half of the apple
is perfect.

Appreciation for the Flowers


The flowers that you knocked at my door,
into my life
have dried.
Some are bound and hung as what now seems to be an homage to the memories we once were making;
some are dead and buried in the bottom of a refuse pile.

I hope they make fertile soil
to grow more flowers.

I feel that our moments were much like these flowers
vibrant and alive
followed by dry periods
of distance
and death.

I had wanted
this cycle to continue
bridging gaps
making us stronger,
closer.

But when winter brought you back
and whispered promises of spring soon
I broke
not believing,
not seeing the promise.
Blind to all of your seeds and flowers,
only seeing dead gardens
I spoke of only endings.

You, Gentile Giant 
always planting seeds
always providing,
I tried to tend
to breathe life back into
what seemed like our dieing garden.



I went out yesterday to the garden
of all the lost flowers.
And in the midst of all the ruin
I saw green sparkling sprouting.

It whispered nothing but Love
and Appreciation,

Gentile Giant.

Lo siento,
Papillon.











Friday, March 15, 2013

Isolation

We don't do well in isolation.

Alone with our thoughts-
a big empty room
full of blank spaces
marked with blank traces
in a darkness obscuring.

A dangerous mind can cause a reaction in another-
of life altering revelations,
purples flames fading to green sounds of
fireworks sizzling one synapse to the next.

These actions change the way we understand ourselves,
and how we choose to act.

But in action there needs to be something,
someone who witnesses, or feels that force.
A fire warms no one unless they stand near enough to feel the orange glow.
The wind moves nothing unless there is something in its path.
If nothing is there to receive an action then,
nothing is happening.

Our minds are capable of creating and fabricating the most elaborate scenarios. We can paint with colors that don't exist,
defy physics and all rationality.
Our minds are all dangerous in this sense. But a mind is not dangerous unless it is given a canvas.

Imagine a story with no one in it. A story where there were no actors, no objects, no participants; nothing.
Or worse, imagine
a story never told or shared.

That story,
that picture
that idea,
that action
will do nothing
in isolation.