It's been oh so long. Wonder what's coming next.

good judgement

I've forgotten how to think. The moon is flat. Mirror this and just drop the phone.

a few days ago my dad and I went for a long ride on motorcycles through the hills of Southern Missouri. In a typical town diner we stopped and ate and there in a quieted voice my dad told me his thoughts about the current state of affairs in the use. For all the nonsense, for all the bullshit that came out of his mouth in the hour of far right, conservative extremist radio, MacCarthy era ignorance that he chose to repeat to me he made direct allusion to a social finality that made me want to walk away from him forever, "Civil War." My heart dropped out of my chest and sat burning in my stomach for the remainder of his time in St Louis. Such anger, such insanity makes me want to vomit. Vomit and his hatred, vomit on his closed minded and arrogant foolishness, his condescending manner and hauty confusion. To think, me, his step-son is incapable of stringing two ideas together and yet I am both better educated and more rounded than himself, not to mention that I am young and not blazé like him, nor have I made the conscious decision to live with a woman that I do not love, take care of children that I have no tenderness for. He has become loud and stupid and now, as I come to think of it, he has always been to my knowledge both loud and stupid.
But! don't be fooled, I love my dad, both because he has been my dad and has chosen to remain so for 18 years but also because knowing that he has done the best he could with what he had and that in rare moments he has overcome his pain to show me kindness. I was an impossible child and I had difficulties that he was ill-equip to handle. I do not hate him for that or at all. But! his mention of civil war, his incapability to put aside his own frustration, anger and self-centeredness for the amount of time necessary to consider change repulses me. So I remain repulsed and disgusted and hopeful that he is both wrong and the representation of something that is passing away.

requited katabasis

I know that I deserve this. Then, we acquiesce to the lesser self and cry out into the wind, "Could anyone possibly deserve this much pain?!" What do I deserve? I deserve the consequences of my naivety because I foolishly brought another, like-minded heart, into the mist. For that, and only for all the rest, I am very sorry. I am broken into shards and I find that they won't realign–we fade to dust, less than shadows and expire. She needed to feel love again. We had lost that. No! we didn't lose it, we gave it away, and as it went, passing from eye to eye, hand to hand, a slow chill drifted on our skin and settled into winter's dreary night.

How could something that was meant to be, not come to fruition? I am more but poorer than an idiot, my allusion escapes my own recognition and I fail as I drift on the stream and float to the blinding sun. I am psychotic and insane by the best and most humble terms.

Will there be redemption for this house? There in lies the rub and the sway is found in the mind.

For the now, I will choke off the oxygen to my poisoned mind and allow the sparks to burn out the smoldering embers weighing upon my soul.

rife with darkness in the day

She has unleashed the torrent. She refuses to speak and the anger wells in her, a fire that burns giving toxic fumes that invade the mind (heart) and poison the heart (mind).
She has allowed herself to wander down a path, in the sky-less world there we make our bed and lie upon the couch of despair.
Our grief does not turn to dancing and our tears give no solace. The wind dries the sign but leaves scars and the insidious weight of by-gone and in the absence of the burden of holy regret our lives are without meaning and without hope.
Yes, here, I stand before a door. I do not have the courage to walk through the darkness so I terry on the threshold and burn the flesh and dig in the blade. Yes, I know that her betrayal will haunt me but I may find someway to turn away from the pain, from the suffering of knowing that she shares her body with another. But what can I say of that? The body must exult itself and give way to its desire to fill the empty space and the hopeless call to the dieing day.

cathartic

What can I say? What do I need to say?
I understand that you are confused. You are doing what you think is right. Hey, I can support that. Also, let me tell you that we just gotta take it day by day. And, once you think that you have gotten things figured out, come and tell me. Or just tell me. However, you know that being honest with yourself is the best way. If it is meant to be, then it will happen. Day by day.

She will say to herself, if she is really honest that I have hurt her, so that means that it is over for us, completely over for us. For now she says that she wants to keep me as her friend, but that too will change with time. What do I need to do then to start getting over her, that is if it is not going to work out, I need to not call or write or do anything that is going to compromise my healing process. She said that there can be no compromises for the moment. I guess I can have hope that once she returns to France, she will be alone and alone with her thoughts, I know that I will have a part there in them. She can either choose to accept the good ones and let that build into something in her mind or she can settle for the bad and the grief. Whatever happens, happens, right? It is what it is and life is life. I have to deal with life on life’s terms or be drowned in the process of fighting it.

So, yeah, maybe there is a promise that I can make today. I can make the promise that she will not hear another peep out of me or from me until I am on my way with a plan. Because isn’t that what I really need? I made the decision to go to medical school and to study to be a doctor. How am I accomplishing that goal today? I have always been plagued by an inability to complete even the most menial goal that I set for myself, and at each failure I set the standard even higher. So what can I do today? Make everything as simple as possible, and stand by what I say that I am going to do. That is the ticket out of this. Doing what I say I will do, being myself, and making that thing that I am and want to be get more into focus with each passing day. I only have one day to live in. I cannot live in all of them at once, and in that way everyday exists together in one day, one moment and one breath. So just breath. Just get out of bed, brush your teeth, take a shower, eat, read a book, get on your way, and get out of the stagnant mire. That is all that you have to do. In the single-handed battle with the universe you don’t have to fight, the battle is already one, take in a deep drawing breath and move about in the space that has been provided to you to live in.

For now, and for today I have my work. Thank the nature that bore me into this world and granted me the privilege of moving around in its glory. I can learn about it and learn to respect it. In doing that I can learn everyday more about myself and learn to love and respect that thing that is myself, that burning and turning, spiraling mass of electrons, bouncing, crashing and bonding with others to others and other things. Let’s make room for the best possible way of running about, and accept that the best possible way is not what you want at all. What we want and what we hope for is that today will be a good day, and with each good day and with each failure and victory come more promise and more hope. Clean out a space and jump on the hillside in front of the setting sun. Get free of the burdens, and throw off your yoke.

How am I ever going to be able to accept the wrong and the hurt that I have done? The only way, absolutely the only way is making the change right now in the moment and moving forward and onward. That is the only way. Age doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t hold all the answers. I can make the decision right now, right in this moment and once I have done that the rest is going to come with time. So yes, there is hope and wisdom to be gained with time. But I have to make that I idea up for myself and I have to get there by going through the mess in this pile, this mess heap. That mess heap and the mire of the waste is what holds what is good in me, and that is what I need to find. So, if I can take this time seriously and I can begin to live in today then that is the greatest victory to ever be had. Serve, serve, serve today because today is all that you have and by living in yourself and living in the fantasy that you create for yourself you are only removing yourself from the present. I want to be one of those blessed few you gets it and in understanding it holds on to the freedom that is granted by it. That is what I have to do today. Some might say, “oh what an impossible order!” For them and for me, there is only the hope that something might aid me in the course. I cannot do it by my own, and yet I am all that I have and all that I am is the world that surrounds me and that I create for myself. So what world do I create for myself? No creating is necessary, no energy can be created and none can be lost. All that there is to be had and all that there is to be found is already within arms reach.

So today, practice and study to be the best doctor that you can be. Let us learn to bring healing to the world. To bring healing to ourselves by sharing in the struggle that we all face in the toil, which is life. I don’t need to be bonded to another; I am only a moving object in space. I am only a thing, and only a thing that can be done or undone, but only by the thing itself. So child, have a bit of lucidity and return to the warmth of the present moment, the present time and the present hope. What is to be done, will be done in the time that is provided to it. You are not alone because you have yourself and yourself is all that you need. You can be sure to never harm another, but if you get close to another the potential danger will always exist because we are, as I said above, all moving fire and burning wave of self. And the order that guides the heart and the movement of the stars can all be found within that world, that universe that is within you and is you.

One day, you may be able to say, “Yes! I have been set out of my cage! I am free and I am whole!” Remember that in every moment you can stand and yes, you can shout, “Today I will live in freedom, because I am already free and I am already completely me, and I am whole.”

So, make your way into the desert, make your way into the flame, and provide your mind the force that is needed to break away the flax. Dance, shake, move about and be violent. Hold your head above the water and then when all your breath is gone, dive deep to the bottom, sucking the water that will burst both you stomach and your eyes. The pressure that mounts to a climactic rising peak, will do its work but you will power the machine.

I once read a story about a wild man, a man completely wild and completely alive. MANALIVE, he entreated his wife to call him, and his name was Innocent Smith. So shoot at me, and I will steal from myself. Hide my bride on the other side of the world and I will make my way to her. Hide my heart from me, and I will burrow to the center of the earth to find that it is warm and full, next to the beating stream of life. Burn me and torture the truth out of my mouth and I will give you my blood, that bares the nakedness of me. Excite the call to the garret, and I will stand my ground firmly on the site of advancing arrows. And there the truth shall arise for you. I will cry out from the shores of Elysium, “I will be your eternal benefactor in ways that you cannot possible imagine.”

And there, when the fires have died, and the end to the wailing has come we will rejoice together in our sorrows and in the presence of our shattered dreams and hopes.

I never wanted to be a liar. I never wanted to be a cheat. But I have stolen and I have crept about like a criminal, in the insidious tasks of my idol hands I have waited for the innocent and the vulnerable, wanting to take what they had because I was poor and penniless. And so, what do we know of what will be good for ourselves when our crimes cannot be removed from our flesh? Yes, the flesh will keep the record and no, I could never be a judge. But I can be holy in my own write and in the truth that I am a man, and like any and every other man, I will stand in judgment. I know that this may be what I believe. Do I know or am I sure or evening willing to accept the idea of eternal judgment? No, I am not prepared to dive into such belief. But, what I can do and accept, and what I can hope to call the purpose of my life is an ideal, and that single Ideal is that I am all that I am, and I am everything and my life, my soul, my happiness and my grit depends on serving the lost. I am lost and that is how I may be found. I am hopeless but that is how I will find hope. I am nothing, and nothing do I have, but I will find substance in my brokenness, in my pain and in the glory of redemption. It is what it is and I am exactly what I am not. I found one like me, and I abused and was careless with the unbroken crystal glass that was given freely to me like a treasure. And that one, that one that I have betrayed is, was, and remains an absolute treasure or the stars and the earth. She is the nature that I longed to serve. She is the love that I longed to have. She is the hope that I longed to deserve. But today, I am without her promise. She is what I will never have because she is an other. She is beyond possession, and beyond control and manipulation. She is only human, but in the pureness of the ideal that I make my own, she is an ideal by her own rite. Today, this will be my own rite of passage, and today, I will make this the story of my own redemption. I am young and I am full of life. And tomorrow, I will be old and decrepit. In that day when I prepare for death and when I prepare to go beyond age, then I will do so with an open hand waiting for one to take it. Today is that day. Life is far too short to be a fool. But we are the imbeciles and jesters of our own court, and the throne sits empty before us, while we await someone else to show us the way. The most simple truth is that that throne is our rightful possession and the clothes of our shame is of our own making. Then, if that is all true then I do not have to accept my shame as a death sentence. I can accept my shame as a key to some greater truth and that is the truth that I will wash myself in today.