Amazement In Which We Fascinate; Amor

We lie to ourselves in so many different ways. We are compelled to do so. It helps us stay happy. Retain a sense of pride. When we humble ourselves, doubt is created. It's fierce in it's reproach, hovering like a starving vulture awaiting your last defenses to be lost by your weakening body so it can rip, claw and tear you to shreds. The brain is a powerful thing, with the ability to dream of joy and nightmare of sorrow.

There is only one emotion that has the semblance of being both good and bad. Love. It drives us to do crazy things that can result in both euphoria as well as retribution. It's the hardest emotion to control. A wild horse that can throw even the most skilled of riders at anytime. It's perhaps this way because to truly feel it, to truly know it, is to give away the power of it. Placing it in someone or something, giving them the power of controlling you.

"If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was," says any Proverb, or particularly in this case, Richard Bach. Is that love? Perhaps it's an emotion that doesn't have a vernacular explanation. There isn't a poet or artist that can truly define it in song, poem or any other piece of art. It's not only terribly tough to explain, it's extremely tough to know you feel it. It kind hide behind other emotions or be confused with one's like happiness, greed or even the actions of lust. Bach has a point, but one that is only seen from a particular perspective. There is not a definite in this universe except for the human wonderment and astonishment in what we believe to be true or the possibility of truth. We find reason and explanation constantly. Justification to our own wrong doings. History tells us, accepted ideals continued to be enlightened to further, newer, accepted ideals.

The world turns.

So, in all the years that we have figured out all of this, we still haven't pin-pointed love. It's nature often like an evil witch dangling quid pro quo over our ability to walk on land or having enchanting mermaid-esque voice. Yes, I've been on The Little Mermaid ride at Disneyland and did enjoy it. I digress. I have loved and lost. Continue to love everyday. Have fallen into and out of it. It's a spiderweb in an un-winable maze at times where you can not only be stuck, but lost. The truth of it is, to truly love, to know the depth of the emotion is the ability to go beyond yourself. It's the ability to do anything, even the no can do for that person, idea or thing. The depth of love can reach so deep that we see it between those who would cut their ears off in proof, to those who will have a relationship with drugs so deep that they will kill themselves with the love for their self-abdication of life.It drives us. It leads us. It deceives us as well as addicts us. It's not always healthy, but we will lie as hard as we can to believe it. It makes us feel alive nearly as an immortal on top of the world, above the clouds with nothing to lose. Adversely it can cut the feel of sunshine on your face, the spirit to go on from your soul, and make you feel as dead as yesterday.

With all this, not all-inclusive in such a vastly and robust subject, what is my definition of love. It's simple. I lie and tell the truth, or perhaps merely don't understand fully yet or ever, but my best attempt is; 

Love is being the sunshine, the rain and the soil so that whoever or whatever you love can reap in what you sew.

Change Is Gonna Come

I don't know who you are, but you were in my dreams last night. The setting I chose to meet you in was exceptional. Crisp clear day with the sun just nestling into it's midday position. This allowed the hat you wearing to shade your face. I couldn't see your eyes through your designer glasses, even if they were knock off. Even though I had never seen you before in my life, you graciously walked up and placed an assuring hand on my shoulder. Strange you were asking for a menu from the bar I was sitting at, but it spoke in woes to me.

This sort of thing doesn't just happen everyday. I could recognize some certain something about you to find nameless in my vocabulary. I was much older in my dream, and was searching for something. Something that you brought. Warmth, comfort, compassion, smarts. It was you who settled the tremors of my soul. The conversation we carried, the obvious narrative of my subconscious, though not remembered, awoke something within. It was the conversation, the situation I did not want to awake from. Could not awake from. I had to know, had to see it your way. Needed to hear what you were going to say.

I woke up feeling free from what I've done and seen. That I could forget if I wanted to. That my problems, weren't trivial and my solutions were going to be grand. The door you cracked open for me, and the light is shining through.

The adversity has to be adversely met. Just don't wash away with the rain.

I struggle disappointing people. It's my biggest fear that I will let someone down. Let myself down really. The dream that you came to me in. I slept through my alarm. Slept through an obligation. Guilt, it's normal routine of setting in began. But the more I realize it, the more I realize you're right. I was supposed to be there with you. There with myself. Selfish and needy. This is the way I should think. That's the light through the door. To be normal is to place yourself before others. This ideology of course makes me feel sick. But when that's the way that everyone else in this world is, why not just conform?


...i think i think too much...

A Pacific Manifested Breeze

The transition is tougher than I had expected. Firstly, you will never have the same respect for those who you served with as when you are no longer around them. They encompass the true meaning of friend. No matter how close a friend they were, they could drop whatever they were doing and help you out. There at very few friends like this here on this side that would do the same.

Waiting for the bottom to drop out is the feeling. It's confusing, because its happiness. I've promised myself twice to never let a woman or money get in the way of a decision, and yet here I am breaking my own rules. This happiness, something that's sort of new is jeapordized when this sort of decision is made. I keep my composure as best as I can, knowing full in well I am in the best driver seat of the best car I have ever driven. My life should be an easy cruise from here. No amount of stress that hasn't tested me already will ever test me again.

It's this new awkward happiness that has me scratching my head. What to do with it. Where to go with it. I'm in unfamiliar territory, and should be happy idly waiting by. Standing on the shores of truth, the vastness of answers lies in front of me. The willingness to tread water has been my only way about it, and I ponder of that's somehow forsaken me. Have I learned too much? Know too much about myself and the life I have lived to be normal?

For the first time in six years I don't have to report to anybody. I've achieved the freedom I fought for. There is no doubt in my mind that all will be for the best, but there is a cloudy road down the path of options that I must choose from. I have but one thing to learn, and that's how to be more selfish. This ideology is adopted by so many people, and though I detest it the same as most people detest those who care of vanity and their looks, I must understand that to find true personal happiness is to be truly selfish. Not because there isn't immense pleasure in helping others, and the satisfaction that comes along with of doing good beyond oneself. It's that when its your time, when your chips are down, the expectations you have of someone being like you will not be met but only rarely if ever. So become the center of the universe, care not about your actions and their affects on others. This discourse is one that is so common place, following it may in fact make me 'normal.'

My happiness lies within change. And I am a constant of that. To wonder how good men turn bad is a direct correlation to their willingness to give up in the face of adversity that is recklessly overwhelming. To think the system can be changed, is perhaps to claim insanity.


...stay calm and return fire...

Bury Me Softly

How does one translate, articulate and divulge the transgressions of their life when it's encompassed things beyond their intellectual capacity? The levy is going to break. There are very few people who can understand me better than I know myself. Realization has unfortunately eliminated a once constant in that category. A failure to understand myself, or at least be able to organize the semblance of who I have become is of some concern as it subtlety drives a wedge in between myself and others.

I felt normal for the first time in a little over a month. After returning from Austria, I had gone into a bit of a tailspin. Nothing out of control, but the feelings that normal people have, I could not muster. Apathy my greatest tool in war has become a mindset that sometimes sneaks up and is hard to shake. In years past, perhaps I play that part that I'm expected to play, say the things I'm expected to say. No one knows the wiser narrative I live. I become part sociopath. It kicks, it shakes away, but never scheduled, never expected. It's there. Then it's gone.

The causes as best as I can tell are from some sort of change in my normal routines and behaviors. In this case, living conditions. There's very few that I would ever let in on this typically. But it's about time to air it out. Let everyone see my dirty laundry, my secret, my self-grievance. I've been going about it wrong. Typically this admission, which has only been made to that few that could, would or want to understand is received with respect, discretion and empathy. Recently, I let someone in. Cast my shadow aside. It didn't make me special. At least not to them. A your problem in a my problem kind of world that we all so sadly get caught up in. The singe of being burned when the soul is so open is a painful reminder of why wearing your heart on your sleeves is such an up and down love hate love affair. The honesty, we're not used to it. It scares us, scares me when I cut you in.

It's feelings of losing your sovereignty that might be the strongest. Or that surprise of a reaction you even somewhat halfway expected to get and actually got it. It's the hurt of pride being stripped. A bare all-tell all cornucopia of your inner most secrets, and you're killed for the scraps of your existence reached and taken by those less compassionate. A cat in a dog eat dog world. The idea you were special; once done over twice and you're not. To them, you're just another spoke in the wheel.

Will I be the man who lets himself be? Will I be who you want me to be? Will I be who I thought I was. I am who I am going to be.


... i have been guilty of kicking myself in the teeth...

Freedom In The Hands of the Beholder

I'm embarrassed on a level to have defended this country. Things are slipping out of the grasp of liberty and our freedoms not only are threatened daily, but are spiraling down a self prophesying drain. Everyone is on their side and only care for it. We still call the media 'News.' Our sovereignty is gone, with it any true hope of patriotism without fire to set alight a unity in our less than perfect union.

Beyond watching what I and my brothers in arms thought we were risking our lives to protect go silently into the night without a fight, I struggle on my own to rehabilitate into the civilian world.

I'm beyond different in ways that are not comprehendible by those who have not experienced the thresholds I have gone beyond and endured. Sadly, this no longer makes me a functional member of society no matter how much I want to be... normal. My ignorance was bliss, and they took my bliss away.

In the college classes that I typically am the eldest by some eight years, I learn about kingdoms, civilizations, empires. They all rise, they all fall. Typically in the same mannerisms at the previous does the latter and the age old, seemingly unbiased and right as the mail saying; HISTORY repeats itself.

The more I study, the more I read, the more this old dog learns new tricks, it seems relevant to point out that a common theme amongst these nations of the past that were created under the hard work of rulers, whether through war, and typically it's through violence of some nature-if not only a threat of it, would rise great kingdoms. Over the years, after expansion, the rulers that have been given the kingdoms after all the hard work has been done; when there is no more blood, sweat and tears to give, when freedom and prosperity is seemingly unchallenged and at it's peak is when it always fails.

The history is staring us right in the face and we're to stupid to do anything about it. We just smile and watch it fade away.


I hear Costa Rica is nice...