Not Unto Death

I’ve had a battle with a nasty head/chest cold the last couple of days. I’m getting better.

Such times are a reminder to me of my need to be flexible, to allow for change. Life changes, my life changes. I don’t count it as a bad thing that I get so enmeshed in the work of living each day that I lose touch with my own frailty. It is somewhat necessary to forget that any moment life can rip us from our seemingly normal path and demand something else of us. Such a continuous awareness – of my frailty – would be immobilizing.

But, when sickness or injury comes, it is interesting to witness the struggle I have to allow for them – life changes.

Today my chest burns, my eyes are puffy, my nose and throat are tender, and it is too much effort to think and plan for tomorrow – as much as tomorrow may need plans. Today my reason is tainted by surges of emotions that hack away at my serenity and taunt my self-worth. Physical and emotional sicknesses seem to be dear bedfellows, with me at least.

So, I’ll rest and limit my number of decisions. Sometimes doing nothing is the best choice. I’ll sip tea, read and sleep and let the world wait – for me.

As you were… -cough, cough-

Perhaps This World Needs

As I strive for self actuation
Demanding more of my mind, spirit and body each day
Determined to succeed, to claim yesterday’s distant horizon
As today’s dawn

It occurs to me that I might have it all wrong
What if these images of status and position
That haunt my mind each evening are self contrived
And the resistance that pushes me backward
Each hard fought day is prophetic

What if my truth is that
This world simply needs another bum?

Loud Hope

There are times when I speak as one with authority out of hope that my words are true. Words about a loved one’s success and well being spring forth from my lips in the midst of much evidence to the contrary. I can hope. Even when everything around be screams otherwise. I can hope and forgive me if I hope loudly.

I believe there is a Divine power working against the odds and since I am powerless over this one, whom I adore with every ounce of my being, I am proclaiming that which my heart cannot feel.

Be victorious my child!

Quoting

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Wisdom

An illusive wisp
Sophia dancing
From our grasp and swirling
Into brief awareness
Remembered only as afterthoughts
Insulting epiphanies
Propelling us to the next level
Of incompetence

Tanked

The sputter can surprise us
Running wide ass open
Taking no prisoners
Casting laughter like caution
To the wind
Blowing up a storm of passionate dreams
And friends cheering us on

The road turns, twisting
Thought and perceptions
Into unrecognizable shards
Broken, poured out, spilled
Across memories of tomorrow’s
Dreamers awake
When the fuel of creation
Runs dry

Thus fools rush in
Where angels fear to tread
And shout
"Fill’er UP!"

An Evening of Musical Empowerment

Saturday evening I had a disturbingly wonderful night of music thanks to the folks at Mack and Mack Clothing, Triad Acoustic Stage and the Queen of the Eighty Eights – Kelley Hunt!

Ok, I must confess that prior to this event I had never even heard of Kelley Hunt. How my life ever had the illusion of completeness without knowledge and experience of this woman’s music, I shall never know. Her art, passion and superb talent reached deep into my spirit and shook out, up and over my blues and boogie-woogie.

Google her up and take a listen. You will be glad you did – otherwise, completeness will remain beyond your grasp.

Be sure and check out her songs 'Mercy' and 'Love.'

I Feel, Therefore I am

Sympathy

Empathy

Solitude

Sometimes feelings are so deep and personal that all that can be done is to feel them.

Congruence

I believe we all wander through life, at times or for a time, cloaked with various masks, skins of textured facades, living as much with our fabricated external selves as with our inner truth. Therein rests our deepest self, the pain, loss, ache of life’s journeys won and lost. Therein lies that being so often sought and revered as the true self, the real us – with its’ complete measure of joy and depth.

Yet, is either the outer or inner more real? Are we not both mask and soul?

The beauty and grace of the dance, without the well hidden strain and sweat of the all but stumbling artist would not exist, nor would the precarious effort have any value, but for the fabric of the art finding form.

It is a dance, of sorts, this thing we call life - isn't it?

Nonsensical?

Why is it that we insist, and I do mean “we” for it is my plot as well, in making sense of life – our life? Making sense of it all is a feeble attempt to remove the inherent mystery of life. Life does not ‘make sense’ if we mean by such rhetoric that life can be fully understood and explained in the same manner one might give directions to a favorite restaurant.

Myth, mystery, paradigm are words more akin to describing life, one’s life, one’s journey. Yet, we persist in trying to explain and reason our way through this existence and hope that we can find enough solidity so we may linger for another moment in the vain and frail belief of a life that makes sense. When in fact, are we not confounded by our attempts at truth and fact?

We are left with nothing more than the necessity of surrender as we fall into the chasm that reason cannot grasp and find there not a plummet to the death, but rather a descent of rapturous delight engulfing the senses that plays ever so amusingly with our spirit and carries us aloft, not down, and sets us once again on the seemingly solid ground of tomorrow. There we can imagine that we are secure, safe, and reasonable – until life comes passing again and we are unable to understand, forced to believe in and then against reason, again.

Ours is a riotous ride of delight.