I don’t care how good you are, life is formidable!
I am thinking today that living life on life’s terms is a lot like the impact of the knife blade on the wet stone. You explore the analogy for yourself, and if you like, share your thoughts in the comments below.
I’d love to read them.
seeking a hike
pounding the sod
finding a beat
gathering a song
starting a dance
Words are abundant and free flowing, tokens tossed into our lives, plentiful, over available loud and empty cases more often than not. We throw them around like a used tea bag or an under valued cap that we flipped onto the floor only later to be kicked under the bed thoughtlessly when walking past, devoted to more important things, left there to settle into uselessness with the dust mites and pet dander.
Hello, how are you?
Good, you?
What are you doing?
I know that, but…
New and improved
Do you have a minute?
Whatever you want to do
It isn’t about the money
I love you
Yet, when the words are spoken at the right time, a time book ended between mutual struggles, and collective losses gathered along the common road of years battling commonality and mediocrity and when those words are spoken between you and that now dear and dying friend or quoted to you by someone who heard them spoken of you by that same collaborator of greatness – then those words mean more than the very life into which they are spoken.
Such was my day, today.
Remember when
We found the forest
Together
Intense, alluring and terrible
We cowered in fear
Shadows danced
Masked marauders set on our capture
Thorns, impenetrable barriers
Pole arms of razor steel
To strip flesh and life from bone
Time
We eventually found our way
Safely among these harrowing acquaintances
Shadows became nuances of light
Painting images of complex contrast upon
Canvases of hope
Spears’ edges, properly marked and navigated
Became safe havens
Briar patches of protection
Time
Now, you and I
Are bored and dumb
Silently wishing for
Another forest to conquer
the journey of necessity
arms stretch outward
delicate steps along the precipice of doubt
pained
muscles constrict and release in rhythm
a waltz that dances ever
withered cravings scream
threats
fear
wisps of liberated mist rise
once bound to soil and stone now free
supportive hands appear
lifting
relief
- Hermann Hesse
Hanging
In a delicate balancing between desire to be free
From the casket of this cocoon
And to be safe from the fall to the ground
How came I upon this entanglement
But by little things, single threads of erroneous
Actions
Quiet discontentment resting feather-light
Clinging unassumingly to the sleeve of my façade
Until
Movement through my own self
Became hindered and slowly, progressed to
Halting proportions lost in one immobile
Case
Suspended by the last filament of my attachment
To you