Great Light

My street,

It’s nestled in a nondescript cul-de-sac

Fragment of a designed, esthetically pleasing subdivision; forgettable in its similarity to so many others like it.

There is a discernible absence of Christmas lights this year.

A few wreaths; a few red bows hanging upon random doors,

but an extravagant celebration of the holiday season

is palatably absent.

Would this be an indictment to current times?

Subtle statements in the wake of weathering a decade long economic nightmare?

Has the community sobered to the real challenges of surviving?

Exhausted by fretting the unknown?

Abiding with scarce little more energy to spare than on essentials?

It’s a view; a sad conclusion.

Perhaps yet, it might be the pensive breathe before exhaling generosity.

A mere repetition of the thematic life as a cycle of growth; then decomposition

Even the mighty Redwood will eventually perish and disintegrate .

Into the very forest floor that nurtured it for millenniums.

Comparison is our way of learning

To every feast, lies nearby bleached bones of famine

Learning to appreciate next cycle’s arrival

We become wise in this way

So this quiet darkness may be the nursery of our change

Cherishing good fortune, when it returns home; to the roots of efforts.

In that moment of clarity; see beyond the mask of lacking

The gift of understanding reveals it is “I” who surmise; then decide

If “I” am rich in opportunity; or poor in expectation.

This pause; this seasons ending is an invite

to celebrate the chance

to evaluate values used in filtering what measures happiness.

Stripping away external worthiness standards might just bring back personal treasures

Mewing in the arms of opportunity

Is freedom’s delicate coddling

We’ve named our precious darling liberty.

It can’t be manufactured in some foreign factory

No cheaper, reasonable facsimile can be had.

It dwells in the heart of every human being; even in the bosom of those whose forefathers surrendered that legacy in trade for illusionary promises; like safety from the threat of violence.

In my youth, I was encouraged to believe the opposite of love was hate.

Later, I embraced the notion love was uniquely divine, it had no opposite.

When I accepted love as an open heart to life, did I recognize its opposite was indifference; so much the source of unhappiness.

 I noticed how love was like liberty; it cannot be taken, it is always given away.

The tale goes:

There was a light; part of a greater all the energy there was, compressed into a single great source of light in the center of the firmament surrounded by endless jet black darkness

It became aware of itself as being light, but also that it was surrounded by bright light.

Everywhere it perceived only brilliant light.

It possessed in the very core of its existence an irrepressible yearning to witness its own illumination; its own specialness

So it requested of the creator to allow it to behold its own brilliance

And that wish was granted

It was cast out into the dark abyss without memory of the warming home in the community of brilliance.

In that solitary loneliness, given opportunity as its only companion; so it could glimmer and burn brightly,

Casting its great cascade of light outwards into the uncharted unknown.

In so doing, witness its kinsmanship to all light; possessing quality that added to the whole.

Is it not the same for each of us?

As single flames of light

Sometimes we need reminding

Given chance by darkness

To illuminate our surroundings

With our own unique, unquenchable brilliance

My new line of Note and Greeting cards. Follow the link, shop like a life depended on it! More to come. albert ~

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Lost Voice

   I lost my voice.  Not in the customarily Laryngitis sort of way where a virus invades my vocal cords.  Nor by singing favorite tunes in a higher than usual pitch.  Oddly enough, repetitive whispering puts as much strain on vocal chords as screaming does; but all of that is purely physical apparatus of voice. I’m talking about the voice of opinion had been silenced; and I was clueless to its cause.

   Perhaps clueless is not entirely accurate. If I could muster up some genuine honesty in my reflection, I might admit I saw resignation coming from years ahead. I just surmised that sooner or later I’d become weary with protesting the outrageous; then inevitably it’d arrive without a lot of fanfare. I recognized it was just a question of time before the fruitlessness of shaking my fist at the Gods for what appeared as unrelenting challenge to my happiness would become the norm; no one was listening.  I could puzzle out the merits of enlightenment and wisdom as hard fought products wrestled into possession by formal education. Contrasted to a more subtle raw experience where complaining was a poor substitute for not trying.  As each door of the unknown was thrust opened I only found more darkness; it was up to me to screw up the courage to go into it without permission or assurance that it was safe. 

  I had learned early on, in college philosophy, that all knowledge contained kernels of doubt; strip away the lazily accepted handout assumptions then sooner or later what remained was a pool of questions that snared wandering minds as sure as the gravity of the largest black hole; when experience conflicted with craftily cultivated expectations there’d sure as shooting be dissonance.

  What mattered became a paradox; then an oxymoron, where a point of view defied vocabulary.  A place where words served the symbols of abstract concepts, those being mere propositions formed by conjecture; both true and false.  Words contained worlds of their own interpretation as they were coupled with other like-kind words, resulting in a train yard coupling defying the imagination as to designed intent or purpose; where any position could be interpreted to mean the opposite:  politicians had been playing that game for years, but then no one took them seriously at their word anyway, so it was forgiven.  The trouble arrived when the rank and file of citizenry picked up the practice so then no one could discern what to believe; the worst of it all was, who could be trusted? It ultimately dissolved into the opinion of ‘it depends,’ and to be honest, trust always was a subjective exercise anyway. But we were lured for so long into the false belief that ours was a shared value system with agreed upon boundaries.  Only in the dire-straights of emergency was it noticeable that the thundering cacophony of the crown was crying the same lament: Who’s in charge here anyway?

Soon enough, it became so damn painfully obvious. It was never a singular case of protest about personal situation, but rather realizing discomfort wasn’t anything that made me special.

After that, what was there to say beyond apologizing for misconception?

My mistake.