Finding your way to the Beginning

Finding Your Way to the Beginning

I’ve not posted as of recent

Not nearly as often as ideas spewed into my speaking mind

 Particularly those topics I discuss with myself within my skull, with no one listening; discussion requires two. Yet, as of late, I have had an experience surface for my attending this whole notion of purpose; be it divine or self-appointed.

   I’ve heard purpose used in a multitude of ways; all as inspiration for the listener to get their act together.  Still, I’ve come to respect the best lessons of life are bought by failure and not happenstance of good fortune.  When it comes to plans coming out, we readily forget past successes as we chew on unfairness of those ripped from endeared clutching.  I’ll add to that observation, I believe for the lesson to have a really lasting impression, there needs to be a certainty that shatters.  I say that with full intention to focus not on failure to meet projected end states; or desires unfulfilled, but rather a personal certainty born upon subjective prediction that failed to meet the reality test.  At those devastations lies the gift of true awareness.

I’ve my own history of taking my-own-darn-sweet-time learning a lesson.  I have adequate scars in all the levels of existence; physical, emotional and mental, attesting to my not-so-clear-headed, slovenly executed plans.  Only in the rectitude of not being asked to leave this earthly plane can I cringe at my foolishness; but in actuality, I was just blinded by my certainty.

Where did I learn to ignore the facts?  Clearly I can’t recall being set down by my parents and advised to follow my own passionate configuration of how the world should be.  Nor was it some teacher advocating the merits of delusional thinking.  The jury is still out concerning my religious indoctrination since I’m leaning towards an acceptance of the general anxiety in that realm for me to swallow their doctrine whole as a template for the order of things.  But I’m not so much looking for a culprit, but rather a point where my beginning had been corrupted.  I am confident I wasn’t always like this, as many would say in their laments.  I also am acutely aware of going from generalities to specifics back to generalities as I ponder the whispering question in my head, “Is this the way of decrepity ?”

  I had been passionately convinced it was just a question of time until being discovered; for me to realize a dream of doing music for a living.  Then, as the fantasy waned by decades of depravation I gladly offered it upon my altar of sacrifice for art’s sake, did I realize my delusion; I moved on to writing with desire to be heard.

No kidding, I was well into adulthood and continued to foster a child’s unrelenting need, no, anguish to be heard. 

Of course, because it was so well rooted into my psyche, I couldn’t  sort it out from the muddle into the open light of actual until it ran its course; like a fever.  But it did run its course, and I was left dry and callous towards the lover who seduced me with promises laced in if I only… (fill in the blank.)

I was once new;

in the beginning 

There were no concepts of necessary

to feel joyful

I just was

Perhaps it was when I started to listen,

To really listen, to the questions asked of me

I noticed

some of those questions were repeated

frequently;

by many

“Why did you do that?”

To my fresh mind

It was a ridiculous question

A playful ruse

to find value in absurdity

It was so nakedly obvious

To see what would happen of course

It’s taken me over a half of a century

to find my way back

to the beginning

To the pure delight of action

a desire to witness

What will change?

 like a firefly on a summer night

Predict the next spellbinding

Brilliant

flash.

End of Time

I could not cross the imaginary Rubicon without comment. You know; the ending of one year and the beginning of the next. 

Arbitrary as doing so may appear, our arrangement requires change of situation to motivate hope and cultivate trusting. 

If there were no end to misery, by any effort, then all would be an ocean of despair; a proposition that continues to resurface from time to time.  Winter is cold enough without such dark foreboding; we must find reason to mark a change; then imbue it with opportunity. 

I like that about us humans.

What a droll experience passing days without passion would be. I’m told confinement is much like that; it drives some mad; others are just driven away from a society that punishes its victims.  We’re here, on this very day, surveying the coming year with a sense of almost giddy promise; along with a sense of ache in loss as well.  For surely the change takes as well as brings, leaving life’s edges a bit more frayed; suddenly noticing seams no longer fitting as easily as they had in our youth.  I heard a phrase the other day that fed my trolling for irony.  Someone attempting to persuade another replied to the proposition as

  “You’re making empty promises!”

The advocate immediately replied,

   “Aren’t they all?”

There was a moment in time, when the idea of empty promises struck me as dishonest and insulting; revealing them as just manipulation would make me bitter since my conviction was one of promises being ironclad; where breaking a promise was the worst of offenses.   Time has seasoned me, as I know better.  Making promises is, I believe, a policy of wishful prediction.  That can be commendable from a point of view; to possess a vision where the promise is fulfilled to every rich detail of expressed desire in reward.  Yet, too, I am able to accept that none of us are in control of the future, so guaranteeing a concrete end state is an invitation into make believe at the best and dwelling in disappointment at its worse.

That is acceptable as well.  We make believe all the time.  There is a paradox asking which power is supreme?  Inherent power, that which you personally possess; or granted power, that which is bestowed upon you to use as you deem fit?  By and large the popular assumption is that personal power is the greatest for we alone weld its purpose.  But the question reveals the greatest misconception of all;  power has no master.  All our plans and schemes rely on our deluded assumption that we are in control of anything; that anything is inherently ours to claim or keep as ours alone.  It is only through suffering are we awaken to the impermanence of anything we hold safe or secure.  We are, after all, just tourist in this physical plan.  In fact, I might take this moment to add, the more we suffer loss, the closer we get to the actual nature of our being;  temporary.

So then, in that vein of consideration ~ along with a grain of humor for the effort ~ May I wish those who know me, and those with nodding acquaintance, all the suffering the year has to offer….then perhaps we can be sad together…until we find the humor of it all.   

Constant Craving

We lost our parakeet Nemo last night.  It was odd occurrence.  We had just returned from a vacation in Spain; Montse was cleaning and unpacking clothes as I was putting stuff away in my study.  I received a phone call from Rene, the woman who had been watching our cats and the bird.  She was distraught to inform me that our bird was dead.  She went on to tell me that Ramon (her husband) had just checked on the bird earlier that very night and it was fine; they had been telling it that mommy and daddy would be picking it up the next day.  Then, as they were preparing for bed, (it was near midnight) she made a last check and saw Nemo at the bottom of his cage; just hours away from homecoming.

He was nearing 13 years old....pretty good for a breed whose average life span is commonly just five.

  Alas, he was just a bird, but part of the tapestry I've grown fond to wrap up this affection I call my world in.  After conveying the news to my wife and reconciling that death was part of the overarching canopy we live under, I recalled an artist friend once telling me of the loss of her bird, Sophie.  I remember I was touched and wrote a piece on it:  I thought in tribute to all of us who invite pets to be our heart's neighbor, I’d share this much of me today.

Sophie's Gift (to life's circle)

The day is.

As the senses receive

The sun, the breeze, iridescent green leaves on bushes and trees familiar but names escaping retrieval remain unnamed.

Yes, the vestiges of spring, the heart’s delights of life reborn

The circle is visceral.

Yet still, the circumspect side has no season,

One to prepare, to harbor our grief and wait until we are dressed for the occasion.

Likened to a feather on the keyboard, reminder of lost flight

The empty place in our hearts, in our nest.

Ah, be forgetful my misery, of love's visit gone.

Special in a creature I knew not as well as I wished.

The traits, the colors, the very sound...only whispers in my recollection now.

Ah, how cruel this comes, so unexpected.

But is it my awareness that let it come as a surprise?

The circle is, and I knew it from youth.

I know glee of new found love, of joys and happiness in a thousand senses and experiences.

Can I be honest with myself and exclude the contrasting flavors awaiting my taste with nature’s ways?

Am I the master of this creation?

This world I carefully construct.

Adding an illusion here, dabbing one there.

I hold, no ~ I grasp upon such fantasy.

That only sunny days are in my spring.

A life of shimmering summer days riding motorcycles.

Ocean spray of speeding Sea-do's

Bar-B-Ques accented by smiling faces.

I am reminded in departures, of my quest to love more meaningful.

To practice kindness more often.

Be honest

To others

To me

The passing is testament that time is an illusion.

We only have now.

My love is here today.

Tomorrow will be the eulogy to the dedicated heart.

The devotion, the joy rendered in the association.

Alas, in passing we are given the great gift of awareness.

Of the dearness of loving hearts.

For us

Of our precious love in which we invest

To know

To behold

To live

Precious.....Cherished....tourist.

 

 It is a characteristic of condition; this ever-wandering mind.  It thrives on process; it demands fodder.  What we do in place of living, is cultivate drama.  So every second we acquiesce to that unquenchable thirst and ravenous appetite of the mind’s needs to chew on something; to figure out something beyond its control; are precious seconds that not used in savoring the present moment.