Don’t mistake the crowd for the truth; failing to fit in does not mean you’re broken.
Your horizons might extend further than your neighbour’s, your colleague’s, your friend’s; trust in your own eyes, let others trust in theirs.
With deference to Hamlet, might I add: there is also nothing either right or wrong, but truth to one’s self makes it so.
The greatest gift you can give another is a piece of your deepest self.
Not your time. Not your money; but something more precious still.
Is it understanding, or compassion, or attention that you offer? Is there a word bringing these together?
Love?
That piece you offer freely, that is the gift. You offer without reservation. You say ‘Do with it as you will’, though, of course, you hope and trust the other treads lightly.
And that’s the risk you take…
…and the pain you can inflict.
Set me adrift in the blackness,
Let me spin aimlessly like a homeless globe,
Traversing endless light-years without bearing.
Release me to the void.
To the black velvety comfort of a lightless horizon.
I see. I hear.
Nothing.
A selfish bastard denying the world. One final cowardly display of spite.
I spit at thee and shut up my eyes and ears to all thy photons and surfaces and waves.
You – life animate and inanimate – force me to understand; you squeeze my head until it pops.
And I say NO! NO MORE!
I do not understand. I do not see it. I do not hear it. I am dumb and selfish; dumb for not seeing, selfish for not wanting to see.
It makes no sense! And I know!
I am absurd and I can’t help it!
I feel the dark beckoning, offering infinitely more promise, more hope, more strength, than your cold, demanding, rational chaos.
I am selfish. I see. I hear.
Nothing.
Now release me, let me drop, so that I may go spinning, aimlessly, optimistically, through the blackest void.
Spent a lifetime talking to that metaphorical wall,
Beat my hands and head until they bled.
Through streaming tears pleaded desperately,
‘WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?’
Spent a lifetime talking to that metaphorical wall,
Until yesterday,
When I chose to listen.
Heed not too quickly the disapproving gaze, it may be the clearest proof yet you are on the correct way.
By showing up with hope to help others, I’m guaranteed that hope is present. Then my own hope increases. By creating hope for others, I end up awash in the stuff. – Anne Lamott
ILLUSTRATION BY ELEANOR DAVIS
Read her beautiful article in National Geographic’s October 2018 issue.
What did you want to be as a kid? I ask you – myself – what did you want to be as a kid?
Did you want to be a slave to your obsessions? To your insecurities? Did you want to feel trapped inside your own mind? Did you pine to be, just simply long to be, an outsider, misunderstood by others, misunderstanding them in turn? Did you wish to lose yourself?
If not these noble dreams, then what?
Maybe you didn’t formulate it. Maybe you failed to think it through. Think of it at all.
Youth was great. We were the lucky ones. I was a lucky one.
Strength of spirit and endless optimism and boundless hope. Enjoying life as it came, sharing experiences with friends and family.
Games.
Hikes and canoe trips and watching TV on Mom’s bed.
Oh, the antics and joyful shit devised with friends!
Christmas.
Shooting hoops outside and swimming in freezing pools. We didn’t need vacation. I didn’t need vacation. It was all – all – right there.
Well…
not all.
No. Not all.
I remember like yesterday walking my street alone, or with a buddy, in the early morn, on the way home. Sometimes drunk, yet always completely sober. And dreaming of nothing, and of everything. This, this whole world was mine, and I loved it, and it loved me.
The stars were so bright on these nights. And when not, then only for the light of the full moon, lighting the gray road and loose stones of the shoulder.
Yellow dashed and solid lines. Black threads of tar filling cracks. Can you feel it? The roughness of the asphalt and the gummy tar and the smooth paint of the dividing line as you slowly jog barefoot down the middle of the road?
This was my road, illuminated by my stars, and the moon, the moon was my deepest friend, my….confidant. And I was so aware, so very aware, of myself, and my feet on the solid ground.
Optimism.
Unbridled hope.
The houses housed guests asleep in my world. I was content they were there. Live and let live. And they let me live.
As did my mother. She let me live. And my father. He let me live. Hell, they encouraged it…life…and me, in whom they had faith. And my sister too. Perhaps she came to see I was a viciously free spirit, stubborn, passionate. Arrogant. Oh so arrogant! Not with aggression, nor malice, nor sickening self-pride.
But arrogance in my optimism and self-confidence. And why not? For me, I was the king of my world, this sleeping, trodden street.
On my road. On my road. Arrogant happiness and naivety. Walking on my road. Ask me anything. ‘What would I like to be?’ HAHA. What a silly question. Can’t you see, I am content right here?
What did you want to be as a kid?
In all honesty: nothing precise. Nothing defined. The wind perhaps. Yes, that’ll do.
I wanted but to remain in that blissful state, forever.
It was all right there.
And yet…
it wasn’t.
And now the roads are all foreign. The stars, well they don’t shine as bright. And my feet don’t trust the shifting ground.
I say live and let live, but I don’t understand the rules of life.
And I have a family, kids, a wife. I have a job, a car, responsibilities.
Birthdays.
Graduations.
Report cards.
Football games and bush-craft.
Laughter.
Tears.
And I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.
Well, maybe one thing: to have it all as I have it now, but to have me included. Yes. Me included.
But who am I? I am here, in this form, behind these walls, writing these words. But a part of me is back there. On that road. Where it all made sense.
A part of me walks that road every single night.
A part of me has never left.
Optimism. Unbridled hope.
What do I want to be?
My answer: nothing. But to have that peace again, in whole. To see those stars again, as bright. To be guided by that moon again, back home. To find me again, barefoot, on solid ground.
Arrogance is bad. Arrogance grounded in ignorance is even worse.
Independence may be a defense from the truth, a form of self-righteousness and silent arrogance.
Don’t seal yourself from the world, and claim superiority.
We may be our own worst (or forgiving) judges, yet removed from the tempering wisdom found only in human contact, our judgments lack facts.
A mind turned inward fails to recognize its reflection in the arena of social interaction.
The eye can’t see itself.
No one is an island.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. – Henry David Thoreau
I’m not reaching out. I’m not playing the victim. I’m not drowning in self-pity (though my knees are definitely wet).
I’m reaching inward. I am fighting. I may be drowning in tears of frustration, sadness, hope, joy. I am suffering, but I am not only suffering. I am healing. Slowly, methodically, not always patiently, always hopefully.
I am reaching deep within. There is a drain that needs unclogging, a blockage that needs removing. It doesn’t flow. It doesn’t flow.
What doesn’t?
It. My breath, my optimism, my confidence, my self-esteem, my thoughts, my life. In short: my essence. It is laboured, shallow, unclear, overgrown.
It doesn’t flow.
I reach inward to purge myself of the undergrowth, the overgrowth, the malignant growth. I pull out all the doubt, the fear, the regret, the neglect, the loathing, the contempt, the anger and hate and jealousy. I excise the insecurity, the arrogance, the apathy, the dregs of my soul.
I pull it all out and assess it honestly; laid out before me, splayed and dissected and arranged in subjective orders only my mind can fully comprehend, I reward myself the final judgment.
GUILTY!
For crimes against my person – death.
Now GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!
And after the stinking fetid shit – the rotting carcasses of my demons – is carted away, buried in pages and posts and amateur journals, covered in virtual soils of obscurity and indifference, I can finally breathe. In, out, in, out, free, with ease, the soothing airs of health and optimism.
Listen here.
Healing doesn’t have to look magical or pretty. Real healing is hard, exhausting and draining. Let yourself go through it. Don’t try to paint it as anything other than what it is. Be there for yourself with no judgement. – Floating around Twitter and Facebook
I am an old soul.
I weep at the beauty of woodland paths,
of slanted sunbeams breaking through autumn canopies,
and falling, twirling, dancing leaves of red, orange, yellow and brown.
I love this world.
And my existence.
The animals in the forest,
I know they are there. And that suffices.
The trees, the streams, the moss wreathing jutting rocks of granite.
Birds. Deer. Mice.
Insects and worms and peeping frogs.
Paths. Worn, fresh, or to be made.
Blue skies.
White clouds.
The breeze. Wind and rain and sleet.
Gently softly falling snow.
The cold.
Flowers and grass and reeds and the call of the blackbird in the swamp.
The distant ovenbird and piercing screech of the hawk.
Fences, new and broken. Barbed-wire tacked to ancient trees overgrown by gnarled trunks.
Time.
Passing days and months and years.
The ticking clock on lazy Sunday afternoons curled up warmly in the silent comfort of Grandma’s house.
Feeling safe. Secured. Loved. Complete.
I am an old soul.
And I can’t picture my life without you.
There are words to capture how I feel,
I have lowered my caloric intake to zero
To discover what they are.
My mind and body are one,
Starving for nourishment,
Twisting into hungry knots.
What matters in this state?
This life is all I get,
And I fill it with emptiness;
Cardboard cutouts of complex carbohydrates,
And two-dimensional emotions.
In this hunger, there is clarity,
Moments and seconds filled with epiphany,
The animal, the rock, the clouded sky,
Atoms carrying wind whipping my shaven face,
Making it clean.
I have cried twenty kilos of thought and emotion and soaked the parched ground of my soul.
To bring me back into harmony with this universe,
To nurture and let grow the blissful blossoms of my heart,
Opening optimistic avenues awaiting exploration,
I carry lightness and vitality and strength and
Forgiveness.
Born into this world alone,
Alone I shall die.
I forgive.
I forgive you.
I forgive myself.
Silence reason and there, within
A fruit of consciousness and reflection,
Pushes like a force against the walls of the mind,
Like the beauty of a cloudless morn,
Something indescribable.
On another plane,
When you were young, paddling
A warcraft canoe with your dad – captain,
On Frog Lake in the failing light,
Toward your amphibious haven.
And oh the sound! Of fiberglass on sandy shore.
Of kindling crackling and flame warming.
And oh the smell! Of steak and onion and pine-needle carpets.
Of supping and talking and laughing and thinking.
And the sight…the sight,
Of two people on a log, and a dog
In the bush on a bed of moss.
Tired. Cold. Afraid.
Lying there you listen
To his breath, its rhythm.
As an anchor in the storm of your mind,
You sleep.
Sitting still in the afternoon sun,
This fruit of consciousness and reflection,
Pushes like a…
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Outside a café by the central bus station.
Wasps. A gentle breeze stalling their forward propulsion. They hover, drawn to the foamed milk and cocoa powder topping my cappuccino.
Enlightening places: central transportation hubs. A congregation of humanity’s diversity: addicts; homeless; drunkards clasping and gulping bottles of warm beer; schoolkids travelling home from school; workers in dirty work pants and black heavy-soled boots; housewives pushing carriages of napping babies; immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe; bikers and walkers and taxi-cab drivers; old retirees in white Velcro sneakers and dated threadbare dress pants and sport jackets; the low, the lower middle, the middle classes; the working classes; students; artists; the down-trodden; the hopeful; the resigned. All jostling, vibrating, moving lives and lifetimes, stories, criss-crossing, weaving paths back and forth and back again on the concrete canvas.
And me. Another node of carbon-based molecules connected by infinite invisible threads to the world around. Inhaling. Exhaling. Respiring the same gas as the drug-addict missing her two front teeth; as the Arab hairdresser speaking a strange tongue to a friend on the threshold of his shop. Shooing wasps from my drink. Smiling inwardly at the too-fat pigeon waddling underfoot for crumbs.
A crippled man passes. The click-clack of a cane. And a woman on an old cellular phone.
Here’s one with cigarette in hand, shawl wrapped warmly, multi-coloured polyester handbag fit snugly into elbow’s crook, texting all the while, as she pauses briefly at my table, puts her bag – still looped over her texting arm – down on the seat, cigarette pressed between lips, and rummages through.
Do they know? Do they know I see them? I really observe them? I study them? I think of them? I remember them? For now. For today. And perhaps longer still. Do they know, they have become a part of me?
Now two ancient nodes have joined my table. Prehistoric lovers. His teeth perfectly pearly white. She wearing rouge on her once flawlessly beautiful, now wrinkled, and still beautiful cheeks. Wedding rings. Umbrellas. He making jokes. She barely smiling, barely giving an inch, but still giving that inch: yes, she’s heard them all before. Two ancient prehistoric lovers.
The pigeon waddles past. The breeze becoming a wind forces the hovering wasps to the eaves. Overhead a flock of city birds circles. Rested, the two stand, hand in hand, and depart.
Twenty-four fountains. Spitting vertical spouts of clear water a foot high. Each stream pulled down on itself by gravity; unfurling liquid ferns held together by surface tension. At the tip of each transparent crystal frond quickly accelerating towards Earth’s center, fracturing and division as multiple single droplets break free; the droplets pit patting, pit patting, pit…pit…patting, the grey concrete paving stones. Tapping out a plot, a rhythm rich in meaning, just for me.
Twenty-four transient translucent authors, communicating amidst the jostling bustling hive of unaware humanity. Secretly, just to me.
Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints...
Just your average PhD student using the internet to enhance their CV
Simple ~ Solid ~ Super-Small
My journey through shadows and back again to mental health in words and images.
Past+Present. World Legends Reloaded+Retold. Martial+More.
Philosophy Is Self-Improvement
Dispatches from the edge
Conquer New Paths.
Musings and books from a grunty overthinker
Using my voice to open up communication for individuals who are victims/survivors of child sexual abuse.
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frightfully wondrous things happen here.
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Ending my silence
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