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.
With my fingernails broken I scratch,
Every single hidden crevice and patch,
Until I, tediously excavating the last,
Finally from this space move past.
And yet with doubt constantly plagued,
Trapped wild beast mercilessly caged,
In my head the war bloodily waged,
Inane, insane, engulfed, enraged.
Have you yourself lost in loops been?
Thoughts’ ends and beginnings unseen?
Round they wrap choking tendrils keen,
Life to degrade, destroy, demean.
Life is suffering, so I might as well
Live my life in this self-made hell.
Your head may shake, yet can you tell
If your four walls aren’t but a cell?
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.
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.
I apologize in advance; I don’t want to bore you with these things. I know sooner than later I will be speaking alone to the abyss; my voice a fading echo traveling through stale air, reaching no ears.
Nobody will hear.
The pain, the fear. I want to run. Faster than the wind outside these walls. As fast as light. Maybe then I could assure escape from these heavy leaden thoughts weighing in the back of my head.
Have you ever felt invisible hands choking your neck, squeezing out infinite tears from below your eyes?
‘Look, it’s not so bad,’ they say. ‘At least you have your health.’ ‘Your youth.’ ‘Have not lost a child.’
Indeed.
But as surely as I cannot experience the world from your perspective, you can’t from mine. And yet I try, and ask for you to understand.
Here I am, at 4 am, waking, shaking, drenched in freezing sweat, hands fumbling, searching frantically for the light, terrified, desperately fumbling, frantically searching for the light.
Oh, that there were monsters under my bed, as when I was a child. Oh, that the rays of light could dispel these choking fears. Old habits die hard; my searching, fumbling hands. The light, like your words, is cold comfort.
The monsters are in my head.
To run. Faster than the wind outside these walls. As fast as light. Maybe then…
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.
Stop feeding off my pain. I cannot take it any longer. The burden, the weight, is far too great. I am no longer your scapegoat, your bearer of misfortune. My pain cannot heal you. I am not your savior.
Though I love you,
I need my strength for me. For me and for them.
(When my son hurts I care for him. I tend his wound, soothe his ailing body. How is it I know what to do?
What of his inner pain? How do I care for that?
When he cries out in pain, I hold him. When he can’t sleep for fear, I reassure him. When he looks down at his feet, reluctant to face the world, I cup his chin in my hand and lift his face toward mine. When he needs me, I am there for him. But even he…even he must someday care for himself.)
I avoid what should be done.
What must be done? What must be done?
(And by must I mean should, as should demands a moral choice: No other choices have meaning. To live with meaning, then, one must choose what should be chosen).
Care for myself as I would my son.
Not so deep within lives a little boy. And when he is afraid, he screams out so loud. A deafening, piercing wail. Screams to be saved.
Silent now. Do you hear him?
The fear of pain becomes the pain.
Fear of loss, of regret. Fear of mistakes. Fear of making an active, as opposed to a reactive, choice.
Through all this. Thirty-five years six months and four days later. That seems to be what I have learned. It all comes down to this: becoming a mature adult man, father and husband and citizen of this world, requires a choice.
Make a choice! Shoulder responsibility, or, rather, make responsibility my own.
I have avoided choices. Certain painful choices. Particularly risky choices. I fear an uncertain future. I sacrifice my present to the morning, but the morning never comes.
I fear an uncertain future, and the morning never comes.
Day in. Day out. Month after monotonous month.
The autumn breeze blows in winter’s chill. Melting ice reveals nodding snow bells, bowing to summer’s rising sun. Around, and around, and around this globe turns in its celestial ellipse. And I, my childlike existence, twirling and spinning and twisting limbs akimbo, orbiting my hard choices, year after bloody year.
(There are only so many seasons the flowers will bloom before these lights go out, and I feed the roots of next spring’s annuals).
I hover in childlike existence. I wait for someone to make the choice. To take it. To move the waltz along. I am not yet finished the dance, the high school wonder. I haven’t yet the courage to take her hand; or to turn my back. I haven’t the fortitude to say yes, to say no. Or anything much, at all.
Days into months, seasons into years; and there it is, nonchalant, uncaring, oblivious. Passing, turning, passing and turning.
Oh how the days pass me by, and the seasons turn their back on me.
And aging.
Thirty, Thirty-one, Thirty-two, Thirty-three. Now thirty-five. Now thirty-five and six months. Now thirty-five and six months and four days.
And it, nonchalant and uncaring, passing and turning. The seasons of my life, orbiting the hard choices, my choices, waiting for someone to make them.
Waiting for me to take them.
It is slowing down.
The letters, the words,
only now a trickle.
A sign of change.
Healing, optimism? Or the opposite:
resignation?
This….this is my life.
This is my life?
Resignation.
Someone, oh someone pick me up!
Bathe and clothe and nurture me.
Point the way, or better yet, take me there.
Oh, someone please pick me up!
(I scream into the Abyss and only I can hear).
I have shed a million tears. And I am still right here.
I only move if you push me.
I will shed a million more. Fill this room to overflowing.
And I will not swim.
And I will sink.
And I will be right here.
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.
Check song out here.
Treaty
I am a play-acting leader wandering aimlessly,
Trudging up and down each ridge and valley,
Marching headstrong on twisted paths unknowing;
Eager to say ‘Here is the way, follow me.’
I set off young, ill-equipped, and eagerly,
To a distant snow-capped peak I aimed to journey,
Heavy burdensome pack filled to overflowing;
Doubt, inexperience, arrogant insecurity.
In each palm five tiny digits clasped firmly,
My delightful, loving, innocent responsibility,
Yet cradled deep within another growing;
Swaddled in armoured layers deceptively.
I now know I am the king of a fortress nursery,
Revealed to me by their lips curled mockingly,
To veiled contempt, through muffled laughter owing;
They all scorn the child I refused to see.
Now too great the burden’s intensity,
A suffocating pack and no hands free,
Foundation’s cracked, there is no more going;
Deep within a child cries desperately.
In this storm of clear and urgent necessity,
Heed those mocking faces – growth requires honesty –
King’s garments stripped as the tempest continues blowing;
I, reborn and naked before you, stand awkwardly.
For eleven years we stood side by side, drifting on the surface of a mirror lake.
Eyes cast down, we mistook our reflections for reality.
And as we drifted toward the approaching falls, the surface remained smooth, unbroken, for we drifted imperceptibly.
In and out of silent coves, we failed to register the shifting shores.
And then there was one more who joined us. And another. Two new reflections appeared and we both tilted our heads.
And as seen from without, as by an observer to the unfolding plot – fate, say – there would be no doubt: they apprehended the reality of those new souls, and it filled them both with joy, real and undiluted.
And with love.
Eyes fixed on our children, or cast down on unbroken reflections, we failed to register the shifting shores.
And then, as seen by fate, they picked up speed. Unaware. Minutes dripped into days and days into months, and then the years, passing without break, without mercy, without warning.
So it was. The slow drifting became a swift advance, and we, mere passengers on a rudderless raft, convinced we had control, trusting our deceiving eyes and the distending reflections being swept swiftly along.
Hand in my hand, her arm began, is if made of rubber bands, to stretch, pulling with an unseen power away from me.
Her body, elongated horizontal, being sucked into the nearing vortex.
And we, convinced this distorting reflection made sense. Looking, to either side, at playing, growing happy children. Mixing reflections and reality. It all made sense.
And now, her arm is so long. The fingers intertwined with mine growing ever thinner, narrowing to nothingness, approaching the horizon of no return, sucked, pulled unknowingly, terribly into the gathering torrent of the approaching falls.
And still that distending reflection was all we knew of each other. And it made sense.
Head bent. Children playing in the sunshine.
And now her body a distant point. Distended from my perspective as to be unrecognizable. I see the shifting shores, fleeting now to blur, too late my desperate lunge, pitiful attempt at self-preservation. I plunge over the falls.
Now nothing but air and water, air and rocks, in a tumbling kaleidoscope of chaos.
And looked at from without, by fate, mother and father extending wings soft and strong. Wings not meant to fly, for nothing can rescue them from this plunge. But wings to protect, to shelter, the only real thing left, knowable. An act of pure instinct and love. Wings unfurled and then immediately furled, wrapping soft protection, cocooning the children.
Coming up. Gasping. My hands palms upward break the water’s surface. Between my fingers, a memory. The reflections on the water scattered continuously in bursts of churning bubbles, sparkling light.
Through the thin wings enwrapping, the children see and sense, yet cannot comprehend this different world.
And I, desperate to find my bearings, head bobbing, eyes no longer cast downward, but seeing as if for the first time. Wings wrapped protectively, I search timidly.
And here, on distant, barely perceptible shores, rising and falling as I bob in place, her body rematerializes from the ether, organized web of light.
Seen from without, he looks at her. Eyes no longer cast downward. He looks at her. And for once he sees her, but fails to discern the direction of her gaze.
What is my problem?
I can’t control this anymore. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out. A million times let it out.
Do you want to be that person? No?
Let it out. Let it out. You don’t need control. Let it out. Let it out.
Let go of the control. You don’t need control. You don’t need control.
People get hurt; let it out.
People make mistakes; let it out.
One year, three years, one hundred years; let it out.
Oh my pride; let it go. It hurts, oh my pride. My pride it hurts; let it go. Oh my pride. Let it go.
Alone in this meaningless universe. But not really alone. No heaven, no hell, no god to guide me. Alone. But not really alone. Who shall lead? Me?
So insecure in myself; so very unsure. Why on my heart did you tread? Why?
Let it go. No why. Let it go.
No why! Let it go!
I shall lead or be led – no control, no pride, no insecurity, in this meaningless world. Let come what may. I shall lead or be led. No control.
Let that all go. Let that all out. Open the gates and watch the flood, the stress of a million doubts wash the barren plains of the soul. Cleanse the spirit with the deluge of doubt. Put it to good use for once.
Watch it go.
How beautiful!
How liberating!
Let it go.
Just because it hurts doesn’t make it bad. And pleasure can be an insidious companion.
Addiction may bring ecstatic release; enlightened dedication, anxious suffocation.
The devil wears many guises, and a rose sits atop a ladder of thorns.
I am sorry for the things I’ve done, of which I was aware,
And I am sorry for the things I’ve done, in my ignorance at the time.
But I am sorry more for the things I didn’t do, the things I didn’t do, the things I didn’t do.
I didn’t know – to be sorry makes little sense –
and I don’t care.
(In my poem I am allowed to be a god, and to render an apology for things I didn’t know)
(In my poem I am allowed to be a god, and to take all your pain. I am your saviour, because I want to be … and to render an apology for things I didn’t know)
————————————————–
What does she want?
————————————————–
I am sorry for the things I didn’t do, I didn’t do, I didn’t do.
(In this poem I am a god…and yet, I still don’t know)
There a seed, and a little tree. There a brook, and rolling rocks. I see sky and birds and fluttering monarchs. I hear the field frog sing. There, moths circle the light, and congregate around the bulb, while dusk brings the chorus of crickets to life.
I rest my feet in the coolness of the lake and watch as the fish, like shadows of airplanes, soar beneath.
Not only in the air can one fly.
This world is as deep, and as lovely, as her eyes.
Simply a former Mormon discovering the wonders of the universe
Political Skeptics
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Philosophy Is Self-Improvement
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