Learning To Love Yourself (more) pt. 23

Be good to yourself.

Be good to yourself.

And the world just sort of slips away and is replaced by nothing.  A dark space, the body is floating and there is nothing all around.  Slowly the stars come into view and you realize where you are.  Floating, drifting through the matter of time and space before it is set to a field of limit.  

In this space that isn't space but just is you tell yourself, 

what is good?

No answer comes only a feeling to be mediated on.  Where bad is bad, dropping below zero and holding a negative value to the holder and causer of such things you have good, this thing you are reaching for.  But rather than reaching for it with your mental arms what if you transform those arms into good, what if you transform yourself into good.  You are breathing in good and breathing out good.  A flash hits you, nothing could be this good, you think of too much ice cream and apple pie, you think of something too sweet that turns your stomach a sour and how it hurts coming out.  That was too good for my stomach.  But you are mistaken, that is an artificial kind of good, what we are talking about right now is a good that transcends the value of positive, better, sweet, and even beautiful, it just is.  Letting yourself stop thinking and breathe deep and deeper you feel something.  Before you realize what it is, you bring a thought that brings the definition, the label on such a feeling, stop yourself, hold on to this ambiguous feeling, it is rushing through your body and mind and what it is matters not just letting it be.  And in this, we are being, be good.  Be good.  Repeat, be good.  Breath deep now, exhale, be good.  And let the world fade to darkness.  

What is being good?  What is that feeling you get when you do something good to others?  Who are you when you are good?  Do you like yourself, do you feel content, do you feel stronger, truer, and beautiful? Let's push aside our demons, let's not fight them, but make peace with them, be good to them, and realize they aren't demons after all, in fact they are ANGELS, yes, angels with horny heads and fiery red flesh, and eyes that pierce the soul.  They are angels.  And they will fly away, say good bye, and then close your eyes.  You realize the room around you, you realize you are not alone, and you can't remember who is in there with you.  Can you trust these people, how many were there again (idontknow)?  You tell yourself not to fear them.  You hear one get up and what sounds like him or her move closer to you before sitting down again.  Another shuttle and even a cough.  The cough has no gender and you wonder, who is there?  Your eyes are still closed and almost shut, you can open them whenever you're ready but you aren't yet (you haven't found what you are looking for).  And what is it you are looking for?  Answers?  To what questions?  

What if all the answers are within you?  What is you already know and that you have to train your mind and heart to believe that which you feel is true.  To push aside the EGO and the voice of others to hear your own, the own that has been buried from the debris of life.  Try hard to find this voice, this feeling, this piercing feeling without a face.  It may happen just now or over years, but never give up for it is very much there.  Try hard to fight the sadness the doubt the fear for they are as real as the day that only fades away into darkness and that is replaced the very next day.  Try to remember that they are superficial and hold no truths about you.  

If the universe is within us, then the answers we ask for or question not are in us as well.  Look for the crack.  And exploit it when you find it.  And once you've done that keep it to yourself, but spread the good either way.  Make someone's day, week, month, year, and after that, make their life.  Help them remember.  And help them never to forget ever ever ever ever ever again.  

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 22

THERE IS NOTHING MORE TRUE THAN THE WELL-AWARE SENSE OF YOUR GUTS.  By guts I mean heart and by heart I mean intuition and by intuition I mean your soul.

There is something that seems to cloud my awareness of this and I'm pretty sure it is ego and assumption.  There isn't a feeling in those cases I think, "I don't know if I'll ever like this person, they smell, they speak too loud, and they say rather unintelligent things that lack any humor to them."  And then we're friends, drinking beers, howling to the moon, and I realized I was soooooo wrong.  I don't blame myself for thinking this way, nor do I see it as bad, we all have assumptions, and like assholes, they all stink (not really).  What I am trying to really get at here is that assumption, these decisions made by the ego, etcetera are never very strong, you never touch that burning feeling.  That feeling, "Yeah, maybe I shouldn't get involved with this or that thing or person because I KNOW, deep down inside of me, that it won't work."  And yes, you can be seen as a coward for never trying, but fuck those people who think that, dem yo guts, not theirs.  Roll with it homie.

(I didn't mean to make this a self-help article)

I often write when there is a surge of overwhelming thought and emotions, I can try to force words on the off-season but they end up as drafts never to be published or things kinda like this, that don't go anywhere.  So in that case, I often write when I'm either really sad for some reason or that I'm happy, seeing someone, or something (I see trees from time to time).  If my heart is into that something then I'll write, I can't help it, for what I have inside is something too complex too grand for a few shared words, I need to attempt at a novel, get it all out, and document it through words that hover between fiction and experience, but all true.  When there aren't words flowing out of me but that something is there, with me, I try hard to write, I try hard to make it work, and ultimately, Guts.  Yeah man, guts.  The coin has been flipped, it has landed on the palm and flipped to the wrist, and the palm lefts and reveal the coin's facing side, and yet I struggle to create emotion, feeling, and attachment just as one were to force that coin that has already fallen to flip over to the other side.  I should start saying goodbye to these somethings by saying, "See you on the flip-side".  Those somethings will say back, "What?", "Where are you going?", "Why are you smiling, aren't you sad that things didn't work out."  And I'll say, "Nah-nah-nah likeitwaspartofacatchysong, I'll be quuuuuuuuuite fine", as I wave with my hand behind me, with that something behind me, with my past which will forever be dead behind me.  A grand Smellyalater and tah-tah.   My guts, man, like a man polishing his favorite gun in his man shack late at night while his wife and kids are asleep, I look to my guts and go, "We should had some fun over the years, what would we do without each other?".  With me and the married man as the holder, the taker on these adventures, and the gun, the guts, being the trusty device that pulled through, worked every time, youbetyourass, and thus the relationship grew blood, the two being one.  

How well do you know your gut?  How well can you separate the static of the mind and false assumption from that piercing feeling of, "yaiknow", "iknowalright", and "ihaveneverfeltsososorightaboutit"?  

Are you training your gut, working it out, studying it, and seeing how it reacts when life throws some variables?

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 20

(Kevin on the Fire Escape, 2011)

Nothing Is.

If it doesn't matter it won't happen.

Before you is the air of your life and it is in reach of your hands. You can grab it if you wish but something is stopping you. You can't quite move and even your voice doesn't seem to want to speak. You're not frozen but are completely still as if something cut the connection from your brain to your hands and vocal cords. If you search deep within yourself you know what may be the cause of this but you care not too acknowledge it.

Like a shadow it has been following you for almost eternity. Over the years it has been growing stronger as you push it further away from you and your thoughts. Not letting it enter and ruin a good mood as you push on. But it follows you and it knows where you live and it knows who you are seeing. And worst of all, it wants to meet them all, it wants to interrupt a perfect evening party with close friends or that special someone walking naked into an intimate setting and completely ruin the mood. It will if you let it. And that's the whole thing, you have been fighting it forever. You haven't won but you haven't lost and perhaps you will never rid yourself of it. But this is not the end nor do you have much reason to fall to its power.

Your doubts, your fear of rejection, and its permanence in your condition are obstacles but taken on a case-to-case approach you can push on and you can conquer them. You may not win every time but you most certainly won't lose either. The air of your life is in front of you, you are sitting down with your hands on your knees and looking forward. You are thinking of running and you are think of getting up but you're not sure what is ahead. You try hard to focus your eyes well enough to see vague objects and the edge of the horizon but they are just blurs (you must go closer to see them to see for sure). The phrase, "Leap of Fate", in this case is more of a marathon of fate, and fate isn't some divine manuscript but your own will and your own destiny. And though you may feel powerless at times and though it may be too much and that you have too little these are just illusions. Your mind plays tricks on you. Your heart does too.

Your bum feels light after you lift up from your seat. Your fists grab the air before you and swing down towards the earth violently. Your legs begin to pace forward graduating at speed as a crawl turns to a walk turns to a light then medium jog and the jog turns to a galloping run. Something fires off in your mind as if there is something life-threatening scary behind you and you run like you are running from the devil himself. But there is no fear in your heart as you push yourself you're just running crazy. The wind starts to scream by your ears. Your breath becomes hard and your legs light. And soon that horizon starts to take shape. You are having a moment of clarity. Things such as failure, doubt, and regret are non-existent for now. The feeling is good, at an utmost positive and the reality is: Nothing Can Stop You.

Carry on, burn your legs and grab that air. Look all around you, your movement makes this world and makes it possible. Without you there is nothing. Never forget that. Nothing is the opposite of you.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 19

The Future/The Past

Once, twice, three times a charm.

In a moment, in an open gas station, with stained concrete, cars passing by on a highway turnout, and the ding of pressure hoses being ran over an asian man with long hair, in a red vest, slim wore jeans, and handsome face is walking back to his car. The car has been counting down this moment for its entire life, it was right before this asian man as the odometer ticked up the number of miles. It has reached its final mile. Something sparks inside the car, something that still to this day remains a mystery, and some electrical wire meets gasoline and they form an ignition, which in turn forms a fire. This man, wearing his vest, steps inside of the car, it has been on fire, from the inside of the engine compartment for over a minute, and he tries to start the engine but it is already going. Smoke bellows out of the hood, which is soon followed by flame, the man had already clicked into his safety belt, he struggles to free himself, his mind goes into survival mode, and the moment slows down. Small details like the crack in the windshield, the molding around the passenger side window peeling off, the smell of gasoline burning, the piercing bright sun engrossed in smoke, all heighten for this moment, all will be forgotten once this man escapes from the burning car, kneeled over breathing hard.

I don't remember ever being there when all of this happened, but in my mind I remember everything like it happened to me, I remember watching my father run from a burning car, over the years it has changed into a smoking car, an exploding car, but burning car is the most accurate to what really happened that day. The gas station is one off of Route 66 in Gallup, NM in my mind, it is the same one in southern Ontario where my father escaped a fiery death. I imagine him doing a barrel roll upon escaping the car, the car exploding, my dad's hair looking marvelous in the wind, in the slow motion of the scene, and I am there, as a three year old boy, looking at my father the same way I look at Arnold Schwarenegger in some awesome action sequence. And that memory of him was left unchanged somewhere deep down inside of me, where the three year old boy hangs out with all those things that slowly come back to me over the years. Mainly from smoking pot and having my childhood return to me in vivid representations. My father is far from that man of action now, he is old, somewhat grubby, somewhat amazing, and we don't get along, nor did we ever really. My definition of father is someone who was there when I was growing up, taking care of me, but showing love in a very mysterious and ambiguous way, it was there, but there was no face, it was just completely self-less, behind-the-scenes, done perhaps unintentionally.

Every time I see him I feel like a dick, that I'm a horrible son, and where I once thought I was a kind person, a caring person, at least my mother tells me so, and I used to feel like that, I am not. Some people are hard to be around, to be able to take them, for who they are, like opposing forces. There are some people that I absolutely get along with, that I feel totally comfortable around, and I am myself, the self that doesn't come out for 99.9% of people I meet, sadtosay, that there is this lingering feeling like I care so much to keep this alive I'll probably fuck it up by trying to hard to hold on to it. I can't, I can't hold on, it isn't mine to hold on to, that it will flutter away, the more I try to keep it down the more violent it rips out from my palms, and the farther it goes. Fuck.

There are 6.8 billion people out there, if I'm lucky I'll meet some high number in the tens of thousands in a lifetime, and even then that is a lot, that might just be too much, and I am going to be constantly changed by these people, coming in and leaving my life, always. For. Ever. There are traces of who I am, the essence or whateverthefuck it is, from all the people I ever met or known of, and even the people that the people I meet met that transcends through them into me. Where one great person is replaced by another, and to spite how stubborn I am, how much I just want this one, just this one, don't take this one away from me, waaah-waaah-waaannnn goes the baby, I can't, I just can't. And out of all the things that are shitty in life, that is the shittiest, saying goodbye without a bye, just an abrupt ending. And it isn't over then, no, they eventually get replaced by someone else, and all those feelings, all that they were that remains in you, as far as you can tell, is given a new face, a new body, and you carry on, oblivious to your past. I can say I put my foot down, but I can't, it isn't up to me.

My father survived that fiery car, I wasn't there, nor was I born yet, and if he had died in the car, and exploded with it, I wouldn't be here. And if my grandfather from my mother's side hadn't gotten stuck in that barbwire in Africa during the second World War, and his friend, who toured with him through Europe, who survived with my grandfather, hasn't gone ahead and gotten blown up from a land mine, I wouldn't be here either, neither would my mother.

The Point: Crazy shit has happened for me to get to this point, for whoever you are to come here, and for you to read this, to be alive, for me to be alive, for us to be sharing this moment, and hopefully the next. And we are not giving an answer to why this is significant, nor the meaning of life, but it is the fact that we are both alive, living in our respectable worlds, meeting people, watching the sun set and watching it come back up the next day. We are lucky to be where we are, to ever to have friends, family, to have fallen in love, or come close enough to it. We are lucky to have each damn moment into the next, and over and over, everything. So this is where I tell myself to stop being a bitch about ever, ever complaining for something, for wanting something so bad, and not getting it, I have no right, after all I had been given. Chillout man.

I fall asleep rambling tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow as Daisy's fog light glows through the night, forever, after seeing everything that happens in the Great Gatsby.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 18

(The House, The Bat, That Man, his Family, and Such a Horrible Thing-to-Have-Had-Happened, from We Soon Be Nigh!, 2011)

The Future is Uncertain

Today, yes today, right now, yes now, in this moment, with the sun shining, or the lack of sun shining, in this now when you are breathing, your eyes are open, and there is air around you, realize this, that air that surrounds you, is neither good nor bad until you give it a value. That this day is just the same, it holds no value until you give it one, and just like the outcome of today, it holds nothing until you wish it does. Perhaps not wish, but the mind chooses one. Hold tight, forget that you have no control over how you feel, what your day is going to be like, and just hold on to this feeling, a feeling of being able to change, and change, and change even after that. That you are able to make any day a good day, even if someone close to you dies, don't let that ruin anything, sure remember them, but remember they probably didn't want you feeling down about them dying, that if anything they wanted you to feel happy. Feel happy, whatever happiness is, just coat your vision, your feeling with the general sense of everything is going to be ok, everything is going to be good. You have to have hope for the future, even if you can't see it, it will happen, and when it does happen you have to be ready for it.

This future I talk of is something vague, ambiguous, formless, and bewildering, you can either fear it, or embrace its difference or lack of difference and see it as not a threat to your now, but an evolution. And in the process you will lose, you will lose hard, but lose something to gain something, and that my friend is knowledge, son, knowledge, in knowing that all your years of life has made you the best you could ever be, until the next few years pass, and then you'll be even better. Perhaps this is a statement with a view that progress is positive, let me strip that value of progress away, and leave it grey, blank, and uncertain again, and let you give it a value. If anything I want to be Patrick Swayze's hands guiding your Demi Moore hands as we form a pot, or rather what was going to be a pot before things got outta control, and we just went with it, making a love child of ceramic. That pot is our future, our hands are what weld that future, and what happens in-between is up to us. For me, it's thinking the Righteous Brothers are constantly playing in the background of my mind, making me feel good inside. They reach down to a point where my flesh is not the flesh of an adult but of a boy, a boy who knows little of the world but knows all he needs to know with his imagination. I traded probably half my imagination for fact, fiction, and science fiction and hold whatever remains deep down inside, not letting the world change that for a bit. What do you mean unicorns don't exist, nor ghosts, nor the devil, ridiculous!

(repeat after me)

I WANT TO BELIEVE. I WILL BELIEVE. AND THAT TODAY WILL BE A DAY OF BELIEVING, THAT THE FUTURE WILL BE A FUTURE OF BELIEVING IN, AND THAT EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK, NO, IT'S GOING TO BE EVEN BETTER, IT IS GOING TO BE AMAZING, WHATEVER MY DEFINITION OF AMAZING IS WHEN I GET THERE, WHEN THE FUTURE IS NO LONGER THE FUTURE BUT IS THE PRESENT, AND WHEN I'M IN THE PRESENT, THE NOW, I WILL GIVE IT A VALUE, I WILL GIVE IT A FACE, AND TELL THAT FACE, HEY YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL, BABY, YOU ARE MOST POSITIVE, AND I AM POSITIVELY ALL YOURS, AND IN EXCHANGE, YOU. ARE. ALL. MINE.

(A galactic high-five of kissing palms shake the space around it, this is as amazing as frightening, and for a time we remember when being scared was fun, like all ghost stories, our curiosity is stirred, it fills our bellies with mystery and uncanny uncertainty. Let's not stop believing, you and me, let's never stop believing.)

Floating in space is a child, or rather, a fetus, that has a face of a child, and eyes of an adult, and say that is us, our next step, and that we have made it, we have touched the void that is a large black monolith, and we have evolved beyond anything our past selves were. Sure I can be positive, see the world in a certain light, and hover in a state that is what I define as good, but the struggle is getting you to be there with me, to know that you are on the same page, I will try, I will continue to try, and all I want from you is to promise to me that you will try, and be, yes, to be, the thing that comes after trying, the becoming, you have become positive, you are able to hover, and that we are on the same page, seeing the world in two completely different ways, but have somehow defined it as being positive, good, better than before, getting better and better by the day, and as we see this growing peak, this constant of betterment, we see the future, yes, it is uncertain, and will always be, but this uncertain doesn't have to be this unknown that we fear, or dread, or rather not know because we don't care to think about the future, and what it may hold, no, this uncertainty has no value, it has no face, until you give it one. And perhaps that is for the best, to give it nothing, to let it exist as a formless, shapeless, void of void, and let our hearts and minds not sink, but be enlightened. To be intrigued, to even be enthusiastic about it.

Let's be enthusiastic without being blind, let's forget about old notions because they are old, the opposite of the new, and future-new. Let's piggyback on what we got to reach high enough to reach the stars. Yes, those giant balls of burning energy, those stars.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 17

(bye-bye there dear karla, 2011)

Slipping Into Infinity

Cut the bread with a chipped edge of a stone, fashion an axe with a piece of yarn. Crush the earth with your toes, feel the trees breathe (they're breathing). Run with the wildest, craziest, and bravest sons of bitches you ever known. See a million sunsets, live in this moment then live in that moment. Pretend your wings for adventure are heavy motorcycles, and your arms are twice as strong and barely fitting in your current arms. The world is your might, extend it, stretch it, destroy, and rebirth it. Take on giants, fuck everyone (fuck as in screw, I mean, to care not in what they speak of or believe in), and listen to what your dirty guts say. Sure this could be dialogue to a truck commercial, especially when I say all this with an implied southern draw. Now listen! (implied y'all).

The sky bends, stand tall, you've learned how to fall, now learn how to jump, to take a leap, to tower, and to soar, if only for moments, if only for this one time or that one time, and just live in a little. Bite the bullet, do anything that could not kill you, and do a few of those things that can kill you. Do everything you told yourself you would, once you were in a better mood for it, because fuck your mood, this is you, you call the shots, you are your mood, now go jump off something, go marry this guy, or that girl, or that idontknowwhatshehehimher, and just trust in your one only weapon when you are completely naked, lost and alone, in the woods, your survival. Howl if you have to, scream at the top of your lungs, you are wild, we are wild, let's get wilder. Make shit happen. And by all means, if something is holding you back, don't let it, if there's a face to your boundaries, make it the face of your high-school history teacher, why, because (s)he's history! And if that boundary has no face, give it one, not the same one as the last, you gotta be creative here, make it Albert Einstein, why, because he's history, that's right. He was really smart and all, but he was on another level, somewhere I'm not, but I get it, or at least I'm ...REACHING for it. REACH FOR IT. Envision your hand grabbing a pot-bellied fruit full of life and nectar, and juices and seeds, and guts, and squeezing it. At first it holds up against your attack, but then, boom, all of a sudden it explodes, seedlings everywhere, fruit guts all over your hand and clothes, and you feel something give in your hands. You hear a tambourine playing, then a techno beat, then electronic guitar, do-do-dah-nah, do-do-dah-nah, (yeah baby, you know what this is)

I GOT THE POWER!

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 16

(For Alex K (the picture, well maybe the words, but it's really meant for everyone, unlike the picture, it's really only for him, sorry, I'm not being an ass, he just really likes cows, and I think he's really great, in fact, you should check him out, not that it will ever substitute him, I'm just saying), 2010)

Sooner or Later

In time, even the devil gets tired. Imagine working day and night (though I think hell only has nights, and those nights are probably pretty well-lit by fires and stuff, which would appear like day), torturing souls, without end, I mean, that's a lot of work, even with a dark army of spiky red minions. Eventually, even the devil has to take a break, and when that happens, God only knows, but what probably happens is; he half-assly asks of his slaves of eternity to torture themselves for the day, week, maybe but not very likely, month. And at this point, the devil isn't this really scary dude you read about in the bible (or maybe you never read the bible, but you definitely heard a few good stories about some evil shit going down). The devil eventually turns into the worst boss ever, and he seems more human everyday. You start to notice he's also balding, and how he occasionally smiles when he gets your blood in his month, or how he is always looking off through his window to the Aboveworld, holding his head by his palm, endless staring and blowing smoky sighs. Hey, you tell yourself, he's not soo bad after all, and then he beats you with a fiery stick covered in bees, and you go, ouch!, but you live since you're immortal, no matter how hard he beats you, and you live long enough to even forget the devil is the devil.

There will be a day that this world isn't so hard, that sure you're still getting beaten down by demons, but it's not so bad, as you pick yourself up, and continue to live. And in all of this mess you call your life, you reach a point where there is hope, to spite all the darkness and blood-sweating walls that surround your everyday, you are relieved for a moment, and you remember something you forgot all about, you can taste it, and this taste sparks a charge of memory, that's it, you think, that is it, oh yes my boy (or girl), that this is what it feels to be in the good, to feel relieved, and just maybe, you are happy. Filled with jellybeans and honey, with powdered sugar lips that concave to all the stress and torment drooling out of your mouth. You are smiling now, donut feel good? and you tell yourself, yes, it does.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 15

(A View Looking Down That Mountain, from YOU BETTER WASH BEHIND YOUR EARS!, 2010)

Highlander

There can only be one for a few things, but let's not start on that lonely road right now. When there are flat circular stones to be thrown, and you have perfectly calm water that stretches on and on, then one must think if a stone could be so perfect, if your arm's strength to be so perfect, and the wind, and also the pitch of the throw, in a perfect universe. Imagine with me, if only for a moment of your time, if this said stone and your strength, and all other elements came together on something, and that something was put forth, and it passed all the trials, and it just kept going on and on, and on and on, on that journey through a perfect universe. The skies are always clear or overcast, or stormy, if you like things that way, and you can see for miles on end? And what if falling meant you floated softly back to earth, only when you wanted to return. What if the world and the many destinations that you dreamed of were at your finger tips (literally, you hand would close down and shallow the earth whole)? In a world so perfect, what if we all shared something so profound that we no longer fought, that we would listen into the stories of other people's lives and totally dig what they were saying, and that we were just one, one giant blob of flesh and endless connectivity. Being is believing, and knowing is not good enough. We need more, we need our hands to walk for us, we need our imaginations to be reality, and we need to fly, without planes, but with our minds, and jet-packs. We can still get hurt, we can still cry, but we will always smile, not forcefully, nor creepily always smiling, but genuinely and joyfully smiling. Why? Because we are so damn happy, we are good, you are good, we are great, we are grand, we are the world, and so-so-so much more. Can I get an Amen, can we get an Amen!

(Amen)

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 14

(untitled, 2010)

The Opposite of Falling

It is what we are once all these layers we carry peel apart and we are left in our flesh, and in the thickest of all, in our bloody truths. It's whether we stay the same once we know, whether the change of being clear and naked, if we see each other as something greater or flawed beyond our ability to repair. Perhaps that is too vague. When you see me with my true flesh, will you remain, and when you bare yourself of the colors and shades of who you really are, will I still remain. There is no answer to that, we either stay or leave, and both have their merit, I mean, after all, everything here is being spoken and done, truthfully. Sometimes the truth about someone can be so severe you become alienated by the once-familar and what lies before you. There is no passage to return to how things were, when things such as love vanish they tend to form into another. This other, is not the same, it is where an end, or death, means there is new life being born. With its first steps, its first sights; everything is new, and the old, that good ole feeling, that person who once was the barer of love is replaced by someone that much more truer. It is in failure we learn the truth. It is in pain we learn pleasure. And it is in forgetting we learn new ways to see our lives.

Where we once fallen, we are soaring, no, we are flying high above, no, it is something that can only come after great grief, pain, and suffering, it is earned, it is real, and it is the truth. It is the opposite of falling.

Learning to Love Yourself (More) pt. 13

(Welcome to the Jungle Pt. II, 2009)

UnDefeatable

1. Getting angry and getting frustrated seem like good ideas at the time but then when you eventually cool down they just look ridiculous.

2. Reason and reasonability seem silly too when you think of when you thought one way and now think completely differently. How can you trust your word when you're constantly changing your mind, it's like knowing yourself is knowing your greatest enemy (awkward small-talk at the urinal)

3. Sometimes lying can get you out of a bad situation, like lying your way out of getting your ass kicked. It is a means for survival, but why just let a lie or two stop there, why not use it to get people to like you. Just tell them the truth once in a while to throw them off.

4. Yes, survival. Like when your body becomes numb in cold weather, you wonder why your heart becomes numb after being broken (winter seems to get longer the older you get).

5. Good days happen, and when they do you realize it is a good day, with a smile, and you think positive about everything. ALL IS GOLDEN. You can lick the concrete for God's sake, everything is good. And it's because of all those bad days.

5 (pt.II). We constantly fall to be reminded how good it is to walk.

5 (pt.III). But as walking is a regular thing we do on a day-to-day basis, I should say we crawl, metaphorically speaking, we fall, and then crawl because we're half-afraid of falling again, and half-brave to walk and risk it all.

5 (pt.IV). And when we walk a good deal, it's hard not to feel good.

5 (pt. V). Now RUN!

6. I think we all need a partner (friend or other else) to hold their hand and promise to each other that we will help each other get through this*

*and this could be anything: a break-up, a death, a break-in, a bad day, a few things all at the same time, a quicksand pit, an apocalypse, or just a vague this that alludes to the universe of possibilities.

7. Sometimes the F-word could be a really great way to deal with one's problems, as simple of a solution it is, there is always something nice in the act of saying, fuck this*!

8. Man-up, Woman-up, kick the bucket, bite the bullet, and blow this popsickle stand (in a non-suicidal way), and make explosions happen (in a non-terrorist way). Ripe this, your, world apart, and make it a new asshole because this, and all of this, is yours, all your pain, all your guff, all your struggles, brother, sister, mother and father, are yours for a reason, to prove no to me, nor anyone else, but yourself, that you, and you alone (because we are all alone (Sartre)) on this, and it is your fight, it is your life, and your death, and you may only have this one and only life (Nietzsche), you get one shot (Eminem), so get up and get ready, rock this, and drop that, you got it going (on)(Marvin Gaye).

9. Because this.

10. Is it all: Before you, after you, and everything you, it means nothing, without you.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt.12

(My mother swims with a diver's weight belt and a knife, 2009)

W.D.Y.W.F.M?

What happens when the thing that once made you happy makes you sad? How do you deal with seeing their face, hearing their voice, and all of their gestures and imperfection that make them, them? Is it the contrast of who you once were, in a memory with them, in comparison with who you are today?

It hurts to know I used to dream more, that I saw a world with more possibilities, and had more enthusiasm. It is the before and after that gets to you, the knowing that the world was once greater and fuller of promise, and now all you have are memories with no real insurance of the future (oh, uncertainty). But what is left once all the cookies are crumbs? The answers aren't here today, and sure there is something to be learned from our past, but what I'm getting at here is that the future is where's it at. For shiny stars and futuristic landscape, where deer roam the field with robot-version deer, and where we picture ourselves happy again. Let yourself dream again, and escape this reality of today for another in future-tense. See the future as not something as far-fetch but as something that seems far-gone because it is that much different from today. And ultimately, see it as the opposite of how you see your past, and all your favorite memories to your detached present; letting the contrast fill you with hope.

Because it could happen, it could be true, and it isn't as ridiculous as wild as your imagination could be, or how your dreams see fit, because once we're there, in the future, it will no longer be the steps before us, and that once contrast will be the difference between yesterday and today. Once we're there, once we're happy again, and everyday starts with a burst of unknown excitement, we'll know we earned each and every moment of this and that, and everything; with each tear, and each fight, we earned the rite to be happy, to let our faces smile on their own.

Let the good times roll on.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 11

(School's Out (for summer), something of Bottomless, 2009)

If Only All Your Faces Were Pies, I'd Eat Them All Up

There is something absolutely beautiful in all of us. A character that makes us individuals, and in our time together learn the traits of others; with some we keep and others we leave behind. Over and over we become something closer to our history. Of all those we have known, their surfaces have scratched ours, and we have scratched theirs. They have rocked our very core, they have danced with our feet, taught us how to smile, and showed us how to live, and perhaps even to love. We are only examples of each other, picked and studied; fragments of everything and everyone, and what comes from all of this human wine-tasting is who we are.

Let's get back to who we are.

Try to pace your walk with a stranger, try to keep ahead of them by a step or two (as not to look like a creep that follows from closely behind), and keep them close. Slowly let them catch up to you, and walk with them for a while. Look around you ever so slightly and look at the faces of everyone in your sight; see them seeing you and your stranger as one, as something, and then look down to your feet, and look at the feet next to yours, and see if you are hitting the ground at the same time as them. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right (repeat).

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 10

(Mother, 2009)

Easier Said (Then Done)

It's that sorry that isn't as much a sorry but a word to fill the required response. Tell her anything, you no longer matter. Hold her hand, and think hard on something nice, something wonderful that is far from her pain and sadness. Speak on impulse, speak of hope. Tell her everything is going to be ok, and leave it at that.
But something's missing, she's still sad, she's still crying, and your heart aches the more, and the more. Power slips from your smile, your eyes are useless, she lives in her shadow, alone and lonely. Nothing to say, and nothing to do, but you cannot leave, nor do you wish to. Help her through this, take her pain in your body, and leave her empty of it. Run out the window, smash through the glass, and on to the street, taking your life in a Hollywood ending. If only, you think, if only you could...

This time will last, and it will fall. Her color will return, and the dark times will be soon forgotten, and in its place will be something you both missed, and both didn't realize how much it mattered. These are the good times, holding and holding on. These are the good times, taking in every last detail, for you never know how long it will last.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 9

(Mr. Wang's Cars, Untitled Landscapes, 2009)

Something Has Changed

It's that feeling of recovery, and aftershock leaving you as it evaporates into whatever matter it once was. You don't care, it is gone, you're different, you are change. The feelings you once had look ridiculous like concepts you developed as a child, and you laugh at how silly the drama once was.
The things you value so much may not matter, because you are the only one that values them as they oppose you, resist your love for them. How swift it can all change, how you can live passed it all, how you can even forget in time. All that matters is you are different, you have changed.
And deep down inside, something has changed. The once you is now you, and the once her or him is now just her or just him. No longer is there someone holding you from high above, feeding you hope, carry you by your back against the ground, throwing crumbs to keep you alive, you have pulled your shirt clear, perhaps even ripped it from your back, the air fills the naked gap and your hairs point up to an attention that your body is now independent. Your flesh no longer registered to the hand at one singular point. It feels free; relieved of burden we place on ourselves, as we ask, why all the games. You no longer have anyone to blame, nor can you blame yourself, as matter turns into air, and what has happened, happened.
Your structure is high above as you walk with feet your forgot were your own. No more questions to the unknown for they will never answer. Walk the earth, and live. Something has changed. It really has.

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt.8

(As His Heart Pounds, She Lost Him, from The Untitled Collaboration of Brendan George Ko and faye mullen, 2008)

Lead-Hearted

There’s a repetition in life, where you experience the same thing over and over, and yet you survive. Over time you become tougher, ready for heart break, but each time it takes a little more, even if you can’t afford to lose it; there it goes. Each time makes another failure, and you ask yourself over and over, why did I let myself be a victim. Don’t feel bad, nor feel like you have failed to learn the lesson because there is nothing to be learned. You are still pure, and your heart, no matter how many times you tell yourself your chest is a void, an absence where your beating heart once was, you still got kick, and you still got love inside of you. You will be beaten more, and more until you reach the end of what you think you have, and yet you still keep on going. I admire this about you, because your strength is beyond most. Every time you fall you get back up, and you continue to fight for happiness day after day. And as long as you continue, I will too, because we need each other in the struggle. Truth be told, it is the struggle that makes it all worth the while, and the challenge to make it sweet and victorious when you get there. Keep going, and never be beaten too hard, you still got fight, and if you don’t believe in yourself, for what it’s worth I believe in you. So keep fighting, keep going, until there is nothing left, and hope for one day it won’t be like this. Until that day, you are brave, you are strong, and you will outlast them all. Head forwards, and still smiling, hold to your dreams, hold to your heart’s desires because they are the only thing that makes sense when life is a mess.

In Search of the Single Thread That Makes Everything Fall Apart

Letting go is impossible. There will always be reminiscence, and residue of the thing or person you are trying to let go. You distance yourself and it only makes it worse as your world grows to a bitter cold. And eventually you reach a point where you are your worst enemy. You are looking for something. You see the image of your reflection shatter into a million pieces shaped to a sudden impact. You open your eyes and there you are, hovering in-between, left on the side, humbly alone. This is the way you tell yourself, you get up again, and then it hits you once more, and you’re down. This time you don’t know if you can get back up, and it feels like drowning and that person or thing you’re trying to let go pushes you with their foot on your chest. Your eyes bleed with tears of pain as the water floods your vision, and your screams are matched with water filling your mouth. You don’t feel like you can breathe anymore, and you feel the rough surface of boot scratch at your chest the more you struggle.
Before your oppressor’s face is the sun breaking through the clouds, and you can hear the wind through the splashing water and grunts, and you soon forget where you are. You lose yourself and you lose the person you struggle between missing and wanting to forget, and you don’t care anymore. You feel light, as if you were water drifting upon water, and you look around you and it all confirms your realization. You feel the world fall apart around you, and through the damper of water it all sounds so beautiful. You whistle and hum your theme song as the credits roll to the world you once know. Fairest of wells to all those greats, and all those mothers of crime and bloodsucking, to smiles that charmed the devil, to the saddest love you have ever lived. You will be free soon, as your lifeless body floods to the banks of a nameless land. You will be a stranger here, and the people you meet will disappear when you close your eyes. The air is as thick as dust, and ashes form shadows. The beating of your heart wakes you, and you no longer care. Who are you now, who are you once you let go?

And this is when you stop letting go, and you hold on, you do what foolish people do when in love and you give to a faceless hope. They aren’t here, and haven’t been for a while, still: hold on. They can never love you back: hold on. They don’t know anything about all of this: hold on. You’re falling apart, and looking for anyway out: hold on. But there isn’t any reason to keep holding on: hold on. I can’t anymore, I don’t know if I got anything left: hold on. I can’t love you anymore: hold on. Why can’t this all end: hold on. I just wanted you to be happy, and so if I leave now: hold on. Do you know how much you mean to me as I hold myself together long enough to see you again: holding on.

(I’ll be here, even if my body turns to dust, you could brush me off, and I’ll live in your hair.)

*and so concludes this month of self-help in the form of:
Learning To Love Yourself (More): or howtolivewithyourselfwhenthereisavoidwheretheyoncewere

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt.7

(working image from Philm, 2009)

Readytotransformintoanexplosion

Running as fast as you can and hitting a brick wall. Your skull shatters starting at the jaw; you can hear the crack happen before your ear is completely cupped but a flat surface of hard and then the sharp pain in your back breathes fire all over. Your hands distort to ways they have never have before as your body dances to the collusion, and your heart is just fine besides a few extra beats in-between. Don’t cry you’ll get better. You’ll wear scars to show you had survived this experience, and instead of running away this time you embrace your past. I can’t lie, never have been good at it anyhow, but it still hurts so bad, and you just want to form a human ball and attach to a chain and be swung from building to building as you test to see which one will crumble first your world or yourself.
It’s not the easy way out, and you’re not making things harder for yourself because of a masochistic pleasure in feeling sad or pain. You just want the poetry of destruction to rectify this change in yourself. You are new, dipping from birth, and the world suddenly is not so well-known and dull. Your eyes look up at things, and everything is full of promise; every face, and every lie makes you a believer. And if this is what it takes so be it, as long as you can forget half of the fall, half of the collusion, and find happiness in surviving, and being able to walk again.

I want to explode, I want that moment of spontaneous human combustion, leaving half my legs, socks, and shoes perfectly intact as my couch turns to flames then smolder and burnt flesh. But it will probably never happen, and so I have to find other things to aspire to. I have to reach high in the sky, and tell the voices of doubt to shut their pieholes because I got dreams. Let the dreamer dream and create the world around him or her as he or she is a master of his or her own.
Remember you are the author of your life, whether things just collide into your path, you will fall over and over, and once in a while a large and heavy brick wall will appear from nowhere and it will hurt, it will hurt real bad when you hit that hard wall, but you’ll get up, and you’ll walk with a limp, and then walk normally, and one day, without realizing it, you’ll be back to running. It is because you are on your feet again, after life dished out you all these surprise brick walls that you are a master of your own, never fall too hard, never cry too long, and never forget the parts that make you, you.