Below you will find a mixture of prose, poetry, random thoughts and a variety of images including some of my favorite music videos. The icons above will take you to my other social media pages. Click the blue button on the right to subscribe to this blog and receive posts in your reader.
But most of all enjoy your time here 🙂
I couldn’t love anyone for the longest time.
The dark corridors of my longing echoed
with vicious intentions and sharp
clashes of words, language meant
to eviscerate peaceful hearts and
their desire . . .
The moment passed. Then the shadows
all faded into the forms of their owners,
men and women themselves capable of fright.
(You’re no longer glass when you realize
that everyone else dreams of
shattering . . .
Most lovers have been annihilated
or reduced to etchings upon
moss-covered headstones.
I want you anyway.
And they don’t deserve to know . . .
One vote by itself will rarely change an outcome. There are examples of course and you can find them if you’re so inclined but they are outliers. A single mark on a ballot may well be swallowed whole by the river of History.
However this is true only if you look at an action as having to greater reverberations. A vote itself may have miniscule power but any act can inspire many like acts ( also known as herd behavior.) People are social creatures and so if voting is treating as a civic duty rather than an atomistic decision (see: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/10/voting-meant-anything-wouldnt-let-vote-extremely-dumb-things-people-believe) it can have a broad impact.
We must espouse our values everyday and put them into action as well. Voting accordingly is just proof of our sincerity and the depth of our belief. Others will be inspired to do so too.
Vote. Because “one” is a beginning not an end in itself.
We are always lying when we tell someone what they want to hear, even if what we say is true. We don’t say anything to another without an intention to provoke, beneficial or no. Truth is altruistic, and we are not fully capable of such ideals.
But we do what we must to survive. We would let others be a villains as long as they would save themselves.
Now you know why I sometimes feel fraudulent. I tell you in so many words why I am not worth fidelity. Not because I am harmful but because I can’t fathom the wages of trust. Even when I lay dying, I will see the beauty of what is devouring me.
I am not who I appear to be. I don’t control my image or protect my nuance. The shimmer of color that excites you or the dull shadow that escapes your vision–that is me. I don’t know how or why.
But I can imagine.
I don’t want to be dead
But I want to die
A strange transgression against precious living moments.
And a terrifying contradiction
A self-righteous judgement
Like a gigantic version of myself
Towering over a tiny, disheveled epigram of me
Until . . .
I had never thought happiness was a plausible outcome
Though I expended intense effort to find it
Now that living comes so easily
I feel guilty to possess even a morsel of joy
As if it is a betrayal . . .
I didn’t want to die
I realize now that I wanted to be powerless
And love can provide the difference
If it needs to . . .
Only your arms can hold me together
They may even try to build whole gnashing worlds around you.
But your soul lives beyond them
like stars are to a smoldering crevice.
Ruination is not defeat, rather it is
giving up on yourself.
I wanted love yet
Not to plummet into it . . .
And then I disappeared
(For a moment. Not a lifetime.
There.) –an ocean of solace.
I’m afraid of never seeing you again.
A man named Rumnabi lived on a modest-sized island known as Nobecchi. He loved his home and the pleasant weather dominate there: warm but not hot, few clouds, mild humidity. However Nobecchi was subject to a rainy period often lasting a full two months. Rumnabi was unhappy with this split of weather, concluding that the damp months were a blight not to be tolerated. He vowed to alter this.
One peak summer day, Rumnabi called upon Iambir, god of atmosphere, also called in the vernacular The Cloud Herder. He did so first by placing smooth stones in a precise circle within which he arrayed tributes: the colorful feathers of a bird of paradise, ashes burned from branches of a fruit tree, and the blood of a first-born goat in a bronze chalice set direct in the center. Then he lifted a placation to Iambir, praised his beneficence and bid him: “Take from us these rainy months. We ask for no greater favor than unencumbered skies, a simple wish for simple folk such as we.” Of course he spoke only for himself.
The rains came the very next day and came again day after day for almost three months. Rumnabi became terribly angry that his request not only was rejected but also appeared turned on its head, and he was arrogant enough that at the end of this rainy period he called out a curse upon the god he’d once humbled himself before. “I have given a gift,” he thundered. “A generous gift. And I have been given something terrible in return. You are not a great being or worth an ounce of worship nor tribute. I will denounce your name in every corner of this land.”
Iambir heard every word hurled at him, and while the Cloud Herder was not given to anger, he favored cruelty as a response to insolent behavior. He sent down a sign to Rumnabi that the storms would not pass over or near Nobecchi for the foreseeable future. However though he kept the inclement whether at bay he did not disperse it, merely kept it in a robust loop slowly circulating through the air miles and miles from the shores of Nobecchi. As more storms joined the loop their clouds became darker and began to whip and crackle with a terrifying energy.
Rumnabi was only aware of the blue skies above him and indulged their warmth greedily. When truly the pleasant weather seemed as if it would last without limit, he let words of praise pass from his lips. “Praise be to this glorious weather,” Rumnabi exalted. “I shall never see blue nor feel warmth without the name Iambir on my tongue.”
And so the Cloud Herder decided then to reveal the full scope of his efforts. When Rumnabi fell asleep that night he began to feel as if he were rising into the sky. Soon he had a bird’s eye view of the sea around Nobecchi. To his horror he beheld the ring of storms the Cloud Herder had wrangled and was now spinning into a fury. Rumnabi continued to watch in a terrified silence as the storm chain was nudged out of it loop and set loose upon Nobecchi itself.
Rumnabi awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. “Is this real?” he placated above. Fierce winds began to saw through the darkness. Trees toppled over. Homes shredded and crashed to the earth. Even the temple to the gods themselves buckled and collapsed. Rains flooded the whole island, washed its fertile soils, its livestock, even its people into the agitated sea. Jagged ropes of lightning struck countless times, searing black gashes into whatever still stood.
The next morning Rumnabi walked wordless through the island’s devastation. His home had stood but most had not. He did not recognize this land he ventured in. It was not where he he’d been born nor lived his entire life. Hours later when he returned to his home he felt saturated with grief, despondent. He thrust his arms upward and wailed. “Why? Why do this? Why at all?”
After a long, aching silence, Iambir’s voice floated down to him. “There is a price for everything.”
For many nights afterward when Rumnabi laid himself down to sleep, he was beset by visions of the storm chain that had wrecked Nobecchi as it continued on a swerving path over the many seas and decimated other lands. He became so wrought with sadness that in time he could barely sleep at all. He took to roaming the beach near his home at night and staying shuttered in his home by day.
In the end, on his last nighttime walk, he came upon a small boat moored to the shore and decided to take it out upon the salts. He didn’t know how many miles he’d gone over the waves before he leaned out above the water, murmured a brief and desperate prayer, then dove into the dark sea never to be seen again.
The remaining denizens of Nobecchi however carried on as best as they knew how. Their endeavor to restore their way of life was slow and arduous. Homes were rebuilt by community effort. The fields in time regained their fertility. The island’s climate fell back into its old circuitry.
The only lapse in the renewal process was the persistent absence of the temple to the gods. There was an unspoken consensus among the Nobecchians that it did not need rebuilding. Perhaps out of pride they believed that the gods in their violence against the island had forsaken its people. Nevertheless the survivors each continued to say their own private prayers and were grateful as well. They had been spared, and the great storm was long gone.
On the night one year after the tragedy had occurred, a stone obelisk appeared on the former site of the temple. No one in Nobecchi would admit responsibility for the structure or who might have laid it there. On its surface was carved a single sentence. “Life goes on no matter the cost.”
![20181016_131326[1]](https://contemplativemoorings.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/20181016_1313261.jpg?w=1100)
I’ll defer today’s thought to the unknown soul who carved the above message into a bench along the Interurban Trail in Everett. It reads “Happiness is only real when shared.”
