What does it take to turn a house to a home?
At what point does a book become a tome?
Is it size or memories or wisdom contained?
Tender moments or philosophies explained?
What signals that an omission has become a lie?
A broken heart? A tear in an eye?
How does the future become the past?
Why do we try to make the impermanent last?
Do we always get better with age?
Will we ever let go of these wars that we wage
With ourselves and the world and everybody who cares?
Will we ever discard these disguises we wear?
The answers to these can never be told
But by living the questions as they unfold.
Through the heartbreak and lies and mistakes that are made,
We will live our way to the answers someday.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Morning Lights
I'm actually developing a soft spot for Christmastime... I love the sparkle of Christmas lights in the early morning.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
"Love Sounds"
People never seem to change, but they always manage to amaze me.
It seems irreconcilable in the minds of most logical people that one could love another person yet treat them cruelly. That one could respect another yet lie to them. That one could be enamored of another, yet have no desire to connect with them in those oh-so-important little moments that make a relationship what it is. The fact that this contradictory set of truths has been present in my life on such a recurring basis makes me think that we as human beings know so little about true love, especially those of us who claim to know it all.
There are those of us who give of ourselves to others from the very depths of our souls, who by our very beings remove every obstacle in the way of sharing ourselves with another. We hold nothing back. We delight in closeness and shared adventures, and we hunger to intimately know the mind, body and soul of our lover. We believe in honesty, even of the brutal variety, and trust in others no matter how many times we’ve been wounded in the past. Our hearts are open and bursting with love, for the world, for ourselves, and for our beloved. We are the ones, I believe, who are the closest to knowing love in its pure form.
So many others, however, have gotten a warped idea of love somewhere along the way. They replace varying emotions and sensations for the presence of true love, and are only left empty and wanting for more. They rely on the attentions and affections of others to bolster their own self-worth, and they seek out this shallow gratification addictively. They forge connections that are superficial and easily abandoned, yet cling to them like a drowning man to a life raft. When they do stumble upon true love, they bask in it, latch on to it, but are never satisfied by it and have a hard time returning it. They keep their true love close by doling out beautiful lies and half-truths, making heartfelt promises that are meant to be broken, yet the distance can easily be felt. They continue seeking out what they already have, jumping from person to person to person, taking what they need yet never finding what they are looking for- no, never knowing what they are looking for.
True love is like a garden. If you fold a handful of seeds into the earth and leave them to their own devices, they will grow and bloom. However, for them to truly flourish, you must tend to them. So many things can slowly drain the life from flowers and plants- drought, weeds, parasites, poor soil, crowding, too much or too little light- that if they are neglected, they will wither away to dust over time. It takes a little work to maintain a garden, but the resulting beauty and happiness are worth the effort.
It seems irreconcilable in the minds of most logical people that one could love another person yet treat them cruelly. That one could respect another yet lie to them. That one could be enamored of another, yet have no desire to connect with them in those oh-so-important little moments that make a relationship what it is. The fact that this contradictory set of truths has been present in my life on such a recurring basis makes me think that we as human beings know so little about true love, especially those of us who claim to know it all.
There are those of us who give of ourselves to others from the very depths of our souls, who by our very beings remove every obstacle in the way of sharing ourselves with another. We hold nothing back. We delight in closeness and shared adventures, and we hunger to intimately know the mind, body and soul of our lover. We believe in honesty, even of the brutal variety, and trust in others no matter how many times we’ve been wounded in the past. Our hearts are open and bursting with love, for the world, for ourselves, and for our beloved. We are the ones, I believe, who are the closest to knowing love in its pure form.
So many others, however, have gotten a warped idea of love somewhere along the way. They replace varying emotions and sensations for the presence of true love, and are only left empty and wanting for more. They rely on the attentions and affections of others to bolster their own self-worth, and they seek out this shallow gratification addictively. They forge connections that are superficial and easily abandoned, yet cling to them like a drowning man to a life raft. When they do stumble upon true love, they bask in it, latch on to it, but are never satisfied by it and have a hard time returning it. They keep their true love close by doling out beautiful lies and half-truths, making heartfelt promises that are meant to be broken, yet the distance can easily be felt. They continue seeking out what they already have, jumping from person to person to person, taking what they need yet never finding what they are looking for- no, never knowing what they are looking for.
True love is like a garden. If you fold a handful of seeds into the earth and leave them to their own devices, they will grow and bloom. However, for them to truly flourish, you must tend to them. So many things can slowly drain the life from flowers and plants- drought, weeds, parasites, poor soil, crowding, too much or too little light- that if they are neglected, they will wither away to dust over time. It takes a little work to maintain a garden, but the resulting beauty and happiness are worth the effort.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
"A Winter Morning's Heartbreak"
Spending a snowy, cozy, insomniac morning by myself, with only my pets and my thoughts to keep me company. Thinking about how life should be, and about the things I have to do to remove the wrong from my current existence. Doing the right thing often means doing the hardest thing imaginable at the moment, but sometimes not doing the right thing brings with it an equally dismal set of circumstances. Therein lies the conundrum. Change is hard, and we are afraid of it, yet the prospect of everything remaining the same is equally as frightening.
Sitting on my bed, staring out from the lopsided hole in the battered plastic venetian blinds, watching the crystalline blanket of winter’s first real snow cover my street, I am thinking that I want there to be more beauty and truth in my life. I am happy, but there is that single nagging, throbbing hurt holding me back from being the happiest that I could be. I know what I need to do, unfortunately, and all at once I yearn for it to happen but fear the challenges that it will bring.
I love from the bottom of my heart, and so I feel every emotion amplified to great magnitudes, multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, a million. It is a blessing and a curse.
I pour myself completely into everything I undertake, like water filling a pitcher, I allow myself to conform to the shape of my chosen situation without ever losing my true self. It’s all about balance. But when someone does something so unspeakable that the pitcher drops and cracks, I am lost. I have no idea how to regain my equilibrium. I try everything I can to patch that slow leak in my pitcher, but my will just keeps trickling out through those delicately suspended bits of glass, and it happens so agonizingly slowly. I am so reluctant to just pour the water out and throw the pitcher away, this thing that I have come to love despite its obvious dysfunction. The water keeps leaking out and pooling around my feet, and as I cradle my broken pitcher in my hands, the shards cut into me and my fingers start to bleed.
This is not how it is supposed to work.
I am caught in a situation that I have the power to change but lack the will to disrupt. I try hard, I care hard, I love hard, so when something hurts, it hurts hard. I don’t want to live with this hurt anymore. I am caught in a situation that I have the power to change, and I need to find the will to take everything and turn it upside down. I need to. I need to. I need to.
Sitting on my bed, staring out from the lopsided hole in the battered plastic venetian blinds, watching the crystalline blanket of winter’s first real snow cover my street, I am thinking that I want there to be more beauty and truth in my life. I am happy, but there is that single nagging, throbbing hurt holding me back from being the happiest that I could be. I know what I need to do, unfortunately, and all at once I yearn for it to happen but fear the challenges that it will bring.
I love from the bottom of my heart, and so I feel every emotion amplified to great magnitudes, multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, a million. It is a blessing and a curse.
I pour myself completely into everything I undertake, like water filling a pitcher, I allow myself to conform to the shape of my chosen situation without ever losing my true self. It’s all about balance. But when someone does something so unspeakable that the pitcher drops and cracks, I am lost. I have no idea how to regain my equilibrium. I try everything I can to patch that slow leak in my pitcher, but my will just keeps trickling out through those delicately suspended bits of glass, and it happens so agonizingly slowly. I am so reluctant to just pour the water out and throw the pitcher away, this thing that I have come to love despite its obvious dysfunction. The water keeps leaking out and pooling around my feet, and as I cradle my broken pitcher in my hands, the shards cut into me and my fingers start to bleed.
This is not how it is supposed to work.
I am caught in a situation that I have the power to change but lack the will to disrupt. I try hard, I care hard, I love hard, so when something hurts, it hurts hard. I don’t want to live with this hurt anymore. I am caught in a situation that I have the power to change, and I need to find the will to take everything and turn it upside down. I need to. I need to. I need to.
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