Accidental Human Confessional Booth

“Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”

“To hold your breath is to lose your breath.”

~Alan Watts~

When you become attuned to yourself, Others become attuned to you. When you know who you are, others want you to know who they are. When you can see the trauma in someone else’s eyes and recognize your own, connection is not only possible. It is inevitable. They will see themselves in you. They will see the truth of their story. Can you tell someone that just made the biggest mistake of their life, that they are okay. Can you mean it? Can you really say to them, learn from this because if you can learn from this then you will be okay. Can I ask you a question? Because the first one will be hard for you to answer, but if I keep going and ask you more, how many minutes will it take for you to bear your soul? I can see it from here. It lives in your eyes. It lives in the creases of your mouth. It lives in the breathless way you talk about it.

What is your IT? We all have an it. Where are you broken? Is there a scar? Is there a mountainous crevasse? A chasm that needs to be surmounted. Shall we go caving, or do you call it spelunking? We can go deep. We can go all the way to the bottom. We can go so far down into it that we come out the other side and realize that we have peaked. We have climbed Everest. Together. 

old wooden language

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” 

~Wendell Berry~ 

“Very often, it is the crisis situation that actually improves us as human beings. Paradoxically, while these incidents can sometimes ruin people, they are usually growth experiences. As a result of such calamities, the person often makes a major reassessment of their life situation and changes it in ways that reflect a deeper understanding of their own capabilities, values, and goals.”

~Richard Farson~

Before I learned to speak, what did I say?

Before I learned to think, what were my thoughts?

Did I throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Have we replaced emotional connection with synthetic simulation?

When was the last time you asked a stranger how they are, and then actually listened to the answer?

How are you? Please. I really want to know.

When was the last time you asked yourself how you are, and then actually listened to the answer?

How am I? Please. I really want to know.

Sat Nam - I Am

You are.

Is the question too big? How are you? Are we actually having a philosophical conversation here? Is this existentialism? Phenomenology? Buddhism? I thought I was just getting groceries.

But instead, I say: I’ve been thinking about the nature of selfhood and its relation to trauma.

To which, you reply: I don’t actually want to disconnect from connection, I want to disconnect from the noise.

Oh yes. Oh yes, my friend. Are we friends now?

Hold My Beer

 

I think I may never understand, what is at the heart of a man. I think I may never understand, what motivates the desire of a woman. 

Austerity, truth, purity, and grace. 

Those are the words that call to me as I rise from my bed. But what calls to you? To all of those who answer the siren call of alcohol. I will never fully understand. To pick it up, I can easily put it down again. But to Others, they cannot loosen their grip. They cannot set it back down. The liquid gold, that pours down their throats and into their bellies, is absorbed by their blood streams, and is taken in by their brains. They become someone that they have promised themselves to never be again. I’ll never drink again. I’ll only have one. I won’t get drunk. But then by morning they cannot even remember all of the drinks that they have drank and the things that they have done and the words that they have whispered and the words that they have shouted and the places that they have been. 

The people that they have hurt.

Is this a poem? Is this an ode? I will never know. I can never know what I do not know and this is one of those that is not for me. But it is all around me. Always has been and apparently always will be. 

I fear that one day someone else’s drinking will kill me.

Is there a lesson to learn. Or is this just simply humans being human and life being life. And everybody taking it one day at a time.

Hold my beer, I have more to say.

beauty for beauty’s sake

 “that which has the least value has the most meaning”

“this too.”

What could be more beautiful, than the last frontier. Mountains, glaciers, tundra, and wild Unadulterated beauty. It is not a question. It is a statement. A fact. It is AWE. 

To disconnect, and reconnect.

What more could the soul of a woman want?