Who am I

I am the contents that has no container.  A sinner when I do right and a saint when I do wrong.  I am the feeling that you’re not alone and the reminder that you are.  

There is the world we desire and the world we are in, and then there's the world we choose... only the third matters...

Some people make a living outta dyin' - i'm just dyin' to start livin'

And sometimes being lost long enough makes you more familiar with where you're not, than where you are.  That's when you know it's time to change where you're not, to where you should be....which is where you're least familiar.  And that's place is somewhere else altogether.

exists

Hairpin Turns through the Ages

I once held the whole of time in the tiniest hands of a child and then my hands grew.  But the abundance of time did not.  It is not the amount of time before us or behind us, it is simply the openness of a hand to hold what we have - now.

I traced lemniscates with my finger, following a mobile over my bed.  I marveled how a superball could bounce so high; how one man with an axe could take down a 60 year old tree.  Yet all the while – eternity was held there in the darkness like a headboard of hope.  I learned about arguing by listening to those closest to me, through the walls – I didn’t like it, so I grew up listening less and found that was the cause of even more arguments than my parents had.  Sex education didn’t exist outside of episodes of I Dream of Jeanie – as a high level thinking pre-adolescent, I toiled with explanations thereby minimizing a monumental sensation that has existed since the dawn of man.  I deferred understanding any of this through an emerging adolescent logic – faith had it in for me that one day, a girl would drop from the sky and land on the erection that first caused so much alarm.  It would all become clear then.   Everyone was tormented with the significance of a recent past because at such an age, we’d never fathomed the rest of our lives.

Yes, now my hand is large and calloused and holds but the tiniest remains of time. My palms are etched with age like the crystal of my grandfather’s watch.  Time is almost up, so why do I feel a mounting kinship with youth.  

Life’s little hairpin turns down the slippery slope of irony.

Moderation is Toleration

Love makes no compromises, it takes a direct path through the most austere environments - the undaunted trace of a shooting star through a field of obstacles. Perhaps the one we truly love steps into our light without hesitation - but only providing love illuminates parts, without receiving it to make it whole. When we love those who tolerate us, we love only as much as they can take...not as much as we can give and it seems love does not prefer to be dolled out in doses of glimmer.

I Gotta Lot Undoing to Do

Godsend

     When I was down, I got high  

     When life got in the way, I still got by

     There was nothing going ‘round that I didn’t go through

     But what you left undone between us, isn’t something that I want to do.

Seems we spend most our lives gettin' out of the way

Of a sun that's meant to shine on our darkest of days

Chased by our own shadows straight into the night

Lookin' back at what won’t work, when the future still might... (whatever)

Friends say I’ve mastered falling down to an art,

Building pretty little piles from what’s been torn apart.

But the pieces that you left are as much as you took,

And no one gets the whole story from reading half of the book.

     So when you were up, you put me down

     When I got in your way, you ran around

     I reaped hope from the furrows, where nothing ever grew

     but fixin' what you’re doin-is more than any man would want to do.

When I think back now what I wish I’d know then,

The same people fool me again and again.

They say hindsight’s 20/20, but to tell you the truth

While I can see through your lies, I'm still blind to the proof.

Yeh, your ghost seems to leap from one girl to the next

And while they keep gettin' better, I know what’s better ain’t best

If my senses come to find me, they’ll know where I am

I’m just one idea behind, where the thought of you ends.

     And when I get down, I still get high.

     When life gets in the way, well, I'll get by.

     In fact, there’s nothing [that] comes to mind, that I wouldn’t do

     So stop redoing what you undid, so it’s done, and I’ll be over you....

     Till then I’m chasing you down, 'cause when I’m down, at least I’m close to you.

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived (Yep-Sun Gazing)

Think about it; the most creative moments of your adult life were the moments you allowed the child in you to play. rsb.

Sad how growing older oft becomes the smothering of the innocent innovator - we are compelled to protect what's within by never letting it out.  And one day, we can't remember what we dreamt the night before.

Through the course of adulthood the surface of childhood is wounded and scarred, like tree bark around the sapling; well intended...but ill begotten in the end.

Creativity is the uncloaking of passion, that is otherwise imprisoned by the broad black lines in our coloring books, with the grown up instruction, "shush now, and color within the lines."  I'm reminded of a picture from Kent State during the war protest - a college girl is placing the stem of a flower in the barrel of a national guardsman's rifle.  Images like this are misconstrued as an almost ineffectual act of creativity, passion, and love.

The world can only be saved by the minds of adults and the hearts of children.  Of all the animal kingdom, the only species to not evolve is the child within a human.  And for this I'm grateful.

Tomorrow I will imagine the conference table as a sandbox, our coffee cups as pails, and my colleagues are children and playmates (not the adult kind of playmates, they'd be fully dressed.)

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to get my coffee and help my son build his Lego Ninjago toy.  I explained to the girl at the counter, that 41 years ago I used to play with Lego's - a whole barrel for 5 bucks...the half shoe box size set of Ninjago Legos were 84 bucks.  No one said, remaining a child was going to be cheap!

Jimmy Buffett sang, "I'm growing older but not up, my metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck, let the winds of time blow over my head, I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead..." (he also has a song, "Life is Just a Tire Swing.")