Snow Day!

Eyes groggy. Sleepy hands fumble. Where did the dark go?

Heart pounds – Sun is shining – I’m late!

Feet hit the floor. Sting the soles. Run to find the rest of the morning. Quick!

See the time. Give up. No way to make it on time. Walk past the window. Snow to the top – snow to the sky!

Mom smiles in front of her mug. Steamy to her face. Looks out the window.

I understand.

Feet run. Grab my coat, pants, scarf, mittens, hat…Door slams. Snow crunches – Yes!

War begins. Fort grows tall. Grenades line the edges. Waiting for brother…

SNOW DAY!

the why will always confuse me

I sat in front of a mirror one night, and I wondered if it was me.  I tried to look behind me, to see if anyone was following, but I couldn’t get past the face in the mirror. I was always following me.

If I let myself go, would I still be there? Or is the reflection telling me something I should know. Still, I look at it every day, and I wonder why it should change, at the moment when I just began to recognize it.

The light in the room grows darker, but I’m not ready for the sun to go. The me in the mirror is just beginning to make sense. But it’s too late, I’m disappearing in a slow fade.

Darkness always brings thoughts of things not done, places never seen, friends not there. Then a fear, that the morning will not come. What makes the morning come? Will it be there tomorrow if I only know today?

The questions all mound up. The feelings overwhelming. Then the silence falls again, a sort of hopeless dispair. When all of a sudden that me in the mirror, begins to laugh at the absurdity of it all and it walks away with me, to live another day.

What is life if it does not involve living?

I started meditating recently. Really meditating. I should have been doing it years ago. Those days when I was exploring faith and religion. I had found a friend within one. I devoured books on the subject and could relate to the words that were written on the pages.

I felt dreary about it though. Although the feelings aligned, it felt heavy. Even though it’s not about pessimism, it’s not about negativity, it felt as if the weight bore down and drowned out any possibility of a happy life.

Then I found comfort within another teaching. It gave me hope. I found that there were gods, angels, guardians (call them what you will) out there to take care of me. I somehow got it in my head that they would make everything lovely for me. Yes, I choose the word lovely. I choose it for all the images it brings. Lovely equates to dances and soft, warm breezes that float you through life.

Then another boom in my life. I haven’t had one of those in awhile. The sort of thing that pulls the rug out. This imaginary world that I was living in was gone and reality was here. How many years was that? 5 – 10? I’m not sure, but they are gone again.

You know what? I decided that life was not meant to be easy. It was meant to be life. A concept I would not have even conceived of 10 years ago when my journey began after the first big plummet.

How can I describe what is happening now?

Hope? No. I relied on hope too many times and it has regularly let me down.

Frustration? A bit. But what is life if it is always a cup of tea?

Anger? Absolutely! But it has subsided and has fallen into a sort of laughter.

Laughter about how serious I took things, then about how magically it all became, but now…now it is…REAL. Or at least as real as it can be.

There is no guarantee. No one, neither parent, nor god can give you a basket full of sunshine to carry through this existence. No one can guarantee this is it and you go to heaven if you follow the rules. No one can guarantee this isn’t hell right here. No one can guarantee life will not end this very second.

So, why not live. Live with no expectation. Breathe the air in and then breathe it out. Just live.

Turning times

I’m so sick of sadness. Time for a change. I’m giving up the gloom, the dreary and making a toast to the madness that we call life on this Earth.

I don’t understand it. I’m giving up trying. All I can do is sit and see. I refuse to talk to God. I haven’t been introduced properly so I don’t feel it necessary. I live a good life. I don’t kick the poor. And I can’t figure out how to steal from the rich.

Do you detect a bit of anger? As I laugh a hearty chuckle. It’s not anger, it’s freedom! And if that takes me to hell, then so be it. Because I really think we’re already there. And my time would be spent more wisely by finding the way out.

Is it the only thing that lasts forever?

Insignificant in size and space, but at one point a date, a time, was all you had to remember, or even everything you wanted to forget.

We tie everything to time. But I wonder what would happen if we never discovered such a thing? Would be not be so transfixed with the point of life, the point of death? When would we celebrate, how would we mourn?

How often do we see ourselves in impossible situations and wish for the time to pass to a better place? How about in joy, when time goes so fast? When did we ever decide that time must go that way? Can we make it come back?

I listen to the masters who speak of time. There is much talk between science and spirit as to which direction it runs. What if I imagined for a moment that time didn’t keep racing away from me? What joy would it bring if I could make the happiness return. But would the pain come too? For how would we know such happiness if we hadn’t known what it felt like to lose?

I say that, but I also hate that it could be true. Can’t there be a better way? I believe there is. I believe we can find happiness without all the pain. That the two don’t need to be linked.

Until I find that, I’ll wish at this moment that a friend of mine will pull through what he is going through, in the hopes that his pain, and his family’s pain, will be all that is needed for the much coming happiness they will soon receive. Because if we have nothing else in this world – maybe we can have hope?

The cool breeze knows no boundaries

When this time of year comes,  I feel refreshed with each new cool breeze. Not frigid like the ones of the past, nor smoldering like the ones of the future. Yet, I’ve found no way to bottle up the time to keep events from unfolding.

Like times past, the wind knows no boundaries. It doesn’t stop to say hello. It only flows by, leaving small reminders of love and loss and brilliance to come. How deeply sad and uplifting it can all be. It touches my soul and leaves loneliness in its wake only to be filled with small laughter from dancing toes.

It was not so long ago that tragedy struck at a moment unknowing. When a smile became a sigh and kept falling into nothingness. Should it be sad? An overwhelming feeling of void where there was no sense of belonging to in the first place. A wish to become a part of the special place where naivety began. Yet, I chose otherwise. That is where the real sadness lies.

Unable to bring myself to become another. I choose to live one day hoping for the other. And in the end, I love.

The Void

Lonely hearts beat empty with no thoughts to pull them together. Getting lost in a torrential storm of when and where and even how long.

I have found no source within this place that causes a brain to make such assumptions. Only two minds together come up with such hoaxes and remedies for this world. For if left to be, alone in the void, the heart and head will work seamlessly together to find comfort within the soul. Or not, depending on which side of the coin you flip. They will tell you which side you look at.

Still, sometimes it makes more sense to see it from not the top nor the bottom. See it alone with no identity to claim, no standard to withhold. No set of rules to follow. No leading ram to pull you through the abyss only to let you fall into the pit in the end.

Loving with a heartless heart a mindless mind and sometimes even a soulless soul. Because if you have nothing of yourself to lose, you stand only to…begin again.

Rebellion

A war is being waged every day. One within our souls. We spend our time deciding who we are, what we believe, and how we will be in this world. Then we step out the doors, step past our time, and we realize that the world doesn’t work that way.

There is a war being waged. It is every moment. Somewhere on this Earth, someone is right and someone is wrong. Do you decide which it is?

The war begins inside, it starts with a thought. The thought expands to the edges of the body. It tells us how to behave. It tells us who to fight and who not to fight.

Stop

Wait

Who’s war is this anyway?

Who decided which side I would be on? Must I choose?

I decide everyday that I will not fight. Still, I walk out the door and a side grabs a hold of me. The war begins on the outside and sends shockwaves to my soul.

A war is being waged. My heart knows what to do, but my thoughts get tripped up in the outside world.

I fight.

I fight with you and against you. I can’t even decide which one is right because in my heart I know neither is true. I want to be…

I want to be a rebel in this world of war and choose not fight at all.

Simple as life and death.

Sweet air. It moves slowly today.

You held on for so long. Were you waiting for me? Did you know that I was hiding? I can’t hope to give you what you need. I don’t even know how. But I’ll give you this one thing. I’ll live.

I’ll live like there’s no tomorrow, like there’s no regret. But it’s so hard to live like there’s no you.

 That last breath.

Could you feel it in my heart, see it in my eyes. I had too much fear to speak it. You don’t even understand how I prayed for you to live. Then how I prayed for you to die.

The air gets thicker. The breath moves harder.

I spend the rest of my waiting. Envious. So easy to die, so hard to let go.

~Mind~

The mind never stops. Twisting and turning from this way to that, never resting in one place, never content.

I sit and contemplate why my mind will not rest but that only makes my mind go more.

I cannot meditate any longer. I sit and think of nothing, but nothing always turns into too much to handle. I make plans to sit and think of nothing, but the plans never follow through. My nothing belongs somewhere else because nothing never comes.

So my mind and I have a new relationship. I medicate it when it needs it. I silence it with distractions. I fill it full of dreams and it returns the favor by never stopping to remind me that the mind is full of nothingness that can never be nothing.