When there's nothing to say...

Talk about the weather, it's what I do.  It's the cliche conversation starter and to some a lame topic, but humor me if you will.  Everybody knows there's magic in snow, and the rain in its turn makes everything grow.  Calm skies is what I like, where I'm able to see a trees bare silhouette pressed against the moon as it hangs among the stars.  I envy that bitch.  I've been told my head is in the clouds, but I don't find that insulting, I dare to dream during the day and so be it.  I never actually check the weather, I like to be surprised upon awakening, what type of day is it gonna be?  I'll tell you, December and the last half of November, mother nature has been temperamental.  Up and down, wet and dry, snowy and icy....we've had it all so far.  This winter ought to be interesting, and I guess who you're talking about the weather with makes all the difference.

So, who wants to talk about the weather with?

Prajna* (wisdom)

 I say this December so far is way more like winter than it usually is this time of year, but my recollection is faulty.  True, we've had some mild winters these last 10 years but I'm not hinking of the years before that.  My life here is kind of separated by my time in the Army, I left and came back more of a man than the kid that I was.  It's all rather interesting the way things transpire, and I watch as the snow falls flurrying, inundated with thoughts as individual as the flakes falling before me.  I talk about the things that I find moving, and I'm not always sure that it makes sense to anyone but me.  I can only imagine that one day this, all of my writing here, will get buried within the depths of the internet, discarded in a wasteland of words and broken links that lead to nowhere.  That's kind of true to life though, we build ourselves up only to wither away back to nothing.  Like the earth spinning on its axis, we can't see it but we know it's happening.  Sometimes it's like we're standing too close to the mirror to catch a good overall glimpse of ourselves, and it isn't at all easy to separate mind from body in order to step away far enough to see the whole.

Buddhists have a word for emptiness, sunyata, but there in lies an idea, not just a definition.  Emptiness, by English definition, expresses a negative connotation or lacking.  The idea behind sunyata is that only when empty can one begin to add.  I share a lot of ideas, ideas I don't want to take credit for because they are not my own.  I simply apply them in life, share my experience and express them in the way I understand, and on a one on one basis I adapt the way I talk to the person I am talking to.  I'm learning about people that you can't always deal with everyone the same.  Over time you see about an individual what they need in order for them to hear what you're saying, to speak in a way that their perception can receive.  Wisdom is not in how much knowledge you retain, it's how much knowledge can you let alone.  Knowledge serves a practical purpose in life, yes, but I'll never know so much to not see the difference between ideas and definitions.  "Knowledge is power...," as the saying goes but they left out the rest of it.  A glass half full has room for more.

Haha, so I started with the weather in the Midwest and ended with a lesson in Buddhism...it is ALL connected.

*Pranja-In Buddhism, it is especially the wisdom that is based on the direct realization of such things as the four noble truths; impermanence, dependent origination, non-self, and emptiness.

ps.  My original "ps"  was fucking lame so I deleted it,  haha.

My little girl

I was giving her a look.  I glare coldly, eyes that will pierce right through you....I stood at the top of the stairs staring at her with all the seriousness I could muster.

"Daddy, why are you staring at me like that?"  She's asks, giggling.

It didn't even phase her.  Her tiny little brain doesn't process things that way.  I wasn't actually trying to intimidate her, I was more playing around and I definitely didn't succeed cuz I couldn't not laugh at the innocence in her question.  

She sings at night when she goes to sleep, makes up her own words and I have to admit, they're creative and she rhymes the lines, it's funny.  She gets lost in her own world trying to fall asleep, forgetting there's someone in the next room listening.  The world of a child is one that lacks boundaries, limitless possibilities.  

Last night she reverse psychology'd me.  She was eating spinsketti for dinner and proceeds to tell me "Daddy, I'm full but I don't want to stop eating."  I said "baby, if you're full then stop."  "Ok" she says sliding off the chair, sprinting once her feet hit the floor.  The speed with which she darted after I said stop tells me it was premeditated.  She's fuckin crafty, let me tell you.  Gwendolyn, my little swindler.