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.

Pensive

I just made a cup of coffee and I used cream, only the powdered kind, and a little bit of sugar.  That's how I used to drink it, seems like ages ago.  At some point I cut out the cream and went black with sugar but when I joined the army, there wasn't any fixing that shit.  It was always in the standard issue stainless steel pot which I think they never emptied, only added more the next day.  Additives only made it worse so I got used to drinking it black, and I eventually acquired the taste for just black coffee, as I get older my tastes change.  I somehow manage to remember these minute details about my life, like when and how I changed the way I drink my coffee.  And then I manage to relate it to something currently going on in my life, rather my head.  Just an observation.

I don't mind change or seeing things a different way, from a different perspective, it can make old things seem new once again.  A different angle can show us a facet we've never seen.  Some people ask me how I can let go of emotions so easily.  Emotions are an instinctual reaction to whatever is happening, but most people dwell on those and can't let go.  If I'm angry or sad, even happy, I know that there is a reason for it, there always is.  It has taken me a very long time to get to this point where I can allow myself to feel something, understand it for what it is and move along.  I'm no longer a flash flood of reactions, rather like molasses, the time to decide how to act doesn't pass me.  

I like to think I have a good understanding of people, sometimes I take advantage of it but I use it mostly for good, I say that with a devilish grin.  I'm an extroverted introvert by definition, I swear, look them up.  I concern myself with everything around me but I internalize most of it, I think about things and then I let go of em.    My thoughts are like dough, I roll then around and play with them with the intent to create something. I share ideas with people as if they were a valuable currency,to me ideas are priceless, and their worth is whatever we choose to make of them.  I always like to bring a post full circle in a short display of the crazy way everything is connected.  A dude at work today told me "I like working with you.  You're always down to chill and there's always coffee on."  I absolutely say this with every humble fiber in my body, it made me smile inside.  Naturally I acted like my normal self and brushed it off without being rude, but it was cool.  Haha, it probably helps that I'm always down to run the crane and help out, but that's how I was shown by the old timers.  We hang out and break first then we ALL go to work and get our shit done cuz when the shit hits the fan around here there's pretty much no more breaking for the day, haha.  Those old timers had their shit together, and they stuck together, anymore it's every man for themselves and it's a fucking shame.  I refuse though, I know I can be a stubborn motherfucker but it ain't in me to be a punk like that.  You have people with great paying jobs act like this place and everyone in it owes them something just for being here.  I don't get it, I can't forget where I come from and even though my dad has been an asshole he's always been a hard worker, and there's some pride in that.  I even think it's safe to say at this point I've forgiven the man, even if more for my own sanity.  Whatever he was when I was growing up isn't who he is now even if it is only circumstantial.  And by that I mean I don't know if he's actually changed or if it's only because he physically and mentally can't pick on me anymore.  It's doesn't even matter the reason, it is what it is.  Even though he's never told me he's proud of me I'd like to think that somewhere under the facade he is, I don't know.  Life goes on as I drift from topic to topic, it's all related.

Everything and nothing all at once.

My coffee's getting cold.

That's my number

It's cold, unnaturally so for this time of year.  A brisk, mile long walk after my midnight shift affords me the opportunity to get lost in my head while trying to block out the frigid air.  It works, but all I could think about was being hungry, and not only for a hot plate with some eggs, but I'm hungry to feel more...to feel more of everything.  I use my big words such as insatiable to say that what I crave basically ain't attainable, unsustainable, it makes me feel kinda disdainful.  It's ok though, to feel more is only a small aspect of the whole.  I now know that I can, when for a long time there I thought I was destined for a life void of all emotion.  There are oceans that don't run as deep as me, and that's a bold claim which means everything and nothing all at once.  I'm a talking oxymoron, and I'm more on an onslaught than a kick cuz that's what I do with bad habits.  I'm a million fragments that somehow come together in a philosophical manner.  And I definitely take myself way too serious sometimes, it's just fuckin life, we live and hopefully laugh a little then we die.  This is my complex simplicity.  Don't beg to differ with me cuz that shit don't do any good, haha.  Yea.

I'm Bad (and by that I mean good)

Sunday November 17, 2013

Two days earlier it was 19 degrees outside and today it hit the mid 60's, the sky opened up and just dumped massive amounts of rain.  Tornadoes touched down and I would have swore nothing could match the way I been feeling inside.  Emotions tumbling around clapping like thunder, the intensity been kinda shocking, lightning burns in my veins.  Tears wash it all away and when it's over suddenly you get a new perspective on the way reality reigns.  It goes with the territory, I swallowed the red pill a long time ago.  I've been unable to put it into words, staring at this blank page for next to 13 hours, I almost don't have enough of a vocabulary to describe what I'm saying.  Sometimes I hear what I'm saying and what I'm saying starts to sound a little crazy, but I hold onto that, it's a pinch so I know I'm still kickin.  On the way in to work this morning I saw this huge tumbleweed rolling along, and I made notice to the guy walking next to me.  "Hey, look, it's a fuckin tumbleweed." I blurted out.  I caught myself laughing at my unexpected excitement at seeing a big ball of weeds.  It can serve as a good metaphor, sometimes I feel lonely, like I'm roaming a dry desert floor.  Please don't resent my efforts to maintain some level of sanity, like I'm holding it all together with sticks and glue, the shit really isn't working out.  Sometimes I'm just a mess, cigarette stained fingers, and coffee drips on my t-shirt, a weed burning introvert lurks beneath the surface.  Absent mindedly I run my fingers through my messy hair, as if trying to pull thoughts from my head.  And when finally I've stopped trying, it all just comes to me and the words and the paper just sort themselves out.  And, by the way, I wrote this first by hand, it felt so God damn freeing, pen and pad.  Try it some time soon.

Untitled

The moon carries a hazy appearance tonight, serving as a backdrop for my twisted delight.  A couple vicodin might get me high, a useless plight, my life flickering like a wax candle dripping in the wind.  I'm mere inches from venturing over the edge, even though something's been telling me "it's an inevitable end."  There's no room for rational thought when it comes to emotional matters deeply inhabited, they tend not to make any sense.  I write rhymes with no reason and my secrets are written in between the lines if you can read them.  So this is a eulogy, proof of a new chapter exclusive to me and my ill habits.  This time I avoid catastrophic disaster, dreams combined like galaxies colliding, a poetic merging of star dusted souls.  No one knows, not even me.