Maybe tomorrow

I've had a pebble in my work boot for the past fifteen hours, I almost made it but I don't think I can take it anymore.  An old, homely woman corrected me in the grocery store the other day, "So what if I call Miracle Whip mayo, bitch..." is all I could think to myself.  "Ah, yea, you're right."  I smiled so as not to show I was biting my tongue.  Sometimes I'm fed up with being polite, I'm like the king of euphemisms, right.  We're expected to be peaceful in society, but if I'm not civilized for speaking my mind then what am I?  My mother told me once that I had crude behavior, and language, right before she slapped me in the face, I think I was eighteen then.  Well, excuse me for not taking anyone's shit, and as far as I'm concerned, biological connection or not it ain't happenin'.  It probably stems from being picked on as a kid, it didn't take long before I learned how to control situations, or at least keep them more in my favor.  Dealing with people is a fuckin art, and dealing with me is a fuckin task, I do admit. 

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My day to day life is like groundhog's day.  Every day is the same, rudely awakened by an alarm clock, I want to shake that bitch till it stops working.  The snooze button doesn't exist, I rise as soon as it sounds, sometimes disoriented, I've always been that way.  When I was a kid I was always the first one up, I'd eat cereal and watch the news, strange fuckin kid I was.  Catching the sports is why I watched, any bit of basketball fed me.  Well, that and Robin Meade, who made her way to CNN among other things, not that I would know. :)  I no longer watch the news. (But I do still eat cereal, I could live off of it, I probably eat it twice a day) Haha, but she started out on a Chicago news station, anyway, and she's hot.  It's funny, the stuff I remember. I couldn't retain a single bit of geometry but I can remember silly ass details like that, and not just that but many, many more things that may or may not be trivial. I suppose that's up to one's own judgement, to which they are entitled.

Little tangent there, I'll settle down.

No I won't, I don't know how.  Knowing how to settle down is not part of my repertoire.  "If you're gonna be a bear, you might as well be a grizzly."  my friend Jack says when talking about me.  He gets it, knows the way I roll.  If a ten is high I'm at an eleven all the time.  

**********

It's five below and has been precipitating in the form of snow since November, it was a wicked December and January was a freakin blast!  I don't think we've experienced this much snow here consistently, not in my lifetime anyway.  I suppose even in the hottest of summers we can grow tired of ice cream too.  But, it's getting long and I'm becoming restless, cabin fever sets in to  test my resoluteness to not lose my cool in the middle of winter.  Heat from the words I breed, like gasoline, burns furiously.  The depths of the cold must hold my poetry, for it is this time every year I find what it keeps.  The winters drain me mentally and sometimes almost breaks me but I make it and spring revives me.

Suddenly, I remember that I'm still alive.

Crucible

If you had asked me at any time before now if I thought my 32nd year on this planet would be the toughest yet, I would have said no way.  Surely there were other years whose tests were just as difficult if not worse, other years which were literally tougher just to survive.  It's unfortunate that the year I'd make my greatest discovery is the same year I'd have to face the reality that all we ever really are is alone.  We come in this bitch kickin and screaming and hopefully go out quietly but only the soul that's traveling can take that road, alone.  People come and go in life and some seem to know us better without even giving it any effort, and for a short but limited while we can share in our experience but eventually it will come to an end, a parting of ways.  The question is when will it happen?  And for how long will you actually have them?

Now, I'm aware that we can't live under the premise that nothing lasts therefore it may as well end now.  That's ridiculous, I know that.  I almost think knowing that makes me appreciate what I've got even more while I have it.  I want to "touch" and explore things and people, some way more than others.  It's in my nature to want to know and I think that's why people take a liking to me, I listen sincerely.  Don't be fooled, that's a bit of trickery, I'll make you like me before you can hate me and all the true things I say and all the blunt ways in which I say them.  I think a few people can attest to that, and I apologize that I make you love to hate me.

Anyway, I've learned some hard lessons this year.  The only consolation being that they were all conscious decisions made by me and I stand by them 100%, right or wrong, good or bad, doesn't even matter.  Nothing changes labeling it as such, everything still is what it is.  We have three choices in every situation, accept it, deny it or ignore it.  I've done the other two throughout my life, I already know how it turns out.  Haha, if you figure out how to make denial and avoidance work let me know, I'll make a post of it.

********

I've seen other people do that as a way to separate thoughts I guess, I'ma give it whirl.  I think I like it, often times I think my cascading, endless lines can be confusing, like sometimes it might be hard to follow.  And I know that using "like" is like a big writing no-no, at least it seemed to be to the "teachers" of writing that I've had.  It works and people understand it, so what's grammatically incorrect can be an artfully displayed essay.  How vain am I to call what I do art?  Ha, yea.  Or to call this last year of my life a crucible, I just think it's a cool word so I used it.  Sue me.  I'll even help you prove your case against me, and that state of mind drives people crazy cuz it takes their power away from them.  It's a shame I even have to be that way but it's a brutal world that can be beautiful, it all balances out.

My Passion For Fashion

(Check out those awesome bathroom mirror shots.)

Hat- Columbia (it's hard to find hats that fit my small ass head, I've got a small head. Word! Columbia)

Hoodie- Carhartt (I can't stand winter jackets being all confining and shit, it's pretty much my winter coat.)

Bracelet- Probably came from India, I'd imagine.  (Bought it from an Indian dude at a mall in Augusta, Georgia about 13 years ago.)

Watch- Citizen (my latest acquisition...I have a thing for watches.)

Beard- That's all me y'all. (It's starting to actually look like a beard, haha.)

I've been thinking about making my blog a "/fashion" you know like, philosophy/fashion.  Each day I'll showcase something else, like the same Carhartt hoodie in a different color, or one of my worn pair of jeans with holes and salt stained, ripped bottoms, and a coffee dripped white t-shirt.  My kicks, always fresh...literally, fresh and clean, I'm anal about it.  Except in the winter I kinda have to let it slide, I got my boots to cover that.

Anyway, back to the topic...I think a few photos like this will qualify me to list myself under the "fashion" label, maybe I'll get some more readers. :) Probably get death threats for being a mockery.  I just think it's funny, all the fashion blogs.  I understand fashionable people having blogs but blogs about fashion?  I mean, I wouldn't mind hearing a story behind something worn, if only our clothing had eyes and ears and could talk.  Yea, like the time I thought I saw a ghost in my car, I am not fuckin kidding!  :) until I got out and realized it was the cigarette I thought I threw out the window burning in my hood.  I still wear that fucker, burn hole and all.  There's a story behind everything, and old clothes suit me better than any new suit could.  

Haha, so don't listen to me, do your thang fashion folk, I'm just talking shit.  It was all just a ploy to get you to read and maybe even comment.  Although, my travels through the depths of blog land has uncovered an abundance of fashion or fashion related blogs, and some of them trick you, or me :), and suck you in.

I'm just sayin...

New Year, Same Words

My silence here lately has been more scathing than any hurtful words I could display, which only states that I am more of a sociopath than I originally thought.  Haha, I'm only halfway kidding.

Fourteen inches of snow, ten more on the way, after I just fixed my truck and it broke down again parked on the street, and the snowblower took a shit all during a seventy-two hour work week, working midnight/day doubles, I hate those fuckin things.

Hanging out in Big Jack's garage flipping through music, listening to an instrumental from Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, that's some creepy shit, the whole thing, Jack and Willy that is.  He used to be a DJ back in the day but his music stops at like 1989 so I have to bring his ass up to date.  Haha, I think I may only get him up to like Y2k but it's a good time passing a bowl around reminiscing in the words I grew up listening to.

It's a new year I'm told but it feels quite the same.  My thoughts still flourish in a whirlwind, hurling through space and time to hopefully strike a nerve in some of you....

Just a few things running through my mind.

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.