Imagine Everything
I want to hike up the mountain
in the dead of the misty fog
and find you there amongst the
trees and the dirt road
close to the tower.
Way up there, find you close to the sky
where you really are.
Where you really are is always in my
head, but up there in the creeping
solitude of the mountain,
I feel I could find your spirit
where only I could see you
without violating the laws of
the
Living and the Dead.
If only it could be so…
I stare at the monumental task
that stands before me, looking at me
from above, from below,
from right to left.
I don’t have the proper tools to
get this done in a reasonable time,
so I stand there with a torch and scraper.
Fingers raw with so much peeling
the skin off the walls: three layers by hand.
This indeed has been the Wall of Patience.
It is hell, it is virtue.
If you come here wanting to finish in one day
you will be humbled by hard work.
Like punishment you will feel it,
but by God it better be worth it.
All that work.
Those that do it shall be blessed with eternal satisfaction.
I don’t want to be near the light of the screen
anymore.
I don’t mean not ever, but not
often.
I want to sit on the porch
at night,
look at the plane
lights go by.
The flashing of radio towers.
I want to listen to the creatures
and critters
of the night.
They carry me and you, and
us into the dream world.
Nature is the conduit to sound
living.
I am repelled by the screen, because like a virus,
it came to invade, to alter the order of
things.
What once was a useful treat, became
an all-consuming black hole.
The only way to balance is to
treat the screen like junkfood:
for limited consumption only.
The screen: public enemy number one.
If individuals blunder, society is no different.
It blunders en masse, but what can one do?
For one is locked in this system with few,
if any alternatives but to integrate oneself.
Integrate and play the system from within
until a better way comes along.
Change is always around the corner.
Could take five minutes or three years.
The thing about change is that it’s
hard to become aware of it until one is in the
grips of it.
And so, the edge rests on one’s ability to catch it, the
spinning of time, before
it ensnares one in its newest absurdity.
And there it came, the moment, the opportunity I had
been waiting for, the change needed.
Unexpected, out of the blue, not thinking
about it.
That is how and when God operates.
It is He, it is the Cosmos that have
written everything down in the
Book of Destiny,
buried underneath the fabric of
the Earth: home of Man.
In the grip of life the fight continues.
Another goodbye, another farewell.
A home that brought so many together
for so many
years.
That was grandma’s house.
A small house made of wood, concrete, and a tin roof.
A house that was ravaged by a hurricane
once, then rebuilt just the same.
There was the
Lonely Room
as grandma called it.
And there she had her old sowing machine.
“Come put this string through the needle hole, boy. Your grandmammy don’t see too well no more,” I remember her saying.
I got a little sentimental.
Family homes above all structures hold time forever,
between its walls where the memories are
not memories,
but
moments original,
and
live.
We merely walk amongst the past in their present.
Things change, our loved ones move on,
and so must we,
so must I.
Only difference is, I never want to forget
Grandma’s House.
When great men die the birds cry and sing songs of sorrow,
rain falls, thunder rumbles.
The house is empty; it cries out for its master.
It always waits to no avail.
Every tomorrow that passes by, we drift away from what was a happy
home.
Where a father and son spoke in the dead of night on leather
sofas.
“Come put these shoes together.”
“This is how you shine them.”
“The sheets, you tuck’em in, in an angle.”
“Fold and iron your clothes and always be neat.”
“If you’re going to do something, you do it right or not at all.”
I carry your lessons in my weakened heart that still beats evermore
faintly.
It gave me trouble last night, and in anger and frustration I lost my fear of the
Big Sleep.
Of going away without any Glory, for all I’ve known since
you’ve been gone is loss.
Loss after loss, failure after failure.
And in the throes of defeat, I’ve come to accept that
it is my lot in life.
Though I crave to bring you Victory, I now welcome
defeat so it hurts me no more.
Today my heart felt stronger.
It rose like I saw you rise from those hospital beds.
Rising from near death again and again.
For such a man these birds cry and sing to your
Honor.
I’m glad you visited me in the realm of dreams last
night at the movies, sitting across from me as that
strange picture played.
If my heart beats tomorrow, I will keep punching back at life,
and if it does not, then at Eternity’s gates we shall share our
stories.
Walking the streets, looking for an area of operation.
We went South, then a day later we went West.
Both places seem good, seem manageable, but I think
we agreed the South would be the better option.
Either one is fine, we concluded. The AOs are close enough to one another.
In the round table we sat one morning. We sat to discuss the formation of an
organization. One with noble principles, and a quasi-military structure.
We knew that it could not last; even the Roman empire fell at some point.
But we spoke of such things, of spreading knowledge, of setting an example
we no longer see, but that lives in us– passed down to us by our forefathers.
Values that keep our society together; the lack of which tears apart its foundations.
But how could we change such a large space, we thought. Why not then set a more
realistic goal. One of forming a new society –one that thrives amongst the larger society in secrecy.
Hidden in plain sight. These things we spoke of: Marcus Aurelius, Bushido, Chivalry, La Cosa Nostra.
These things we spoke of and meant it. An organization and a society, to do what others cannot.
These things we spoke of, my brother and I.
The mind is an endless factory of ideas that like water, must find a way to flow on up to the surface. If harbored too long inside without an outlet, these musings can lead to overwhelm. The way to save ourselves from this overwhelm is through self-expression. To open the windows to our souls. One way to do this is through writing. Old school magic as Alan Moore puts it. This magic called writing is primarily an exercise in bringing order to chaos, as Doctor Jordan B. Peterson would say. The chaos that exists within and outside ourselves. And to do this, we must manage our distractions, both internal and external, so that we may make use of the gift of self-expression. Let us first address internal distractions.
In my estimation, internal distractions are mainly comprised of thoughts, feelings, moods, and emotions. Which, ironically, are to a large degree, the basis for writing itself. Our thoughts are likely to be scattered, we may be feeling depressed or anxious, something may be preoccupying us psychically that in turn prevent us from expressing ourselves. We want to get it out quickly and efficiently. But therein lies the first error in our thinking about writing. Writing is a practice in organizing these preoccupations, not an activity that is done effortlessly, like say brushing our teeth.
It takes time to focus and to meditate on what we are trying to express in a way that thinking alone cannot achieve. Since it takes so much effort, the mind will tend to wander or to run away from the work it takes. But there lies the challenge and the reward, and it is quite rewarding to assemble the puzzle that is within ourselves. A story, a poem, an essay within us that wants to get out into the real world are but a pen stroke away. And these works could be the solution to some problem that we may have stowed away in some compartment of our minds.
Therefore, the solution isn’t running away from or trying to cancel out internal distractions like overthinking, but to let them reign free, not in the mind, but on the page. To bring out what is harbored within our psyche and bring it to life in an organized fashion. It is to refine ourselves verbally until we can express ourselves creatively, analytically, persuasively, or whatever the case may be, clearly. Whether it is to communicate something to someone else or to ourselves.
As for external distractions, everything that our sensory capabilities can perceive, is of great use to us for it is quite literally food for thought. Anything that we can see, hear, touch, taste, or see is data that we can process to express something new to us. The external distractions I refer to, however, stem from digital technologies. I must preface this by saying that it is highly beneficial that we live in a world that allows us access to a plethora of information at our fingertips, that permit us not only to educate ourselves, but also seek entertainment. Ironically, as many of us know, it is also to our extreme detriment, because we can infinitely zone out from reality by the use of these technologies. Now, more than ever, we have the capability to be endless consumers of information, and to even outsource our own thinking and creative abilities. This definitely sets the foundation for a dangerous future, but that is a topic for a later discussion.
It is however paramount that we assume personal responsibility for the amount of information that we consume through digital means, because it consumes too much of our time and its overpowering stimuli is too much for us to process in a healthy manner. Personally, I find Meta’s Instagram to be the most distracting to my daily productivity goals. The combination of a tiny portable computer and an app that supplies endless visually stimulating moving images at warp speed, overtakes my attention. And it is something I must wrestle with. Sensory overstimulation due to “advancements” in telecommunications overtake our time and attention to devote ourselves to say more “humanly” activities such as creative self-expression.
That is not to say that such technologies do not aid in these endeavors, the evidence for this is overwhelming, but only if we spend more of our time producing rather than consuming. Alas, it is up to each of us to identify our external distractors whether digital or otherwise and put them in their proper place by exercising agency over our will and priorities. And that is why I believe it is so important for us to write what we think, what we believe, and what we hope, so that we do not lose our humanity to the screen. Not to mention it is quite fun to plan and live our own adventures, instead of living 95% of our lives vicariously.
Writing is freedom and satisfaction, and it is in our own best interest to relish in the fact that we can do it by our own hand, through our own creativity, research, and experience. What we write may remain long after the dust from our bones are gone, to paraphrase Hector, prince of Troy. And that is legacy, worth more than gold and trivialities. That the stories we leave behind may be inherited by our sons and daughters as they forge their own.
Sometimes I myself feel like a vet suffering through the pains of PTSD.
Sometime I sit in bed like Captain Willard re-experiencing the horrors I saw or the horrors I committed.
Like him, I’m waiting for a mission.
A clear objective:
terminate the Colonel with extreme prejudice.
A mission meant for me, for my skills, my knowledge.
A way out.
A way forward.
To be fully immersed in life and purpose; a high like no other, while waiting for
The End.
