Stillness

January 27, 2024

   Stillness. What a concept. Something we as the modern species have no general grasp or balance at. Many stay still so long they rot in place and never live-not even in their own imagination.

   Others, move with such bullheaded aim at goal posts that in reality don’t even exist. Barreling blindly  and knocking down everyone around them on the way to some destination that will be gone by the time they arrive.

Thoreau said something like “We are destined to be starved…” Whether starving the soul or heart or whatever limit of analog emotions and destination of “there,” a human has conceived. It was never truly the place to go. There was no destination, just a meeting point to be folded out upon again. Those elements that remain intact survive.

   The flow of all Physics, all energy, all factors … Ebbs and flows with an inconsistent certainty. As does the consciousness and determination of all that IS. Humans are the only thing that either sits stagnant protest of living, or runs blindly against the flows of nature into its own chaos. But what if we run with open eyes into the chaos? What if we document what we remember. What then. What ending is there in innumerable chaos.

  Homosapiens decided in small groups, then larger dumber ones, that whatever it is, what we have right within reach, within ourselves, within our OWN existence will never be enough. Others determined that, what it is, should always just be like some sick sense of security. Remain unchanged. TRADITION.

  This imbalance alone can be a call to all of our turmoil. It’s not our choice. Our choices are greater. The truest are at the tip of a sword to be snatched lightly from the blade. If we hold too tightly to control, the blade will cure us of our fingers.

  Being still, moving in quiet tact through life, working with the fickleness of real inspiration- these are the keys to unlock many doors to give us home in the chambers that show an answer to our unrest. That call that anything we may be doing by nature, like love or connection, creation …isn’t enough. That merely being will always cause anxiety. That stillness is the enemy.

  In our nature we can dig deeply or choose not to. That as well depends on our nature. It depends on a vast ecosystem of false optimum trajectories. No longer fighting modern sensibility, and embracing the cores of primordial want are both necessary and valid for true progression. Not more blindly pushing to some destination we don’t know the name of and that doesn’t exist.

It’s from this Peace of mind one starts to procure newness. It’s from the still and the nothing we create. To transcend and evolve on small thought or effort of Force at a time. Not overreaching, or sitting stagnant, but telling our proverbial stride set into rhythm, that beats in time with the unpredictable nature of our souls.

Stream of Consciousness essay: “State Your Purpose”

In writing, and philosophy especially, there is a phrase that has always nearly driven me crazy….perhaps because it felt too personal. “State your purpose.” Tell us why you’re here. What your experience offers in authenticity and originality. Why why why why. Better put “How can we sell you, and if not, what can we make you think is your purpose?”

Perhaps, that’s why I always preferred Eastern Philosophy as much as purpose and Dosha exists in the world’s of meditational thought, is insomuch that simply being and doing what is natural is ALSO enough.

This means of progress programming that has been layered down on us from years of bullshit is simply that. Especially once you begin to find those successes. I have never focused on one thing as single tracked as I ever should have, and yet when my credentials come up in some circles it gives me a view into a world that doesn’t seem to involve me, although….I seem to fit right in according to many. I always feel like an estranged outsider watching things happen around me and learning information I was not particularly meant to know. Especially, not with this attitude.

So, when it comes to purpose I can simply state mine is to be where life takes me and when it takes and allows me there. If that’s even such a thing. I seem to end up Gonzo-in-the middle of things. Never quite fitting the mold. Negotiating my way through variables I don’t even discern as real life but instead, some common variable of capitalistic obsession that still makes no damn sense at all other than our need to survive. Of which is major to be sure, and I have essentially worked and toiled up until the last 25 weeks of my life. Herein given clarity I couldn’t expect when not, as to the avenues that raging, no….toiling in the words and songs of my mind seem to have illuminated.

Life continues still in its consistency and my other basic wants of survival and home. The instincts that exist deeper within each one of us for our own versions of comfort and community, but also those that ignited when presented with a choice in these matters alike. Somewhere, in all of this, is the inherent nature of existing with peace and balance within our own nature….

And living in our nature, is, if you ask me, our only true state of purpose.

Poetry- “Personifying Flowers.”

[New Stream of consciousness- Journal]

I used to name my flowers…

Until, I learned they’d break my heart.

I’d nurture every seed, and look in awe as they grew.

They’d stand tall in the sun,

but then I’d watch the seasons come.

Steal away their petals, proud stalks withered, wintered…

until spring’s work could ensue.

And so, I used to name my flowers.

But now I never do.

I learned they aren’t just flowers, and don’t need names, like people do.

Poetry-“Command_S”

[April 2019]

Save the Bees and the trees, not just the ones who make your daily fees.

Save the humans in the places,

When the world won’t see their faces.

Cure the Beasts, make them kind….

Wake the sleeping,

and the weeping;

Wipe their tears, change their mind.

Kill the Machine-Make it Grind-

To a halt.

It’s not our fault.

We’re who the world, tried to leave behind.

Poetry-Title Poem- “Always Around.”

I’m always around.

When I’m needed.

Wanted.

Loved.

And when I’m not…..

I’m still here.

Because one day,

I’ll be here. There. Around when I’m truly needed.

WANTED.

LOVED.

When these days come again, I am ready and willing for them.

As we all should be.

Needed. Wanted. Loved.

Until then.

I’m always around.

“Silence is Golden (or not…)”

Excerpt-prose/essay from “Always Around”

[Nov 2011. Revised August 2022, Final Edit November 2023]

  Silence, no matter its company good or bad, speaks great volumes. Its presence can mean violence, but so can the frantic nonstop expression of someone who is stuck in a void of misunderstanding and said violence. Either can mean a hurt soul. In the presence of the knowing company, silence is comfort, it is knowing. Words! Words in that company mean even more. When that anxious avoidance and attachment is broken across those boundaries of knowing, well…it’s an unstoppable force between the living. Something the dead of mind and nihilistic would know nothing about. Words, ahhhh…well how poetic it is that one can use words to describe how magical they can truly be. From the right people, the slightest recognition shows you they are listening, and you are seen. Like a sunrise on a dreary morning it can light your world.

 Silence with those same people, or say even just one person, is a supportive company greater than much else in the whole God forsaken world. Silence, in good company, is Home. No matter where you are.

 That knowing of shared values, education, experience, hurt, triumph, feelings, or even just liking the same silly things that make you smile- is so far undervalued it pains me some days to keep trying to find those who will recognize it. It’s not anything wild, it’s our instinct. Frightening, how far so many seem to be withdrawn from it, in favor of some fake version of progress or evolution that’s done nothing but drive everyone crazy, and distract them from what really matters in life. Safety and security in the darkest points of life is all any of us need-knowing we can trust even just one person with our vulnerability-if not many. I could always be wrong, but I think it’s truly the core of our humanity to love….or at least that’s true for some of us.

 The silent understanding of a person without needing to explain, but instead discuss, learn from one another, grow together, and grow community from that- what else is there. When I find just this I may be able to let you know. Finding any company in which I would feel comfortable enough to just SHUT THE FUCK UP-and smile- in some sort of nodded understanding is so incredulously rare that I feel the need to share its rarity in words. It isn’t new to me, but something that seems to wane over time as people get comfortable, and decide they would rather live in that ignorant sense of uncaring, than recognize what was right next to them all along. I had almost forgotten what this sense of knowing truly felt like until I left the shores of the Stars and Stripes to seek some real humanity. I found that and now I’m grateful again to know it can ever exist.

Enjoy the Silence. (or Scream, depending on the circumstance.)

Excerpt Essay “Don’t Go Back To Sleep.”

From “Always Around.”

Nov. 2017 [Edited Dec 2024]

They’re selling the American Dream all over the world- they always have. These days it’s in a neat cute little package. Personalized to every corner and crevasse of the world. Everest is a dumpster. Paris has always been a rat shit hole, ask my cousins about it. England and Paris may have started this mess. I say that a lot….I digress. ( I say that a lot too.)

The commercial sense of it has been definite since around 1850. The world changed and the first wave seemed successful but after then, for awhile, only men were “free,” so who really knows? But sell it they did, better than ever. After the War we were to go one of two fucked up and indiscriminately bigoted ways: The Circus Circus, or the falsehood of the American Dream. If you ask me the USA chose both their cake and ate everyone else’s too. The USA has sold Romanesque ideology to its students and continued to press that they have all ‘the Answers.’ I am simply here to state they are wrong.

Instead of whatever dream has been pushed, instead, the MLK Boulevards, Karl Marx Allee’s, Love is Love, and BLM roadways that were supposed to mean something mean absolutely: Dick. From Birmingham, to Miami, to New York, DC, the PNW, LA, Detroit and every other god forsaken place on Earth, ‘Uhhhmerica’ tried to press change has happened: It’s gotten worse there…maybe even worse where they haven’t. The Disease of sleepiness and lack of consciousness, has spread for years like an overcoming wave of nostalgic trance, that has steadily put the whole world to sleep. The Ruin the Western World has imposed is the same reason I almost failed Western Civilization 4000 in Uni. I couldn’t stop writing and answering to the FLAWS in the idealized plastic world that had been founded in nothing but greed and some manic search from man to find their greatness. I digress. (I told you…)

Tourism and Bullshit experiences encapsulate our world to keep us numb from what is really happening North, South, East and West in every single corner of all of the idolatries “Christendom.” It’s at every corner; there’s a Starbucks at every corner-therefore there are busters at every fucking corner. Real Estate is crashing everywhere yet again? Why? ….. by design. My only mission has been to try and STAY AWAKE. ( So here comes the poetic part…)

No more denial, and enough experience to know “That could happen to me too.” And it has. It all has. You get what you ask for. “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride.” It’s all happened to all of us by now, and no single human should go on in silence of this bullshit dream. STAY AWAKE. GET CRAZY. STAND THE FUCK UP. No one will do it for us. Whatever you do, don’t…..DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP. Take it from me. That sort of Sleep is more painful than death.

Don’t slip into the forceful abuse that man doesn’t even know they are imposing on their self. To deal judgement like poker cards-Face up like Texas Hold em- not understanding that every single individual at the table has their own hand to play.

And we play alone, more like Solitaire. So DON’T go BACK to SLEEP.

Don’t give into the Fear we’ve all been force fed since we were children. Don’t give into the nasty familial dysfunction we’ve been taught was normal. Or what others deem good enough, or fit enough, or ANY KIND of not enough. Whatever well adjusted means, I don’t want to adjust to it’s nonsense. That adjustment bullshit has been effectual in claiming the ideas and emotions of the populace and the pathological deep feeling human in me will not let it be a song unsung.

WAKE UP! Don’t let the cold of winter, or loneliness, or depression or the nauseation of anxiety ruin the day or your ability to keep chasing. Take your time. Find your nature and your way. Take that time, and STAY with US. Another day is coming. This too shall pass. All that good shit. No emotion is truly permanent, and when they are we must seek to find their resolution. So stay awake.

Don’t take me as prophetic, authoritative. I am nothing more, but empathetic from my own experience in the deep end….. of all life has offered me. The Sulphur of Survival is just that. We must Survive, in every way possible. Letting it all fade away to selfishness and nihilism without a give a damn is for the weak and scared. It is no life worth living.

Speak your fucking goddamned feelings, with rage and vigor- even from a place of love. Reaction is always something proportionate to outside stimulants in ever singed environment and ecosystem. Whether it controlled or a combustion of metaphysical action. You and your emotions are only just the one set. Your only map. Don’t be afraid when others try to add to it. Love with a full heart always, even through, and to and fro, of the pain will let you know what’s truly good in your path. To know love is always too- knowing yearning and heartbreak.

STAY ALIVE, stay free, and empower those around you to stay free. That empowers you to stay free within yourself no matter the circumstance. It’s about all of us, no matter the judgements and harshness that has saturated our daily conversation. As our individual freedom shines a light!!! Perhaps even to places we cannot see, or maybe even ever know. Whatever you do to survive out there-Remember- Don’t slip back into the dream.