To Exist

To Be

Are they one in the same?

To be Alive

To be Living

What do they mean?

At what point do we see the unseen?

When do we wake up from the dream?

The material world is

The other worlds are to be

How do we create what has not been done?

Where do we see what has not begun?

The mind is the body

Body of what?

Reality, the creation of something obscure

The abstract of life we are here to endure

The choices we make, are they really ours?

Is the illusion we build perpetually true?

I hardly think I am any different from you

We merely perceive the world through a different hue

 

 

I OF THE STORM

WE can most agree upon the idea that no matter our current standings of beliefs, that every person, whether aware or not, experiences a ‘journey’ of sorts throughout a lifetime. As we age we begin to make personal conclusions as to answer some of the more abstract questions to our own lives. It seems to be an ongoing learning within ourselves as to keep that ‘flame’ burning.

With age, we begin to decide what flavours of life we enjoy and which flavours we detest. Indeed our taste buds for life evolve with us as we become more ‘refined’ or concrete as an individual.

This could be summed, such is life. An ongoing of death and rebirth, and enlightenment that ever so graciously is reclaimed by the very nature of our being.

Though, one might ask, are we the individual?

Could it be that our natural subjective perception of the world blinds us from any other way of being?

You may believe that you are you, and only you, as I am I, and only I. Perhaps this is not true.

As the current generation of science and philosophy tries to capture the elusive consciousness of the individual, perhaps does not lay within an individual at all.

Who is to say we are individual? Just as it were believed an atom could not be split.

Who is this elusive being that we call ‘I’? Can it be found in the brain? Does the brain construct ‘I’. Does ‘I’ construct the brain?

It could be that there is no ‘I’, and just the storm of all being present.

I am no one, yet you see me as an individual. I am able to ask these questions. Who is asking these questions? We are. Why are we asking these questions? Why are we?

I like to think of this storm as an ebb and flow, a mix and dance of illusion. Like two cobras hypnotising one another, becoming one. As they become one, the entire landscape around them cascades into an ever shifting sands. An orbit, but a tide-like orbit of energies. For we are always in communication. What are we communicating?

Are we communicating our existence? Can we be without communication? I believe not. As an ultimate failure of communication is death.

However, do not listen to the ramblings of this voice. For what do I know? I know nothing.

Do What You Say

It is late at night, and a father is tucking in his son.

He kisses him on the forehead, “I love you, son”.

As he walks towards the door, he pauses.

He turns around and asks, “Son, how can I be happy”? Tears forming around his eyes.

His son smiles and says, “Do the things you say”.

Into the Window

I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself lately. Objectively, spending my days doing very little. Reading books of all sorts, colouring mandalas, writing poetry and short stories or philosophical blurbs in relation to my own life experiences and visions.

This time of solitude, relfection, mental time travel, and understanding has been a true breath of fresh air to my soul.

I’ve realized that the majority of my stress and depression was reigned by a lack of cognitive vision. As I pushed on day to day for what? To pay the bills? Luckily I am still young enough, without obligation to derail this train of destructive personality I found myself on.

I dropped it all. I admitted to myself that I know nothing. I became the blank slate that I saw before my minds eye, and decided to begin rebuilding myself from the core.

Focusing first on emotional attachments to past memories and experiences, I asked myself –

Am I truly being fair to myself by continuing to feel this way? Is this how I want to feel about these memories and experiences now, and from this point on? I dove deep into my interpretations of my life’s experiences and dissected it all in my mind.

Do I want to continue to allow my emotions to control my life like this? No, I faced them head on.

I spent days analyzing my life so far. It was necessary for me to be able to move on.

You see, my life is not all that you may see from the outside, just as any other person. I’ve been plagued by grief from any early age in life starting with the death of my grandfather on my mom’s side and grandmother on my dad’s. I was not even 5 years old. Not long after, at 9, I lost a friend to cancer. From then on people in my life began to check out on a regular basis.

Then the big whammy. Just before my 20th birthday, I lost my father to cancer, and it happened extremely fast. I remember the day, which plays on in my mind like a broken record –

Sitting with my dad as he lay in bed, just being with him, watching his father, crippled with arthritis and bound to a wheelchair pull himself up and out of the chair to give his dying son a final hug.

“Fuck that” is how I felt whenever this would cross my mind, like a brick in the face, which happened all too often. Overwhelming with anger and resentment of life.

I realized that I became this embodiment of hatred only for the sake of my own survival. I couldn’t bare to deal with my thoughts and memories.

Now here I am today, 28 years old. My father is gone, all but one grandparent remains (step grandmother, but grandmother none the less). I am allowing myself to heal, finally.

To breathe, to feel, to think, to live.

I am shedding the shallow husk that I had become over the years as I realize I no longer need this protection. I am stronger, I am more alive, and even more unbreakable than I ever thought I was.

Nothing will bring me down, I thank my Scottish blood and native soul for this. The undying flame that burns at the core of my heart.

I drop kicked the ingongruence of life right in the nuts, and said “Fuck right off you, I don’t need your shit! Get out of my head, get out of my life”!

Like a toxic relationship that existed within myself for far too long, I’ve cut the ties. Farewell thee, weak dog.

As of today I feel much lighter, much easier.

The food I eat has flavour once again, the music rings beauty in my ears, and laughter soothes like waves over my soul. The sun is shining brighter, and the air is fresher.

I have enjoyed this deep rest. For in a world ever so transient, nothing actually changes.

Life just goes on.

The Day the World Stopped

Clickitty clack, clickitty clack. I could here them walking in my footsteps. Knock, knock. I knew they were at my door. Badum, badum, my heart would beat, with every pulse to outrun them.

Sitting alone, in the deafening silence of existence that one lonely night, I felt I no longer could run. My body was tired. Fatigued, and drained by the constant impulse to stay one step ahead. My mind drunk with delusions of who, or what these things were.

My soul, finally surrendering to the futility of my resistance.

There in my room, I sat accepting what to me could only be described as fate.

The thumping, cracking, and creaking of the walls around me filled me with the illusions of my waking life, as I stared deep into my soul, staring back at me.

“I know you are there”, I croaked.

“You’ve always been there. What is it you want from me”?

I could feel the fingers in my mind, massaging my brain, sculpting my awareness into something entirely new. I could hear the hair growing on my skull, almost louder than my heartbeat.

Clickitty clack, the steps grew louder, and closer.

I knew this day would come.

Without a whisper, they reincarnated into the sentient bodies of light and hope around me. Swirling in the mists and echoes of my thoughts and memories.

“Is that you dad”?

The silence dissipated into the air, leaving the most unheard of feeling of understanding.
Felix, my furry friend, looked over at me, his ears pearked up, listening to the exact moment of clarity that had enveloped the room.

Then it came. Bursting through the door, flying up the stairway, over Felix and directly into my body.

This essence that could only be described as spirit entered my body, my mind, and grabbed hold of my soul.

As I felt my body surrender, my eyes to the ceiling, and mind pulsing with electricity, the spirit made rest within me.

The fusing of two spirits cultivating right then and there inside one body. I felt I could not control myself any longer. As uncertainty began to fill me up, I panicked.

“911, 911” is all I could think of.

I fell out of my chair, my heart pounding, mind racing, and body shaking.

“Is this a heart attack”? I wondered to myself.

No it wasn’t. When I finally pulled the phone out of my pocket and dialed for help, an instantaneous sense of relief calmed over me.

The lady on the line answered “911, fire police, or paramedics”?

“Existential crisis” I blurted out, almost laughing. Drunk with delusion , I collected myself.

“Um, are you okay”, she asks.

“Are you hurt? Are you alone? Do you have any weapons on you”?

“Not that I’m aware of” I chuckled, trying to contain myself.

“Is this call for you, or someone else”? She wondered.

“For me, I am not sure what is going on with me” I replied, calmly.

I gave her my address and paramedics were dispatched.

I grabbed my coat, journal, and hat, where I began circling through my house until their arrival. Out the front door, around the side, through the back, lock it behind me, unlock it. Through the house, out the front, lock it behind me, around the side, through back, lock it behind me, unlock it, and so on.

I was trying to lose them. Stuck in a maze within my mind, the clickitty clack was still behind me.

Now, to this day, as I walk my ankle does click, my wrist does clack just as my father’s, and there are no longer footsteps behind me. My steps are louder, stronger, and surer than ever before.

Life’s Fair Toll

There once lived an owl, an owl called Life.

This owl did sit, so elegantly.

The own would sit, perched upon a pine tree.

Not just a pine tree, but a wonderful pine tree.

The owl without movement, finally could see –

That as it became aware of what, who, and where it must be

there was no reason for itself to become trapped,

upon this tall, pine, tree.

As it sat, stoical – perched upon this pine tree –

it became a monitor, observer, a platonic Fabergé.

As the owl began to see, see what is truly free;

the owl began to feel. Feel free to see. To see free, to feel.

The owl let go of its body, to be.

And as the owl did sit, upon this wonderful, tall, pine tree –

the awareness did grow, so fabulously.

As the owl let go, looking back upon its body –

Its soul, mind, and emotions became free to control.

For some would believe that to LIVE is to LEARN, though to LEARN is to LIVE.

For the owl that lives, allows the owl TO LIVE…

Unaware of Life’s fair toll

All Life Must Grow

Sitting back in the caress of the comfy leather chair beneath me, and warm ceramic mug of bitter sweet coffee hugging my hands, I was staring out the living room window with my waking thoughts.

The fields brown and bare from last fall’s harvest and the tall ash trees, naked and stripped by winter’s frost, I began to soak in my surroundings.

The beautiful, lively, eggshell orchid completely content in it’s earthen soils and sunlit window view. The volcanic candle holder, so rustic, yet sleek and slender. The silky smooth maple table, polished to perfection with its beveled edges and ornamental legs.

As I began to become one with my surroundings and their essence, my curious mind is drawn back towards the window and the wonderful view into the natural serenity of solitude.

It is when the graveyard of house flies along the windowsill yanked my attention out of the solace of the moment, I noticed the struggling stink bug that perplexed my mind of peace.

As the bug struggled with every ounce of its life trying to find a way through to the other side, I wondered of its simple life. The bug does not know why it wants to be on the other side of the glass. It is only drawn by a strong natural instinct. It doesn’t understand that fighting this pane of glass is futile and that its fate will become that of the dozens of house flies beneath it.

The bug never thinks that perhaps inside the window it could live its short life in peace. Yet instead, walks in circles in search of something more. In search of an escape to the other side.

What on the outside would make its life any better? What is it searching for that it does not already have?

I wonder, am I all that different than this tiny creature?

Am I too, driven by the same instinctive desires to be on the other side of the window? My ability to create meaning of my actions becomes somewhat trivial.

The bug is just as I am, trying to survive, to live;

and as I understand that all life must grow, I picked up my tiny critter friend and released it into life beyond the glass, in hopes that just like me, it will find what it is looking for.