Truly

The world needs more people that write what they mean and really mean what they write. That is the only way to write truly.

False writing is blasphemy that echoes across the pens of the thousands of writers that hacked their way onto The Page.

 

Write with ferocity. Write with lust. Write with pain.

Write like you are at war.

 

                                  Write truly.

 

Book Lust

I recently visited Bauman Rare Books at the Palazzo in Las Vegas. I fondled first editions of Shirley by Charlotte Bronte and Hard Times by Charles Dickens.

An added bonus was an employee that could “run” with me on Thomas Hardy novels…I know nerdy…but hey, I am the 21^st century’s version of Jekyll/Hyde.

 

 

 

That's right--book lust!

The Cost

 

Fear resides

Alone even when I am not

Raging inside

Praying the pain can be forgot

 

I bleed

Not where the world can see

A buried seed

Frantically I scribe to feel free

 

Can it be?

Will it come?

I am clouded and unclear

Desperately grounded within my fear

 

My mind floods with light and it crumbles in darkness

 

Can myself I find?

Forever lost

My fierce mind

Belays the Cost

 

Every feeling

Every thought

Sends me reeling

Though forgot

 

The cast is die

The place is set

Unable to comply

Drops of blood I sweat

 

Now I realize

Now I know

There’s no safe haven

On high nor below

 

Feelings torn from my flesh and eyes

Transcribes my truth and prolongs my lies

 

I am one born to the tempest tossed

I will live and write

Matter not the Cost

 

 

 

When I was a Lion…

Fiercely

Fiercely

 

 

I have loved so fiercely I can stand a little hate

I have hurt so badly I am stoic where I stand

I have left that thing so longing

As I held it in my hand

 

I have heard the lonely strings that made my head to sway

I have known things false and true

As the night forsook the day

 

I know the Sting, but not how it came to be

Always, and also never, from It will I walk free.

My Yards in March

My front and back yards—right now.

 

In case any of you were wondering: spring has not sprung and will probably not do so for some time.

The Darkness Falls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eThZkvj2FHM



Music: The Darkness Falls on Dark Night of the Soul

Composed by: Philip Wesley

Words That Are Not My Own

“Saying nothing sometimes says the most.” –Emily Dickinson

“Forever is composed of nows.”—Emily Dickinson

 

 

“It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.” –Emily Bronte

“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they have gone through me like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.” –Emily Bronte

 

 

 

“So many people are shut up inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.” –Sylvia Plath

 “If we should meet in another life, we should meet in the air.”—Sylvia Plath

 

 

Life is a rambling thing—uncensored, unsafe, and uncaring. The things we do to each other, and ourselves in the name of whatever, cannot be reconciled. Neither can the things our minds’ do to us.

Those things that we try to explain away on the surface of our minds’ do not reflect any sort of real truth. We all make our own truths. We construct, sometimes simply as a way to survive, truths that we can live with; truths that do not allow us to reveal the real person inside.

From the moment we identify ourselves as a unique thing among other things, we start building, stone by stone, a self that we can present to the world. Whether that self is good or evil or a bit of both, it becomes what we are willing to show.

Eventually; however, we start believing the very lie we have created. We have to, or we could never live with the creation. We are the Prometheus, the Frankenstein of our own craftsmanship. Time passes—many years, the person we have created becomes us. It becomes the only us we can recognize. It begins with our success of being recognized or “boxed” by those we have intrinsically deceived.

Can we change? Can we be reborn? Do we want to?

These are questions that most will never try to answer. It is just too hard. It is like tearing down a great castle with a single hammer. And when the wall is breached and the tower falls, who are you? That is the real fear. Who are you when everything is stripped down to the essence? When your center place of reference is not self-constructed, but simply realized. Can you be happy with what you find?

I don’t know.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who am I after all?

Am I a sentient thing from an eternal increase? Am I fierce disaster or a masterpiece?

I do not know.

Life is a rambling thing—uncensored, unsafe, and uncaring…

 

 

 

You Walked Alone

 

You walked alone even when you were surrounded by people

Your mind bending the world to suit the genius that resided there

Colors were your life, blues and yellows and reds¾bright colors, colors that held their own power.

You saw more fiercely and felt more deeply than everyone else.

But they could not understand. How could they? They did not see those things that you did, not even your brother.

A misplaced thing, everywhere you went people whispered and you painted. They laughed and you painted, frantically as if you knew your time was short. In your baggy clothes and your stained lips, in all weather and in all places, you painted.

The simple and the poor became beautiful; the worn and the forgotten became immortal by the heavy strokes of your brush.

 

The lights in the church window became dark, but the light in the peasants’ eyes did not. But, with the gift that the world was unready for, came a price. The price of the artist, the price of feeling, the price of genius is often high. Your demons followed you as relentlessly as you worked. The stars, the water, the flowers and the birds became more than they were on your canvas. Your world was the world of unending simplicity wrapped in confusion, like the Mistral you braved your mind as it waged war against itself. In the end, you would be the stone that you broke yourself on.

 

You were not afraid to bleed, or hunger, or thirst, you showed us that. The Heads of art scoffed at your work, they did not understand, or they were not ready, or they were jealous; no matter, still you worked. You loved few people, your heart loved art more. And how much can one heart hold? Rich men and lace-bound ladies did not interest you. The people of the earth, and the streets did; you saw Truth in them and you painted it.

 

 You sold nothing in your life, save one. It was not about that. It was about creating— creating the world as it lived within you, and nothing else.

War

I declare war.

 

 

 

“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

 And this is one: I'm going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.”
― Emily Bronte

 

Square Blocks of houses lined up in a row

Smoke hovers over the stony streets below

Silent men wander, compelled to reap so that they might sow

 

All their hardened faces seem confused within the Way

Accepting without passion the labor of the day

And the woe of man caught in the trap that keeps his mind at bay

 

The systems of the Rich; plots and figures every fee

And the ones with hardened hands still struggle to be free.

 

 

How About a Simpler Life?

The great grammarian William Strunk wrote, “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Amen Mr. Strunk.

 So in my muddled mind I think, “Why cannot life be like that?” Do we really need all those activities? Like, scouts, and soccer, and school, and work, and church, and schedules, and meetings, and rules? And what about systems, and plans, and theories, and lists, and tests, and interviews? Some of those things are needed, but do we really need all those things, and at what cost?

Our hectic, over-filled lives are the progeny of Industrial Age development, protestant values, rampant capitalism, and worst of all Social Darwinism (If you have to look some of these things up—it’s okayJ). Why do we need to fill our lives up so much that the cup is not only full, but it spills out all over the ground?

Think about it, and be honest…wouldn’t it be a glorious relief to just load up in a shiny Airstream trailer and park it at some remote beach. No itinerary, no timetable, and no reason to argue those points! Your biggest concern is the sand you are bringing in on your bare feet.

Or, maybe teleport to southern France and sit on an ancient, white-washed balcony looking out over the long lines of vineyards snaking across the gentle hills. Give me a copy of Wuthering Heights and a cup of green tea and I am in paradise. I bet the cell phone, I think I like so much, would skip across the lake as good as the flattest of stones.

A good friend of mine once told me when I started to build up my place, “What the hell do you want all that ‘stuff’ for?”

I asked him what he meant.

“All that crap does is tie you down—it ties you to things, and when that happens, kiss your freedom goodbye.”

 This is true.

Now some people like to be tied down. I like my space. I like some of my stuff; you would risk your very life if you attempted to assume ownership of my books. We all have things we like, but I wonder if that most precious of possessions— our time is utilized in a way that truly makes us intrinsically happy. Does it really do our kids any good to play every sport and participate in every activity? Is it really that important if we are ten minutes late for something? Will the earth stop turning? I don’t think so.

It is illogical to just give away everything and walk the earth like the Buddha; however, maybe we should reflect on our lives and the stress the world, other people, and rampant capitalism inflicts upon it. I mean…hey, I’ve become a soccer dad (how the hell did that happen?) and sometimes I love it and sometimes it is just another stone in my pack—one more place I have to be, AT a certain time.

I postulate maybe we simple fragmented humans take William Strunk’s advice about writing and apply it to life. “…no unnecessary parts…and every word tell.”

Hmm…no unnecessary things and only worry about the important stuff.

 What a novel idea.