Hell’s Cage

Tools with which to pick the lock on the cage of self. ~Philip Connors

I hide from myself yet know not that I am hiding. I seek contentment in the external not realizing happiness is hidden within the cage I locked to hide myself from myself during the seasons I simultaneously ran from and toward pain never escaping the self-inflicted torment.

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A Flower Thrown Into The Air Does Not Stay There

America was conquered, but not discovered, the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place. ~Eduardo Galeano

The above quote made little sense to me until I saw the concept in terms of a relationship with a significant other, a spouse, a partner, a long term intimate companion. From my own experience, a wife. One can choose to enter the relationship as one of conquest, as is the motif in the boy gets girl stories mistakenly marketed as tales of blissful love with victory being the parting of her legs, or a relationship can be one of discovery, of continual revelatory understanding of who the other is, an appreciation for the path along which they are evolving…which is how to truly love another.

Surfaces are More Important than Souls

How would Anubis with you? Are you lighter than a feather? ~David Olson

Through extensive field research, I have come to believe people have sold their souls to the rhetoric of dRump because they are mirror whores fixated on the superficial regardless of the damage inflicted on their own soul, their own country, and every country intertwined in the physical body we call Earth.

The Flip Side of George Bailey

It would have been better for them never to have known us. ~Peter Matthiessen

Looking back on 58 hears of semiconscious existence, I wonder how many people, had I never met them, would have improved my life? If I had not spent “x” amount of time with person “y” would my life have glided along a more favorable trajectory “z”? Would I be happier if we had never shared a kiss igniting the fuse destroying my heart? Would pursuing a different set of friendships have driven me to higher professional stratospheres? This is all entertaining speculation until I flip it over and wonder, who would have been better off today if we had not crossed paths?

The movie It’s A Wonderful Life end with the smiles of all the lives George, by his existence, has blessed but does not expose the hardships others suffered because George prevented Pottersville from being an alternate reality or by saving his brother, Harry Bailey’s, life. For all we know, Harry may have eventually become an abusive alcoholic beating, perhaps killing, his wife and kids. For all we know, if Potter had not spent his life with an enemy in George, he would have had a revelatory experience and shared his wealth with all the residents in their tiny town.

The facts are we can never know who would have been better or worse off for not having walked a path intersecting with our own. Perhaps having a super shitty example for president as dRump will unite the US and the World in a common quest to overcome the petty ideologies dividing into a unity of love and peace. I can only hope it is so.

04 Oct 2019

A Whirlpool of What Ifs

What if I had not sighted down the long gun, pulled the trigger, and killed my childhood dreams? ~David Olson

What trajectory would my life have taken had I not eliminated my mind dreams for the one that seemed the most logical? Where would I be today had I not let my chosen path kick other possibilities in the teeth and left them bleeding on the curb when they threatened to divert the path pushing me forward like a human in the midst of a buffalo stampede?

Climbing to Heaven for the 10,000th Time

The closer you get to real matter, rock, airmailing fire, and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. ~Jack Kerouac

I need a deity to keep me afloat in the ocean pulling at my toes toward the black depths of the Mariana trench at the bottom of the Pacific. God or demon, either will do for the difference is minimal at best, so small, a sheet of onion paper could not fit in the space separating the two without shredding. The God that saved the Jews also a demon to the tribes assassinated by the Israelites so they could steal land for their own anointed manifest destiny.

Building a Web

What is in store for me in the direction I do not take? ~Jack Kerouac

I wonder at the web my life would have created had if decisions made in the past were chosen differently. What if I did not choose on a whim to play soccer in High School an obscure sport with little following in my stuck in the mud home town situated in the upper Midwest? Where would my life be if I did not rise above my assigned intellectual level and study Engineering college? What if I realized an early dream and dropped everything to become a traveling outdoor adventure photographer? How would my mind have developed had I not chosen to live and work in India for a year and a half in my early fifties? Where would I be had I changed any of the hundreds of decisions made each and every day?