There are times when something I’ve been thinking about can make my head spin, then other times a thought will snap into focus with such clarity that it’s almost like getting a paper cut, a sharp, intense, pain that lingers, that can’t be easily relieved, it draws no blood, but cannot be ignored. Those moments come far less often than I wish, although, sometimes the intensity does get annoying, but I know I feel more alive when those thoughts drive me, I know I am more alive in those moments. And it’s almost always about perception…

lol… it’s always about perception.

It’s about how I see this world, you, what happens to me, what I think I see… and what I think you see.

I guess that last is the true mystery. I think it is for any of us. How much of what we actually do  in our lives is determined by how we think others will see and judge us? How often do we reject things we know we want, or at least want to try, because we’re too afraid of what others will think? How often do we turn away from our hopes and dreams because we’ve been told to, that they are either too unrealistic, or selfish?

I don’t know what you see, I can only imagine, and no matter how objective I try to be I can’t see beyond the confines of my own mind and history. And neither can you.

But I want to…

Can I keep my irrational delusion?

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught” ~ Baba Dioum

the soft warmth, the slight pressure of your body as you sleep, pressed against my back…

the joy that fills me as you would read my words and smile…

standing at the sink, passing the dishes as they get washed, no words, just a fleeting touch, and a spark that opens my heart… again…

the look in your eyes as I’d give you something you hadn’t expected, something that I had been able to make with these hands, this heart…

so much to remember

so much…

to dream

It’s an unfortunate truth that the person we understand the least will always be ourselves.

…there are simply too many questions we don’t want to ask, too many truths we don’t want to see, too many facts we want to hide.

…too many excuses for us to use.

It seems odd in a way. There have been several times in this last year when I felt I should be writing about the journey I’ve been on… it has been ten years, I’m not where I had hoped. or planned on being, the road has been far from easy, and in some ways I’m amazed at all that has changed.

But… it’s also been me, just living each day.

Sure, there were times when I thought I couldn’t, wouldn’t, live another day. And there were times when I thought I’d found everything my heart had ever desired.

But here I am. Still here, trying to figure out what happened, what’s next, and whether I … yeah, or maybe not.

I guess it’s all just part of life. The reality that we never want to see in our dreams.

It seems to me that the older I get the more important honesty is to me. What I find odd is that it’s not the honesty of other people that matters tome, but my own. Oh, sure, it hurts when someone I’ve trusted isn’t honest, but it’s not like what they do, or don’t do, is going to kill me, well, at least I hope not. Basically, I’ve come to expect people to be dishonest far more often than not.

I guess what bothers me now is looking back at all the lies I convinced myself to be true that kept me from changing my life, that have kept me from letting go of things, or turned me away from chances to do and learn things I always said I wanted to.

“What might have been…”

It’s a sad thing, that thought, one that can drag any of down into the pits of despair.

But it’s also another lie. And one thing is true above almost everything else, we humans are experts at lies.

There is a woman I hope does exist, one who is willing to meet the fears, desires, hopes and dreams I have, one who will challenge me, question my motives, stand by me and choose to share my journey. I hope this, but also fear that she has never existed, never will. I’ve never found her, that’s for sure. Though, twice, I thought I caught a glimpse… a spark… a passing flash of a dream.

lol….even if she did exist, why would she be looking for me.

silly boy, don’t you know dreams never come true.

I find myself looking more and more about how we perceive things.

It’s interesting how all of us can blind ourselves, often, knowingly. Back in the days when I was young I used to rail against what I saw as the unfair and authoritarian views that were being forced on me, I hated the rules and those who demanded that I blindly follow them. I would fight back in almost any way I could, no matter what it cost me. Later I started thinking that I could be more successful if I started working from within the system, weakening it from the inside, but that turned out to be almost as pointless as the outright battles.

Then, for years I just let all the anger and outrage just slide by, it became just as pointless to try to beat the odds against me.

It has only been in the last ten years that I’ve come to understand that the real battle has always been within my own mind. The rules of our societies are taught to us from birth, each new lesson layered over the last, a laminated composite that we don’t even know exists until we can change our perspective. We live in our society because we choose to, we choose to accept the restrictions, the blindness, the “guidance” of those who “know better.”

The reality is that we can’t escape society. The vast conglomeration of all these conflicting concepts become less and less cohesive as more of us try to cross barriers that have been in place for thousands of years. And that is where the real battle is now, in accepting that what you see is just as flawed as any other view, in stripping away as much of the conditioning as you can and looking for what is common to us all, instead of what makes us different.

We can’t escape, but if we try, we can maybe build a better one…

I need to come here more often. I think so much, about so many things, but it seems that it’s here, where I attempt to put what I feel onto a page, that the pieces start to fit, it’s where the patterns finally start making sense. These words, the misunderstood tools they are, shape how I see, how I feel.

I shape my understanding here.

There is just so much that I don’t understand, so many things I see or hear and have to question. But even when I do fins answers, they bring more questions too. No matter what we see, what we think is truth is only because of our perspective, no matter what we hear, what we think are the facts, are only opinions. No two of us can ever truly see through another’s eyes, and even when we think we see what’s really there, we don’t, there is so much we simply miss, or our minds fill in without our knowing. Our ears are no better, it’s second nature for us to ignore what our minds say is unimportant… we never see it, or hear it.

I still remember the sessions where I learned this, and still feel like a stupid jerk when I forget.