Standing on the precipice of sleep
Working my way to my feet
It’s the little things that make and break me
Each day I go through each day
Trying to catch the good moments
Letting the bad ones go
But being tired makes the whole thing a lot more complicated
Makes me wonder about how good of a person I am
Deep down
It’s the person who pushes through obscurity despite it all
that’s the person to aspire to be
I catch myself sometimes
Failing to do good
Because my body falls behind
And my mind drives me to close my eyes
Wanting there to be more to it all
To return to the land of dreams when the sun is still shining
Keep going
Keep pressing on
You have to pull out a win
This is for you
No one is going to be pulling you along
Drag it
Pull your body along with your aspirations
Drive it with your dreams
It will follow you where you go
Because it has to
Then you can sleep
When you have exhausted all your resources
And gotten the job done
That’s when you deserve it.
General
Kiznaiver : A Clash To Empathize
I was talking with my dad recently, talking about life and the feeling of being able to go back to school. The part that I am started to get excited about the most is the fact that I will be surrounded by people who I might be able to connect with in some way. The conversation changed in tone when he told me that life is about finding your people. The people that understand you in some way and that get you. This phenomenon is kind of a strange concept. A group of people that will understand me in my entirety seems kind of like a funny thought. I had talked about this before, in a way that used an analogy as a tree and its branches signifying how my life stratifies as time goes on reaching out in all sorts of directions. It about that connection, the empathy between two people that really matter.
Now I wanted to write about this for a while, this show I had watched many months ago, it’s called Kiznaiver. This show happened to resonate with me because of the topic that it covered. The ability to connect people through empathy, now since it was a sci-fi anime its premise was that a group of people had their pain was connected, and through various events, they were forced to come together and understand one another. Each participant out there struggling to connect with another person in some way but a lot of the time fighting to keep themselves from exposing too much.
It made me think about all of us nowadays. We are throwing ourselves out into the world using social media and yet the way that the research goes, that it doesn’t make people any happier to do so. It’s like a shout to be seen but only in a way that there is so little of us is showing at a time. It’s troublesome because I think it’s these pain nuances that we tend to manicure out of our lives that really allow us to connect. Though it seems strange, it’s our pain a lot of the time is a glimpse into this part of ourselves that doesn’t see the light of day. It’s touching of the core of who were are so people seek pain to feel real. The question is if we keep acting this way on our social media, are we hoping our lives will follow the illusion or is it that illusion that sustains our lives. Will we finally be able to connect to one another if we make ourselves like all the celebrities we see or is the good ole’ fashioned way of being present and real with one another the key to living a happy life?
The reason I was talking about finding my people, was because I want to have a chance to connect with people. Sometimes in my day to day, I feel like it’s always I am a fish out of the water, gasping for air, expecting to break. The question is if I act as I do, will I gain the ability to breathe, or perhaps I should find other fish of the sea who might just be a lot more like me. I know when I have found these people in my life, I feel at ease and the suffering for air seems to slip away. Who knows where all of the people who will impact my life will come from, but I can honestly say, I hope when I find them, I feel at peace because we will know we finally found a kindred soul to connect to.
More Money, More Calculations
Money becomes a huge focus when you seem to have run out of it. It gets me thinking about the function of money in my life. I work and I work, then I get paid a certain amount depending on what I put into it. Now since I work hourly, my time is being bought, hour by hour. Now that time as a quotient of my day and life is essentially putting a price on both the work that is being done and the person who is doing the work. Once I have that I start to measure the cost of things in hours rather than dollars because it’s much easier to conceptualize.
Now, take for instance standing in line for lunch, should I go after that sandwich, that will cost me about half an hour, maybe I should pick up those chips, another fifteen minutes, drink will cost me twenty and I can make it a meal for the added cost of ten. I wish when I came up to the counter they rang me up and said, that will about about an hour and fifteen, but thats usually what I try to do. It makes me understand how I want to spend my time and money. Unlimited music a month for one hour of my time, hell yeah! A nice book, usually runs me about two, same with the interent. My apartment costs me about 70 hours which is worth it but it does take up a lot of my time. Thats when I get to the problem at I don’t have enough hours to do the things I want to do or I might literally not have enough time.
It’s a strange exchange none the less but I find that there is a great motivation through it. I either find things that will take up less of those figurive hours that I sell or maybe I find that there is more value in the hours I have. Our goal is to maximize our time output while minimizing the percentage of our time that every day expenses take up. That way we can reach an equalibium where we feel comfortable with how much time we spend to fuel our lives. That way, we don’t have to worry about about the small things like how much time do I have to work to get a sandwich but think about how many hour we have to work to spend the time on memories, which ultimately are priceless.
The Place Where You Belong
I felt it again today.
That surge of electricity that flowed through my body as if I had been I had been finally plugged back in again.
I sat around that table, flooded with this familiar feeling that had been gone for such a long time.
How could I have forgotten about it, how could I have doubted
I knew that life might not have been going the way I had wanted it to, but if how I felt is any indication of where I should be then it’s the universe telling me that I just struck gold.
I help but be excited
Finally, I feel like all of my zeal and passion is warranted
there I was, surrounded by the simple word peer again wrapped in the frame of cohort.
I haven’t even started yet and the questions began to flow, like a dried up creek after the rain.
I felt as sense of being alive again
Like blood was finally unstuck and my brain was taken off pause.
A sense of self that resumed naturally almost like automation
This is who I am and I haven’t felt this why in a while
My dad and I talked after
he said life is about finding your people
for now, I know these are some of them
maybe this will change in the future
I don’t know
I just know the electricity that I feel coursing through my bones
and the feeling of being alive again
This should be a good year.
The Storyteller
I sit behind this keyboard regularly thinking about the various progressions and places my life goes. All formatted and written in a way that I hope comes across easy and accessible. I figure, if I can at least tell you all a story, then maybe it would make what I have to say more bearable. I’m not a very good storyteller, at least in person I struggle with it. There is something about proper storytelling that is mystical and enticing to me. Great storytelling makes you feel what the teller is feeling, see what the teller saw, and understand the story that they are building right in front of you. It grips you and takes you on a journey, only to put you back to where you were before right at the end.
I think we all experience storytelling, it permeates our lives in the small, telling people about our day, to the large, reliving a major event in our lives. It’s how we go about getting updates and information about the people around us.
But for me, I always have a hard time with it. I get bogged down with trying to explain everything, and if I miss something, I’ll go back and correct the record. I don’t know where to start or end, the rise and fall that feels more like a plateau than the mountain it should be. I get tripped up by the words and am compelled to go through the every minute and irrelevant detail. A story people suspect should only be a couple minutes turns into a marathon full of tangential information and excessive need to correct. The format to which feels more like a report than story, like the telling of facts than an adventure.
I grew up with them though. The first storyteller in my life was my dad who used to tell me from the bedside, both reading from great books aloud right, and telling bits and pieces from his own life over the years. There was always something exciting about it, it was then not strange that I picked up listening to others as a habit. I relish the stories they decide to weave right in front of me. That’s probably why I also feel so comfortable listening to the background noise of talk of radio and have filled my phone to the brim with podcasts spinning stories and narratives.
It’s just my hope that I can somehow capture the magic storytelling has locked within. As with all things in my life, its work in progress. I’ve been told to start with a place and a problem. Both things that are hard for me, because my problems usually happen over many nights and many places. It’s hard to pinpoint where there the breakthrough happens, so my stories muddle together and lose its meaning like a trying to transport a puddle with your hands. It’s something I hope to work at for the future, so when it comes to my turn by to tell my story, people will be happy to listen.
Breathe
I don’t know
I don’t know what I should do.
Ripped and torn from direction to direction
My life asunder
Tired each time I wake up
With no easing as the day presses on
So many things
It makes me feel as if everything needs to be done
But nothing really does
Just a swirling
A flowing of an ever growing
I know what I should do
I know what I actually do
And sometimes hope aligns them
Time escapes me
It hopes for me to duplicate
To be two or even three
Maybe then I can get things done
Maybe then I can I can finally catch up
That’s all I want
To finally get my head above water
And see the sky again
And breathe
Like I used to
Aware
I hate it
that you made me aware
I was perfectly content
focused and driven
now
you showed me what I had purposely put aside
it’s not your fault
I should have been more careful
now I am left
with an ache
that I can’t resist
I don’t know if I should thank you
or scorn you for this
it’s on my mind now
I can’t shake it
I am losing my drive
my focus
to this feeling
I will fight it
tooth and nail
until it’s time
but now is not the time
so I hate it.
embracing the quiet within
Imagine the scene of sitting out watching clouds and the world on that park bench during a beautiful summer day. The shade of the tree keeping you nice and cool. The day is lively, coming and going with life busying itself around you. How long do you think you can hold that moment? How long can you just take in the world around you before you have to stop? It’s been bothering me lately, that I can’t seem to find that peace enough to stop long enough to matter.
I’ve never been one to be able to stay still for long, taking in what I can and busying myself with the goings on in the world. I might only get a few spare moments that my mind allows me to stop and say that I should just take it all in. I don’t know if my attention span needs a little work, but I feel like I am not at rest, not letting myself relax. It’s a perpetual movement that drives me to go from task to task for the sake of doing so. I will take the time to capture a moment like a picture, but then I am gone on to the next onto the next one without skipping a beat.
What bothers me most, is that silence seems in some way to be the enemy. It’s most telling when you are left alone with someone, someone you know, and there is a lull or natural stopping point within the conversation. I can’t stand that silence, it’s unsettling to me so I fall back to words and conversation breaking what could be a real moment.
I’ve been trying to find that silence, that rest during my day, and yet the time I spend doing it, though only a moment, feels like an eternity. I think it may be that I am not comfortable sitting with myself. Not comfortable with allowing myself to stop and to catch my breath. I try to sit and meditate but the task isn’t one that you can just check off a list, it’s something that requires waiting and patience. To actually sift through a moment.
Personally, I find my solace in the loud, discordant undertone of life, the constant reminder that the world keeps turning and life keeps moving. I want to work at embracing the small moments that I have of quiet in my life. To just sit and ponder without speaking. To listen without interruption. I think then I might find that I have matured in a way that I embrace life in all of its forms, loud and quiet alike.
So if you could, take a moment and wherever you are and just sit without anything else going on, and see how quiet can be.
Genuine
I don’t know how to express it properly, this feeling about the world. I find that out there, there are so many ways that people act, ways that are only a shadow of something else, someone else’s purpose and rational. An act that a merely a motion in a machine of how people believe the world should be or just is. The process we go to for learning how the world works keep us confined in the way we might have learned to be right. It keeps us on in a perpetual motion towards and an end goal that we do not understand. These actions we participate in, do we truly believe in their message or is it just a lesson we are not to question. This basis for how we act is in direct relation to how to feel within. So if there is something we do that is so incongruent to what we believe we create a resonance within ourselves, a detachment from our action and have to rationalize behavior we might not even truly understand ourselves.
We subtract the resources of our personality and use it the brick and mortar to build a wall around our hearts. The problem with a wall is that it is a fixed thing, a settling down in space for the long night ahead. It becomes hardened, a separate piece from ourselves as we hope to cultivate the fertile land of the being within. A wall works both ways, though, it might keep the danger out, but it also keeps us in. The higher the wall that we build, the more labyrinthian we create our protection, the more we isolate ourselves from the outside world. There then is a sense of irony as we build the wall to keep others out but inside is a quiet hope for people to come in.
We can’t assume that someone will come to break down those barriers, find their way through the labyrinth and finally be able to share in harvest in your heart that you so meticulously sowed. We have to act, spend time leaving the confines these castle walls and explore the world in a way we feel is right. We must have the courage to act as at times we feel we must, not worried about how it might look or seem. To ask the important questions about why these walls are there in the first place. Our spirit asked not to be confined, so keep those doors open and keep our curiosity strong. One day I hope for the vine and weeds overtake the wall, return it to the earth, allow to see this rich land all around. A land that we freely wander in our own way, and see with eyes unclouded, it’s beautiful out there, and wall only stands in the way of that. It’s then we must realize that the only way we can truly be free is to believe in what we do and do what we belive.
Untitled
I was walking through the night air
Puffing steam with every breath
The only sound around me were my shoes
as they would clap at every step
I needed someone to talk to
but no one was around
so I called out to the moon
and what I found made me frown
She just ignored me
As I missed her gaze
She just ignored me
and I didn’t know who to blame
She so bright and so beautiful
And yet I got no reply
So I called out to the stars
And be it a surprise
No one up there would answer
me or any of my cries
There are so many of you up there
How could this be
So many of you up there
How can’t it be just me
As I walked through the earth and pondered what may have been my mistake
only to come to the realization
My plan was half baked
That is when to a degree,
I knew what ultimately must be
It is I who stood and talked to the sky
But here on earth is where I must try.
Too Human 