Let's Go Sailing

Bitter Sweet.
Bitter. Sweet.

I've come to believe that those two words are the answer to every philosophical question that's ever wandered through the empty hallways of my mind and rapped repeatedly at the front door of my brain in synchronized rhythm with my heart.

Inhale. Bitter.
Exhale. Sweet.

Knock. knock. Bitter.
Knock. knock. Sweet.

The rising of my chest has been weighted down with all of the bitter, and as I struggle to release a song of joy with each new breath the contraction of my ribs refuses to set it free. Cages protect what is outside of them. And are prisons from what's within. Where is the heart?

But this balance, although difficult, is necessary. Hearts are dangerous. Hearts are passion unbounded by laws of thought and reason.

My whole life I've heard about right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark.

These past two years, the greatest lesson that I've learned is that there is no opposition between those words. We've been led to believe that those things undo one another, but we just didn't understand. Tension, and opposition are two very different things.

We think that if something is not good it is bad.

What is wrong and right is subjective. Light and dark don't undo one another, they complete each other. They can't live without each other.

I'm moving soon. I've started to say my goodbyes, and my pockets jiggle jangle heavy with melancholy change.

However, I can't say that I'm sad, because with change comes growth, and as much as everything is changing, I'm making room for so much more.

Life is filled not with oppositions, but with tensions, and it is the constant pull, between holding on and letting go, between this transition that is causing me pain, to this new limitlessness that is so wonderful, that I am, that we are, able to sail out of a safe harbor, to uncharted waters, that hold so many possibilities.

Pull too tight and your sails lose power. We need to Let Go. As hard and painful as it is, we need to.
But without any pull, your sails can't catch any wind...

It is the tension, the balance, that exists between everything, between me and you, and here and there, then and now, that connects all of us.

I've started to say my goodbyes.
Tears have been shed.
And now when we hug I feel like we hold each other so tightly, its as if we are trying desperately to draw ourselves into one another so that we can't be parted.

But we've all got our own voyages to take.

Last night I was asked how I felt.
Tonight I have an answer.
I feel Bitter Sweet.

"I have to learn to let go and remain all at once." - Elizabeth Lives

feeling is being.

I'm in love with a feeling.

A pulse rushing, beating. breathing.

Not existing. But Being.

I'm in love, not with a person that I can name.

Not with a hand that I can hold. Or a mouth that can be pressed against my own.

I'm in love with the intangible. The indescribeable.

But who can tell me that this isn't love. what is love.

Plato had six different kinds of love.

With six different names.

Why do we just have one? Why have we diminished love?

Simplified, Reduced, and Extinguished it?

Love who you want. Love what you want. Love where and how and for whatever reason you want.

Love...Love.

I'm no romantic. I don't fall for lines and gestures and bedroom eyes. I don't envy girls in white dresses with rings encircling their polished fingers. I don't think about soul mates, and happily ever afters. For me, that is not Love.

But do not tell me that I do not believe in love.

My love, is not your love. and the way you love is unique and can not be copied or replicated by me or anyone else. And that is why love is so extraordinary.

I walked outside today. And a rush of blood surged through my veins and my palms got sweaty and my heart began to race and a smile beamed across my face and I looked around me, and i realized I'm in love.

I'm in love with life.

My life.

The blessing of life.

And i'm in love with the chance that I have been given to share my life with others. To better it. To make it shine and sparkle and sing. and make it mean something. Make it mean Everything.

That is my love.

Regardless of your definition, or how well it puzzle-piece fits with anyone else's definition, embrace your Love.

Love your Love.

Because it is unique and golden and exists for you to Love it.

In Darkness, Find Comfort

"Wouldn't it be beautiful," she mused to her shadow, "if what was said, and what were true, were the very same? Wouldn't that really be something?"

Her shadow did not answer.

"Wouldn't it be beautiful," she continued, despite her shadow's seeming disinterest, "if we didn't need jackets and hats and gloves. We could wear our feelings wrapped about us, and they would keep us warm. And everyone would know exactly how you felt, if you were wearing happiness one day and sadness the next. Then they could say to you, did you shrink your happiness in the wash? Is that why you're wearing blue? and then they could lend you a pair of joy because your hands were cold. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Her shadow was preoccupied with an ant that was crawling over it, so it did not answer.

"I wish that you would not always trail behind me like that," She said as she turned her head to face the shadow. But the shadow, also turned her head.

"You and I are not so very different after all. Why should you not want to walk side by side with me. Or even hand in hand with me. Why must you constantly try to trip my feet with your own. Why is it that when I lean over to get a better look at you, you hide yourself from me? It makes me feel as though you want nothing to do with me. And I am not about to try and force compassion from a being so disinterested. So I try to run from you and yet you refuse to leave me. You will not speak but you will not go. What am I supposed to do? What is it you want?"

Her shadow sat motionless across the warm concrete. She was embarrassed. She hugged the ground as tightly as she could, but something within her buzzed and tapped at the invisible space between a shadows mind and it's soul and would not let her be still. She was moved to answer.

Slowly, cautiously, she peeled her palms off of the sidewalk that had kept her grounded. She rolled her shoulders off of the earth and pressed herself to sit side by side with her companion.

She turned her head, and for the first time the two looked at one another face to face. And both began to cry.

The Shadow stood, walked in front of the girl, knelled before her, and took her heavy hand, burdened with blood and bones and flesh, with in her own translucent palm.

And then the Shadow did something very rare. In a faint and tenuous whisper, that was simultaneously angelic and haunting, the Shadow spoke.

"Yes. My dear sweet girl. That would be a beautiful place, and there is nothing I desire more than to walk hand in hand with you. I would love it if what was said was true always and for our hearts to keep us warm and I never want you to try to run from me, because I am you, and you are me. And a race in which one runs from themselves in a race that can never end and will never be won.

When it is dark, and you don't see me, I never go away. I could never go away. When it is dark, I meet with the other shadows. There are so many of us. And I meet them and tell them of the beautiful thoughts i've seen inside of you. Don't be afraid of the shadows. We carry all of the secrets you corporeals are afraid to speak. All of the dreams that you are to shy to admit to and all of the fears you think no one else shares. We shadows are the great unifiers in life. You dress yourselves up in fancy clothes and designer names you drive expensive cars and build great palaces. You are all constantly running, trying to be bigger and better and different and unique.

But everyone has shadow. And we shadows can not be changed. We can not be made up or broken down or taken off. We will be here, with you, because we are the purest parts of who you are. And in the light, I walk behind you so that I can protect you from the untruths that surround you. And so that I can look at you, and admire the person you've become. A person with beautiful thoughts of truth and joy.

But what is said and what is true are very different things amongst you corporeals. And although I know many things, I do not know why. Maybe, I think, it is because you are all still searching for something unnamed. Something you don't know, and so you can not find it. And so you make up things in hopes that what you create is what you are looking for. But in these creations, you become further and further away from truth.

Does that make sense?"

The girl did not answer.

"I'm sorry friend. Maybe I'm not being clear. We shadows are not the best at making sense of words. Because words, though powerful, are not always true. That is why chose ours wisely. In the silence of my companionship I offer you the only real truth that I know, and that is that, we are never alone."

And with that the shadow released the girls hand, nodded her head, and lay down across the the cement, waking an ant that'd dosed off between a crack in the sidewalk, who realizing the time and that he'd over slept, sped off into the earth with haste.

Everything else fell motionless.

The girl smiled. Stood. And continued down the street just as the sun began to draw its night shades, and the shadow, growing dimmer by the minute, trailed behind at her heels.

Reflecting.

I re-stumbled across my original blog I started the start of my senior year of high school. I didn't maintain it very well because after a few months i'd completely forgotten my password and abandoned it. But serendipity grabbed hold of me the other day and as if by fate I found it, cracked the code, and reread all of my old entries.

They were surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, very similar to the ones I blog now. A lot of them however were about my wishes for the future.

It was like unearthing an old time capsule. The days that I wrote them seem like another life time ago and its so strange to think that those forgotten passages are the manifestations of my old hopes and dreams.

There are so many things that I know now that I questioned then. But as I read them a warm smile grew from my lips to my cheeks and then reached from one ear to the other. I was laughing and touched, not because what I'd written was particularly profound, or even very good, it was hardly even punctuated properly.

I was smiling because I realized that the girl that wrote those silly entries, would be very proud of the girl writing this one.

Despite everything, everything turned out better than alright. It always does, I think.

At the end of the day the only person that you have got to live with is yourself, so make sure that you live your life in a way that you can look in the mirror and tolerate the person returning your gaze.

I'm happy to say that I can, and I believe that everyone else will be able to too, they've just got to keep a stiff upper lip. Wouldn't it be lovely if we all did the wonderful things we thought up. We could all be so proud.

I intend to.

And hopefully an older version of myself will find this and laugh at my own silly thoughts, and hopefully that older girl will be someone that I can admire and look up to and be proud of. And hopefully she will have done something wonderful during the time that passes before our meeting.

Happy Day

It never fails to amaze me how quickly a year passes, and how much can happen in the duration of one.

I'll keep this short.

2010 has been remarkable. Its been a real eye opener, and in my brief stint on this earth, has so far taught me the most, about others and myself. It hasn't been all rainbows, and sunshine. Parts of it have been hard. Really hard. But through it all, 2010 has left me with a sense of utter bliss, as any year should, and i'll tell you why. No matter what hurdles a year throws at you, how wonderful or awful you feel it has been, look back on each year with fondness, because you're still standing to greet the new one that's approaching.

Resolutions:

1. love more

2. cry more

3. laugh more

4. share more

5. live more

ashes to ashes.

burning bright

we're so hot nothing can touch us

invincible, care free, reckless.

young

we're moving so fast our feet don't touch the tracks

track back, back when life moved slow

and we were young.

and we were learning. and we were growing. and life was shiny and new and bright. warm.

to go back a second, an hour, a day, to those days, when we were fenced in and child proofed and protected. we've neglected the rules that held us in place, kept us safe.

walk don't run.

don't push don't shove.

sticks and stones, that's not fair.

before all was fair in love and...

when was it that we realized that we knew everything, and that the shiny new and bright was ours for the taking, and once we stole it we had to run, run with it not walk because walking wasted time and we didn't have any time because we had places to go and people to see and we were going to see cliffs and dive off them and swim to depths unheard off and drive fast getting there and hey they look good lets take them for a ride and hey that looks like fun yeah i'll give it a try.

it use to be the only shootings were stars. stars burning burning bright.

fire. fire. hot. cause we're running so fast our feet don't touch the tracks and the stars don't shine brighter than us because we are young and we are reckless and we are invincible. and rules couldn't hold us and keep us in because we ran out of those gates so fast no one could catch us and we've been running and taking and jumping and diving and shooting and flying

but what goes up

must come down

and why didn't anyone tell us that

did they tell us that?

before we knew everything did we ever know? had we forgotten?

forgotten that flying

turns to falling

turns to crashing

and that track is closer and coming up faster and the stars are a blur and they're burning so bright

but that light, that fire that burned so hot with so many dreams of places to be and people to see is getting dark. and now its black.

SMACK.

pavement.

not sky.

not.

not.

not anything.

nothing.

because kissing the cut won't erase hurt anymore.

because rockabye baby, our cradles, they broke.

because we were never invincible.

and that was the last lesson we learned.

Scattered.

I met this awesome person.

Who I very well could have had the time of my life with.

And then the evening ended. And we said goodbye.

And I will spend the rest of my life looking back very fondly on that evening, and wondering "What if?"

But life is made of moments. Not of blocks. Moments are small and pass by too quickly to grab hold of and hang on to.

So we watch them speed by, unsure of exactly what they were. A flash in the corner of your eye, that fades and you're left, wondering.