No Absolution, No Pardon

There ain't no destiny about that there choice. No authority will grant you absolution from your obligation to choose for and be yourself. Though you may create the illusion of independence and individuality, your dependence on things you consider greater than your own will keeps you stuck: powerless, yet comfy. You abandon yourself in servitude out of your fear of being responsible for your own life. A simple word like "own" means "possession." So, own it and own up to it. No fortune cookie will pardon you from the charge that you have not been creative and courageous enough to write your own destiny. In the end, you'll die alone. This is both your greatest fear and your only path to salvation. There ain't no destiny about salvation. How fortunate you are to choose!

On Facades

Some people spend most of their time and energy creating facades for those in their lives that don't matter, instead of spending it wisely on those who do. They would rather hide behind a persona that is a seemingly better version of themselves than be exactly whom they are, out in the open. Some people also spend most of their time diverting others' attention away from ways in which they suck and do wrong, instead of being honest and honestly changing. They spend their whole lives focused on one thing: how to hide, without anyone, including themselves, noticing.

Not everyone is so blind or naive or soft. And not everyone has the courage to walk the high road.

Exerpt from The Art of Being

From Erich Fromm's The Art of Being:

"The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions. Illusions contaminate even the most wonderful-sounding teaching to make it poisonous. I am not referring here to possible errors in the teaching. The Buddha's teachings are not contaminated because one does not believe that transmigration exists, nor is the biblical text contaminated because it contrasts with the more realistic knowledge of the history of earth and the evolution of man. There are, however, intrinsic untruths and deceptions that do contaminate teaching, such as announcing that great results can be achieved without effort, or that the craving for fame can go together with egolessness, or that methods of mass suggestion are compatible with independence.

"To be naive and easily deceived is impermissible, today more than ever, when the prevailing untruths may lead to a catastrophe because they blind people to real dangers and real possibilities.

"The 'realists' believe, of those who strive for kindness, that these latter mean well but that they are ingenuous, full of illusions--briefly, fools. And they are not entirely wrong. Many of those who abhor violence, hate, and selfishness are naive. They need their belief in everyone's innate 'goodness' in order to sustain that belief. Their faith is not strong enough to believe in the fertile possibilities of man without shutting their eyes to the ugliness and viciousness of individuals and groups. As long as they do so, their attempts to achieve an optimum of well-being must fail; any intense disappointment will convince them that they were wrong or will drive them into a depression, because they do not then know what to believe.

"Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. Meister Eckhart expressed this briefly when he said...'He does not deceive but he is not deceived.'

"Indeed, neither the Buddha, nor the Prophets, nor Jesus, nor Eckhart, nor Spinoza, nor Marx, nor Schweitzer were 'softies.' On the contrary, they were hardheaded realists and most of them were persecuted and maligned not because they preached virtue but because they spoke truth. They did not respect power, titles, or fame, and they knew that the emperor was naked; and they knew that power can kill the 'truth-sayers.'"

Present Moment For Sale

Present moment for sale. Brand new. Never been used. One of a kind. Affordable. Priceless. A perfect gift for friends, lovers, enemies, yourself, or any occasion. Act fast! Your awareness, presence, and integrity desired. O.B.O.

Oh, Death

Oh, Death, how you remind us that living beneath the veil does no more for us than drinking out of an empty cup.

When You're Looking For Spring, Look Only to Yourself

The human being should be an artist. There is an art to living and an art to loving. The greatest of arts. Then, there are lesser arts but arts, nonetheless, in need of no less than artists to guide as hands do. Less can assume more. Even the warrior is an artist. Even the smallest of seeds creates beauty likened to art. Even the comedian, with his crude speech and brash ways, tailors the art of our humanity into humor. His art creates joy.

There is an art to this thing. That's why when we lose focus and concentration, we fail to create works of art, as the artist fails to create without a steady hand and discipline, surely leaving his muse lonely and his love without expression. The human and the artist fail to be artists without commitment and discipline to their art. The artist is not worthy of such art if he only chooses to abandon his art, as he abandons himself.

Fromm wrote that we need to study life and love in theory AND in practice. We only become artists through that kind of discipline. If I am to know you, what better way than to pay the homage of witness through my steady devotion and discipline? How else am I to know what's behind those eyes and beneath each intent, impulse, or action? My love becomes art, even in the everyday ordinariness of you.

Like any artist, the warrior must know his craft: his opponent. The comedian must know people, especially her audience. She must pay special attention to human imperfection and each fall from grace, the obvious and subtle. The lover must not be afraid to love or to know the beloved. The lover also must not be afraid to know herself. To know the nature of each and the environment.

The true artist is neither afraid to know herself nor can she avoid doing so. She finds herself in her creations and at the end of her own sentences. Rilke wrote, "Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it only comes to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast."

The lover waits patiently for the beloved to reveal her secret. She waits patiently for her beloved to open like a cryptic poem written in a foreign language that had only become accessible through a timely dream in which the Rosetta stone had been given and she had accepted. And now sits patiently before the beloved's eternity and "unconcernedly silent and vast" ocean of unknowing she can't escape and may choose to meet.

You see, this patience is not without faith, an essential confidence and trust. All true artists create in this sphere. They are gathering dust.

However, eternity is not only the soul that can't be seen, it is the soul that can be seen. Simple truths and lesser arts. And you shall know them by their fruits. Give her time to ripen or that love to bloom or an end to finally wish you fare thee well. Look only to yourself.

Little Against

I could just let these tunes, melodies, empty my brain, but there's no getting around it...

You ask me to come here, tell you a story, write you some poetry, sing you a song, but I can't...

I know you're not listening. Who listens these days, anyway?

It's already tomorrow. I forgot to mail that love letter yesterday. And the milk's old, about two days ago.

I expect your call soon. I think it could bode well--there could be some kind of reconciliation, some kind of good news. But who knows--it might take some time to tell.

I don't know. I learned to read at an early age, but I'm stuck here, still trying to decipher your language...a mouthful of rage...

Aren't you tired of "but"s, because I am. "Pero no." Pero si.

But, yes...

I'm a frantic flier. Fly-by-er. I stretch my skin as far as it will go. And still, it ain't tight enough.

My heart beats "churn," like the butter under a rotor, goes 'round 'round, and thickens, like skin beaten beneath a wide frown and a bleeding heart worn on a sleeve.

Ah, do you even remember me? My scent? You carrying my keys?

There's no raspberry or cherry or secret slippin' from these lips. You might want to catch up, give me a kiss.

We all die sooner rather than later. I hate to be the bearer of such bad news.
What happens then? When worse comes to worst, what happens when?!

I smile at you because we both know that everything ends up alright. All the meaninglessness in the world can't break a striving fool's fight for time.

Can't you hear it?

It's that dream you had but tried to deny. It's that small hope that your love will bury you alive. It's that bigger-than-life symphony of singing seeds. The rapture.

It's you and me.

Don't be a pussy. I got your number.

You can see me inside, I suppose.
Come outside, already.

Your good Lord knows.

I hold so little against you. And the things I carry are light.
You're lucky I'm easy. I won't put up much of a fight...