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do what you can

June 2, 2013
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Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Almost everyone is working towards a goal in their life, and it is an important thing to have ambition and work for that one thing that you want or need to feel satisfied, but what I want to talk about here are the consequences of wanting something.

Sometimes we get so fixated on where we want to be that we forget to notice where we are. We take some things for granted and we don’t appreciate the journey; and yes I know it’s a cliche and everyone knows and goes through this. But what about how it impacts the small things in our lives.

Just because you’re working towards something doesn’t mean that in the time between now and getting that something, you should be miserable and spend all your time wanting.

Time moves so quickly and someday will be here sooner that you think, but if you spend your life waiting for someday then all your life really is; is waiting. You’re always going to want something, you’re never going to not have a goal, and you can’t put life on hold in-between them.

My point is, not every moment needs an “if only” attached to it…

be nobody but yourself

June 1, 2013
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It’s difficult sometimes, not just to be yourself, but to remember who yourself is. Life tries to mess you up, make you forget what you believe in; forget what it is you’re fighting for. When that happens, we stop fighting and get lost in the chaos.
Don’t get me wrong, this is actually when it get’s interesting…

The chaos isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it takes some chaos to make you find something, and even better realize that it was never lost to begin with.

my world and hers…

June 1, 2013
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Introduction

In the mornings I wake up without a single breath left in me from the night before. The air is cold around me; the room lingers in a warm embrace. I turn to my left and find an empty bed beside mine. She’s never home when I wake up; she’s never home at all. I can’t move when I’m alone. By the time I have the strength to get out of bed it’s never me at all.

I walk to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I don’t even bother to close the door, no one’s home. I wash my face and brush my teeth just like my mom taught me when I was three. She’s not here either; but that’s my fault. Maybe it’s all my fault. I look in the mirror and notice that her lips are still red from the night before. It makes me wonder what the hell she’s doing. I walk away from her; I don’t want to fight anymore. I go into the bedroom and ruffle through the pile of clothes that now acts as a table. I pick out what she’ll be wearing today and I fix her face with a touch of make-up; enough to hide the dark circles under my own eyes and expose the sparkle inside hers.

I never leave the house until I’ve had at least an hour to just sit and stare at the blank screen of the television. I light up a cigarette and turn to my left and find and empty seat beside mine. She’s never there in the mornings: she’s never there at all.

She’s always on my left side except when I am driving. My lips start to burn, and that’s when I realize that my cigarette has burned out. The lights come through the old curtains and shine a light on what this house used to be. When they were here the air was warm. Now that they are gone their memories keep the house warm, but the air is as cold as ice. Outside nothing is warm, for it seems as though there is no room for me in this place. It is as though I am playing a game of musical chairs with no chairs to begin with. That’s not the worst of it. Every time I play I try to sit down, only to fall flat on my face. That’s why I never leave the house; she does.

She takes the first step out the door. She looks back at me with bittersweet sadness. All we needed was a little more time, time for me to see. She wants me to take those steps with her. Those steps I have been trying to take for a while now. All I can do is look straight back at her and bow down to the floor. She looks at me with eyes filled with disappointment, and there is nothing I can do. She walks out the door, and as she turns away she plasters a smile on her face to go with the sparkle in her eyes. She’s gone; now I am really alone.

She braves the world while I brave my own world. A world I created that is just as torturous as the other. Whose to say which world is real and which is not. I don’t really believe in reality; ultimately everything is relative.

 

Her World

She lives in a place where she does no wrong. She walks on a streak of red paint that is never tarnished by the dirt on her shoes. Others have chosen to place her there, and she has chosen to stay. She’s never seen without a smile on her face; everything is fine. She’s never seen without a skip and hop in her walk; everything is all right. It’s fine that she’s abandoned me and it’s all right that she’s lonely. She lives in a world that makes it fine and say’s it’s all right. She lives in that world, her world, where she is queen, officer, and civilian. It is in this place where anything she does is right, nothing she does is wrong, and everything she does is accepted. In the mornings she takes her car and drives off to college. She never misses a class; she is the perfect student. She walks down many steps to find her seat. Front row; she is the perfect student. She always participates in discussions; she is the perfect student. She understands the material instantly; she is the perfect student. She stays after class; she is the perfect student. In truth, she knows that she is far from perfect. In reality, she knows that she has to be. I’m the only one that knows. She’s afraid and yet she’s never scared.

After class she heads out toward the benches that surround the department, and she’s not alone. She’s never alone, yet she is always lonely. I wonder if she secretly misses me as I openly miss her. She is with her friends that fit her perfect profile. She is at the top of her class; number two and number three will do. Almost instantly they involve themselves in an invigorating discussion regarding what they had just learned; they are perfect. Once the debate has been settled, they hurry of to the studio and start working on projects that they have been assigned; they are perfect. She was born to play that part. As for me, I haven’t found my part yet. I guess I am waiting on someone that just won’t show, not that she’d ever know. She’d never know that I am what she fears to be. I am always scared and I am never afraid.

She calls me on her way back home; I don’t know why. Maybe she thinks that I left, or maybe she’s just lonely. Sometimes I get the sense that she’s afraid she’ll have to die without me; if at any time I find the strength to leave, she’d never find me.

There is a moment everyday before she gets home when I feel as though I might be able to leave. The moment soon passes. It stays true to its nature; it’s fleeting. She is afraid that she will have to die without me. I am scared that I will die without ever being found.

She is home now. She’s left her world behind her while still holding it in her front pocket. I look at her as she sits down beside me. I can see her but she could never see me. I am happy she is home; she’s uncomfortable here. She is afraid of what she cannot see. She is afraid of me; I am scared she’ll always fear me. I am scared that I will die without ever being seen.

When it didn’t used to be so cold, we were constantly fighting; battles maybe even wars. With a bright red cloud that floated above the battleground, we screamed and we cried. The floor trembled under the hooves of approaching troops, and the walls turned their backs to the demise of their quarters. The furniture joined the passing winds in its chilling embrace. It stood in the shadows of many warriors and prayed for the passing of this dark cold day. Nothing was comfortable; neither of us was welcome anywhere on this field of passions and furies. The on looking faces of people and memories stared into the blankness to which they have been chained.

Our house became an abandoned field of dreams, dreams of a better place, and dreams of a home. The battles would last for what felt like an entire lifetime, and then they would slowly pass. Secretly I always wished that they didn’t. Face to face we stood and withstood the test and torment of time; at least we were together. We would reside in this horrible place for what felt like an eternity that was never ending. The place was filled with the nervous silence and loud forces of an epic betrayal. In this place where we stood together, in this place I now stand, alone. I did want to leave, but I did not want it to end. It did end, with me standing at the door and her walking out of it.

I wanted to be heard; I wanted to be found. I could never see her like she wanted to be seen and she could never hear me the way I wanted to be heard.

nomad

June 1, 2013
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I wake up in the morning to the sound of car honks.

I go to bed at night to the sound of car alarms.

In simpler times mankind only needed food, water, and shelter to survive. It was only natural that man moved where these needs sufficed him – Nomads; traveling across land and water to find what they needed to survive. Stability did not exist during this time, because in fact nothing was stable but the desire to be stable which drove the nomadic movement from one place to another.

As time moved forward, we built cities and nomads slowly became extinct; or so we thought. We filled the walls of our cities with the means for our needs to come to us. We invented a new way of living, and we created homes. Soon everything one could need was available to him within the walls of these cities. Travel was no longer a necessity for survival, but a means for trade and economy. The economy, a new concept at the time, grew and grew, and before we knew it we had new needs, needs that with depleting resources and the rise of populations became harder and harder to suffice. Today ours needs have grown into a web of complexities that can hardly ever be met. If this is true, then it is no wonder that we are never satisfied, and we’re always running after something; or running from something running after us. The reality that surrounds us is continuously morphing and adapting to our needs, or better yet to what we think we need. Families are broken in half for fathers and mothers that need to find work where they can. The homes that we built are breaking because they cannot survive in the world that we created for them. Stability has become a phenomenon that we only know because it existed once in between where we were and where we are today.

As nomads stability did not exist, and today it does not exist again. One might even say that we are nomads again, but how? How are we nomads if we own property and live in the same country? It’s simple. Nomads had three needs and once they could meet them in one place and sustain them, they were no longer nomads. Today we have a countless number of needs that cannot be found in one place and cannot be sustained. In a sense, we don’t need to be homeless to not have a home. We spend our lives in mixed batter of thoughts and emotions, fueled by desires that are constantly changing and increasing in number. We run after needs that are defined to us by a world that is in itself unstable.

Through all this turmoil, it is humanity itself that has been providing stability. Humanity provides us with connections to people through friendship, love, and family that instills a sense of stability in our unconscious. Humanity enables us to feel a sense of belonging to a certain place or time, we are driven by the need to feed this sense of belonging. Here is where we are lost again. Truth be told, I don’t think any of us feel like we belong, in this world that keeps moving further and further away from what we know. Technology progresses towards creating new means of survival as the world around us changes. These new means are created in the light of a world that in itself is unfamiliar to us.

We are pursuing humanity, but the world that we have created is destroying it. Traditions that have been passed from generation to generation are now considered obsolete. Values that were once considered sacred are becoming old men’s tales that we only here about and roll our eyes to. We shape our minds and our bodies to fit into this world based on greed and progress; but progress towards what? Towards an existence in the shadows of tall buildings filled with corporate machines, and a world that punishes “good old-fashioned values”.

I wish I had my grandfather’s conviction and belief in family and honor. I wish I could have met a chivalrous man and asked him what he thought the world should be. In truth I wish we could have gotten this far without forgetting what got us here, without forgetting the very core of what makes us human.

I am only 25 years old, and I look today at a world where childhood no longer exists. Instead of cherishing a child’s innocence, this world beats it out of them before its time. Childhood has become a lost concept, and with it all the innocence in the world is at risk.

My father once told me that if I were to marry, I should marry a man of principle. I cherish these words, and I live my life to the sound of his voice. Not only to marry a man of principle, but to be a woman of principle. I carry my principles with me at all times, and live by them.

I believe family is a bond that is created and only strengthened by blood. 

I believe that every individual should be respected and honored. 

I believe that children should play, and adults should worry.

I believe that we have basic human rights, but everything else we have we must earn and fight for to sustain.

I believe in honesty, because everything else fades.

I carry my beliefs with me, they are the principles that engraved in my mind and heart, make me the person I am today. Still I do not claim to know any truths, and I do not claim that it is always easy to stand by my principles in today’s world. Today stability is an illusion that we hold on to with possessions and money, as for a few of us, we carry what’s left, or what we still remember, of real stability in our hearts.

I only know two things for sure.

When I wake up in the morning I will hear cars honking, and when I go to bed at night I will hear car alarms firing. These two truths are stable in my life. The rest, I have not found yet.

I am a Nomad.

lacking…

May 31, 2013
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It seems to be a fact that the moment you believe something to be true, you find out that it is not. This speaks to the idea that the reality of the matter is that there are no truths.

We are all chasing after something that doesn’t exist, and it seems as though it isn’t this “truth” or our desire for it that pulls us forward towards it. I believe that it’s more of a force that is pushing us from behind.

Desire is born out of lack, you would never feel the desire for something unless you feel that you are lacking. This also means that desire is born at an instant; at the first instant that you feel lacking. It is that initial lack that drives us forward (if you can even say forward because that implies positive progress).

We’ll never find satisfaction, because we aren’t enough. We are always lacking.

I am lacking…

the self-fulfilling prophecy

February 1, 2013
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I think that maybe sometimes we try to grow up faster than our time, and in the process we ruin some things that were meant for a later time. If you’re baking a soufflé but don’t have enough patience to wait until it is ready to come out, you will ruin it, and it will be gone. not because it is not meant to be but only because you didn’t have enough faith to be patient and kind to its survival.

We want to grow up because we think that the prospects of our future have a better chance of making us happy. but the reality remains that these prospects live in the future, and the air there is different; to take them out of their habitat will ultimately ensure their demise. but what happens once we’ve made the realization that planning and thought are obsessive behaviors and as any other obsession, once they become all you have they self destruct.

too much of a good thing…

There isn’t really much you can do to cure obsession, usually the only way to get rid of one obsession is to replace it with another one. and here is where it gets tricky, we are in our nature obsessive, at least some of us are and to those people life is a matter of knowing which obsession can prosper at which time and which obsession will deconstruct the sequence. you see if you are arrogant enough to think that you can break the chain and go for something whose time has not come, you risk losing it all.

All it takes is one week link to break a perfectly strong and resilient chain… the trick is to give up on fear.

I know most of us rely on fear to help motivate us to move forward, fear of failure, fear of being alone, and fear of death. the truth is it is the fear itself that will cause you to loose.

I believe in one thing above all else; the self fulfilling prophecy.

If we let the fear of failure control us, then the only thing left to sooth us will be failure itself. cause in the end that is the way we are wired. we always need to be right, we always need to believe that life doesn’t just happen to us, but that we know better and we can see it all coming. ergo if i believe that i will fail, not matter how hard i try to succeed and even if i do at one point, my original belief still needs to be satisfied and the only way i will feel right is if life reassures me that my fears were valid, and the only way for that to happen is to fail. the self fulfilling prophecy.

But on the other hand this can also work to our advantage, if we let go of fear and give in to faith, then the flaw that once ensured our failure will ensure our success. if you let go of fear and have faith that no matter what happens you will be fine and failure is only relative, then the self fulfilling prophecy is reversed and now the prophecy is life, of at least what it should be.

Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans… well that is true, life isn’t the sum of all our actions, life is a moment, it is fleeting.

Life is like an increment of time; a second. with each second that passes by a second has gone, never to be again. as is life, a bunch of moments moving quickly behind each other and the trick is a game of musical chairs. the difference here is that there is one player and many chairs, oh, and you control the music. you choose where to sit and how long to stay there. you can choose to linger in one chair and elongate the length of a second, or you can jump around from one to the other hoping to be satisfied eventually.

Here’s the thing, everything is a choice, you are foolish if you think that you are a victim of a life that you cannot control. your life is just that, yours; it is your own and you make of it what you can. I know some people are given different opportunities and are surrounded by different situations than others but the reality remains the same. we all live in a house of cards, and it’s always a matter of choice that determines the quality of our life.

hysteria; a language

January 7, 2013
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Hysteria is a language. One we don’t understand, but a language, non-the less. It takes its form as a chapter in the history of art, and not medicine. The reason for this shall be clear once we’ve started to read it’s meanings; the meanings that it creates through images and signs; the meanings not that we create, but the meanings that create us.

To claim that hysteria is a language, can be based on a number of variables, many of which stand to be questioned and verified. Freud, as did many others, saw hysteria through psychoanalytical eyes that placed hysteria among the vast river of neuroses that exist in our unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious functions as a language. It is made of a million chains of signifiers that migrate and explode to create meaning, to create us. So is it not logical to say that hysteria too, functions as a language and through specific chains of signifiers. What about the many images of hysteria that we are left with today? The images left behind by Dr. Charcot and his famous, if not infamous clinic of “mad” women. They too speak to us, a language that we are familiar with today, but yet still remains a mystery; the language of the image. We are bombarded with images everyday, but how do we see these images?

We look at these images to see representations, representations of the “real” world, of the world to which we belong to, and the world in which we understand and perceive everything to be true. Images of the Visible.

But what if we were to look at images, not as just as representations of the world that we know, but manifestations of a world that we do not know. What if these images spoke a language that we have yet to understand by simply listening to what the image is saying. Images of the Invisible.

It is through this reading of the images of hysteria that we might be able to cross over into a place unfamiliar to us, a place where hysteria is the real, where hysteria is understood. Through finding these signifiers and understanding the associations that they form, can help us travel along the different chains of signifiers. Then we might be able to communicate with an image. Not only understanding what we see, but also understanding what the image itself is saying. And through studying images of hysteria in this way, then we will be able to understand what hysteria is saying.

one of life’s mysteries

August 4, 2012
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most of the times when we're sad we don't even really know why. and even if we do it isn't something that we can explain or share with anyone else. sadness is the most mysterious thing we face, because it doesn't have a name, it doesn't have a voice. when we're angry there is always a reason, when we're happy even if there is no reason we don't care. but when we're sad for no reason, it's like that dream where you want to scream but your voice fails you. sadness and depression are two very different things. i can't say which is better or worse because it's irrelevant. some people mistake the two, but they are in fact very different. not everyone who thinks they are depressed actually are. not all of us have been depressed, but i am almost certain that all of us have experienced sadness. it's weird that something we all share is so hard to explain or understand. so hard in fact that i can't really explain what i'm thinking right now. the way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.

on your own

August 1, 2012
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a lot of people under estimate how important it is to be able to be alone. people who are uncomfortable being alone try to surround themselves with others constantly to avoid it. but it isn't something you should avoid, it is something that maybe you should find a way to enjoy. we're all alone in the end, and there is nothing wrong with that. your own company should be something you enjoy, not just for yourself but for the people you care about. we juggle many relationships in our daily lives, but for me at least the most difficult relationship is the one with myself. i'm harder on myself than i am on others. i am meaner to myself, and frankly i don't think i am a good friend to myself at all. i really do think that i should be able to be my own best friend, and we all should. we're the better when we're better to ourselves; more honest, more open, and more content. it may not seem like the most important thing to focus on, but all of us have one relationship in our lives that will always be the most substantial and the longest; and that is with ourselves. we should make sure its a good one.

found

July 26, 2012
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26

i once read this story about and old man who spent his last days wondering about a particular question. if he could be just one thing in life, what would he choose it to be. when he couldn’t figure out the answer he started asking the members of his family the same question.

his 40 year old son, who was married and struggling to support his family, answered “rich”.

his son’s wife, who didn’t care much for being rich, but worried about her children making the right choices, she answered “wise”.

his 25 year old daughter, who was single and lonely, answered “loved”.

he understood the value of all the answers he got but it wasn’t until the day he was taking a walk in the park and ran into a young boy wandering alone, that he heard the answer that changed his life. he walked beside the boy for a while and then asked him: “if you could be just one thing in life, what would you choose to be?”

the boy was quite for a while then stopped looked up at the old man and said, “found”.

when i read this i thought it was extremely insightful, cause the truth is we all want to be found. whether its by a job that we love, or a person who loves us; someone who understands us.

we all want to be seen, to be heard; found.