Christmas time

Just a few years back christmas was diffrent to me,
it was candle lit and warm, rich in colors and the friends I had from church
every christmas eve we lit candles, sang songs and reveled in the mystery of it
followed by early waking on New Years eve morning to pray for peace, share breakfast, and our hopes and dreams for the new year. In all honesty I miss it. There are some traditions that can be kept, spending time with my family on Christmas Eve, the annual trek around town to see my family the day of Christmas. Bundling so I can go to see my grandma and grandpa, headed to my dads to spent time with him on his birthday and see my step mom, and sometimes, in the past few years, go and see my best friends kids and spend some time with them. Holidays are far from the traditional meaning of a day off, always a day I do not have to work, but hardly a day I do not have a full plate of things to do. As of late however, things have just not been the same. No Christmas eve programs to attend, no 2 weeks full of Church stuff to do almost every day, as always the family things remain, but it hardly seems the same anymore. There are presents, and boxes and bows, some of the same music is there, but somehow it has lost much of its magic for me. Maybe it is because I have not had kids, so it is not their time yet, but in a lot of ways Christmas is feeling colder this year. Another Christmas, another day older, not much has changed.
Sometimes traditions have lived far beyond their original meaning and purpose, but we live them just the same. I never have celebrated Christmas as the birth of a savior, because I do not feel I need saving. But, somewhere in my mind I realise the value of the birth of hope, the birth of an idea that 2000 years later is still found missing at times. I want my Christmas eve service back, with all the trimmings and people I knew and loved. But try as I might to bring it back, it seems things have changed. I was once told by a counselor of mine that the reason that trditions were so important to me was that I knew that no matter what the years brought some things would remain the same. The Buddha once taught, Life is suffering, and the reason we suffer is attachment to the things of life. I guess the years are harder because the past has meant so much to me. I know it's not about the things of Christmas, afterall, if it were that would mean that once things are gone, it would leave no meaning to Christmas at all. I miss my traditions, and hope that maybe this year I can create some new ones.
I hope that this year brings all the joy you seek, and all the love you are after.
Namaste

Lets review, shall we?

As the cold moves in and the snow gently falls it seems the time of year to reflect on the events of the past one and perhaps set intentions for the new one.
It all began with a kissless new years eve. Not too sure if that was a sign of things to come or not, but it was what it was.
I began working out and eating right several times this year. now begining week 5 of the last cycle I may be able to continue if I stick to it and do not let the days between working out become longer and longer periods. I found a new sport, (hockey) and rediscovered a love of an old one (sword fighting). Found a new love and a chance to redeem myself as a pet owner in Sam. Reunited with a new love, took a trip to texas, and watched it turn sour on the return trip. I wrote very little though much happened. My house grew as I took in my niece, and watched her florish some as she found new things to do and came to find new things she had always wanted to do waiting at our door step. I spent saturday mornings all summer at the farmers market, met some new friends and watched others leave in the aftermath of the break up. Saw some people who I had not seen in 10 years. Came into my own as a Supervisor at work, and embraced my inner geek in a whole new way, all along finding some new friends. I found natural solutions to my depression, and when tending to it propperly have seen it back down some.
Lots of wins, a few losses, and my fair amount of fun.
I am not sure what the next year will bring, but I am setting some intentions now.
I will, continue to take care of myself physically, mentally and creatively. and who knows where things will go. I still have my hopes, and my dreams, plans yet unwritten, but sitting here thinking on it, all I can do is sit back and do what I can to enjoy the ride.

Laying here,
your hands gently intertwined with mine,
I reach up to touch your face
with the back of my hand
caressing your gentle soft skin
My heart races and I can't keep this smile off my face.
Somewhere deep in my mind I know it will not last
As much as I want to hold on tight to the thought it will
Nothing seems lasting anymore
So I kiss your lips
and run my lips over tender stomach.
hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that I can grasp something real
Something of this moment will be lasting,
something will stay with me when all of this is gone
Frozen in time, our passion brings us together.
and for this perfect moment
time is lifted.
Maybe this is the only shot we have at life,
And all we have is a handful of perfect moments
but laying here your body next to mine,
I am happy
Knowing that for a time we have each other.

Faces in a frame

I was cleaning my room today and found our picture.
Sitting in dark frame we put it in those 4 years ago.
The night air outside your door was chilled
so we kept inside to take pictures of us together
a short Saturday afternoon at the Zoo
Watching Camels and Gorillas and holding hands to keep off the cold
We picked frames for each of us to keep a place where we could remember
All the light we had brought to each others lives.
Now, these years later, laying on a bedspread you got for me
I wonder how you are doing,
and if you remember things the same way I do
I miss what we had,
maybe not for what it was but more for what it meant to me
I wonder if a song on the radio brings you back the way it does me
It may not have been perfect, but to me the time was magic
and that's all it takes, to make an imprint in my heart.
I shuffled the frame away maybe one day,
I can take out our picture and using the frame for something else.
But for now, back in the drawer it goes until I am ready
Maybe you are right, when I finally am over you I will find my soulmate
but for now you remain
a face in a frame,

Just added another blog for only my fitness/health stuff

I am going to pull down the fitness/health recipes from here now that I have a second blog for those at http://livingfreejournal.blogspot.com/ That is my new health related blog, so I can get back to this one being about my writing and whatnot. Thank you all for your support!

Falling together

Tonight, speaking with you, thinking of you, a feel most blessed
Blessed both to have you as a friend but also to have a deep and wonderful chance to spend so much time with you.
And yet, even having found you again I find myself moving deeper
It is true that we have no need to rush, to pull ourselves headlong into something right away
however, at the same moment I feel we have come into something wonderful
My feelings stir, my heart patters, and I find myself reaching so that I do not fall
head below feet into this wonderful thing we have found.
I wish to hold you next to me
your head on my chest
and dance forever into the horizon
to lie with no shoes on across the fresh sweet grasses of a thousand summers
to hear the sweet melodic tune of your voice in my ear.
To feel the touch of your forehead against the back of my hand as i brush aside your hair.
I am beginning to fall, I can feel the ground slipping itself from out below me
Something wonderful has begun
and so in knowing that rest in it
My longing will wait until i can see you again
and share in the joy of your eyes.
I am stirred and so I will wait
and soon enough we will see what the future brings for us
but for now I lie in the shelter of your embrace
and the bliss of our being
together

Alone

Sitting in the cafeteria i remember how simple it is to be alone, even in a mass of people. How easy it is for a word or two to turn you from something resembling a decent person to something resembling a beast, savage, isolated and isolate-able. Remembering back to the days when recess was time to play and imagine by oneself. Then I remember 3 years ago, shaking and sobbing, you can love someone else but you can't love me. No one believes me when I say I have ever wanted in life was love, and all things otherwise fall secondary to that. From Infancy it seems that has been my life's desire, to love someone and be loved and cared for by them. The world however is selfish. People care for none other than themselves or their interests, and now I find I am no different. The splinter I see in the eyes of the world are in fact the pillars in my own. I want to save it but I know that in order to do that I must save myself and when I am here it is hard not to sink with the ship.
They say its because I am missing my medication, and maybe that is true. But every time I think that that is the problem something dark bubbles through the molten tar of my mind and slaps me in the face. I know the things they say. Everybody need help sometimes, but I feel down deep like I should not. How am I to help the the pain of the world when there is so much of my own? I feel like I am going crazy again. Like I need to scream and run and scratch out the eyes of the world but I can't and it seems the things I am most afraid of, being alone, seems to be what I am faced with. I watch the years slowly roll by as people get older and get all the things I desire in life. A home, Family, someone to love, and its hard not to ask, where is mine? When do I get to be happy and own the place I live, or be in a good helthy relationship that is not either a lie or a cover up?

We really need to stop seeing each other like this

We really need to stop seeing each other like this
It is sad when you look forward to funerals
the times to get together with people not seen in recent memory
Everyone is always so busy, never a moment to gather with the ones they love
until the sudden snap of deaths pointed teeth
then, taken off guard, we all show up, tears in our eyes, sad expressions on our faces
Its hard not to wonder when next we will see each other again,
will it be at a barbecue, or will our numbers be diminished all the more
when next we see those faces around us
We really need to stop seeing each other this way
we all say in one form or the other,
and then, when it ends, we walk away,
head towards separate homes, separate lives
until the next one dies
Its funny the way we are around death
as if we can't say the word without inviting it
“We lost the patient”
no, he is right there!
“He passed”
On what? peas and mashed potatoes at dinner?
“They lost a loved one.”
Have you checked the hole you put them in?
“He has gone to a better place.”
Where is that, Disneyland?
We cannot say it outright, and so when we come together to mourn
we fill the time with false words,
We really need to stop seeing each other this way,
But when will we make time for the ones we love
To hold them close while still we can
We really need to stop seeing each other this way
like a curse, or a thing to be avoided
and instead gather together to celebrate the time we do have
while still we have it.

Today, we choose- Written for the 2008 election

Today, We Choose.






Here it begins


Our revolution starts now


Hope renewed


This time we make the choice


Vanquishing corruptions icy grip


Making our votes mean something


This time, we make a stand


For ourselves


For our Nation


For our future


No more feeding the rich on the backs of the down trodden


No more allowing big business to control the way we think


Who we are is more than what we buy


This time we are ready to turn the tide


To voice our once silenced words


And show the world what a few determined minds can do


To face humanity with outstretched arms saying


No one stands alone


We are all in this together, and together is the only way we can make it work.


We all live here, and if we don't come together for a greater good, we all loose.


People are starving everyday


And being forced out of their homes


To live where few would like to


But none of us is any different than they


Our revolution, begins today


With a vote that means that we are paying attention


We wont stand for the status quo


Or be arrested for not matching outdated ideals


And as the constitution rubs the sand From its battered eyes


And brushes off the dust of disregard


We begin anew


United as one


We realize our sacred right,


Our duty to teach our children that the world can be changed by one voice


Singing out in the darkness of fear


Bringing with it a dawn of hope


We will not be held back from our own greatness anymore


We shall overcome


Today is ours.










-Jordan R. Hinckley

Rough beginings of a story I am working on.

Time skip






“I know I am not crazy, but how does the world?” I wrote on the top of the blank notebook page. It had happened again, this time I was spending time at my mothers eating, talking like I had so many times then right in the middle of it all things stopped. As if the world was taking a huge breath and I alone was privileged to watch it. All my family sitting around the table, paused like a video cassette and I was the only one who could move and watch it. Outside of the window, a leaf was falling, or more to the point on its way falling but it had stopped mid air and was sitting mid air for the world to start again. This was not the first time I had witnessed such a thing, It was a regular occurrence, the problem was that I could not tell anyone about it. I guess I could try telling someone but I was afraid that if I did no one would believe me and in truth why should they? Sanity was based on the way that the world saw things. If I saw something behind the world that no one else did then it was perfectly true to be judged that I was insane. The problem was that if I did not meet the status quo or thought I saw things that no one else did I would be forcibly medicated until my “delusions” went away, or I became sedate and didn't start any more problems.


I don't remember the first time things stopped for me, it had to have been happening for a long time, as it did not bother me much anymore. If I had gone to a doctor to tell them about it here is what I would describe as the side effects: Usual disorientation when time had resumed as a result of being thrown back into the middle of a conversation or a situation after being “out of it” for a little while. The “pauses” as I had liked to call them never happened for longer than a few minutes though it was hard to measure without a working clock. Usually, I had a moment or two of disorientation when the pause began and as such could never really gage the length. It had no rhyme or reason as I could tell, it seemed pretty erratic. It was no more likely to happen during a particular season or when I was surrounded by family or or not. It also did not seem to happen in particular when I was in time of great emotional distress when I often wished that it would for a time. There was the other problem being that usually shortly after it happened I had pretty strong headaches. It was likely that they happened sometime in the night but since I was asleep I could never know exactly.


These things were normal as saw it. The disorientation did not seem an unusual problem as it came as a result of the stopping of time and the restarting of it and usually had to do with the social implications of that. This was the thing that I was most concerned about was the headaches, but since I did not want to talk to a doctor about it, I took a couple pills to make it go away. This was of course a common solution to problems anyway I felt. Rather than looking at the source to fix it, it had become far to common place to numb the pain and go on doing what was being done before.


It was a few days until it happened again. This time I was standing in line at the grocery store off in a world of my own thoughts and suddenly the back ground track fell out. The normal background noise of music paused and when I looked around everyone it seemed had stopped. The man with the overly large belly in front of me, his large cart with 3 or 4 things in the bottom of it had stopped mid groaning over to grab them and was hanging there like some kind of a ridiculous picture. The cashier with her smudged lipstick had her hand paused mid-wave over the scanner which was giving her face a demonic glow. I looked around and others had stopped too. The kid who was mid tantrum in the lane next to me was being grabbed by his mother on the back of his 2nd grader sweater and it looked like was in the middle of trying to either run away from her or to grab a candy bar on the shelves at the checkstand. It was always strange when it happened in public, seeing faces that were in fact mid facial expression often looked angry or distorted. It was also very easy to see the things no one wanted you to. The man discreetly trying to pick his nose, or the woman who was biting her nails who often did it so quickly it was hardly noticed. (both of which would be denied later, somethings were unconscious.) Every little thing people did was caught in this snapshot moment. Preserved by only my eyes, a true look at the way the world was. Pretentiously no one did any of these things, and could I have a camera that worked in the middle of it I could get some very candid snapshots as proof that everyone did them.


I turned my head and grabbed my handbasket with the same amount of things being pushed by the man in front of me and decided I would take a walk for a bit. I knew that when everything started again that the lady with the boxes of hair color (red), cheap hairspray, and reading one of the tabloids behind me would not notice that I was not there anymore. I usually figured the even if she did, since I was not there now, she would write it off as being wrong, never believing the truth of it. I passed the child a bit ruffling his hair (another fact that would not be understood but would definitely be written off) and headed back to the dairy section of the store.


It could be easy, I always told myself, to make a profit at times like these. An open cash drawer could be pilfered without anyone knowing or noticing until the end of their shift, or I could always play the good Samaritan and catch the woman with a bag full of cds who intended to leave without paying for them before she walked out the door. Of course I could also do things to mess more with people than I had before, untying shoes, moving wallets, that sort of thing. It was simple to think of doing things that would make people ask the question of whether or not they were going insane, but I always figured it was better karmically not to do any of it. As I headed towards the back of the store walking down aisles of potato chips (NOW LESS CALORIES!) I caught a glimpse of someone running out of the corner of my eye. Was that movement? Was that someone running through the store, and moving like I was? I quickened my pace and turned the corner only to see the same shape duck into an aisle a few rows down the way. I had to catch this person, I had to know if I was insane or if I was not alone in being able to move in such a situation. Running hard and dropping my basket I turned the corner only to come face to face with a boy, not much younger than myself wearing an ill fitting black sweater, a pair of tight black Jeans tucked into a pair of army surplus boots that were untied and loose fitting. On his head was a Black knitted hat that did not cover the stringy blond hair it covered. He stared back at me smiled then seemingly out of nowhere the music started and the world was back to the way It had been before.


“you smiled at me!” I said standing there feeling stupid about the whole thing for the first time in a long time. I had more or less gotten used to most of what happened during these episodes, but for the first time now I felt strangely uneasy staring at someone else who may have the same secret life that I did. “I did?” he retorted in a voice that was deep and growly and seemed as though it did not belong in a body of such a slim fellow. “when, did that happen?” he smiled again. I was beginning to hate that smile. “just now, you know when...” “when what? I have never seen you before in my life.” I knew he was egging me on, trying to make me explain what had happened. “you know when, don't be a prick.” “No really tell me, I am curios to hear this.” “well, you know, when time stopped” after I said it realized how insane it sounded. “Are you saying,” he smiled that ugly yellowed grin again between his cracked lips “that when you saw me time stood still? do you have any idea how queer that sounds? Look dude I don't roll that way, so if you are hitting on me you are wasting your time.” “You know full well what I mean, so knock off the charade.” I knew my face was red by this point and my voice a little louder than usual for a nice conversation. “ woah dude chill out. I think it would be better to discuss this somewhere less, um... Populated.” I turned around for the first time to noticed everyone the Aisle was staring at us. “alright meet me outside in 10 minutes.”





“Hurry up they won't be open for ever.” The lady shouted across the parking lot. It was funny to hear such a cosmic thought from her until I realized that she did not mean what I did. They would only be open for so long, eventually everything familiar would melt away. For me it was a little different with all the stopping and starting of time I had a little longer than the rest, a minute here a few there, but nothing more than anyone else in the grand scheme.