THE EMPRESS OF BOWLS AND THE PAGE OF THE WIND

     Once upon a time there lived a man with a very special ability. Now, everyone has the ability to do something. Some are better runners and some make more money, while others are better at saving money or running longer rather than fast. This man had a very unique ability, and while it is often talked about as something that is admired in thought by others, it is usually something never seen.   This man could see into another persons heart as though it were made of glass. Not just the things others wanted him to see, but everything. The good and the bad. The tiny, nearly imperceptible perfections, and the flaws of character that make people more human, not less.  All the dark secrets and dreams kept contained in airtight boxes and under wrappings far away from the regular personality that contained them.  He could see the good or the evil person underneath the mask, regardless of what they hoped to hide.  What caused it in the past, how it was either used as a tool or exploited by others, and how it would affect them in the future, all laid out like pieces to an outwardly confusing puzzle that needed nothing but one shake of the box to see it for all it truly was.  It was a wonderful gift, but one that came with a very high price in order for him to possess it. For all that this gift was to him, and for all it can do for others, he was unable to lie about what he saw, nor cover up what he could not do. Like Cassandra from Greek mythology, whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of premonition, but cursed her for not returning his love, so that no one would ever believe her predictions. It is the full measure of irony that both this man, and Cassandra, are a  combination of deep understanding combined with powerlessness to enable others with the power of it that exemplifies the tragic condition of humankind.

     He spent most of his time ensuring that the people around him understood what it was he could do, because he was always aware of how uncomfortable it made other people to know there was little that could be hidden from him once he looked, but he tempered their discomfort with  somethng else.  When it seemed that others had divulged far more of themselves than they were used to, he would simply open himself and honestly tell others he loved and understood what he felt in his heart.  It was only fair. With the gift of insight for others cames the appreciation of hidden virtues and the  inability to decieve or to use someone elses emotions as as a tool.  It was not only a fair trade for what he could do, it was a humane gesture that refused to exploit what could not be fought by others.  To have the ability to take from others, against  their will, is a powerful thing, but to have that power and refuse the ease with which it can be used to exploit, is the very definition of absolute power controlled absolutely.
     For most of his life, this man went out of his way to instill a sense of compassion for anyone he met. Different and better than anyone else because to have that much ability to be within another persons hopes and wishes is a dangerous weapon, and he saw fit to protect that for them by talking and communicating his feelings as much as he knew of others.  Most people keep the secrets contained within them because they are so accustomed to the shame or the guilt that results from admitting them, and intractable fear of reprisal orchestrating the movements of their lives into docile subservience concealed in a shroud of regretful duty. He would never allow a person to feel shame or guilt at what he was so gifted to see. And so he talked.  He talked openly and honestly of what he felt to the same degree that he felt it or saw it in others.  It was the only way he could justify the ability he was given without others shrinking away from him in fear. Every noble notion exemplified and taken notice of by him, and every deep dark fear or shortfall protected as well, as if he never knew how it could be so easily employed to destroy them from the inside out, should anyone else find out.
     This man is so much like everyone else in every other way, though. He did the same things everyone else did, and yearned and hoped as well as anyone.  He worked hard and fair, but through it all he talked. He learned as much as he possibly could of the world, but he always talked. He took his own ideas of right and wrong and ensured that others understood  that what he believed was decent if not easily known and more often than not, came with a deeper understanding of the situation far beyond what he himself could or could not gain from it..
        One day, after learning enough of his own life to share it with someone else, he happened to fall in love. And while it seemed perfect in the beginning; to be able to talk to another person in the way he had learned, he soon found that there was something even more important than knowing the thoughts and dreams of another person, and more critical than being able to tell them honestly what he felt. He found that what a person is or feels, or makes of himself, means very little if you are not recognized as capable of doing it or accomplishing it. He found that there is only one thing worse than being something and not telling them you are capable of it. He found that some people simply didn't want to hear at all. As though the mere telling of a virtue was enough, and that by practicing it beyond the definition, was a moot point if it wasn't needed.
     For all of the things he would willingly admit as a part of himself, the opinions and concern for what he thought by the woman he loved, became less and less important.  Until finally, it didn't matter  what he said at all. It mattered less how he felt about it, either. No matter that tobe without them would mean less of himself. She simply would not listen.   It was as though he were given mastery of  thoughts and could harness it like the wind to be lofted like a tiny puff of knowing or  erupt into a gale of epiphany. All that was needed was to direct the wind of change toward that which he felt should know it. And she never did. She had no use of the wind, nor of his voice, nor of what he thought. The wind becoming an inconsequential bluster to  flat, but more significant, lives of paper.
      Many of his family and friends knew they could never harness all of this at once, and revelled in the ability of him to do so, but needed only small bits of it to propel them through their own lives. As though knowing that to fully feel it would simply be a waste of air from which there was an endless supply. As though pinwheels were preferred to the wind mills he could move.  He had always needed a person who could appreciate every breeze, but when it came time to actually have the woman he needed  feel it, simply furled her sails and chose to drift in a sea of wasted opportunity. She had the abilities of a clipper ship, and chose to be a rowboat with no need of wind nor sails at all. All the hopes and intention in the air, and it wafted to the ceilings of his life in limp errant wisps. And so for all of the ability of this man to be heard, it is ironic that he would spend so much of his life with a woman who was deaf. Not by circumstance or infirmity, but by choice.
 She could hear, but without listening, it was not her who seemed the failure. It was he who was made into a feeble mute.  This went on for many years until the man had resigned himself to the reciept of a useless gift that had all of the potential in the world but was not going to be utilized for what it was intended. It was a diamond in the dirt that had the undeserving requirement of being recognized and appreciated by someone else before it could have any value to himself at all. Worse yet, was that he rested beneath the surface mere inches from the light that might have brought the eyes of others to the worth of him.  This is the story that starts with a man who had a loud and honest voice, and who could no longer justify nor endure begging for love of a deaf woman on her terms alone.
      One day this man met another woman who was very very different.  He spoke to her, and for the first time in many many years, something wonderful happened.  The thoughts came into his head as they always had, and the voice he was so used to having ignored so often, came out just the same. But when it hit her ears, she spoke back to him. A complete circle.  A thought of his that would move to his voice to be said to another person and heard, and a voice that would hear and understand what he had said, and  return it it with a thought of her own on a voice he could hear and wanted to understand. This is the woman where his story did not come to an end, but a beginning of such staggering force that it would change his life completely.
     Now this woman has a story of her own as well.  She was born into a world with some of the most amazing qualities.  She was compassionate and kind, and had within her an almost uncanny ability to grasp exactly what it was that made for a happy and joyous life. Not only the need of it, but the understanding that it was necessary for others around her to benefit from it with the worth she knew it to have. She spent her life  with a fully developed and complete understanding of what it was to love and to be loved in return.  All of the critical details that were needed to be filled and just waiting for the opportunity to have each one to overflowing. As though every emotion and feeling, every situation expected of her to be a success, was an ewer or a bowl, set on a table like a banquet and merely needed them to showered from above.
     She had a dualistic quality that was very much like the man she would meet later on in her life, however.  Because for all of her ability to know within her a kind of love and fullfillment very few people will ever understand, it came with the ability to hide it away from everyone else.  And without her telling anyone what it was she felt inside, simply became a person compassionate enough to let others decide for her what they would give to her, and she would adjust her dreams accordingly to fit that model. Because that is the gift of compassion. To give more of yourself than is expected back. She could feel what others could not, and could hear what others said, but she could not speak for herself. She earned her position by what others defined for her to be worthy of, without ever asking herself why they were more qualified than she to receive them.  And the answer was sadly simple. Because she was told so. It was an expectation of fulfillment that became an expectation of necessity in order to feel fulfilled.     She, too, fell in love when she had learned all that she could about herself, and went about adjusting the pitchers and bowls and ewers that would fill her life as she knew it should be.  Just like the man, it worked at first. It worked with effort as anything of value should, but as time went by, the amount of labor required to achieve the same result waxed and waned. It did not happen over night. It happened slowly, without ever having her realizing that if she had to adjust the receptacles to fill them, that the love and joy that she expected for herself obviously was not falling steady and evenly everywhere at the same time.  It sprinkled in some areas and was totally non existent in others. It came in great spouting gouts where it wasn't needed and into trays much too small to hold it. Much of what she hoped to catch was wasted by spilling onto the table. In others, where the pitcher was more than sufficient to hold it all, she strained to hold the handle exactly where she needed it to get but a trickle, and in the labor of it, got even less by being too small or too tired to hold it steady. Worse yet, was the feeling that it was her fault that the trickle could not be caught at all, not that the pitcher had to be tilted in the first place to catch a meager amount.  All in all, it was a great deal of work and effort to be able to try and fill them all, and usually resulted in her pointing to the overfilled trays and insignificant bowls,trying desperately to draw attention away from the telltale wet tablecloth underneath that showed wasted effort. She would beam proudly at them but even more so, she grew exhausted while shifting her body to shield from view the large and accomodating, but equally empty and dry, pitchers that would show that she recieved little or nothing. And for all that could be noticed as contributing to the over all effect, chastised herself as though the only person who could have made it better was her. That what she did not receive was her failing alone. 
     She had tried vainly, and for the most part was very well appreciated and honored for what she tried to achieve more than for what she received from it. She became the pillar that held the bowls aloft, and the pediment that steadied the bowls, but they never seemed to fill to her liking. She blotted the tablecloths of the precious water and resented having to hide in a cloth what she so desired within her bowls. It frustrated her, and she had hundreds of different views and ideas about how to make it all work, but was ashamed to speak and be seen as something more than simply the successful "Empress of The Bowls". Even when she did manage to speak her mind, she was often reminded that she is merely here to move the bowls, and that how and when they should come to overflowing was simply not up to her. The bowls and cups were hers to hold, but the water within was not her decision to have. It was however, her fault if they did not do so, and her responsibility to endure the lack of it if she failed.
     The woman spent most of her life like this. Sometimes for family, sometimes for friends. Sometimes for every other person except for herself, and sadly, that is one of her greatest faults. She set  herself below the wants of others at the expense of what she needed. And for all of her ability to view her soul inward, and her ability to feel that she had just as much right as anyone else to feelwhat she felt as what she didn't, she simply couldn't bring herself to open up and admit it. She relied more on her ability to have her motions dictate to others what she needed them to feel, but never realized that they simply refused to look. She had all of the thoughts within her that were as pure as her dreams. She had a beautiful voice, but she never believed she had the ability to use it.  And so she spent her years believing that she was indeed mute, herself, when all she needed to do was speak, and that the fault lay mostly on her for what she could say, and did not.This is the story of a woman who could feel and perform the will of angels but fell in love with a man who would not listen.
     One day the man who had a voice but was deaf to the world met the woman who could hear the world but could not speak.  It wasn't planned by either of them, and they both simply dropped softly into each others lives like a kitten into an apron. It wasn't expected that these two people would come to know  each other  any differently than the multitude of others who had reacted to them in the same way countless times before, but they noticed each other just the same, and in each of them, something happened.  There was a realization that this person...was different. Not just slightly, but critically different.
 He spoke to her. And for the first time in many many years, something wonderful happened.  The thoughts came into his head as they always had, and the voice he was so used to having ignored came out just the same, but when it hit her ears, she heard it inside of herself as though he spoke into her soul. And as if to confirm that it was not simply a trick of hope and yearning on his part, she spoke back to him. A small waterfall of knowing began with a trickle as each one tested the ability of the other, until there was a torrent of thought and feeling travelling between the two of them. It was a knowing. As though the wind suddenly fell into a place where wondered if he had it within himself to fill it.  For the first time in his life he had found someone who could hold all that he could give and have him striving to give her more.  And for her it was the same. As though unexpectedly all of her bowls and ewers and pitchers were suddenly aligned and began recieving an unseen fountain of water. The air that he had always wished to fill sails with suddenly found purchase in the ability to fill the tiniest of cups as easily as the largest of basins.  The air dried the moistened tablecloth of her frustrations and failed attempts to have love, and the plates and dishes suddenly filled when it was seen that what was put into them was just as real yet required only the slightest breeze to fill them.
     When the two of them were together, everything mixed together. It was no longer simply the speaking that expended the effort. It was the understanding that what was spoken was going to be returned by a woman who never spoke. Each one a truth and each one returned to the other as proof that it mattered. It wasn't what was done anymore that defined the effort. It was the gentle feeling that it was being accepted. As though the best way to know that something is comfort is to feel it resist slightly against you and then sudeenly relax with the taking in of it. The way a pillow resists your head but still brings the embrace of safety.
     For each thing the mute man spoke, it fell into the ears of the woman who could understand it all and then come from a voice she thought no one would listen to to be felt again by him. Not just what was said with a word, but the weight of a thought.
     The man she had left berated her by asking her what was so important if there was nothing within her cups? It was simply empty air. How could it possibly be of substance or worth more than water? No mention of the fact that it was steady, or complete, or warming with minimal effort. It was simply not what she had defined as needing in the beginning, and therefore the wrong thing to have.
    And the man was chastised by what he left for wasting his time and effort blowing into the cups and bowls when it was obvious that he did not belong where he was nor being responsible with his station in life when it was his lot to fill sails regardless of whether anyone saw fit to have them filled.  He was told to blow and continue to do so until they saw fit to use him.

And so a solution was made. Not a solution to their own liking, but one that was obviously tolerable because it had been done for so long already. They would simply be put back where they were. The man was sent back to where he was before;  where he could tell everything and have what he said, once again, fall on ears that cared little either way. His life made worse by the fact that even though it was a rare thing to have anyone hear him, that it would be so much better if they simply removed them all and had him scream in a perfectly clear voice to no one. Perfect truth, expressed perfectly, to nothing but the air that defined him.  Anyone who was even remotely comforted by the breeze he could make, sheltered into coves and bays where they become unnecessary.

     The woman, needed a different penance. She was surrounded again with a multitude of bodies and associations. Not simply those she had before, but more than she ever thought possible.  Some of them were critical and could not be ignored because they were as much a part of her as she was of them, But all of them refusing to ask anything, and not knowing her enough to care if she spoke or not. Some would be told not to ask, and still others wouldn't know what to ask even if they did care. She would go back to her bowls and cups and tinkle them together while she set the table for people who no longer had the need to hear her thoughts, and the man who came to love her would stand on a beach alone and feel the wind rip across an empty beach.
To each their own, and neither to their own wishes.    
     The mute man can not leave the beach to which he has been left. Even for as clear a voice as he has, he will not be heard above the tinkling of dishes nor through the water. He can not go to her for the throng of people that shield  her view of him.  But she will always have the ability to walk to the edge of the crowd on her own feet, and turn toward the sound of the wind. The air is always filled with the winds of change.
    
    
 

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

         IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

"Our lives are made in these small hours.
These little wonders. These twists and turns of fate.
Time falls away, but these small hours
These small hours, still remain"
        -  Rob Thomas "Little Wonders"


I was talking with someone the other day about how it is that other people see me;  How it is that I have come to define the world around me in the way that I do  differently from the way other people are accustomed to seeing it.  Without even thinking about it, I answered that it is 'the little things' that make up the whole that has me coming to a completely different understanding.  My Grandmother once sewed a small hat for me when I was only two years old with small red embroidered letters that said "The Littlest Beachcomber". I am very proud of that hat, and of the people who predicted in me such a profound truth.  Even at two, it was apparent that when I walk down what every other person saw and thought of as as merely a beach, that I would come back with handfuls of the things that others had simply walked over as so much sand.

     To a person not looking, driftwood is merely a part of the beach.  It litters the surf line as so much flotsam and becomes nothing more than brief interruptions of a supposedly perfect line of sand.  But when I find the one piece of driftwood that looks like a bird or a seal, there is rarely a time when the person I show it to does not immediately see what I have found inside of that particular piece of wood.  The difference is that now this piece of driftwood that was just recently nothing more than one of many, has become unique.  Among all of the other pieces, this one was singled out as not only different, but valuable.  Maybe not valuable to everyone, but valuable for what I saw in it.  And that brings me to another conclusion that most people overlook about the way I see the world.  In order for me to have seen the shape of a bird or a seal in one piece of driftwood, I looked at every single piece of driftwood individually. In order for me to find that one perfect seashell among the clutter of broken shells, I had to crawl along on my knees and slowly cull away from the others a perfect symmetry from what is usually walked over the top of and dismissed as nothing more than an abundance of  imperfect clutter.  Perfection is found in the usual and normal, but without spending the time to contemplate it, it will never be found.  Even when it is right under the very noses of those who expect it.

     The conversation wasn't entirely about me, however.  It was more about you, and what it was within myself that draws me inexorably toward you.  Why is it that a person like myself, with such an overwhelming drive to find that which is so often overlooked, would find such definition and meaning in myself by loving a woman like I have come to  love you.  The answer was the same, though. It is because I do not see you as a simple beach or a pile of driftwood.  I find in you  'the little things'.  More importantly, though, at least to myself, I have come to find a person who appreciated the little things in me.  That one person who got in a bit deeper than anyone else and found those pieces of myself that others felt no need to see a difference in. To me, and to you, everything is different.  Sure it's just driftwood and seashells to everyone else, but they did one thing just like everyone else has.  They trod over the top assuming a  normality, where you came back with a handful of needful things.

     So how does it happen?  How does a person draw from the same experience under the usual circumstances, a completely different understanding and knowledge?  The trick, I think, is that our lives, and the world around us and the people we come to love as deeply as we do, are no different than a beach.  It is what you care to look for an understand as more meaningful, that defines a person or a love, in a way that simply can not be explained to another person without the same set of skills to perceive it in the first place.  Most people view the beach on the whole as valuable and worth it.  It is simply the use of the beach without ever realizing that the beach is made of of millions and millions of different things.  Depending on what we decide to hold as valuable, and how willing we are to understand the uniqueness of particular things, can make what is held in our hands become far more priceless because we have come to find it.

     If I were to think of the most critical material possessions I have of the person I love, they would take up no more than the palm of my hand.  Thats it.  And to be quite honest, that is all I have ever needed to define withing me the very quality that makes loving her more than anything I have ever known. Sure, it only fills the palm of a hand to a person who values the beach, but in the palm of my hand I have the weight of the world.  It is the little things that move me to the point of understanding within myself.  That does not make me poor or simple.  That makes me know that the woman I love is defined by a power higher than the weight of a beach, and it is not their standards to which I weigh the worth of the things I hold important.  That is why what I see and find of her is in places people do not understand, and how certain places and feelings have become more meaningful to me because of a single thing than could be defined by an entire room full of material things.

     When I walk with her, I do not care where we are or what we are doing.  I care that her hand touches mine or that I know the curl of her fingers against the palm of my hand.  I don't care what she decides to wear on that day except for the fact that she feels happy within it if she does like it, or knows that she is beautiful even when she does not like it.  She defines what she wears, but does not get defined by the wearing of it.  When I see her walk from one place to another, I do not see her as simply moving in a direction. I see the way she moves her body so differently than other people.  The same, but in a way that is so unique as to make her so much more than anyone else.

     I do not look at her face and simply say it is beautiful.  It is a collection of facial expressions that I can read like a book.  How her genuine smile has a way of making her look almost shy, and that the knowing of it within her causes it to make her eyes smaller with an even larger grin.  That her eyes are always the same size and shape, but can show wonder and passion and anger and compassion simply by the shape of her eyebrow.  It is the most wonderful face I have ever seen, but it is again a collection of parts that are appreciated and felt by how they work together as completely unique.  To see her as pretty is to simply walk on the beach and explain the obvious. Anyone can do that.  To see her think or feel, and to have it reflected onto her face, is to truly know what it means to be beautiful.  And maybe that is why it is so important to me to ensure that what she feels is reflected from how she looks.  True joy and happiness is seen on her as easily as another sees her nose.  But without knowing what she felt to make that face, is to waste half of the beautiful person that she is.

     I do not understand how it is that a person is defined by where they are seen as much as what it means to notice a person within that spot.  How some of the most romantic and thoughtful places I have been with her have been completely defined and remembered by something so simple as they way she sat to have one thigh crossed over the other, or how her fingertips ran over the rim of a glass.  To me it was so much more than the simple mechanics of muscle and bone.  It was a direct reflection of what it was inside of her that causes those movements.  Even unconsciously, I can see and feel what she thinks.  I know when she is not saying everything she feels or when she suddenly comes to an epiphany within her.  I can hear the tone of her voice and gauge where to take a conversation to either compliment it, or avoid it.  Most of all, I can tell the difference between her need for simple affection and happiness and a deeper compassion and need for comfort.  Yes, passion and desire are there too, but how she feels is transmitted to how she moves and with how quickly she does it.  The difference between simple want and desire, and a deeper need reflected by how deliberately she expresses what she touches becomes.  Know this woman, and you can actually feel her fingers sifting through broken shells to find one symmetrical perfection for the moment.

     She flows into and comes out of some of the most mundane and trivial things.  How something that at one point was nothing more than a chair or a hammock becomes a place where so much deeper meaning resides now.  A stone turned into an icon, a word into a mantra, a simple piece of clothing into an anchor that holds you tight to the ground.  All of them, from something as plain as a canoe becomes the vehicle of choice to a world beyond measure and the smell of cinamon and apples.

     Perhaps the greatest treasures I have come to know are not in what I find, but in how quickly I can come to find and know them.  Time, for as much as it frustrates me to endure when she is not around, is nothing compared to how much I can gain from small moments.  They do not require the span of weeks or months to be understood.  They require seconds, and sometimes, not even that.  Time seems to be an idea that everyone expects us to value equally.  The old adage that time is counted in moments is not necessarily true for me.  Moments, to me, are what count time.  Ask me if it has ever been enough time before I make another decision, and I will tell you that you obviously do not understand what it is that I have made of the time I have.  Because when I think of how time passes with her, I will say that it was all moving much too fast, but when I ask myself what it is that I felt within it, I will tell you that I have gained lifetimes from it.  It was once asked of me whether I have waited long enough or not.  I answered inside of myself, that I will give as much time to waiting as I have from the time I have spent feeling the warmth of it.  And for that, I will stay warm for years.  Time is another one of those pieces of driftwood that is overlooked by most.  They may be a collection of moments to others, but I feel time with a greater understanding of its worth that makes paitience seem a small price to pay for what it is that I gain in mere hours.

     If I were to view my world as a simple beach, but illuminate the parts that she now defines as unique, there would be very little left of the beach that would remain in darkness.  Because it isnt a question of what you see on the beach that defines the weight of it, or of her.  It is how you see the beach as a collection of unique parts.  Each one seen and valued for a different thing and for a different reason.  Walk across the meaning of her as a beach, and you would know what it is to walk on stars.  See what it is within my mind as a beach, and her presense would blind you.

     She is not defined by where she is, she is defined by what she is.  She is not seen so much as she is felt, and she isn't known as much as she is understood.  Find those things, and you will truly understand what it means to be a person like me.  Know that, and you will understand why a person like me loves a woman like her the way that I do.  People ask me to stop paying attention to that small handful of things I hold to myself, but they never stop to realize that that pile rests in my hands as the most valuable and worth far more than anything else.  Even if they were to throw it to the ground as useless, I can always go back and find more of her in anything I look at.  Ask me why I can not define everything she is to me for all the things she is worth, and I will give you the most profound and equally comical answer you have ever heard. 
 
 "Because I can't carry a beach."

     How you respond to my answer will tell me whether you are the type of person who understands who she is to me, or you will show me that you choose the beach for how you see it, rather than what the beach really is.

     Yes, she is a collection of little things.  Small and trivial and commonplace to everyone who can not see her as I do.  It does not frustrate me that others can not see it in the way that I do.  If anything, it exemplifies her as something others simply can not grasp.  If you want to know the weight of this woman to me, and see her as a beach, then you need to dig.  Dig deeper, and see her for what she is on your knees, not standing and walking above it.  True, to you she may be nothing more than a handful of small bits from a bigger beach, but I am "The Littlest Beachcomber" and I was born to find the bigger things that can only be held in smaller hands.

THE CAROUSEL HORSE AND THE TWO BRASS RINGS

                                  

     When I was a kid I remembered stories about carousels and the brass rings that they had. I only remember one as a kid, myself, but my parents knew of many, and my grandparents could recall  as children when  EVERY carousel had a brass ring. Like I said, precious few of them had brass rings that I remember, and as time went by, the rings dissappeared altogether. They are long gone now  and it is very rare to find one that still has the polished brass ring that, if pulled, offered a free ride.
     Everyone I know has been on a carousel horse at one time or another, and I will bet that even if the ring was there, most people didn't even take notice of it.  I did hear of a carousel with two rings, however.  No more difficulty either way, though.  The horses still traveled in one direction, clockwise, while the brass rings rotated on a painted wall in the center, in the opposite direction. 
     All in all, a carousel is  a slow, enjoyable ride that allows you to rise and fall a bit as you watch the world go by.  All fun and games.  That is, unless you were, or knew of, one of those kids who had an inexplicable NEED  to grasp hold of the ring and be seen as "the winner".  Now assuming this is just a carousel, we don't take much notice of the determined rider who spins like a Dervish turn after turn.  We pay our tickets, ride, and leave to carry on with our day.  But spend a little time watching, and you may find a child who will do nothing else but define their entire day by that one single ring, and waste the rest of the day enjoying the park, just so long as they can be seen as "the winner".
     Now like I said, this is of no great consequence when it is just a carousel, or just one determined rider with an overdeveloped desire to be seen as the best, or even one day at an amusement park that was wasted.  But when you stop and consider that this type of behavior is played out in relationships and marriages all the time, the analogy becomes a tragedy. 
     So you fell in love and got married.  You got into the park, walked straight and proud right up to the carousel, paid your ticket and set your sights on the brass ring.  You weren't the winner yet, because you didn't know the first thing about how to ride, and reach, and gauge time and distance, but you'd learn.  The ride starts and  little by little, you get the hang of it.  Close, but the ride ends too quickly.  No worries.  Everyone appreciates a person of conviction,right?  Pay the man again and at least be seen as dedicated.  Not that time either?  That's okay.  Just pay him again and take another year...I mean ride and see if you can get it the next time. Or the next time. Or the next time.
     See the pattern?  If you do, you are one step ahead of the game.  Because most people DON'T.  They haven't been able to grab the ring to be seen as "the winner" and so to them, they aren't.   But to get off the ride now simply assures them of the fact that all of the people who had been watching them, and appreciating their dedication and efforts to remain steadfast, will somehow forget the countless attempts to grab the ring as a noble effort, and simply see them as "the quitter" when they finally step off the platform.  And so they keep right on riding. Over and over and over.

     Now here is where it gets even more distressing to watch and confusing to understand.  Since the ring is no more within their grasp now than it has ever been, the main goal of the ride, for the person who sits atop the horse, is no longer to grab the ring to be seen as "the winner", but to keep riding, no matter what, so at least they won't be seen as "the loser".  The brass ring is no longer the goal to the rider.  They have long since abandoned the hope that they will ever attain it. The brass ring now is simply the 'red herring' that people use to recognize and rationalize  the intention of the rider to be on the ride at all.  The real fact is that all the rider can do now to justify their existence, is keep riding, whether they like it or tolerate it, or hate it, and have themselves be verified by others who watch them in their ride (their life) as being diligent and steadfast and noble in the effort.  There is no winning in attaining the brass ring any more, but because they can do nothing else but ride, they can at least avoid being seen as the failure they believe they will be if they stop.  And so all they do is ride.  turn after turn, year after year, attempt after attempt, until the park (and their lives) closes and shuts off the lights of the amusement park.  And the saddest thing about this analogy, is that there is only one trip to the amusement park.  You don't get a second chance to go back and see the rest of the park for all it had to offer.

     This frustrates me no matter how many times I try to explain this to other people.  Mostly because the primary rationalization for continuing this fruitless endeavor is their belief that the same people watch them from the side of the carousel for the entire duration of ALL the attempts to be seen as worthy.  But that just isn't true.  While it would make the efforts of the rider be seen as worth more to believe that others  spent their whole time at the amusement park ( or their lives) watching this one rider, the truth is that those watchers come and go.  They are never the same people watching  all the time.  They are different people all watching some of the time.  And how would a rider truly understand that, if all they could discern clearly was the the horse?  How would the rider be able to recognize individual people if all they could see was a blurred and spinning exterior wall of people?  The truth is, they can't, and they don't.  The people watching this  rider from the outside only see a person riding a horse, and no differently than they see all the other riders.  To them, the brass ring is no more important to this one rider as it is for any other.  Not for the tenacity of the dream of a brass ring that is greater than anyone else, or for the repeated efforts time and time again that makes the single rides of others seem irrelevant when compared to their repeated efforts. Just that one ride.  Because if the observers are only there to watch the ride once, how can they ever possibly know that this one rider was there all day long?  They don't.  The well deserved recognition of the continued effort becoming no more attainable or worthy of praise than the  unreachable ring.

     The analogy  between a person's life and a ride on a carousel horse, can be explained a bit further when you compare the brass ring to a particular person that the rider strives to win the favor of.  Love is not easily defined, and the reasons for why one person loves another, even more so.  I don't think it is up to me to decide what should, and should not, be the criteria for why one person loves another.  For each person it is different.  And for each person they love in their own time, they are loved for different reasons.  Sometimes I think that people simply say they love another without quantifying why it is that they do. But that, again, is not up to me.  Who I love, and why I love them, is just as individual and unique to myself as I am to the person who loves me, so ascribing my ideas and definitions of what love is or should be, onto someone else's notion of it, is unacceptable. Even to myself.

     If, though, the person who rode the carousel horse saw the person they loved as the brass ring, it would seem to me that attaining it would be as simple as figuring out which horse to sit atop to maximize the chance of reaching it, gauging the speed of the carousel, and then planning whether to reach up or down as the horse passed by the ring.  Complex when seen on the whole, but basically rather simple when broken down to it's smaller more predictable operations.  But what happens when the ring is not as stationary as it was explained to be in the beginning?

     Many people seem to take an almost disturbing  pleasure in making the ring as difficult  as possible to achieve by the rider who wants nothing more than to do exactly what is required and expected to attain it.  The rider can be an absolute master of looking at all of the variables necessary to maximize the likelyhood that the brass ring is there for the taking  because they have gone to the extra effort of ensuring they want it the most, and then putting forth the energy to hold it in their hand.  That is all very plausible and logical, assuming that it is, indeed, just a ring, and not a person who finds more pleasure in watching them work for it than it is to give it to them for the trying.  To them, anything that can offset the planning of the rider; by twisting the ring from its expected position, or altering the size of the ring, and even changing the speed of the horse to make it so that it can never be attained, makes the efforts of the rider become moot and pointless.  To them, the purpose of the rider is to see them bend and contort, and stretch to the limits of their capacity and planning, only to have the ring suddenly deviate and become unattainable again.  It is not the having of the ring that defines the success of the rider or the ride to the 'ring'.  It is to keep them from having it and making them ride again, and again, that is the goal.  To have another person's  life defined entirely by this kind of treatment is at least insensitive, and at worst, cruel and inhumane.  It is the expenditure of effort by another person for their own sense of hapiness,  for nothing more than to  see  another person expend it for what they need of love.

     I need to go back just a bit to the carousel I mentioned before that had two rings rather than one.  Because a life( like an amusement park)) isn't really chosen by us.  You simply show up at it because that is where we were brought to. Almost as if you were born at the turnstyle. And while some amusement parks have a carousel with one ring, and you do what you can with that one ring to achieve it for your own, there are those rare times, that a person is brought to an amusement park(or a life) with a carousel that has two rings.  A built-in second chance on the same ride to have exactly what they want.  You didn't choose the park, and you didn't have the option of a one ring carousel or a two ring carousel for that matter, but it was given to you, nonetheless.

     Sometimes, a carousel rider will suddenly come to realize that the one ring they thought was the only option, and spinning twice as fast, is actually TWO rings.  Suddenly, there is an alternative that was previously unseen or unrecognized, and on closer examination as they rode past, was of a completely different nature than the one ring they believed it to be.  What was perceived before simply as a contortion of the one ring  to appear attainable on one pass and then unattainable on the next, was actually two different rings, behaving in two separate patterns with two completely different goals.  One that sought to define by continuing the ride, and one that hoped to end it to go on to the rest of the amusement park.  One that occupied its time by being elusive, and the other that was actually going out of its way to be pulled from its ring and hoisted aloft as the vehicle for the riders triumph over adversity.  The laurels for all they strive for so long to attain.  Theirs to have as their own, but earned on their own as well for all that the rider has been appreciated for all this time.

But remember, that this rider is no longer looking to the rings as the objects that define their existence and worth in the world. The rings are the 'red herrings' now. It is the ride itself that defines the worth of the rider by how  they believe they have been seen by the spectators as someone to admire for their efforts. Because if either of the rings is grabbed now, the ride is over.  True, a new ride will be gained by the winning of the ring, in either case,but it will be with a whole new awareness of what they are defined by.  Not as just the picture of dilligence, but as the happy and deserving victor.  And that is just something most people are no longer capable of understanding the value of, regardless of their ability to do so.  By being seen and defined with one set of attributes for so long, a whole new  appreciation  of the rider must begin by the grasping of either ring.  By pulling the ring that makes itself as large as it can, and aims itself toward the fingers of the rider, and even lifts itself from the hook to angle itself directly toward the head of the horse, a whole new  life will begin. A life defined by being seen as worthy of praise for something other than endurance.  Of qualities that go above the mere need to twist and spin for recognition or respect.  It is a life recognized for what has already been done, not for what is done over and over. To do either one is to simply stop being what is now.  Both with their own merits, and both with their own  uncertainty.  And so they continue to strive for the twisting unattainable ring, and duck the other.

   Were it possible for one of the rings to suddenly drop to the platform of the carousel, or be pulled from its hook by another person, the effort could then be concentrated again on the one remaining ring with no one the wiser except for the rider.  After all, who would blame the rider if suddenly the situation saw fit to leave only one option?

     These two rings also have one other quality to each of them that can not be seen even to the rider of the carousel, and that is that one ring strives to make itself as attainable as possible and the other as small as possible, but with the spinning of the carousel, it is very difficult to see which one is which in the brief moment it passes by.  One ring sees no problem in sharing the space on the rotating column with the other, just so long as it is given the ability to be pulled with  as much opportunity as the other holds itself at bay. One sees the perpetuation of its existence by the withholding of itself, and the other prefers and end to itself as a goal to become something else entirely.  The choice, if offered to the rider for what it is worth, is still, and always will be, up to the rider to discern.  Maybe not on this turn, but eventually, and on the terms of the rider  and not on those of either ring.  It is their carousel, their horse, their ride, and most importantly, their ring to have.

      I have been slowly amassing a great number of letters and emails from people(both women AND men) with two of the most surprising statements.  The first is that I have hit the nail right on the head more often than not.  That this is EXACTLY what it feels like for them to be in the situations they they have found themselves.  And not only find themselves in, but justify as what is expected of them to be seen worthy.  The other, and I find this absolutely tragic, is that they honestly feel like they were the only ones.  That this carousel had only enough money for one horse and strapped one person to it like a sailor strapped with an albatross.
     I have to be honest, and say, that if you feel as though you are the only person in this misguided revolving rodeo, that maybe what you should do is look to your left and right and see how many of us have been riding along on someone elses caravan for far too long.  That this carousel (less like an amusement park ride and more  like a "ship of fools") because we feel we are the only one riding on it. We spent so much time pretending to every other person around us that it was perfect and that what we painted as the truth was what we told ourselves we were supposed to do, that we completely lost sight of who we started doing it for originally.  And that was ourselves.  We climbed onto the carousel for what it would bring to our own lives as well as to someone elses.   But instead, we became of ourselves only what we would be made by others who had us do what it was they expected of ourselves without taking into account what we needed from someone else. All the while spinning our lives in circles waiting for rewards that will not come from where we want, or fighting it from the places it would.

     If it were up to me, I would like to see the riders of carousel horses do one of two things.  Grasp the ring that allows itself to be taken, or resolve to walk away from the ride to go see the rest of the amusement park if it doesn't.

     But I'd like to see the rings do something as well.  Either tilt themselves to be grabbed for all that the rider has earned for the effort and wishes to receive of them, or drop to the platform to give the opportunity to the other ring.  Because every rider, whether they grab the ring or not, has already proved their desire to be happy by riding in the first place. They have seen fit to set their sights and achieve their goals on what  the brass ring represents and for all it can bring to their lives, and they have continuously proven their dedication to the receipt of it by still paying the tickets to ride.  It is not the place of the ring, however justified they may feel, to dictate the worth of the rider by prolonging  in the endeavor to define themselves.  It is the job of the ring to be simply that. A ring. To hold where it is for all that it can be, and simply let the rider who needs it the most, take it and be defined by the greater things they hoped to achieve when they climbed on to the carousel for the very first time.

PREDATOR AND PREY

                                                             THE "THRILL" OF YOUR HUNT


The family dogs bark incessantly
to get in, or out
at the screen door
that hasn't been fixed in months.
and my husband glares across the table
with that all too familiar expression;
Expectation mixed with apathy
that tells me it is my job to fix it if I care
or my job to endure the criticism
if I don't.

This is the game we play.
a pawn in the corner of a checkerboard floor
within arms reach of an oblique king.

The teapot on the stove rises to a din
that matches the blood rushing in my ears.
and he is sitting. Right. There.

Staring at me, or through me
out into that fucking unkempt yard
that hasn't been mowed in weeks?

His lawn,
but my shame.
It's appearance so useful to him
It serves its purpose
one way or the other,
whether tended or not.

I don't know exactly what he wants,
and to be honest, never did,
but the hackles rise on the back of my neck
and the game I know so well now is afoot.

His game.

No contest between predator and prey,though.
Not a matter of whether it will be done
willingly by me or not.
Only that it is done.
Success is gained from the hunt,
not my need to survive.

He wants an answer
to a question he feels needs not be asked
and I answer him with silence
knowing full well the rage building in him
"Do what I say, not what I do"


The time spent making him wait
becoming the small inward price  I can make him pay
for the shred of dignity I still keep.
Waiting is yet another trophy 
but so much more for him than me.

This is the game we play.
This is the how he plays it.
"Sit still and let me devour you"
Hardly a game of skill.


The seconds tick by
between thought and action
a mere moment that encapsulates
a lifetime of unrealized dreams
but in it, I know I was born, and will exist,
and will die.


When did this happen?
What changed?
Did anything ever change?

What's mine is his. What's his is his.
Every success, a laurel to him alone
and for his way of thinking.
every failure, mine, because of his way of thinking.

Tension builds like the cloying smoke
that billows from the eggs he started
but that I will be putting on his plate.
As though saying
"Watch what I will make you wish for me"

The necessity of domestic duty
 rises to a fever pitch
and he knows he has won either way.
In getting his way, or showing me I am a failure.
Either way
He wins.

The pedestal to which I am accustomed
placed like a trophy to his will, shifts.
And me, a well intentioned marionette,
balanced on the handle of a broom.

My lips tighten against the canines unbarred
and invisible claws shoot from my delicatly manicured finger tips
that grip the side of the table.
A terrified wet cat, clinging
to the side of a sinking boat.

That moment is there.
Every muscle tensed to lunge at him
defiant, erupting rage at the back of my throat
it rises like black bile.

"What did I do to exist like THIS?"
But I realize I have said not a word.
His look of cold indifference tells me
I never said a word
and I swallow the mouthful
of internal cowardice.

Flee! Run! GET OUT and away!
Blood pumps into my muscles
but  my heart, already broken,
hemorrhages adrenaline
onto the floor.

Instead, as I rise, the left leg collapses
in the middle of a run.
No fight. No flight.
Already, adessicated carcass on the trail.
the thrill of the chase over before it started.

Dog in. Dog Out.
The kettle set on the back burner
like so many other things, and broken yolks
that spell the name of another man.
He smirks from the side of his face.
a single proud canine bared.

Was that amusement, or satisfaction?
I suppose it doesn't matter to me.
It didn't matter to him to show the difference.
Everything tastes like sand,
but I eat it, nonetheless.

The dishes stare back in mute awarenesslike the props in a Greek tragedy.
Funny how inanimate things
so so very much.

The danger is greatest
during mating season.
The drive to perpetuate a species
defined by three demanded actions;
Mouth shut, hand out, legs open.

His species.
Not mine.

Moments of intimacy,
once a welcomed distraction,
uses me now as fuel for more important things.
When did passion become payment?


Easter, Mother's Day, anniversaries,
events involving chocolate.
I am proud of myself for figuring it all out.
The house agrees, and so do all who are allowed to see it,
but the water runs hot enough to burn.

The front porch and steps shed its green paint
in miraculous wet sheets,
and my husband is oblivious.
How could paint un dry and run?

All the toes of his shoes
and gloves by the door
have curled into fingers of implied failure
to be atoned for with compliance.
and I am still silent.

Sometimes nothing changes.
Sometimes everything changes,
and no one cares to see it.
Sometimes nothing
changes everything.

My throat is a dry river,
my tongue a dead fish in silt
Provocation increases the toxicity of the venom
and I am too tired to run any more today.


Intentions falling to the floor
and pointless re-assertions of power made,
I rise from the table
and walk from the game.

But his name.
The man I met that changed everything,
that irregular and constant echo
that reverberates through a pan of burning eggs,
swims like a small fish that grows bigger in
the pond of my mind.

I close the door to the room
and look to the bed.
Conquest. Nothing but conquest.
Quilted subservience in repose.
Mine. Not his.

The bed posts leer downward
and stare out in an honest truth
but the bare wood floor
is a deeper, honest comfort.

I lay down to keep the floorboards against my face
to keep a yearning heart, silent
until I can open it up.
Until I can dream into a pan of eggs.

How cool it is here, how still.
The game over and spoils
left to the victor, I drift off to sleep
to the sound of my bones
being splintered for marrow.

But I dream of tell tale eggs,
and of growing fish in still ponds,
and of the comfort of uncomplicated simplicity.
The peace of cool and supportive hard honesty
like the floorboards against my heart.

TWO LOVERS ON A BRIDGE

    
     I saw two lovers today walking across the bridge above the waterfall by my house. I saw the way they talked quietly between each other. Her head lay on the edge of his shoulder while he whispered a secret into her ear. She looked out intently as though he was saying something poetic and deep. Suddenly she broke into a great big grin and tossed her head back to laugh. Not exactly what she was thinking he'd tell her right at the moment but she laughed nonetheless. This is the comfort lover's enjoy. Where the unexpected is met with happiness. She pulled her head from off his shoulder and walked a step away from him but never let the tips of her fingers leave the warmth of his hand. Their arms stretched out between them as though this was as far as they would ever allow themselves to be from each other. They both slowed and he led her out in front of him to twirl her around by pulling gently on her arm. She slowly rotated on the tip of her foot and around to face him; her face changed from one of a simple gentle happiness to a look of absolute adoration. Only an instant, but the depth of one persons love for another needs but the blink of an eye to be felt. His free hand swept around her to slide up her back and let her feel the muscle of his forearm slide across her skin to hold her to him. So effortless, I thought. As though the two of them were choreographed dancers who knew exactly where every part of their partners body was at any given time. When two people move together so well, physically, it is obvious that , alone, they are so much more in tune with the things that can not be seen. Not one thing without movement, but two things, completely separate, that move together. Synchronicity. His other arm slid across the top of her shoulders to wrap around her neck. Her eyes flashed with fire for a man who can touch her soul as effortlessly as he breathed. Her hand sliding up his chest, then across his neck and face to cradle his cheek as she leaned in to kiss him. Like two people knitting together like climbing vines. Her leg slowly wrapped around the back of his heel to hold herself, balanced against him, as he embraced every part of her body with his. Their hips melting together and the length of their legs caressing each other with the same warmth and intensity as their lips. Two people interlocked in union. Seamless, with no part left unattended by the other. Everything complete and whole. They were only joined for a moment, but in that time I saw their entire lives. And so could they. I know these two people. Not personally, but how it is that they have come together like this. Because it is easy to live in a world where we feel inside of ourselves what it is we wish to experience. So very often, we look to others to be able to find common allies to agree with our dreams and thoughts, and seek others that will validate the thoughts. But for me, and for these two people clutched together on a simple bridge, the validation of thought and intention becomes a moot point if it is not acted upon by the only person who can do those things. Validation comes from the fulfillment of finding the person who is willing to turn that thought and feeling into a reality. And when it is physically expressed, it is validated with so much more than thought or dream.
This is how I see real love. Not as a verification of agreed upon thoughts, or as a compatibility of feelings. It is a belief that things that are ever growing and changing is its own constant, and that by showing it to a person, and having them not only feel it as true, but internalize it as fact, is what catalyzes their emotion back into me as the strength that I feel near them.

LOVE AND THE GAME OF MOUSETRAP

Love And The Game of Mousetrap
Love is not measured in how much we get from another person. Love is measured by what you GIVE. What you get back from them is the proof that you put love into the right person for the right reasons. Put it into the people who you truly desire in your heart, and you will have the definition of WORTH. Understand your worth and you will understand PURPOSE. Be aware of your purpose and you will come to understand BELONGING. Know where you belong, and you will see STABILITY. Be comfortable in the stability, and those who will depend on your stability can GROW. And when people grow, THEN they have love. Love is not what creates the qualities of the others. Love is what returns when you HAVE the others.
Clarity, piece of mind, and purpose come from your knowledge that nothing is real if it is not what is shown. It is ONE FOR ONE. It seems simple because when you are offered the truth without it clouded by self doubt, there IS no confusion. When it is made so "simple" it is just that. Simple. Good is a simple concept. It is often trivialized as less than worthy in the face of complexity, but complexity is a 'paper tiger' more often than not. How often have you been introduced to a product or a way of doing things that seemed so much more involved or contrived than it's original purpose?
So very often we are led to believe that some of the most basic principles of love and relationships need to be defined and orchestrated in a way that makes them a complete and total waste of time. They are the "Rube Goldberg" functionalities of a truly loving relationship, and our inability to comply with all of the necessary requirements to achieve what we feel we need, are most often attributed to failings within ourselves to live up to the expectations, without noticing that it is the ridiculous semantics; the "song & dance" of the whole escapade that makes US feel like we are doing it wrong without EVER considering the futility of the mechanics in the first place. The people trying are not failing. It is the machine that fails.
Remember the game "Mousetrap" by Milton Bradley? Basically, it was just a very complicated way to get to catch a mouse. And, as anyone remembers by playing this game knows, it rarely went smoothly.
In a proper operation, the player turns the crank, which rotates a vertical gear, connected to a horizontal gear. As that gear turns, it pushes an elastic-loaded lever until it snaps back in place, hitting a swinging boot. This causes the boot to kick over a bucket, sending a marble down a zig-zagging incline which feeds into a chute. This leads the marble to hit a vertical pole, at the top of which is an open hand, palm-up, which is supporting a larger ball. The movement of the pole knocks the ball free to fall through a hole in its platform into a bathtub, and then through a hole in the tub onto one end of a seesaw. This catapults a diver on the other end into a tub which is on the same base as the barbed pole supporting the mouse cage. The movement of the tub shakes the cage free from the top of the pole and allows it to fall. Simple. Instant mouse.
There are several points at which the mousetrap can commonly fail, though. If not built level, or if kicked too hard, the marble can fall off the incline; it can also miss the chute if not properly aligned; the contact of the marble with the pole may fail to dislodge the ball above; the ball may fail to propel the diver into the tub; the movement of the tub may be insufficient to dislodge the cage; or the cage may get stuck on the barbed pole partway down. And ANY of these results in one thing. No mouse.
Our desire to have the basic components of a fullfilled and real relationship are so very much like the ultimate goal of Mousetrap. To catch the mouse. And in most instances, it is as simple as dropping the cage over the mouse. But we get so wrapped up in collecting the pieces, and putting them where they should be,and waiting your turn, having the efforts fail to seat correctly at one part while trying to dislodge another. Even when all of the parts are assembled and everything should work, we fail to realize that the board wasn't level in the first place. And that simply results in an emotional fullfillment with the same result as a stupid, contrived, over complicated game with too many working parts that could be totally eliminated. And nost importantly, no mouse.
We get very used to playing this game. And we do so because we completely lost sight of the desire for the mouse in the first place. All of our energies diverted into trying to live up to the expectations of the game, all the requirements to have all of these supposedly critical components without ever looking at the simplicity of the end result. And in the end, feeling as though it is all just work and effort for a result that simply can not be attained. In the end we feel unworthy of the mouse, and the love it represents, if we are so ignorant as to be incapable of making a "simple" mousetrap.
But sometimes, and when you least expect it, a person comes into your life and sets themselves deep within your heart in a way that has never happened before. And it catches you totally off guard. They see inside of you the reality of love. And they want it just as much as you do. Not concerned with an outward appearance, they delve deep into the very center of you and they awaken the hope. They bare open a soul with completely unfettered desire to love you and offer you the mouse. Just the mouse.
And so you breathe in deep and immediately start to stress about how on earth you are going to play this game with a lopsided table and a boot that wont kick and a tub that never seems to catch the man. The chute simply can't lead the marble where it needs to go and you don't even know where the marble IS and it's all just going to go wrong wrong WRONG. And above all you ask yourself, "What is wrong with this person? What on earth can they see in me if I have such a faulty game and can't even build it?"
And maybe that's when the people who so desperately want and need the mouse in their lives; that little simple thing that gives meaning to all the effort, is simply set on the table and places your hand over it. No need for game whatsoever. No more finding lost pieces. No more wondering about whether you assembled it correctly. No more feeling like it is your failure to comply with the directions to earn the mouse.
With simplicity comes something that is almost ALWAYS overlooked. Simple things have incredible power. And without the myriad of components to blame the failures on, become the absolute basis for everything else. An inclined plane is simple a block of wood that displaces vertical work over a longer distance. Simple. And yet this simplicity has lifted some of the greatest monuments of stone to the heights of modern skyscrapers. A lever has only one working part, but Archimedes said "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Love is that simple. It is usually the misunderstanding that love is something that is to be recieved to truly have. And nothing could be further from the truth. Love is what you GIVE. And to have it in your life is to simply give it to those who would understand its worth and receive it.
So when a man comes to you with a mouse in his hand, with no desire to have you build a massive contraption before he gives it to you....
Take the mouse.

THE PATHS OF FREIGHT TRAINS

So I've been sitting here watching everything roll over the top of me and feeling as though it's all being rubbed right into my face with each revolution of the wheel. Standing loyally is one thing, but standing to be forgotten and ignored is not the same thing. Time to think has become time to be ignored. Time to find herself has gone back to time with what she had. Not the same thing and hardly what I was led to believe. Not even enough time to tell me how she is thinking or enough care to see how I am. Just left to pick up pieces and rely on people who simply can't even comprehend the enormity of the loss. Like being left to bleed in a subway while the rest of the city walks on by. It is a mental desolation that I never expected I would be left to endure alone. Never. There are those who sympathize, but simply can not relate to the level of loss without having it happen to themselves. Most of it is beyond the limits of a human being. All it takes to realize that is the understanding that most people would rather ignore it completely and turn to what they know is stable. Not better. Just stable. What I have been forced to deal with is worse because there is nowhere left to turn. Any comfort in family that lessens the blow is unavailable to me now, and friends are, more often than not, a very painful reminder that under the exact same circumstances, with far less communication, they were rewarded with exactly what it is I lost. My communication to the people who mattered understand it completely, but can do nothing to help it. Hardly a viable consolation and makes me feel as though anything I wished for another is simply not worth it to anyone.
A few of my friends have found themselves in the exact same situation for exactly the same desire to add to their lives what has been missing for so long. The realization that these are the very friends who I have always been impressed with their understanding of what it is to be wanted and to want to give it to the people they love makes for miserable company. Loved and appreciated, yes, but there is nothing we can say to each other that we don't already feel. Nothing we can explain away as a bad mistake. We made the right decisions for the right reasons and life saw fit to reward us with the exact opposite of what it implied we would receive for being those kinds of people. So much for the road less traveled making all the difference. People all walk their own path. Each persons path wends its way through life. And while they are on it they begin to be able to alter the path to allow another to follow alongside theirs. Many people find the paths of others and confuse themselves with the belief that, while it may look as though they are sharing the path, they have instead, stopped walking their own and are now following someone else entirely. Their path becoming vague underneath what they now travel over the top of. Not their own, but someone else. The odds of finding your own path, or ever getting close enough to another becoming less and less of a possibility as time goes on. Every once in a while though, a path comes very close to the one they travel on. Completely different from what they have become accustomed to, it reminds them of what their path once looked like and how badly they wanted it to go where this one led. They wanted it so badly that the new path stretched out before them with each step until it matched the tempo of their lives and made walking the path effortless. But still, there are two paths. The only difference between the new path, and the one being walked at the moment, is that there is always enough room for yours to travel along the other without it having to overlap and become indiscernible again. It is the promise of two paths ,side by side, that travel in the same direction, but always two paths. The paths can not be walked on at the same time, but for a brief time can be straddled. Each path being followed by separate feet. At that point, there is the opportunity to cross over and rediscover your own path traveling alongside the new one.
Paths rarely come close to others, and the odds that they would travel in the same direction even less so. It is a one in a million chance that, even if they did, that they would be the type to allow space for two. That is a chance that most have never even heard of....but it happens. Walking with one foot on two paths can't go on forever, and a choice has to be made. Walking with each foot on a different path is not easy. Usually it is by the desire of one person to continually offer to support the needs of the other by bending their own path to be as close to the other and make it as easy as possible to simply step off their path and next to yours, if they want to. It isn't easy, but a path that follows where you want to go is a much easier thing to walk than living on a path that is no longer going where you wished
I have been going through my journals over the last twenty years trying to find a point in my life where I wasn't so destroyed emotionally to be able to get a better point of reference for what I feel now. I am angry with being forgotten and ignored. I am jealous for being told I am worth everything, but traded for what has always been explained to me as so much less. I am frustrated with being appreciated for love in the way I could give it, while it is given away to someone else without any regard for how much it hurts to be left. I am overwhelmed with the need for comfort and compassion and intimacy that I refuse to give to anyone else but need so badly from her. Most of all, it is the feeling I get that I am the one who should feel like I am breaking my promises, and to assume the failure of my loyalty when it was rejected so quickly in me. Am I to feel every bit of guilt for indiscretion when it is me who refused to falter with a single one?
As much as I love my friends and value their opinions, I find, quite often, that I am my own best advice. Who knows me better than myself, right? So when I am broken and defeated and need a hero, I look to my own words when I was in stronger times and use what I wrote for myself. I knew then that I may need them in the future, and the future is here.
I found something that I wrote about a woman when I was eighteen. She had decided that I simply was not the type of personality that she needed in her life. That while she no doubt appreciated the love I had for her, she was seeking someone more forceful and pragmatic. She admired people who were forceful and could get what they wanted from others if they had to, and I was simply not that kind of person. She needed someone who would take care of her. Safety and protection is necessary and as long as she could answer to his demands, it was assured. No matter I was never given the opportunity. So sorry.
Now I made a mistake in this relationship. I made the mistake of telling her that if she ever needed me, I would be there. That as far as I was concerned, I still believed in her and what she was. She said "No, I know where I belong and it's with Dave". So I pined for two years groping miserably with the desire to be with her, and, feeling I owed it to her kept away from the places we had been together, or doing things I found pleasurable with her. Places I had showed her and things we had done. Most of all I shied away from people feeling an obligation to a person who had no intention of ever returning, but also couldn't deal with the idea that I might be able to give it to someone else. My greatest fault was admitting to her that I couldn't. Because in saying that I couldn't, it allowed her to do what she wanted somewhere else and always have the option of returning to me. An ace up the sleeve she never intended to use. And all the while she could stay where she was without ever feeling as though she had left anything at all. She simply put it on a back burner until she could pull from it if the need arises. But it is never needed. We are excused from a place in their mind to become an even less important part of a heart until we are nothing more than a dirty mistake of their own and a point of failure to which they will avoid at all costs. She is, by the way, still living in California. She has a nice house in La Jolla, and would have loved to see me when I was there visiting, but her husband won't let her see her old school friends anymore. She still emails me occasionally to tell me that she is miserable now. Well....yeah. I bet you are.
The entry was a rather sad and very painful thing to read. Because it was exactly why I was so afraid to fail in a relationship now. All the feelings of rejection and lost love I blamed myself for rather than realizing that it was something I had no choice in making nor was it any failing on my part for it happening. But still, I saw it as a failing in me. How could it not be if you were everything right and nothing wrong?
The second paragraph explained how I had decided that I am not responsible for what people choose for themselves. I knew it to be a recipe for disaster, and that's exactly what it became, but how do you explain what to recognize when it is something that they can't even see? You don't. How do you teach them to fight what they don't see what is wrong? You can't. The most important part of this journal entry was at the very bottom, and when I came to it I was reawakened to a very stark reality. Written at the bottom were five words. "Decisions are choices of finality."
Let me say this again. Decisions are choices of FINALITY. I will be honest and tell you that when I read this I had to just....walk away. Just walk away from my house and my life, from anything that had to do with anything and anyone. I sat there in this worthless heap of dejected misery at the understanding that, once again, I had allowed myself to come full circle and be rewarded with EXACTLY what I was terrified to feel at the very beginning of this relationship. The very reason why I was so adamant about what it was that tears my soul apart was for exactly that reason. It tears my soul apart. It isn't an understanding of what it is that keeps loss away from you. It's that loss is up to the person who leaves you for whatever the reason. It isn't my choice. There is no amount of love that can't be traded off if there is no comprehension of the depth of it in the first place. That isn't to say there isn't love for me, but there simply isn't an understanding of the depth of it. And that is not my fault. So regardless of what I know, it is all worthless if THEY don't know it or understand it. And it's made worse by refusing to allow me to make the comparison from what I give to what is there. That ISNT deciding what love is. That's settling by default. ANYTHING greater than zero is better. But when you have to and it gets compared to ten, the difference becomes striking. There is no fair reason why a person like me should feel guilty or obligated to another person if they have made a choice contrary to what I have offered in true faith. It is not up to me to make them believe. Only that I give them enough to believe in. It is not my responsibility to lessen the severity of loss by wishing to make it better. And allowing them to believe that you will always be there to pick up the pieces does NOTHING but add an already unappreciated sense of loyalty to an equation you have been eliminated from by CHOICE. The sad part is that it isn't a choice I even had a say in. So why am I so agonized over it? Why let someone believe that there is always a better life in the future regardless of how long I endure it without any sense of urgency on their part? Time counts, and keeps counting. If it's good enough now to want it for their future, why should I endure it until everything else that is left there is gone? Including the future!! There IS NOT a way out in the future. The decision, as far as they are concerned, is final, and expecting another person to wait around for what they say is worth having but not worth having now,while they live somewhere else refusing to want it or need it, is a waste of my time and a pacification to them. Loss is just that. LOSS. Regardless of how badly I want it, there can be no full comprehension of that decision unless I make it a finality to them just as much as it was made to me. If the consequences of not having the love I wish for her results in a life with less, so be it. That is not my desire and it is not my choice. It's hers. If it results in a feeling of jealousy for another person I spend time with when I'd much rather be with her, so be it. But it was not my choice to be anywhere but with her. And if, in the future I ever grow to trust a person enough to want to spend my time with them interferes with the ability to have me take her back in the future, so be it. Because it is not my choice to be with someone else. It is my second choice because I can't be with her. But letting someone else let me suffer with a life unfulfilled so they can live a life half filled is still not the way I wish to spend my life. I want my love with her, but she has to want it just as much. In addition to that love, it has to be a love she is willing to give back. And she doesn't. And so I have a new analogy. No, people are NOT like two paths through the woods. Paths in the woods are what happens when people fail to come to full grips with the consequences of final decisions. It's a way of saying that what you are is just what they want in their lives....just not now.
My complete and total exclusion from her life and the total rejection of my love for her in place of something not even properly defined or fairly explained now has led me to this. Instead of paths, I like to think of people and their lives as freight trains. These trains follow tracks that run parallel, but they run in opposite directions. They travel in the direction OPPOSITE to what you are on now for very good reasons. If you are on a train that is not going where you want, you have to hope that one going in the opposite direction will come your way. When you are NOT going where you wanted to go, the other train is exactly what is needed, right when it is needed. A few trains may pass in a lifetime, but only one will need you as badly as you need them. And THAT train will pass only once. Regardless of the will or desire to carry you and all of the load, there will come a time when the train passes by completely. The train that wants you on it, may even STOP in its tracks to give you more time. But these trains move FAST. And while one may be willing to apply the brakes to go as slow as it can to allow time for the person they love to jump from one to the other, it is only a brief amount of time before the one you are on doubles its efforts and applies coal to its engines to speed off without giving another chance to offload what you need onto the other train. What you want at that point becomes the impetus to keep you from doing it. And after that, the train will never slow down to let another chance again. It is gone. And regardless of the other trains desire to have you on it, will simply be unable to pass by again.
I don't WANT to go off alone. I don't WANT to watch what I love more than anything stream off into the night because she was too afraid to jump, but it will not be me who assumes the responsibility of the loss. It isn't my wish at all. It will not be me who rejects the love. But it will also not be me who lives in a relationship less than what it should be.
I feel as though I am to allow someone else to go back and reclaim whatever it is they thought they had and, at the same time, make me feel as though I am the one who will be the lesser person for wanting it in my life. I sacrificed EVERYTHING. I had to start over with a clean slate to have them at my side as an equal. Not my train, but OUR train. Not MY tracks, but OUR tracks.
It isn't enough to be going in the same direction as before and still believe that the train is yours as well. Not if it isn't under your control anymore to direct it, or slow it, or stop it, or get off. That's the proverbial runaway freight train.
The offer to let me give her all of the love I have for her still stands. But I am so terrified that it is only me that realizes that this is a freight train....and not a path.

The Principle Of Passion

I had a conversation the other night(actually we've had a few too many for me to handle lately) and the question was asked "What do you want from your life?" That's a pretty vague question, and what I want from life would take far too long to explain. But I thought about it carefully anyway for a very long time and came up with an explanation of what I truly wanted in my life without having to make the exhaustive list.And what I want, more than anything else in my life, is passion in the things I do. It isn't a matter of what it is that I want. I want the same as anyone else. But it is my dedication to them, that passion that makes all the work I do in them a reward beyond even my own expectations.
And while it can be said that people do a great many things in their lives; their job,their hobbies, their relationships, that is not the same as having a passion for doing them. There are people who can paint, and there are those who paint well but have no heart in it. It is those who inject passion into the things that they feel important that drive the very limits of what it is they have put their energies into. You have to WANT what it is you create, and passion is what changes a simple task into an art.
I have a very wide range of things that I have put passion into. If I were to go way back, and think about why I went to college, it was not to make a better life for myself. It was for the passion of Archaeology. Now most people could not conceive of spending an entire weekend stuck down in the stacks of old journals and musty museum curation labs looking at artifacts that were broken and useless when Christ was born. But to me, it was of no effort at all. It was work fueled with passion. And no amount of work it involved ever felt like it was too much for the satisfaction of knowing what I found. Passion is what separates simple toil from a labor of love.
To have passion is to do something you love to do above all else. What would you like to do if time was not restrictive, money not and issue and nothing to stop you from doing that? For some, it’s a question people are very afraid to not only ask, but answer because they might realize that horrible epiphany,“Why am I not doing this?” But for me, it is the passion that brings the meaning to the act. I KNOW why I am doing it.
For many years I worked as a helicopter crew chief. I was very good at my job and there isn't a single piece of an aircraft I couldn't identify, repair,or replace. But I didn't have the passion for doing it. I was destined for greater things. And it wasn't until I became a medic that my ability to do a job became as much an art as an occupation. It is being able to go far beyond the limits of most peoples comfort zones and get right down into it and have every single aspect of it under my control. It is grace under pressure.
One of the things that people do not understand is that passion for anything increases your success at it simply by your need to have in your life every component of the experience. No part is unimportant when passion fuels the desire to have it. It is for this that some people prefer to live in tenement buildings and paint or sit alone and write on street corners rather than be seen as successful in cubicle sipping latte's and considering on a daily basis whether jumping from the 17th floor wasn't a better idea. Because the desire to do what it is that you feel in your heart is what you put your energy into and the belief that there is nothing more important. That is passion.
I only mention this because I knew where the original question was going when she asked what it is in my life I wanted. Above anything else I want in my life, it is a love complete, and passion for love is something I would trade anything else for. Passion for love is the greatest of my desires. It is that feeling I get when every second of my day is consumed with the thoughts of another person. Not to the point of distraction, but to the point that it drives me through everything else in my life. It is the difference between distraction, and direction. Love may be a flame that burns in a heart, but it is the passion that puts the heat to the coals that makes the warmth of a relationship. It is the knowledge that there is nothing that will not be done to have the intensity of love any less than total. Everybody has something they love, and a few even say that they put effort into it, but it is the rare few who elevate their love so far past an aspect of the human condition so as to make it a form of art that makes it swell beyond normal definitions. It is divine intervention sent through the heart and the mind of the person who wants it, and it is the passion that makes simple love become the type of intimate relationship that becomes priceless.
Passion is a gift of the spirit combined with experience. When passion for another is found, it fills us with the power to live and love and communicate with unbridled enthusiasm. Passion at its purest starts when the full potential of a mind becomes undivided in its desire. It is cemented to a body willing to endure what it needs to achieve it, and then they work to breathe the spirit into what they see as worthy of the effort. Together, like a magnifying glass gathers light, it focuses and brings out, in both ourselves and that which we put it into, our most sacred values. It is passion that allows another person to see the true depth of their worth in another persons eyes. Passion is the mirror that reflects back the qualities of your own soul.
Passion enables us to overcome obstacles (real and perceived) and to see the world as a place of infinite potential. When you have passion, and passion for love in particular, every event, every dream, even every simple act, is a promise of what can be, what should be and what will be.
And passion has its own inertia too. It is a quality that increases in size and value. And most of all, passion is not intrinsic to the individual who started it. It is not only observable by someone else, it can be transferred. Most importantly, passion can not be imitated. There is no comparison between a person who loves with passion and a person who simply loves. It can not be faked. Almost anyone, with minimal intuitiveness, can notice it. It's much like walking down to a flea market and seeing two people who made the same two things. One who made it for the passion of doing it with money secondarily, and the one who made it for money regardless of its lack of passion. Yes, they are the same thing, but it is in the fine details and the dedication to its perfection that shows the difference. Passion is the scale for things that look alike. We can sense a lack of sincerity, authenticity and depth. And in doing so we automatically recognize the dryness of what it is to be without passion.
I believe that passion for what it is that you do and who you put it into determines the authenticity of an individual soul. It is one thing to say that you love what you have or make or believe, but it is passion that strips away the thin veneer that separates what is said or done by one person, and what really is inside another. The power of passion forces us to see others as who they are, who they are becoming and often,when it is not there, what they can never be.
Don't get me wrong. There are still a great many people who shy away from passion. Passion is a commitment to that which you desire, and many people run from the total pursuit of passion because they're afraid of being burned. Past relationships that ended in searing pain can cause a person to lose passion. Trusts and confidences that were betrayed often cause people to no longer look to the rewards of passion. The Utopian goals that suffocate under soulless logic, fractional or underdeveloped emotions, and overzealous egos. All of them contribute to the loss of passion in the world.
As a result, they have become afraid of taking the risks that come with living life to its fullest. Most people have touched the fringes of true passion, if only for the briefest moments, at the most unexpected junctures in their lives. They've glimpsed the edges of another world, the promise of hope they never imagined, and had themselves caressed with the comfort, the overwhelming sense of peace, of genuine affection.
Longer and longer, they stay away, though, opting instead for a more predictable existence. Rather than taking a leap of faith and immersing themselves in the deepest joys and motivations, they insist on hiding inside a safety bubble, a sanitary, lifeless, colorless world where nothing new ever happens and the only thing that one can rely on is that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday, and that today will be more of the same.
What I want?? More than anything else is PASSION!! Passion for the world, passion for people, passion for hope,passion for what it is we do in our jobs and the people we do them for, but most of all passion for love. And we have to trust in ourselves enough to be receptive to experiencing every second of every hour, of every day to its fullest for the things we are passionate for. Can you imagine how much more meaningful our roles as parents, as lovers,....as people, we would be if all of our thoughts and motivations, our total sense of desire to succeed was with passion?
And you wonder why it is that love would be what I put my deepest passion into?? Don't ask why I would put passion into it. Look at who I love and KNOW that what is there is deserving of passion.
I believe in the passion that I put into who I love. And it is the passion that I think she will see. Passion for the world, passion in other, but most importantly passion for her. That is the power of passion.
One of the greatest differences between us as people and the rest of the animals is our capacity to experience and respond to feelings. Tears of joy, the desire for happiness, affection, unrestrained intimacy, pride, zeal, conviction, true love, compassion -- these are not, CAN NOT be sins. Rather, they compliment another aspect of humanity. And that is the gift of free will. The real sadness is lacking the courage to express our convictions and dedication for the loves in your life. The belief that free will somehow, somewhere, was removed as a virtue and replaced as a sin. It should be a crime to bottle up the passion you once felt as a youth so that you'll fit into a controlled environment or association, or to find it only to be convinced of its worthlessness or triviality by someone else. In fact, the closest we can come to a physical hell is the unforgivable action of refusing to say what needs to be said, not gravitating toward what makes us joyful in our hearts or forcing ourselves to no longer feel what was intended to be felt. It is not the loss of passion. It is the refusal of passion. Passion shapes our existence, fuels the fires of inspiration and makes the heart and mind open to changes all around us. It is what gives purpose and value to intangible things. It is food for the soul, a spark that re illuminates our purpose and mission for being here. Passion is the driver to what it is to be human.
If there were one thing I held more important than anything else it would be passion. But passion for love above anything else.