I Challenge You
Are you listening?
Are you frightened by the sound of
time rushing, whispering?
Can you hear it now,
the anxious cry to be
something else while you can?
Are you happy there, with a vacant stare?
Can you even imagine,
a slice of the world in your hands?
A lost cause? you feel hopeless.
You don't have to be helpless,
or do you?
You laugh at your misery,
dance while in agony,
but the show's just for you.
And the applause is dying,
your "fun" is running with the tears
on your bitter face.
Don't follow your dreams
they won't move on their own,
If only you'll lead them, they'll go where you go.
I won't pretend to empower you
for all I can really do is
speak the truth, and challenge you.
I challenge you to trust
to be hurting if that's what it takes,
to be strong, to walk on for a while.
What can change
if the view stays the same?
I challenge you.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
the unfailing anomaly...
I'm sitting here at the computer listening to Taylor Swift's lovely sexy voice singing of an uncooperative lover; "...I've never been anywhere cold as you...". The song moves me somehow not because I can truly empathize, I've never been there. No what hangs me up is one little line:
"You have a way of coming easily to me... So I start a fight 'cause I need to feel somethin'..." Before you start guessing where I'm going, pause for a sec, I'm not going there. I'm not going to talk about love or pain or any emotion really.
I am going to talk about reactions, perspective. As Abraham Lincoln put it "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." Someone somewhere knows the truth in every aspect of a situation because the truth for that moment was their life, literally.
They lived something and no one else may ever know the truth of that moment, not that they won't try to communicate it but people are who they are, see what they see, and do what they want, such is life. But I think, and I may be wrong as I often am, that the truth is not subject to perspective or reactions. Everyone would concede that "nobody's perfect". So, if no one is perfect than there's got to be a perfect somewhere, grey areas cannot exist where there are no extremes.
Back to the song... All the intuition I possess tells me that she felt "nothing" and most likely everyone (starting with the guy) was surprised. It's a fact, she did feel nothing. No one saw it, doesn't mean the numbness wasn't real, the resulting pain sheer imagination.
The song then becomes perception, she calls him cold, he may have been a poor communicator, a tightly guarded heart. Cold is what she saw, not necessarily what was there, after all she was the one who claimed the chill.
I said I wasn't going to talk about emotions but they tie in here. We usually choose the tangible portions of an experience out of laziness/convenience, but you can't touch truth (even hard evidence is not the truth itself). Feelings, but more especially memories of feelings, can be tweak, twisted, and at times unrecognizably altered. Who wants to remember a boring trip o a history museum when they could remember and exaggerate that unbelievable sensation when that hot senior brushed against their arm in the lobby of the blasted place. See?
Perception and reality are all too similar, they'll look identical but one is always a clever fake, fabrication, a figment.
"You have a way of coming easily to me... So I start a fight 'cause I need to feel somethin'..." Before you start guessing where I'm going, pause for a sec, I'm not going there. I'm not going to talk about love or pain or any emotion really.
I am going to talk about reactions, perspective. As Abraham Lincoln put it "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." Someone somewhere knows the truth in every aspect of a situation because the truth for that moment was their life, literally.
They lived something and no one else may ever know the truth of that moment, not that they won't try to communicate it but people are who they are, see what they see, and do what they want, such is life. But I think, and I may be wrong as I often am, that the truth is not subject to perspective or reactions. Everyone would concede that "nobody's perfect". So, if no one is perfect than there's got to be a perfect somewhere, grey areas cannot exist where there are no extremes.
Back to the song... All the intuition I possess tells me that she felt "nothing" and most likely everyone (starting with the guy) was surprised. It's a fact, she did feel nothing. No one saw it, doesn't mean the numbness wasn't real, the resulting pain sheer imagination.
The song then becomes perception, she calls him cold, he may have been a poor communicator, a tightly guarded heart. Cold is what she saw, not necessarily what was there, after all she was the one who claimed the chill.
I said I wasn't going to talk about emotions but they tie in here. We usually choose the tangible portions of an experience out of laziness/convenience, but you can't touch truth (even hard evidence is not the truth itself). Feelings, but more especially memories of feelings, can be tweak, twisted, and at times unrecognizably altered. Who wants to remember a boring trip o a history museum when they could remember and exaggerate that unbelievable sensation when that hot senior brushed against their arm in the lobby of the blasted place. See?
Perception and reality are all too similar, they'll look identical but one is always a clever fake, fabrication, a figment.
Monday, July 23, 2007
The Nothing Box
As I was watching TV the other day, my show went to commercials and so I lazily clicked through the channels until, for some reason, I stopped for a moment on a live lecture with a huge stage backdrop that read "NOTHING BOX". Intrigued I listened for a few minutes and found that the program was about the place where men go to "veg" during stress or just down time, and why women, hard as we try, cannot go there. The "Nothing Box" it seems, is the place where guys are (mentally) when they are staring blankly into space and seem distracted or disinterested in what we females are saying. Apparently, when you ask a man what he is thinking and he answers "nothing" he may be very well be telling the truth! And why can't women go there? Well, because if we invaded a guy's "Nothing Box" we would be shocked to discover that there was actually nothing there. We would immediately start decorating, arranging, and filling the nothing with somethings, driving the poor guys insane. We don't want to idle our minds and vegetate, we want to talk about stuff. Guys need an escape (usually from us). Thus we females are forever banned from the "World of Nothingness", but maybe it's better that way after all.
Still, whenever I see a guy sitting in silence with a blank look on his face, lost to the world, I wonder... what is it like? When a girl gets a blank look on her face it's there for one of two reasons, one, she didn't put it there on purpose; she has no control over that one cell; or two, it's a facade to lull whatever she's talking to into a sense of secure superiority. It's a fun look to get good at.
Still, whenever I see a guy sitting in silence with a blank look on his face, lost to the world, I wonder... what is it like? When a girl gets a blank look on her face it's there for one of two reasons, one, she didn't put it there on purpose; she has no control over that one cell; or two, it's a facade to lull whatever she's talking to into a sense of secure superiority. It's a fun look to get good at.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
The Other Side of Never
Yesterday was my day off and I got to spend most of it just relaxing with small amounts of privacy here and there and therefore I was able to enjoy minimal amounts of a favorite indoor pastime: staring vacantly at a blank sheet of paper and waiting for inspiration to come. It did and what I wound up with I placed below, enjoy.
In the middle of Never there's a little couch made entirely out memory foam. I know this because I poked it once and the little round dimple that my finger made stayed there for what seemed like forever. There's also very awkward gold lamp that I can only assume was left there for the very reason that anything is ever left behind anywhere: something was more distracting. I could also fairly say that it was probably left behind on purpose because Never is a very deliberate place. The third object that stands out to me is, well, I'm not precisely sure what it is. It vaguely resembles a very dirty spoon only that it is significantly larger and quite pointy and sharp on one end as if someone intentionally honed it for use as a weapon of some kind (I mentioned this being a very deliberate place); it stands between my height and that of the unfortunate lamp.
I find after visiting this place that the terse chastisement to "never say never" (favored mainly by parental figures) is largely an exaggerated fear of the unknown passed from generation to generation; it's silly really for never is, for the most part, dually enchanting.
However, communication can be an obstacle with the native Neverinians as they never say what they mean but never lie. They never speak to strangers yet they never discriminate. The laws also are particularly confusing but -as a word to the wise - never follow them as the Neverinian police officers never make arrests. So you can see how city life could be a bit of a challenge (though never crowded, leaving that delicious couch never occupied), country life is much more enjoyable.
The most delightful vacations I've spent in Never have been on the other side (near the border with Always). The sky is a swirled palette of innocuous shades of grey so unoffensive to the eye that one could find themselves drifting listlessly in a dreamlike state almost instantaneously. The air smells of fresh snow but feels like warm restless breath on the skin. There's nothing to do and not much of anyone to do it with but no one seems to mind at all, in fact, no one seems to mind much about anything at all, I thinks it's the sky. The water is another thing entirely, to say it is still would be a understatement worthy of reproach, it is as if a tingling curse hovers over the expanse and repeats a silent tranquil chant, compelling every molecule to stand in place for eternity. One would think such a place would be terrifying and unpleasant, but the atmosphere, however calm and eerie, is far from unpleasant. The water's surface reflects not only the grey skies far above it but also whimsical images that can only lie in the world between the two, unseen except in this glassy pantheon. This is where I usually pass the hours, upon the very shores of peace itself.
In the middle of Never there's a little couch made entirely out memory foam. I know this because I poked it once and the little round dimple that my finger made stayed there for what seemed like forever. There's also very awkward gold lamp that I can only assume was left there for the very reason that anything is ever left behind anywhere: something was more distracting. I could also fairly say that it was probably left behind on purpose because Never is a very deliberate place. The third object that stands out to me is, well, I'm not precisely sure what it is. It vaguely resembles a very dirty spoon only that it is significantly larger and quite pointy and sharp on one end as if someone intentionally honed it for use as a weapon of some kind (I mentioned this being a very deliberate place); it stands between my height and that of the unfortunate lamp.
I find after visiting this place that the terse chastisement to "never say never" (favored mainly by parental figures) is largely an exaggerated fear of the unknown passed from generation to generation; it's silly really for never is, for the most part, dually enchanting.
However, communication can be an obstacle with the native Neverinians as they never say what they mean but never lie. They never speak to strangers yet they never discriminate. The laws also are particularly confusing but -as a word to the wise - never follow them as the Neverinian police officers never make arrests. So you can see how city life could be a bit of a challenge (though never crowded, leaving that delicious couch never occupied), country life is much more enjoyable.
The most delightful vacations I've spent in Never have been on the other side (near the border with Always). The sky is a swirled palette of innocuous shades of grey so unoffensive to the eye that one could find themselves drifting listlessly in a dreamlike state almost instantaneously. The air smells of fresh snow but feels like warm restless breath on the skin. There's nothing to do and not much of anyone to do it with but no one seems to mind at all, in fact, no one seems to mind much about anything at all, I thinks it's the sky. The water is another thing entirely, to say it is still would be a understatement worthy of reproach, it is as if a tingling curse hovers over the expanse and repeats a silent tranquil chant, compelling every molecule to stand in place for eternity. One would think such a place would be terrifying and unpleasant, but the atmosphere, however calm and eerie, is far from unpleasant. The water's surface reflects not only the grey skies far above it but also whimsical images that can only lie in the world between the two, unseen except in this glassy pantheon. This is where I usually pass the hours, upon the very shores of peace itself.
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