And neither are my struggles. An uncle used to always say we aren't here for a long time, but here for a good time. Puro good times. Suffering was a perception, lately it feels more like a choice. Here is a little voyage you can take to see the vastness and maybe a declarative on evolution, divinity, spirit, and cosmos. Click the link below...you must have flash.
I am not as important as I wish I was
Not Fast, Fluid
His name will remain undisclosed but his impact on my life will be hard to recognize because it seeps into most aspects of my success. I am writing about a person who I am scared to lose. I am scared because he is going to one of the most dangerous places in the world for an American soldier. I am a borderline pacifist, but he is my reminder that the revolutionary culture is rarely entirely peaceful. Revolution is still part of the American culture. He isn't the strongest man, the smartest man, the bravest man, nor the most honorable man, but he believes that he is heading that direction. What stands out is what he won't do, and that is refuse to be pitied. This has helped him become a green beret. This has prepared him to interact, immerse, and fight for a people who he cannot trust but has to.
I have a dream that his warrior experiences will bring home a wisdom I was too much of a coward to experience myself. Being a soldier was a fantasy that my cousins and I always chased. I have a subtle regret that stains my soul. It may be the remains of a past life or the bottled potential of a future one. I cannot shake it, like I cannot shake my respect for him. I am not going to dwell on the idea of his danger. I will focus on the hope for future experiences. I am fighting a war here with myself and it seems selfish to want him to be safe. It is painful to have jealousy and disappointment that I cannot be there with him. Since our adolescence we have fought most our battles apart, after having each others back throughout young adulthood.
I sit and think about what we have grown from. Two arrogant boys, dreaming of the big leagues, small town values, big city desires, and tattered souls. We taught each other how be men. I've told him shit he hates hearing. I have told him shit he appreciates. I have shared with him my tears. He has yet to let down his mental guard to show me his heart. It makes me feel like a sissy most times, but I know he can be where he is going because he can guard his heart. We are very similar in our insecurities and we are similar in our hate for losing. We have lost too many times in life and in sport. It never gets easy to do. Our community is an underdog breeding ground. We have an appetite for pain.
I will never be able to understand the pain he carries. He has yet to let me know about the pain he holds. I his journey has led him to be a great warrior. He grew up not the smartest, not the fastest, not the strongest, or not the most principled, but he leaves to fight for his country smarter, fluid, durable, and committed. We may never be measurable to the greatest of men, but he walks the paths that many great men have taken. To my brother God blessed me with at my worst. Do nothing fast, and everything fluid!
Shine bright like a Diamond
Contradiction is learning...
Standardization tells me the path to normal...I am not standard I am learning.
Suli Breaks is a good example of what productive critical thought can create. He looks for contradiction knowing truth is only momentous, never absolute, and always changing. He also has fun with learning, it might make him a walking contradiction.
Suli Breaks is a good example of what productive critical thought can create. He looks for contradiction knowing truth is only momentous, never absolute, and always changing. He also has fun with learning, it might make him a walking contradiction.
Building Weapons of Mass Destruction
Listening to this song is a reminder to me that devastation does not have to scratch our surfaces.
Devastation can and has come from voiced opinions, tormenting regurgitated secrets, and mirrored insecurities. I am an expert marksmen when it comes to tearing down opponents, adversaries, and loved ones when I reach a boiling point. I can be ruthless when it comes to finding words to string together that can unravel someone's safety and trust.
There are too many people who have suffered the wrath of my weapons of mass destruction. I can't apologize for the unknown and numerous times I have unleashed my words. Nor can I undue the damage rendered. I can proliferate the emotions that provoke their use.
I can discover the rogue attitudes that are harvesting ideas and prejudices. I cannot disassemble my stockpile of already existing and primed weapons. They are there with launch codes already programmed to protect the inner most vulnerable parts of my body and soul that my ego is unwilling to expose.
I am finding the villages and tribes inside me who have found refuge in the walled in compounds of my past. Seal Team 6 is performing exercises on my trust. My terrorist organizations are trying to have three cups of tea. I am realizing that dying is no more easy than staying alive while guarded and secluded. There are peace treaties to be made in my head. The childish nature of my soul is playing in fields that were previously saturated with mines, sadly losing limbs to the uncovered explosion of my self hatred.
I am learning to be civilized. I am putting down my Words as Weapons. It may be awhile before I can kick them away and out of reach. My wish is for the Angels of joy to come and confiscate them, replacing them with flowers.
Devastation can and has come from voiced opinions, tormenting regurgitated secrets, and mirrored insecurities. I am an expert marksmen when it comes to tearing down opponents, adversaries, and loved ones when I reach a boiling point. I can be ruthless when it comes to finding words to string together that can unravel someone's safety and trust.
There are too many people who have suffered the wrath of my weapons of mass destruction. I can't apologize for the unknown and numerous times I have unleashed my words. Nor can I undue the damage rendered. I can proliferate the emotions that provoke their use.
I can discover the rogue attitudes that are harvesting ideas and prejudices. I cannot disassemble my stockpile of already existing and primed weapons. They are there with launch codes already programmed to protect the inner most vulnerable parts of my body and soul that my ego is unwilling to expose.
I am finding the villages and tribes inside me who have found refuge in the walled in compounds of my past. Seal Team 6 is performing exercises on my trust. My terrorist organizations are trying to have three cups of tea. I am realizing that dying is no more easy than staying alive while guarded and secluded. There are peace treaties to be made in my head. The childish nature of my soul is playing in fields that were previously saturated with mines, sadly losing limbs to the uncovered explosion of my self hatred.
I am learning to be civilized. I am putting down my Words as Weapons. It may be awhile before I can kick them away and out of reach. My wish is for the Angels of joy to come and confiscate them, replacing them with flowers.
A beautiful Poem to grasp Failure
I was sitting in a session with a young man, no longer a teenager, but learning among teenagers. A student who felt education was important but lived a life that did not cradle his dreams. A young man honest enough to say he was afraid to be a good guy because a fear of failing. I asked him to describe what he meant.
Out came the following stream of greatness.
Out came the following stream of greatness.
Failure Is When
When you're asked to
take the clothes down from
the clothes line the day
its gonna rain, when they
have been hanging there since
the day before and should have
been taken off that night but didn't,
and having to come back late at
night looking at the raindrops
dripping from pants you forgot
to take in.
This is not my poem but his. It is not to be reused, republished, or shared. It is his gift to this blog.
Be the change
In honor of Gandhi's birthday, I'll comment on living his words. There has been an extreme amount of education, learning, and circumstances that have helped me understand the non-violent philosophy. At the same time there have been mistakes, transgressions, and void that have helped me to exercise the non-violent philosophy. I like to describe how easy it is to know of non-violence, and cannot seem to fully be the change that is so desired by my thoughts and ideals.
Non-violence is definitely not another form of positive thinking. Non-violence is a human choice. For me its a lifestyle that defies nature. There are few examples of non-violence in nature. Symbiosis requires that others capitalize or threaten others to survive, predator or prey. The feeding process asks that something be broken down for the building up of the other. Ecology demonstrates the struggle to keep harmony, and nature itself has storms and earthly restlessness. So this choice to be non-violent is a call to divinity.
Non-violence is an expression of faith in others, a trust of others, and a interconnection between all, like divinity. Non-violence calls us to an awareness that ask us to understand the paradox that exists between feasting, sharing, and sacrificing. There is unlikely a pure form of non-violence. Death seems to be the epitome of violence. So life and death are in themselves limits to the human understanding of peace. Existence is for me a constant desire for the perfect. My writing is proof that I have not found peace. In spirituality most folks like to believe that we continue on living in different forms. Non-violence might be a remedy to the emotional violence we can feel when someone hates, dies, or separates.
To narrow this tangent that could veer off into further complexity, I appreciate the example Gandhi left because as I try my own attempt at being non-violent I fail often. With the failure I get to practice self non-violence. This has helped me learn to appreciate and forgive myself. I am a precious gift from, what I like to call God, possibly the only pure non-violent entity. If there is a divinity then it is the only life that does not die, separate, hunger, or fear. The eternality of God is what Gandhi was trying to help me see, and this tells me that non-violence is not susceptible to the instincts we are given as animals.
P.S. Another piece of insight that I have been lost in, is that Gandhi was not a Crossfitter...but he was a cross fit.
Non-violence is definitely not another form of positive thinking. Non-violence is a human choice. For me its a lifestyle that defies nature. There are few examples of non-violence in nature. Symbiosis requires that others capitalize or threaten others to survive, predator or prey. The feeding process asks that something be broken down for the building up of the other. Ecology demonstrates the struggle to keep harmony, and nature itself has storms and earthly restlessness. So this choice to be non-violent is a call to divinity.
Non-violence is an expression of faith in others, a trust of others, and a interconnection between all, like divinity. Non-violence calls us to an awareness that ask us to understand the paradox that exists between feasting, sharing, and sacrificing. There is unlikely a pure form of non-violence. Death seems to be the epitome of violence. So life and death are in themselves limits to the human understanding of peace. Existence is for me a constant desire for the perfect. My writing is proof that I have not found peace. In spirituality most folks like to believe that we continue on living in different forms. Non-violence might be a remedy to the emotional violence we can feel when someone hates, dies, or separates.
To narrow this tangent that could veer off into further complexity, I appreciate the example Gandhi left because as I try my own attempt at being non-violent I fail often. With the failure I get to practice self non-violence. This has helped me learn to appreciate and forgive myself. I am a precious gift from, what I like to call God, possibly the only pure non-violent entity. If there is a divinity then it is the only life that does not die, separate, hunger, or fear. The eternality of God is what Gandhi was trying to help me see, and this tells me that non-violence is not susceptible to the instincts we are given as animals.
P.S. Another piece of insight that I have been lost in, is that Gandhi was not a Crossfitter...but he was a cross fit.
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There is a part of the Chicano culture that is ruthless. Even the slightest social struggle creates opportunity for deviance. My family wa... -
Part 2 The darker aspects of my culture are simply expressions of communal pain. Without diving into excuses or reasons for class structure... -
Part 3 Where did the ability to self abuse originate? If I take a critical look at the people in my barrios that perpetrated on the home...