Sanctuary Of Sanity

The strangest of things occurred to me the other day as I lingered around a certain consideration within this ongoing crisis that creeps back around in a sense that accompanies sporadic.

One should hope that the circumstance from this considered idea would turn my sneaking suspicion in the right direction. From the corner of my eye, I see something—that said so-called crisis—a wretched caricature slinking with stealth through the shadows of my mental ruin, quietly slipping through an opening at the other end of my abandoned approach.

It would be an oversight to employ the fact that I have been drained of all creative motivation as of late. I would be speaking upon the terms of honesty that I am lacking the necessary ration of inspiration to excuse the absence of my muse. I have found that when we descend towards the fluidity of disorientation, we tend to take a hankering to all different sorts of mischief, especially in the mental compartment of ones’ self.

It is probably nothing more than a false pretense regarding the mending of the cracks in the foundation of my own suffering.

During the most recent spell of this ongoing existential crisis—something happened that had yet to happen. I began to question my own voice of reason. Was this an actual crisis, had I finally booked my one way ticket upon the crazy train? Had I finally cracked?

I have always leaned into the more eccentric curves on this road of existence.

I have always leaned into the more eccentric curves on this road of existence. It is often that I pass the projected passerby who lives life in the façade of normalcy. As I see them fade in my rearview, I wonder what life would have been like, had I….

Then I remember a lesson that I once tried to teach myself via this blog. The one I passed—now far behind me—dim their driving lamps and their taillights vanish into thin air. It’s like they never fathomed an existence upon my being.

I cannot cry with teary eyes, nor deem this noise as crazy at this point in my life—the less abrasive way of putting it, would indeed be nothing short of extraordinary.

Though, it is that little extra that defines those of us who shutter the blinds of our comfort zone, separating ourselves from the mentality of a world where thoughts are being herded with the same logic as Orwellian mind control.

Whatever it is that shook me to my foundation would be fortunate enough to learn that it worked quite well. It has been quite the pleasant diversion from the routine of gluttonous behavior that most men seek as their only salvation. It somehow intruded itself upon my spirit and exalted me into the vague realm of the romantic. I do know that the distracted recreation of writing keeps my mind on the same path as my heart and for that I am grateful. If a curse was cast upon me, it should be known that instead of haunting me with weakened knees, it has soothed my soul like a spell smitten with providence.

All kidding aside, I do not believe that I am going crazy—my mind is simply inflating with archaic apprehension. I have read more in the past 18 months, than I have in the past 18 years. Some of these books are antiquated with philosophical lore; others were read amongst an event of becoming wise, while some were written in the way of achieving awareness, one even mapped out a structured Russian ideology about the pillars of geopolitics, that one carrying quite the fright and very articulate in the way it is being demonstrated in the present day.

This knowledge has opened the windows of my mind while the drafts of wisdom flow through them like an autumn wind. Fragments of the old me sneak through the same window, seeking freedom from self-inflicted suffering.

There is something you should know about me, for my entire life I have always been searching for something else. What that is, I do not know. If I did, insert smartass remark here. I often feel as though I have been split in half and if there is a lick of truth in said feeling, then it is very possible that I am searching for that other half of me.

I have taken to the industry and application of writing, trying to find my misplaced “Holy Grail”. I have given my soul to a band called Widespread Panic, listening for it. I have climbed a mountain, reaching for it. I have had financial freedom upon my fingertips, only to throw it away, searching for it, and I have lingered in love, longing for it. I went so far as to leave the nostalgia of home fifteen years ago, yearning for it.

It is in the fullness of time that the answers we seek usually arrive bound with astonishment, whilst we are left scratching about our head with a perplexed air.

Now I know what it is and where I must find it. It is I, and I would be stunned if I don’t spend the rest of my life digging for it. It is in the fullness of time that the answers we seek usually arrive determined in astonishment, whilst we are left scratching about our head with a perplexed air.

It is not time to write this whole thing off yet. I have not flown the coop, bounded away towards some vast wilderness, butt-naked, with fluttering clothes behind me, waving goodbye in a primitive man sort of way. But if the time does come for me to welcome the handicaps of older age, I’d like to consider crazy as a way to go, because being customary ain’t shucks to being crazy.

I must tackle this newfangled method of mending my mental faculty. The only way this is to happen is to suspend the being of this blog. I am not sure for how long, one cannot say, especially me. I guess however long it takes to finish the book and more importantly to find me. I would like to say that there is a way to prevent this but there isn’t at this time. Everything could change tomorrow, or the next day, but at this point that is even farfetched. I am aware that this could be detrimental to the loyalty of my support staff, a.k.a., you, the one reading this right now. I have used excessive caution in my reasoning process and it is my hope that you consume these words with curiosity and excitement, looking with forward eyes, waiting with the anticipation as to what comes upon the structure of next.

This short-lived season of my life has been one that weighs with anxiety and it is time to turn the corner towards the spring of redemption. Hope will always hang on to make a show of revival—not needing any reason to back it—but only because it is in the nature of hope to revive itself when the spring in its step has not been lost to the inferiority of old age, nor with the familiarity of failure. I have always found it better to explore one’s surroundings than to bear the heaviness of weight with idle behavior.

As much as I love this blog and the elasticity of its message, the only way I can make the world a better place is to attack change in the vicinity of personal presence. I have to get out and approach the revolution with the acoustics of an auditory voice. It should be noted that I do not intend to stop writing—it is my intent to strengthen the bones that have built this blog by simply stepping away with the brevity of an intermission.

As of late I seem to merely pick a topic and screw it into my own twisted reality, while trying to relay the message to the reader in a rhetorical kind of way. While intriguing, I feel that my words are becoming errant in their ability to be genuine within the sanctity of novelty and progression.

Words are wont to make a difference, this doesn’t mean they always will, especially in the five o’clock world that we call the comforts of home today. Words built with argumentative structure won’t change the mind of someone who doesn’t see things the same as you in certain areas of established opinions, you’d be none the wiser to talk over a bottle of liquor to get your point across.

What works better than either of these, is to instill and cultivate courage over the duration of time in a tight knit community and watch as they learn to support each other under the veil of what it is that is right. The challenge is not to find the better angle of an argument’s approach, or retreat. Yet it is to change, not in the sense of radical fanatics, but by building on what is already there.

It is an errand I must run; full of such gravity that it pulls me back to where I belong, and that seems to be lost and fallen. It ought to be remembered that should a word become lightning, it will leap with stunned suddenness upon this paper, while the ink drips from this sword, only to write again. If not for anything more than to right the ship, that is lost at sea, with the sail set in the direction of the good fight.

Sometimes silence sounds sweeter than a symphony of sympathy. For now, I must stare into the sunset of life with the spirit of adventure and bewilderment as my only companions. I must rest in the sanctuary of my sanity until the facilities of my thoughts give way to the sublimity of their meaning.

Or this could just be, in its simplest sagacity, some sort of ignorant bliss by way of sleep depravity.

-Bubba Love-

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Thank you for taking the time to read.  It is with hope, that I shall see you all sooner rather than later.

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The Task At Hand

I will always walk

bound by the perpetuity

of two endless eternities

one called the future

and that what has long passed

down my own sort of path,

where my left foot

drags on through the bygone

and the right

towards the future of you.

And in this precise moment

for which I live

it is in the nick of time

that I shall continue to toe

this here eternal line.

Not for yesterday

or even tomorrow too,

so be that as it may

it is my feet that shall stay

right here in the now

or in the present,

whichever and the hell

that way that went.

But I guess that is all

one can ask

of this painful life

and it’s mysterious little task.

BeLove © 2018

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When Stuck In Life

The older I get the more I am coming to understand that life is just a chain reaction of events. All that has happened in my life is a direct result of something that has happened prior to that. It is important to remember that this includes my thoughts, desires and choices. The logic behind this is that things like choice and will power, even though they do exist, they are nothing more than the consequences of what I have been through beforehand.

It is in the cultivation of coincidence that reality rises above fear and fantasy inches closer to reality than one ever dreamed. It is through reason that we can’t allow ourselves to detach from the past. I first started to understand this a couple of weeks ago. I was stuck. I had no creative motivation whatsoever. I wasn’t willing to let go of the past as much as I liked to lead on.

It was in this state of stuckness that I did what I thought was the reasonable thing to do and evaluated my process with the rigidity of classical thought. Why was I not able to finish this or that? I had done my due diligence on the research and there I was still stuck. I had so many ideas running through my head that I couldn’t descend from one message to the next. All this process did was stress me out even more; I was so stressed that I couldn’t think straight.

Finally after a couple of hours, I got up from the desk and walked away, with little to no thought about what I should write, I felt like giving up and I did, in every sense of the phrase. I threw reason by the wayside.  I had to detach myself from all of the past ideas that I felt were worth writing about. I woke my child from his nap and we went for a hike to explore a new experience.

As we talked and laughed about childish things, we came upon a river where he was more than happy to throw rocks into—without much thought—for hours on end. The serenity in this maneuver alone got the momentum flowing. The water was curving at a crawl and I decided to pick up a few flattened stones and weave them across the ripples of this river. He has seen me do this numerous times but hadn’t yet quite developed the motor skills to actually make the stone skip across the water. This time around it was my goal to be patient and allow his creative process the time it needed to come around.

This time around I shared with him the knowledge of how to skip a stone with the angle in which you release the stone and the follow through which one must achieve to get the rock to spin. It must be noted that follow through is one of the most critical aspects in every facet of life. He slid the rock out of his hand at a slight angle and the stone skipped gently across the water. He was so ecstatic and happy that it almost brought me tears.

The romantic parallel of thinking came rushing over me like a river. It skipped across me like the stone he just threw, it skipped passed my creative process, followed by a few times across my heart and then it sunk directly into the soul of me. In the metaphorical sense, I was the river and he was the stone.

It was in the moment of stuckness that the solution to my problem seemed so very important, it was reasoned to sit back and stew on the problem.  Then as I thought about it more this stuckness when allowed time, will assume its true importance, the importance of figuring itself out. In the rigid evaluation I made, it seemed like a gargantuan matter. Maybe it was, but by allowing my mind to be stuck in the place it was without overthinking, well that was when the problem started to become more and more diminutive. The less my mind thought about it, the more my mind let go of reason and it started to move freely and naturally towards the resolution. The lesson learned is that stuckness need not be sidestepped because it is the precursor of total understanding.

It is when I took a different approach towards a new avenue of experience that my creative wheels started rolling again. It was in this moment that I started to understand things and see things with more clarity that I finally understood what it felt like to be a teacher. In my profession, I find it easy to be a teacher, but it takes a lot of work to allow that to translate over into your own personal life. I guess maybe sometimes we do ignore our own premise of self-growth and put all of that focus on the burner of our professional career.

What I learned from this experience is that if you can’t explain something in a way that even a child could understand, it is because you do not fully understand what you are talking about. The greatest teachers are able to convey complex messages with ease. Poor teachers cannot accomplish this and it would be wise to realize that they must become students first.

And that is exactly what we all are; we are all students of life, figuring this thing out as we go. Some of us yearn to learn, some of us give in to all of the distractions of life, but we will always find ourselves stuck at some point or another, and it will not do you any good to become frustrated in that stuckness, instead ride it like the wave it is and you’ll see the beauty that follows, all you need to do is allow time and patience their deserved chance at making the problem disappear.

You must suffer at playing the fool before you become the master, because if you cannot explain it to a fool, you are not a master.

BeLove © 2018

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Happy Place

There is a place

that no one wants to go

for they fear

their true colors may show.

But it is between

a fib and a lie

that the soul

goes to cry.

Yet it’s there

by that place

where the spark

of truth

shall never die.

So let your fear

creep through the dark

while your light

it opens the gate

of what it is

you must create.

So as you

sit on the fence

between now and then

the ink from this pen

will dry written

again and again,

long after you decide

what you are to do

my old friend.

BeLove © 2018

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Strings Of You

Beneath a booming thunder

awoke the buried beast

from his sleepless slumber

all of life and it’s misfortune

has been put to bed

by the dream he fed

with an appetite for wonder

from the fear of blunder

he shall plunder.

With a conscious stream

his heart will no longer bleed

from the wound

of life’s stampede.

In the shortness of life

we must all sing together

even through the most turbulent weather

and awake with the wisdom

that touches each and every day,

between here and there

and a little bit of everywhere

you can find the meaning

while love fills the air.

What was written in the beginning

when this started to breathe

bubbling up from the darkness underneath

with mysterious ease.

The greater good

will rise above

while waiting with loyalty

and the battle will rage within

fighting with the fidelity of hospitality.

The spirit carries on

to fight the wear and tear

of a shadow casted

in the doubt

of what we all fear

day in and day out.

Together we float this eternal river

where a word slips into forever.

From his soul

you start to shiver

from the peace and quiet

is where it will always quiver.

It’s the heart in him

and the strings in you

that begs the day

for a creation new

with what it is

that may always

speak with truth

into the light in you.

 BeLove © 2018

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Pinnacle Of Purpose v.3

A sliver of sunlight is all that remains as I wander into the darkness of this chasm, I do not expect this light to last for much longer.  It is cold, muggy and damp down here. There is no path down here except for a craggy rock formation that resembles a half constructed spiral staircase.  The solitary mechanism leading me through these depths is a suspicion that somewhere I can find my intuition and shadow it all the way to safety.  I come upon a concealed corner and I peek around it with caution.  Wouldn’t you know it? There it is, my intuition barely reflecting a likeness to a light of hope through a narrow hallway.  The maze of hazy reflection looks to be an opening towards a way out of this unfamiliar underworld, or it could be a direct path to hell.

The flashlight flickers violently against the constricted chamber of the chasm, meanwhile shadows start to play tricks with my mind.  These shadows take a toll on my equilibrium and the scene around me spins until I fall to my knees, spun.  I almost pass out on the way down.  From my fallen position, I begin to feel that I am not alone down here.  I feel a strong sensation of another presence and it washes over me. My anxiety tackles me to the ground.

It is completely dark now.  My body blooms with dread and a cold sweat trickles down the back of my neck, only manifesting panic into a deeper state.  There is something about complete darkness that arouses the hidden fears that have been hiding in our souls since we were children.  I feel all around the ground looking for my flashlight and all I feel is little metallic pieces spread about in a scattered manner with a few batteries to boot.  The horror becomes unbearable while the simplicity of breathing vanishes.

My thoughts turn to the worst and my worry overthrows my entire thought process.  In the face of death I start to feel pity for myself.  What would my family and friends feel in the actuality of my disappearance?  Would they send a search and rescue team?  How long would it take for them to find me?  Another wave of terror moves over me.  No one has any clue where I am.  I told no one of my plan except my four-year-old son.  I told him the day before that I was going to climb a mountain, although I never said which one.  Then I think about him and the tears begin to flood my eyes while I envision his fatherless life flash before my eyes.  Would he think somewhere in the back of his mind that I ran away from my responsibility of raising him?  The presence I felt earlier is back again, only this time it seems to be inside me.  It is stronger than it was before.  My heart starts beating with perseverance.  An unknown strength lifts me to my feet.  “Just breathe,” there was the voice again.  This time though I know exactly where it came from.  It came from within me.

I expel all of the air out of my lungs, emptying all of the fear that filled me minutes ago.  Then, I inhale, slow and determinate, allowing confidence to settle inside my thoughts for the mission that lies ahead.  I do this for quite some time and I can feel clearer thoughts coming in waves that are crystallizing with a vision that resembles a ladder that I have never in my life seen.  I inhale one last time, only this time I concentrate on allowing unbridled love and harmony with the world to enter my body and before I can exhale, I see a light and it guides me.

The light in which I must reach looks to be some two hundred odd feet atop this cryptic wall that stands before me.  If I were to get halfway up and fall, death would be eminent, either quickly, or slow, torturous and lonesome.  I focus on the path towards the light and put the paralyzing fear behind me.  I climb towards my meaning with all of my strength. The climb is easier than I thought it would be.  The wall is formed with many cavities that allow me to gain significant heights with little effort.  I was almost to the top when I came to the final hurdle.  The only way out of here was to jump over to the ledge behind me about six feet across and two feet higher than were I stood.  There is no room to get a running start and absolutely no room for error.  My hands are already bleeding with a bearable pain from the jagged edges of the wall.  I tighten the straps of my pack around my shoulders and tighten my shoelaces.  I do not affix my thoughts to the consequences of what may happen next, instead I just jump.

In life, wisdom only has value if it helps us to overcome some obstacle that stands in the way of our dreams.  I climb out and bathe in the sunlight without a thought in my head for almost an hour.  Finally, I push through the glory of surviving death and I climb to my feet.

I can see the summit from where I stand now.  I sit down and inhale the mountain air with a deepness that consumes me with an extraordinary amount of love for life.  Not only my own, but every single aspect of life that walks this earth.  I see the undignified process in which the human mind falls into the trap of might over right—we are not superior to other species—and it sickens me to stomach.  So much that I become queasy and begin to dry heave.

We are the only species that is aware that our death is imminent and because of that we allow empathy to give way to fear and apathy.  The latter spreads through the soul like wildfire and destroys the goodness that was once the foundation of philosophy.  Men become despots and look to protect their namesake with violence, war, greed, and gluttony, by destroying love.  Little to they know, that when the manifestation of love is interrupted, the one responsible for that interruption becomes beholden for its recreation and the rebirth of the original manifestation.  I prefer to not sound like a broken record but it is cyclical.

Death is not something that we should hide from instead we should allow it to motivate us to do the best with what we can with our lives.  Life is a battle that must be fought with worthy causes and not inflated wars.  It could be considered vanity to act in such a way to prevent one’s name from being forgotten by performing good works, but vanity is merely an inward reflection of one’s self in the mirror of good and evil.  When we become aware of the significance of death, we become braver and we seek further heroic conquests that better our soul because we have nothing to lose—for death is certain and when we no longer fear this, we find perfect harmony. You see death is our constant companion and it is death that gives our life meaning.

I take my last cigarette and light it.  I take one last drag and savor it for awhile.  This will be the last time I taste the conundrum of a cigarette in my life.  I crush the lifeless stick on the rock below me.  Life gestures my direction and I must proceed with the path that has been laid before me without any personal vice that has the power to extinguish my soul. I put my backpack on, and I start the final ascent towards the pinnacle of my purpose.

The sky wraps around my being and I am overcome with a sentiment of the endless Quality in everything that surrounds me. Everything, from the blue that paints the sky to the wind and her capricious breeze that holds me steady every step of the way.  Every thought that goes through my head carries a hint of gospel with them and they turn to the glory of the God.

Back in the chasm, when I first felt the presence, it is something that I’ve always known was in there, you know, in the depths of me.  There just hasn’t been any entity that was capable enough to extract it from me.  I, of course, know that I am the only one that can become who I am to be, but sometimes, the most unexpected ray of sunshine plunges from the heights of heaven for us to bask in, if only for a moment and in the blink of an eye—forever starts to make sense.

I believe that God was manifest in the darkness of primitive mankind, in the storms and the cavernous depths of the soul.  Man started witnessing God’s hand in all creatures, as well as the beauty of Mother Nature, the trees, flowers, waterfalls too, then they saw his evidence in the cold winds, the rain, the sunset, and the snow.  You see, the spirit really does rest in all things if you are willing to believe.  There have been difficult times when God seems to hide beneath the catacombs of evil, I believe this is his way of allowing wickedness the chance to transform itself into hope.  One thing is for sure—he has never ceased to exist inside the heart of each and every one of us and the love that makes it beat. Remember wherever the treasure you seek in this life is, that to is where your heart is, that is where through good works you will find the importance of love and the perpetual bliss we all hope still exists.

I walk through an atrium built in the expression of granite.  I look toward the summit and a presence, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, stops me dead in my tracks.  My heart starts to flutter and a feeling consumes me from the depths of my core.  The feeling cleanses my soul as it leaves my body and stretches outward over the land that surrounds me, this mountain, this wind, throughout Mother Nature and all of her beautiful caprices—spreading like a wildfire that cleanses all souls with purity instead of wreaking the havoc of hatred.  It has only one purpose and that is awaken the love rests inside all of humanity.  It cannot be stopped; it will not be stopped, for love has risen once and it will rise again.  I take another step and the view from this summit is the most spectacular, I have ever seen.  For once, I finally see me.

Author’s Note:

The history not only of thought, but also of opinion, action, and consciousness too, of morals, aesthetics, politics, is to a large degree just a history of dominant preconceived patterns that follow certain paths. Whenever you look at any particular civilization, you notice that the most characteristic writings, or any artistic fragment, reflect particular paths of life. Those whom are responsible for these writings—or paint these pictures, or compose the most beautiful pieces of music—are dominated by the patterns of these paths. In order to identify with our civilization, in order to explain what our civilization is, I feel it is important to isolate the dominant pattern of these paths, to which present day culture obeys, and attack it head on.  See you soon.

-Be Love

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No Doubt About It

It used to be said that when in doubt, it was better to not act at all.  I was someone that used to feel the same way.  I doubted my ability to have a voice that echoes amongst others’ thoughts.  I doubted that I would ever be able to follow through with the most incendiary of passions that I had held close to my heart and hidden from most everyone that knew me for my entire adulthood.  Most important of all, I doubted myself.

This was the case until I woke up one morning almost a year ago after participating in a brief yet brutal Facebook tirade with a fellow acquaintance. The tirade related to a blistering debate about the financial devastation that had twice followed the only two times that the Grand Ole Party had held complete control over the District of Columbia. The following morning after the aforementioned outburst I woke up and could not stop writing, not about politics per se, but about the creative process and how important it is to the foundation of the future and that of living.

I do not know where the motivation came from, though there is no doubt about it, that is a gift so graciously given to me from above.  I do know that I felt a brand spanking new consciousness of freedom filling me whole, while words flowed from within me like ice-cold water from a spigot on a sizzling southern day.  My mind had evolved into an outpost of creative goodness within a day’s time and I no longer doubted my ability to construct my dreams into reality and lay them upon the world’s existence. Soon thereafter this blog and its foundation was loosely laid and the rest they say is history, right?

So what is doubt? Doubt in the sense of mentality is when the mind rests suspended between two or more contradictory intentions, and is unable to decide between any of them.  Doubt on the emotional level is the indecision between belief and disbelief.  Doubt on an emotional level is often uncertain, lacking trust, and missing conviction within the certainty of facts, motives, and more important than those, decisions.  Doubt often results in the delaying and rejecting of relevant action due to the concern of making a mistake or missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Doubt is the devastating spread of ignorance via instruments of fear and misery. There is a cultural phenomenon that is taking place and allowing these instruments to feast on the heart of freedom and liberty, as we know it. That cultural phenomenon is the mass media at our fingertips and its permeating purpose to propagate inexperience by allowing certain powerful influences, both corporate and administrative, to prey on the individual’s thirst for knowledge and freedom by spreading malicious and fabricated information that only helps to boost the momentum of ignorance by way of hatred’s vacuum.

I leave you with a quote from an “unknown” freethinker, this quote has often been one that takes my doubt and twists it into motivation.

“We must give credit to that oft-repeated assertion that democracy is the kind nurse of knowledge, and that high literary excellence has flourished with her prime and faded with her decay? Liberty, it is said, is all-powerful to feed the aspirations of intellect, to hold out hope, and keep alive the flame of mutual rivalry and ambitious struggle for the highest place. Moreover, the prizes, which are offered in every free state keep the spirits of her foremost speakers, whetted by perpetual exercise; they are, as it were, ignited by friction, and naturally blaze forth freely because they are surrounded by freedom. But we of today seem to have learned in our childhood, the lessons of benignant despotism, to be cradled by its habits and the customs from the time when our minds were still tender, and never to have tasted the fairest and most fruitful fountain of eloquence, I mean liberty. Hence we have developed nothing but a taste for flattery. This is the reason why, though all other faculties, are consistent with servile condition, no slave ever became a speaker; because in him there is an ignorant spirit which will not be kept down—instead his soul always chained—for he is one who has learned to be ever expecting a blow from his own neighbor.”

So my question for you is, just because they feed our reality with enduring doubt and provide us with more opportunity to fail than to succeed, does that mean the dream has died?

Absolutely not.  It is very much alive in you, me, and everyone else in between.

-Be Love

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Thank you whole-heartedly for taking the time to stop by.  See you this weekend.

Wisdom Of Wednesday

This is something new I would like to try from here on out.  Hope you all enjoy it.  Time for the whole NaNoWriMo and it’s cornucopia of 50,000 well-placed words.  Wish my creativity and sanity good luck.  See you all soon.

-Be Love