Documents

I always find it interesting what we collect. How we surround ourselves and what inspires us. Our attachments. Person, place and thing. 

In this time and place I find my needs are more emotionally based. My thoughts on marriage come up more often. This is something I've never allowed myself and am now more than ever needing. The need of family. Home. And yes, even a dog. 

These thoughts visit often. Unlike many thoughts in this era these are most welcome. I tuck them into my subconscious and pull them out to revisit. Turn through them as pages in a journal or a calendar as they seem to repeat and document each day. 

My attachments to things have lessoned though my thoughts attached to certain things have grown. I am drawn to the handmade. Mostly ceramics. I admire the skill. The evidence of the hand. The story of the maker and my story that I give it. This is what brings me to the hand created. What keeps me emotionally attached. The other person. The maker. The intimate physicality. 

As I continue to build my life, I surround myself with the things that bring me joy. The solace of my home and the memories that create warmth. I collect less and create more of what I desire from my life. What I desire in my life. I collect and create the documents of my living. The evidence of my life lived. 

CB 01/18/18

Determination

Determination acts as inner voice. It knows our fears and histories and uses this knowledge well. Speaking with picture perfect detail and precise language to pull and prod, push and mock as we move forward. Night vision goggles on, compass in hand. 

Though fear is its fraternal twin, determination has the balls. Has the steady. Owns the deeper truths to who we are and leverages with self love. Leverages as it lifts us from our lowest points, repeated histories. Failures. 

Determination is our deepest desire and purest wants. Blood work and bone. Heart and lungs. Born from our first cry and stays with us to guide our final breath. 

CB 01/15/18

Forward

Forward thinking and movement are ambiguous and challenging terrains when negotiating the paths. When it comes to balancing the mind and body with reality there is rarely a clear map that shows us the best way. Rarely does this dance have a precise step. Even if you have found your rhythm the music changes. 

It's often that the mind and gut speak to each other and difficult to find which is in command as emotion and knowledge intertwine. As these two sway to the rhythm of our ancestral senses. Our blood work and genetics. Identity and place in the world. 

When it comes to desire I often think it's my gut that speaks loudest as that's where I have the most rattle. Where the disorientation dwells as the rhythm and rhyme play out. Logic and knowledge forsaken. No stoic quote still cannot save me as love beats my intestines with no obvious metronome. 

This is how our bodies work as we attempt to navigate the world. Morphing in a minefield of information we survive, the fittest. 

This disorientation is especially true to this era. Though the topic is not desire the rattle is the same. Moving back and forth from brain to gut we try to make sense of what's being played. Of what's being dictated to us. As if language is a musical note from someone who can't hold a tune. Dancing to their own drum. Mindless to the fact that the party is winding down as we look on embarrassed by their perceived drunken behavior. 

Our only savior from our selves and these times is the knowing. The knowledge that with our inner complexities and our outer realities we have a voice. A voice that creates the rhythm, speaks to the rhyme and can soften the inner rattle. A voice so loud it echoes in its depth and puts to shame the tweet of a bird. 

CB 01/14/18

Identifying Spice

My path in life seems to to be an ongoing search and rescue. Search and discover. Many years ago I had a tattoo placed on my forearm. A layering of compass, target, arrow and path. Little did I know how true to my life this sketch is. How engraved not only on my skin but in my mind this was. My need to discover. To pin point. Mark. 

I equate it to trying to identify a spice or a missing spice. I don't know what it is but I like it. I don't know what it is but it's missing. This to me points to emotion. To the satisfying of need and desire. Satiation. It speaks to a bigger picture, perhaps a yearning. A need to pair mind with emotion. Present with future. Seeing the horizon from the current path and succumbing to the desire of its pull. The desire of knowing. 

This I think is my driving force. What I live for. Like the Treky I am, to seek out. To boldly go. Or at least stumble forward, phasers on stun. 

Inspiration and curiosity are what move me. My compassed spirit, inner road map. It is without exaggeration what turns me on. Read to me and I'm yours. Point to the future and you'll have me forever. Show me that spark in your eyes and I share you my pounding heart. My secret map and plan. Strategy to overtake the present. Trojan horse for the future. 

I sometimes have dreams where I awake only to find I am sleeping. Disorienting at best. This is my psyche telling of my need. Telling me to keep moving steadfastly forward. Phoenix before the flame. Soldier in the ongoing fight of desires and needs. Hierarchies. This again, is no exaggeration. No novella. It is my mind, emotion and body playing Twister, Ouija Board, Solitaire on the train. There is no app for this. No book. No written or spoken word to describe the spice of life I'm searching.

Inspiration goes beyond amore fate~a love of fate. Or beyond hope as Liea Organa has said, "Hope is like the sun. If you believe in it when you see it, you'll never make it through the night." Inspiration is slingshot and pellet, word and action. What propels and what pulls. The inner drive of desire and physical touch. It is antagonist as well as pragmatic romantic. Political activist and choir. It is for me, blood vessels and blood. 

CB 01/07/18

Fear

To live life fully is to push through fear. Apparently. One of my biggest challenges. My biggest weight or counter weight that pulls me back. Pulls me over. Down. 

We're living in an era of muck. Of tired rhetoric and antiquated unchallenged belief systems. I believe this to be a long drawn out history of ignoring the wounds. The cracks and rotting structures. The very foundation that we have built is now crumbling. Has crumbled. 

This should not come as any surprise as we view the current political leadership. Lack of a better word as leadership usually suggests moving forward. Leading, the ship. This ship is not sailing nor is it sinking. It sits on frozen water. Frozen by fear. Fear of the winds of change. 

To move forward one must move through fear. Easier said than done as fear is part of our genetic code. Part of our survival. Our brain's innate duty to keep us safe, to keep our body preserved and therefore guarantee the procreation of the species. The pack. 

Interesting how this works in our mind and body but not in our reality. In reality there are those who wish to extract certain species. Certain ways of thinking and being. This is counter intuitive. Inducing the very fear we wish to avoid. In this case, fear feeds fear.

So in knowing this, this must be more about the ego. I am right therefore you must be wrong. But again the ego is mechanism, a system for self preservation. Which brings us back to fear. The ego wants what it wants as fear demands it. Fear is the boogie man as ego is the preening peacock. Each feeds off the other. The ever present, ever historic dance of self preservation. 

But what exactly are we preserving at this point? Maybe that is the point. Preservation. To preserve what we believe to be desired. To set aside safely what we deem preservable. Important. Self preservation. Which not surprisingly brings us back to fear. 

Perhaps this is our lesson here. Our learning as we dig and sift through the Titanic. The fear of loss. Losing what we have historically preserved but forgot, yet again. Our humanity. But this too seems to tie right back to the ever present, fear. When was our humanity ever really healthy and whole? Fear seems not to lean towards humanity as a whole but to the individual within the pack. Though fear is something we all share it seems to also divide. The individual within the community under the umbrella of humanity. 

Could this then all come down to the contrast of social doctrines and genetics? The friction between mind, body and socio-political belief systems that do not do us true justice. That do not actually preserve but cause us decay. Is it possible that our fear is telling us something? To listen to our fears, as again fear is our preservation. Our ship on water. Waiting. 

As the saying goes. The only thing to fear is fear itself. 

CB 11/28/17