Organic Hysteresis

there have been too many reasons to think about mortality this past week. the death of friends, relationships, dreams; all these carry their own weight - it is left to us to choose the direction this heaviness pushes us in.

i don’t really talk to many people about this sort of thing. it just gets to be a bit much - i am fine, and will be fine tomorrow, but tonight I am listening to vienna by Billy Joel and crying like a schoolgirl.

life is a beautiful thing, but i fucking hate this part.

“Slow down you crazy child

You’re so ambitious for a juvenile

But then if you’re so smart tell me why

Are you still so afraid?

Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?

You better cool it off before you burn it out

You got so much to do and only

So many hours in a day

But you know that when the truth is told

That you can get what you want

Or you can just get old

You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through

When will you realize…Vienna waits for you

Slow down you’re doing fine

You can’t be everything you want to be

Before your time

Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight (tonight)

Too bad but it’s the life you lead

You’re so ahead of yourself

That you forgot what you need

Though you can see when you’re wrong

You know you can’t always see when you’re right(you’re right)

You got your passion you got your pride

But don’t you know that only fools are satisfied?

Dream on but don’t imagine they’ll all come true

When will you realize

Vienna waits for you

Slow down you crazy child

Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while

It’s alright you can afford to lose a day or two

When will you realize…

Vienna waits for you.

And you know that when the truth is told

That you can get what you want

Or you can just get old

You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through

Why don’t you realize…Vienna waits for you

When will you realize…Vienna waits for you”

today was/is a good day. 

like most good days, it was not an easy day - rather the kind of time that shows you what you are. 

well, it reminds you anyway.

either way, today i made a decision i have wrestled with for some time; and a part of me is at peace finally. time will be the tell if my choices were right or wrong i suppose. but for now, for this moment, i am at rest.

there are days that I spend too much time thinking about things way outside of my control. 

there are other days that I say “fuck all that”, those are better…

today is one of those days :)

I just had the most bizarre conversation. At a bar of all places.

With a girl no less.

I suppose its a good sign that I didn’t want to take advantage of the place she was in… it was pretty sad really. I hope the advice I gave was fitting, and that she figures out how to be comfortable in that skin she has.  

yes, today is the day we are supposed to remember, but that does not justify ignoring it for the other 364.

oddly-even:

Downtown KC at around 1 PM today_

I started this as a reply to a post on fb this morning  – got a little long winded, so now it’s here.

Yesterday we “survived” another end of the world. Once again someone promised the world a get of out jail free card and people ate it up. It was wrapped up (as usual) in a pretty package of religion, but rooted (again as per usual) in a pretty bow of non-responsibility. Too much debt? No problem. Life not what you thought it would be? No problem. Job suck? No problem – it’s all out of your control! The global lottery is on the way to take away all your issues! One wave of this mystical wand and you get swooped away to heaven or nirvana or valhalla or your cosmic vestal-virgin laden harem. That is not how it works, people. There is no fairy dust to be sprinkled. Ignoring personal responsibility is not a viable solution to the problems in our world, it IS the problem in our world. So many folks listen to what jesus had to say about four horses and totally miss the bits he says about feeding the poor, protecting the weak, accepting the outcast. In some twisted horrible irony most seem to want to sit together and hear about these things while simultaneously dreaming up ways to avoid doing any of them. I don’t recall any of the stories about his 33 years where he passed on an opportunity to be a part of helping someone in the “here and now” because he thought it would be okay if me made some grandiose gesture later on. To quote Don Henley (yes, I’m that old.):

“ To this garden we were given, and always took for granted

-It’s like my daddy told me, “You just bloom where you’re planted.”

Now you long to be delivered From this world of pain and strife

-that’s a sorry substitution for a spiritual life”

Now, lest anyone be confused, let me say very clearly that I by no means think I have this figured out. Believe me, if I thought for a second that yesterday was actually going to be the end of the world I would have begged the powers that be for more time, not less. I have way to much crap left here to be sorted out. I want to see my children grow and learn their part in all of this.

Life isn’t easy, but quitting sounds boring.

(I also want to be around when The Cults finally release their album next month.)

So I went to the dmv today. Nothing super exciting there, but it did provide me with an hour and a half of mingling with a people group that I otherwise wouldn’t normally associate with – oh the humanity (if you can call it that)… The one constant that I experienced there and pretty much everywhere I have turned today is the incredible amount of hatred people seem to harbor.

Bin Laden is dead. It was bound to happen sooner or later – that in itself doesn’t phase me much, its one more life lost to add to the thousands who have died in these attacks and retaliations. I would have hoped that people were going to react somewhat differently. The cheering, the demonstrations, the mass display of bloodlust has been staggering. I actually sat and listened to a woman today say that she felt “cheated” that he had been killed. Cheated. In her words, he should have been “put in a cage so the public could watch him suffer”. Why? How does anyone derive pleasure at watching someone’s destruction? Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this in support of his actions. He was an evil man who was responsible for a great deal of suffering. I just cannot understand this mob mentality that seems to have gripped the nation… it disturbs me at my very core.

I want to believe we are better than this. As campy as it sounds, I want to believe we can forgive, that we can heal. That somewhere in this mess the human race can find a common thread and move forward. If we continue to fuel ourselves on hatred and ignorance, we all lose. It’s not sustainable – it is the cancer that eats away at us; and yet here it is, celebrated in our media and embraced by our nation.

To quote Jane Porter, “The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us”

you know those days when it seems like every step you take requires some gargantuan suspension of belief? when you understand on a base level that you are doing the right thing, but on the surface it seems like absolute folly? 

today was that day. tomorrow may well be similar. the good news is, i just might be delusional enough to get through it.