Mental Meanderings; Soul Searching Through the "Twenty Somethings" : Re-examing, "Plight"

Mental Meanderings; Soul Searching Through the "Twenty Somethings" : Re-examing, "Plight": And Sisyphus pushed his rock Uphill, in the toil and the draaaag-   Drag- Drudge With tears in his flesh ...

Re-examing, "Plight"

And Sisyphus pushed his rock

Uphill, in the toil and the draaaag-

  Drag-

Drudge

With tears in his flesh

screaming out their miseries

begging to be heard, to be healed, to be patched

in blood-

in sweat-

With the wine of a nation 

reamed of rotten grapes,

picked and stomped from the unripened vine 

molested by the beaks of 10 million savage crows

Seeping out his pores

And in mission, his body ached on

An eternity long

With gnarled bare feet

Twisted, tied, tangled

In sharp remnants of wilderness, that cut-

cut- 

carve -

into the crevices of feet and flesh and toes and soles

In passionless motions, meaningless in their sheer multitude 

With cold, fruitless efforts 

Of mundane nature

Devoid of significance, blank

Blank-

And Kafka portrayed you as a bachelor-

With freedom at your foreword,

but shackles at your feet

Trapped-

in the limitlessness of your "boundaries" ,

in the nonexistence of your "borders"

A self imagined incarceration 

Imprisoned-

in these,

 our beautiful  days of "us"

Bound, in a heaping hurt

your discontent, gnaws 

like glutinous rats trolling the streets of insatiable hedonism

Poor, glorious struggle of Sisyphus

       such painful contradiction

       such stifled restlessness

All bound up, wrapped tightly in the package
Of one

      "cursed" human being.

In a Jar Where we Keep It

Living in a moment,

Best illustrated in pieces.

Pieces of sounds, of movements, of touch, of memories-

             Just being born

Instances nesting on a line,

Punctuated at the junction

Of where, "who i am"

            Meets, "who i was"

            Meets, "who I'm becoming"

            Meets, "Who I will be"- While "who I will be",

Is just taking shape.

In the gray apartment

Illuminated dimly, with lights of rust

And beams of sun, fighting valiantly

To break through the shutters.

Waves and wind pound at the gate,

And you're here- Holding me

Tightly against the rain

Providing and protecting,

             Holding quiet my head-

             Holding open my heart-

             Holding in my breath.

And then, we danced

Like nobody was watching

And who cares if they are?

After all,

That's what you taught me.

And cuddled up in cashmere,

The soundtrack plays on.

Every ounce of me, swaying to internal melodies,

             Shifting-

            Evolving-

Slowly becoming aware of the self, developing.

Listening, eyes closed

To the songs change, the beat becoming more and more familiar-

The sound of coming home

The sound of coming to

In that proverbial sense of, "coming to"-

Because what does that mean any ways?

Coming to you?

Coming to me?

Coming to a place-

          A space-

          A second, housed within a minute, housed within a lifetime-

Where a "you" and a "me", blend into each other

Where an "us" becomes an entity

Breathing quietly, peacefully, contentedly-

Within the jar where we keep it.

So here I sit safely

Within the jar, the snow-globed world

Enclosed, with you

In a dome with raindrops-

Whisking down on all sides of us

         Small Petals-

         Creating large puddles-

         Gorging out pools-

So large, we jump right in.

Because after all,

No sense in running-

From a raindrop.

No sense sidestepping-

An adventure.

No sense in questioning

The creation -

          Of the room-

          with the floor-

          with the crack, at the corner-

Which became the ravine-

          So big, we crawled right in and claimed it as our own.

No sense wondering why it is we can know for certain,

That this is where we were brought-

That this is where we were born-

That this is- gauged against all other notions of birth, and rebirth-

Of growth, and change-

This is, exactly where we belong.  

Hindsight Is Always 20/20

The following is an excerpt from my fledgling attempt at a novel. Luckily, it's from a time that now seems a million miles from where I am today.  It's about the painful fallout of a lame relationship, the regaining of sanity, and the support of friends who help you remember that all shit will pass! So, I include this mostly because I think a lot of us have been here in some way or another. Wading through the bad in order to get to the good, Is a staple of the "20-something" experience and so I felt it was fit for sharing....

He had chiseled away at me and somewhere along the way, I had decided to let him. There was nothing left inside me. No energy to fight or call names. I was speechless and breathless, stripped completely bare and utterly alone. I curled up, shivering with fear, but sweating with anxiety. An anger I had never felt towards anything or anyone, rose inside me and created an unsettling ache that encompassed so many varying emotions. I could not pinpoint how to react to it. So instead, I just sat with it. I sat, and let my body quiver as it absorbed the full agony, want, desire, and pure hatred that was swirling around my mind and pulsing through every muscle of my torn, weakened body. The only energy I could muster, came and went in spurts of sudden fury. I would scream- a high pitched wail that gave way to a low groaning mumble as the rising crescendo of emotion exited my body like an exorcism, then calmed back into a numb lull of emptiness.

Moments of clarity came and went. They shifted in between and all around the whirlpool of other emotions, all of them contending for the minimal focus available in my war weary mind. But I was incapable of mentally or emotionally landing on one spot for too long. I had fallen deeply into a broken state of undirected and untamable emotion. It was an ebb and flow of extreme opposites, in which I knew I would be rocking back and forth for quite some time. The thought alone made me sea- sick...

A few years after this part of my life, a good friend of mine found herself in her own  breakup. She eventually told me  that she was able to get through it by letting herself hit her bottom. She revealed that it was only when she had finally gotten to the point of sitting in a state of acceptance, within the immense hurt she felt rising up inside her, that she was able to grasp at an inner strength buried amongst it all. Ultimately, delving head first into the deep pool of love, loss, regret, and sorrow, made her feel free in a way she hadn't expected. 

Listening to her years after my own experience, I couldn't have put it better myself. Even in the midst of everything I had been going through, a faint glowing flame of self worth flickered persistently- refusing to extinguish against my best efforts to completely destroy it. Instead, this hidden reserve of durability sat waiting patiently in the unexplored caverns of my self. It readied itself for a time to spark back into a roaring inferno. As the eloquent advice of my friend stated, this comes when you hit the full expanse of hurt and have nothing left to grasp except your own hardiness. It is the will to survive ingrained in every human being- you grab your backbone, and climb right back up it inch by inch. 

Reflections on my First May Day

        Realistically, I have never seen any sense in the concepts of Anarchy.  So it was with general curiosity that I agreed to attend the Anarchist sponsored May Day March in downtown Seattle with Micheal. To me, it remained a self-marginalized ideology that perpetuates its own negative public image by neglecting to have any concise, cohesive, or even necessarily tangible objectives. Basically I couldn't understand how any movement that hopes to create change, would choose to operate without any structure, along the fanatical fringe where it won't garnish much support. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe in grass roots movements. Mike was the first to remind me that this country is built on the massive success of grass roots movements around race, sex, war, etc. Yes, that's true. However, it seems to me there are always components built within those movements which add to their success. First and foremost of these components; a unified, consistent message with measurable goals & feasible objectives. Sometimes included are also viable evidence or alternatives supporting the change the movement seeks to create within society. I suppose the difference between Anarchy and other grassroots movements, was the presence (or in the case of Anarchy, the non-presence) of actual organization. In my mind, there needed to be commitment to something more than fragmented thoughts of  grandiose change, that stayed loftily at the level of "ideal" but remained unsupported by any real road map for achieving these aims. Ahh, but see isn't that the root of Anarchy- "non-organization?" To me, therein lies Anarchy's contradiction-  It's an ideology organized to support the masses, and yet it remains anti- ideology, anti-organization,  AND anti masses. So, color me confused but I was a tad skeptical I admit. 

          And so here is where my thoughts on Anarchy lied as I walked onto the campus of Seattle Central Community College and prepared for my first foray into the world of political activism. I tried to shelf my sarcasm and remain open- minded for the sake of not being an ideological hypocrite and also to support my partner who had developed a genuine interest in Anarchy while studying it in school. Though to be clear, I didn't feel obligated to participate or explore this day because of Mike. I went for myself. And myself, was genuinely surprised by how enjoyable it actually was once we got going. Admittedly, the march had a few underwhelming "leaders" who spoke on campus prior to the start and  who left a lot to be desired in terms of rallying the troops. One began his rally cry by screaming. "Capitalism kills! Fuck the System!" "Oh..I see," I thought to myself- "it's going to one of THOSE marches where we're just shouting popular catch phrases and nebulous concepts." I'd be a hypocrite to say I don't rant my own nebulous concepts, but for the sake of organized movements I do find them generally pointless and self-defeating (in case you hadn't gotten that from the first paragraph of this post.)




      Despite the bad speaker, we started marching. And like I said, it was surprisingly adrenaline inducing.  I looked around me an noticed how many people were marching that looked nothing like the media perpetuated image of an "Anarchist". What I noticed, were the old hippie couples, the family with children, the funky hipsters dressed in hot pink tights- just a full range of Seattlites marching for something they believed in. Of course there were more than a few people screaming "kill the cops." And there were also other aggression repressed youth wielding pipes they hoped to use against the windows of a corporate store or two. Though, those people were the exception- not the rule. The fact that these negative persona's serve as the unofficial "face" of Anarchy is an unfortunate byproduct of a sensationalist media. And I wont even examine the argument of, "who shot first." Who really knows whether it's ever the police or the protesters who first overstep the line from peaceful protest, to unmitigated mayhem. Either way, that's simply an initial spark that starts an uncontrollable domino effect until both sides fall together into ugliness, fear, and aggression. What I will say is despite the malay that ensued after the march, and avoiding the issue of "who done it" finger pointing, the day was an eye opening experience for me. And then I got it- it didn't necessarily need to be about measurable aims or achievable goals. It didn't even really need to be about some massive coup of the government or a complete overturn of the capitalist system. Instead, It was simply a means by which everyday citizens could  march together in an effort to relay the point that, yes- this world is a bit f***d up, so we stand together to promote a public awareness of this fact. It's a symbolic stance- a good ole fashioned fight from the populous- against the oppression of culture by the mighty dollar & a  hope that one day, we can all progress past it.