Sometimes the biggest challenges in life become easily doable if we can just get a leg up.
The Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Tiny
Surmountable
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Category Archives: humanity
Speechless Thursday
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
~ H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
As yet I cannot comprehend
the ills that have been ordained,
nor how they came to be,
nor how anyone justifies these creeds.
As yet I cannot see a way
to fight these ills that threaten me,
that threaten us,
and our children
and their children,
and this innocent Earth
with the bounty she so selflessly shares
while we systematically poison her.
As yet I cannot rightly communicate
my utter, utter dismay.
So for today
as I struggle to comprehend,
as I struggle for words,
as I struggle to fathom a response,
I will honor my speechlessness
and I will weep.
I Just Want to Be
“I’m miserable,” she utters despondently.
Her head drops to the table,
face smushed into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“I just want to be happy.”
Happy? Hell, I’d settle for functional.
“Is that too much to ask?”
She sniffles into her sleeve.
“Not at all,” he says.
“Everyone deserves to be happy.”
Kind eyes. Calm voice. Practiced cadence.
How does one deserve an emotion? I wonder.
Either you feel it, or you don’t.
Or is it a state, and not an emotion?
The state of happiness…
Can one deserve to be in a state?
What about the state of depression?
No one deserves that, that’s for sure.
Then again, no one would likely say,
“I just want to be depressed.”
The clock on the wall seems frozen.
I will the hands to move more quickly.
They don’t.
Perhaps I don’t deserve a faster clock.
He turns toward me. Observation mode.
I don’t meet his gaze, but I don’t look away, either.
Blank eyes. Silence. Practiced apathy.
“And how are you this morning?” he asks gently.
I consider the question.
Perhaps I should have prepared a response.
It’s not like I didn’t know he’d ask.
“Depressed,” I say.
“That’s why I’m here.”
I just want to be well.
Is that too much to ask?
The Daily Post Discovery Challenge: Radical Authenticity
Maze Days
Some days you feel like you can tackle the whole corn maze.
Other days it’s enough just to sniff at the husks for a bit.
Monster Fail
Remember holding a flashlight under you chin in the dark and making scary monster faces with the light and shadows of your features?
Well, apparently it doesn’t always work out that way…
Sometimes, instead of monsters, you get angels.
Story Time
“What story do the things you wear tell about you?”
(The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Outer Layers)
The story I portray,
the story I live,
the story you tell yourself about me,
the story I tell myself about me…
Do the clothes I wear
tell about me,
or are they simply fodder for
lots of stories?
It’s so tempting to judge
a book by its cover.
Belated Quest
Sad to think
I never really knew you.
As I sift through gleanings
of a life concluded,
hidden facets surface that I am
just now seeing for the first time.
Sad to think
I am left to piece together
a life story that for all these years
lay nestled in yellowing tissue paper,
carefully tucked away at the bottom of
your cedar chest.
The Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Quest
Talk Like a Dove
© Barbarico | Dreamstime.com – White Dove
September 21st is International Day of Peace or “Peace Day.”
I can’t help but wonder about priorities when a day or so ago, I saw a lot of internet hype over “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” And today, I happened to see Peace Day listed in a single obscure online post.
Granted, that may say more about my own interests and inclinations, as Big Brother of the Internet parses my cursor’s every move and feeds me whatever It thinks I want to see and/or what It wants me to see. But I’d rather not perceive myself as so simplistic, nor the Internet as so intrusive. No offense to pirates.
At any rate, I’d like to add my voice (figuratively) to the call for world peace, and share with you a favorite video of mine (but not me). “United” by Playing for Change. Enjoy:
From a Different Lifetime
One hand clapping
Today the Daily Post’s one-word prompt is Silence.
I wrote a poem years ago with that title, and will share it here. The poem has a totally different voice and came from a completely (almost) different person than I am today.
I am content with who I am today, and grateful for the journey that got me here. Sometimes it’s a valuable exercise to look back and be reminded from whence one evolved.
Silence
Before ego there was silence.
Then ego emerged, dragged by intangible forceps
from the serene sea of oneness with its maker
into the harsh artificial light of material world.
No wonder ego screamed.
The small, still voice – also part of Oneness –
was drowned out by a raucous cacophony.
Ego began devouring material world like a strident crow
feasting at an overripe dumpster.
I meditate, try to invoke the resurgence of silence,
but my goal eludes me.
I strive to empty my mind,
but ego will not go away.
It careens from synapse to synapse,
ricocheting off every thought mote
that sifts down through my span of consciousness.
Silence is golden (so they say),
but when I fall mute, others worry.
Outwardly I am judged as too quiet.
Inside, ego shouts in derision.
Is silence relative or absolute?
Is there such a thing as too silent?
Or partial silence? (The sound of one hand clapping, perhaps…)
We seldom understand what we hear.
Why would we expect to comprehend silence?
It is not essential to fill every void.
Only ego thinks this way.
Silence is not a void begging to be filled,
but I do beg…
that ego will surrender, and the void in me can be filled
with the still, small voice that is Silence.
~ MCC (@ 2000)
“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”
~ Henri Nouwen
Light Meets Dark
at the edge
of the shadow
light meets dark
in a deception of
distinction and
division and
sometimes
dissention
but this edge
where light meets dark
is only an illusion
of differentiation
because under the shadow
no edge exists.
The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: Edge
What Rhymes with Stanza? 