Finding the lost

       There are always those distant things we can't remember, those silly things that could redefine our moments if we could recall them. Ever found one? It starts in a sudden moment of deja' vu. Then we recollect that this tidbit of wisdom is distantly our own, though perhaps has been found by a new owner. Do we express joy at our reunion? We have found a little bit of our lost selves! If this small revelation is that exhilarating then imagine our worlds beyond the veils of mortality when all our lost memories may return into play. Now to stop ourselves forgetting, forgetting all over again. Perhaps it is time to rethink keeping a journal.
        I feel there is always a distant scope of wonder in ourselves that will come with a greater understanding. There are lots of things we don't know or have not remembered that will surely redefine, change what we become. At least, I would hope so. I try to make it a habit to change what I am with what I know. Sad those that don't apply what they learn as if learning doesn't matter at all. When it does. It does and it always will.
        There are days when I feel like a child who has gained lost toys and every idea that came with them. Lost paradigms we once had. Compare, accept, discard. Where we have come from and where we are going. Where we could have been. What changed us? What have we kept? Self Inventory: Let's find out what we are, past, present, and becoming. And then, let's come to terms with it.

Me and you

      Me and you may walk different lines, speak different words, be different people, watch different sunsets, but the night still falls on us both in the end. And, I think I learn something from the sunsets I see in your eyes--watching you watch them. "What?" "Just watching."
     What am I watching? You, watching sunsets. How else will I know how you see them? This is important, you know. I like watching sunsets. You could say I am a sunset connoisseur, but I would be showed up by enthusiasts everywhere. I like to know what others look like when they see them. Perhaps I am not looking, I am simply seeing. Seeing you watching a sunset. What does this mean? It could mean lots, but perhaps it means I know just one more thing about you. I won't impertinently claim it reveals your life story to me or hordes of hidden depths of feeling. I will tell you it lets me know how you watch a sunset. That is a nice thing to know. It is nice to know the little things. Don't ask me what I see. You will be disappointed. I see you watching a sunset.
      Sunsets aside I do see staggered meanings in things, but these are most often wrong. Dropping a candle does not mean the light has gone from your life, and moving my stuff from a seat does not mean you wish to supplant me. Buying food does not mean I am starving you, serving breakfast does not mean I failed to serve you first. A gift is best seen as a gift, not a request for compensation.
       Let's not play hidden meanings until we both know the rules. Then it can be quite fun, mind readers everywhere. Then it can be a game worth playing, but let's get the basics down first.

Revelations and aptitude.

        I have been asked how one can tell what gifts they have been given. I didn't know at the time. Now I recognize a unified voice of query among all younger folk. "What talents do I have?" For many this question is a catalyst to self pity and sin. A wander into the web. When you're being eaten it is hard to tell when you are special. When you are all special.
       All have been given gifts. Given them from a loving God. All hidden by the world, buried beneath vice. Most common is pride. Looking at those who have not only found, but nourished, their abilities and we find that suddenly we have nothing. That discourages us from having anything. Why should it matter? What do they have to do with us? We may not receive praise for our acknowlegeably smaller successes, but we didn't do it for praise. We did it to fully live. Without the exercise of talents and expression of self accompanied with that how can we ever accomplish happiness in this life. Not knowing where to look for the pot of gold and not knowing what to spend it on.
        Where do we look? None-other than our best selves. Look when we are serving, loving, being the best we can be. How do we accomplish our successes? Deduce what is different, what we individually notice about the gospel? About love? About self-control? About humility? What does it do for you, for me, for us? Remove the dregs of worldly and see what lies beneath. We are archeologically uncovering our true selves from mounds of dirt. Remove it, the soil, use it to plant flowers in later (The best the soil can offer). Look at what truly is. And, now, we can see what we are capable of. Revealed aptitude.

Month ends

      In the records of time there is little to praise a month end for. A day's ending is marked by a night, a week's ending is marked by a day of extreme joviality and extreme spirituality (Saturday and Sunday respectively) and a year's end is marked by winter and massive celebration. All represent very distinct ends to a previous beginning. Perhaps that is where the problem lies. Can anyone really tell when a month begins and another ends. The content in between is definite (April showers. Spring time. Summer. Fall. Winter. Etc), but the product of each month fits into another category and a larger picture (usually two or three months in particular).
       Months are more defined then an even in them than a beginning or an end. December has Christmas and new years, November has Thanksgiving. June has... nothing. Sleeper month! Found one. So forth. So on. Months are hollow. Like those events in our lives that are drawn into a great length or awkwardly across time. They come like whispers and end like a passing breeze. Off off and away into the annals of history without the distinction of an explosion or a sunset. It takes a critical fellow adept at nuances to catch these things. It takes a savant to write them down.

Self 2 Self

Dear Self,
      
The day dawn is breaking
The sun has just set.
I've known you forever
I think we just met.

        Do you ever really get time to think to yourself? Truly now, the walk into tomorrow requires introspection. Don't lose your perspective, get back up again with a vivacity for knowledge; a vivacity for expression.
        Thank goodness we wake to give dreams an amount of silliness. Without consciousness how could we ever prove false nightmares or dreams? We would forever be limited to what we know or insinuate ourselves. There is so much more to gather from this Earth before we can reside in endless sleep (Endless tomorrow).
        There is a space required for plants to grow. If the pot is too small the roots bind and the flowers never bloom. The plant may cry out and say WHAT is wrong with me!? Nothing is wrong with he plant, just the conditions he is grown in. Sad the family that doesn't have a larger pot, a spot of ground. I think nearly any family would. Everyone has access to space and more world (most everyone, somewhere there is restrained and the persecuted). The world doesn't isolate itself easily. Easily at all.
         Waking tomorrow I could walk in a new direction, think a new thought, or see a new sight without worry. Really though, I need to be happy with where I am before I set out into the unknown. Give me a place to think and I will draw the world in, shadows and all.

The White Whale

         And Ahab sought him restlessly, one creature in self defense that gored him, gored him, gored him. No matter the spears that stuck from the side of the great white porcupine, no matter the wounds incurred for no reason other than a whale steak or a vat of oil, he deserved to die in anger for the self-defense he rightfully took.
         It was then that the voice of reason was so direly needed. Starbuck, Ishmael. But, their voices were the dust on a distant shore. Only too clearly was that evident in tatters and ruin. A great white porcupine is a ferocious foe when backed into a corner, especially when he has done nothing wrong. And, even those that know better will lay broken over the shark filled sea if they stand with those that don't. What about the innocent lives, they ask. What about the innocent lives echos the great white.
         If captain Ahab were anything he would be a gangsta'. Fighting off a wrong that he invented. How dare they hurt his brother for trying to hurt that innocent! How dare they! Morals aside, they are looking for some reason for bloodshed. As a whale Moby Dick already had reason to be harvested, Ahab turned it into a reason to be hunted. Ahab gave him a character. Ahab gave him transcendence.
          What made the white whale stream from the deep in legend and story? Not the whale. Oh no. It was the man who spun the tale. It was the man that called him forth, labeled and mythed. The man who made the monster.

Importune life

       Sufjan Stevens sang the words "I can see a lot of light in you," to the pleasure of all. Was he speaking to a child? A woman? The vague helps us use it in our own way. Creativity helps in taking something and finding meaning for it, like this song. We can all be artificers of the arts. Of course, what is it we are drawing? We are taking something and making it work in life for us. "I can see a lot of life in you."
       I have been reading books and playing games and watching movies and attending plays and thinking about it all for a very long time. My guess is that, for the most part, so have all of you (No vague here, you know exactly who I am talking to). The point being: is all this introversion, all this absorption and sorting, all this time inside of our heads merely something to pass the evenings or are we using it. Using it like the intellectual food it is. Or, do we reduce it all to a mere bag of brainy potato chips? Not that some of these methods don't at times only provide potato chips. And, not that potato chips aren't bad once in a while. But really.
         What we see is an age when potato chips are what anyone wants outside of work. TV is full of supply and demand, and the people demand BBQ, Ranch, Sour cream and onion, and just potato-y, potato chips. Plenty of flavors to choose. Perhaps if they, you, I, look at the back of the bag--or even just inside of it--something of health could indeed be taken from everything around us (if we dare) as it must be in a world of intellect. In order to find the nutrition we must first be looking for it. This is getting harder in a world where less and less actual substance is being introduced into our favorite forms of interpretive entertainment. Mmm. Harlequins. Soaps. First person shooters. Catchy broad-way hits (as long as it sounds good). It is getting harder to find anything of value without adding it ourselves, and even then under layers of symbolic babble we know there is nothing much. A crumb. Probably from a potato chip. This is why I raise the cry.
       This is why I raise the cry to importune life. Demand it so that somebody can supply it. Bring me more Miyazakis, Shakespeares, Psychonauts, and Ella Enchanteds. Maybe then I can have a three course meal of cosmopolitan tastes, but until that day--and as of always--I go through the carefully stored stocks of time to find the canned fruits of another season.