where is the poetry, where are those lines
where flows so much pretty prose
or painful bleeding valentines
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sacrifice
Where am I to go with this? How about I start here, with sacrifice. What is sacrifice? The agreement to deprive oneself of something one needs or wants for a higher purpose, something one sees as greater, more important than what is in the moment, more important than oneself. It's so hard to see past the moment.
I've known my share of sacrifice. So many times, I run into people who have children, and don't even know what it means to sacrifice, usually men. They do, they know it on their own level, they aren't completely oblivious, but I mean in this case, the sacrifice in the name of children. After sixteen years in a relationship which produced three children, one can stand astonished at a man who was hardly ever home telling a woman, me in this case, that not only should she have been raising three kids alone, running the household, but she should have been working, which I did mind you, and going to school as well. I could look through this man as if he wasn't even there, too flabergasted to believe those words could leave his mouth, that he could really believe that. It's not enough that I was to have sacrificed all my time and energy, my sleep, money, sometimes my sanity and my social life I was to have sacrificed my children's one parent that they had most of the time with the little time I had left, and used up my last reserves on school instead of them. It was as if he never lived here, as if after thirteen years of being a parent he had no idea what it took to be a full time parent. That only means that I did my job so thoroughly and willingly that an outsider just saw that things were done, as if they were never undone. Who keeps the threads together? Who ties the strings?
I'm over it, I guess. But I run into it all the time. There is nothing to say to someone who thinks like that, there is no way for them to know until they have been there and there is no way to tell them what experience has told me. But I know I am better for it, and I got the better end of the deal. I got the through the rough times with my sanity and my strength, and I also got to build a bond that is incomparable. Take that. ;)
I've known my share of sacrifice. So many times, I run into people who have children, and don't even know what it means to sacrifice, usually men. They do, they know it on their own level, they aren't completely oblivious, but I mean in this case, the sacrifice in the name of children. After sixteen years in a relationship which produced three children, one can stand astonished at a man who was hardly ever home telling a woman, me in this case, that not only should she have been raising three kids alone, running the household, but she should have been working, which I did mind you, and going to school as well. I could look through this man as if he wasn't even there, too flabergasted to believe those words could leave his mouth, that he could really believe that. It's not enough that I was to have sacrificed all my time and energy, my sleep, money, sometimes my sanity and my social life I was to have sacrificed my children's one parent that they had most of the time with the little time I had left, and used up my last reserves on school instead of them. It was as if he never lived here, as if after thirteen years of being a parent he had no idea what it took to be a full time parent. That only means that I did my job so thoroughly and willingly that an outsider just saw that things were done, as if they were never undone. Who keeps the threads together? Who ties the strings?
I'm over it, I guess. But I run into it all the time. There is nothing to say to someone who thinks like that, there is no way for them to know until they have been there and there is no way to tell them what experience has told me. But I know I am better for it, and I got the better end of the deal. I got the through the rough times with my sanity and my strength, and I also got to build a bond that is incomparable. Take that. ;)
Monday, August 3, 2009
Cigarettes
Yet again, another cigarette, another disappointment. As a non-smoker, I told people it really wasn't that hard to quit, just got to start doing it and slowly it becomes a reality. A bit like jumping off a cliff maybe, but as Miley Cyrus says, it's the "climb." At the end you forget the journey, but when you remember, the journey was really difficult, that's the beauty of it. So I'm looking out as a smoker once again, unbelieving that I'm here again, trying to focus, back into the mentality of the dream of once again, becoming a non-smoker.
It's so sad that it's a brain chemical addiction. The body craves it, but the processing in the brain craves it more. Believe it or not, minds are often muted when quitting, being so deprived. Bodies are drained, and ill. Emotions are dark and muddled. The brain speaks the language it knows. When hungry, one eats, when tired one sleeps, when craving.....one deprives. And if you fail, deprivation diets are the worst. If you succeed, bravo. But the brain, that's the funniest thing about it, it tells you with words, "have a cigarette," just like it tells you, "you are deprived of Vitamin C, drink some orange juice," etc. One feels a bit robotic just then, when one recognizes how it works. But understanding a disease is the first step to the cure. My one friend said that he just decided that he had to get used to feeling deprived, he would never get over it, just had to accept that was how one was gonna feel. Me too, in the past. It's like one recognizes that there will always be the next cigarette on the horizon, if you don't say no to this one, you'll just have a million more, and still want. I want to be in control of myself, as much as a person can be. Just got to be ready for the journey.
But alas, here I am, still fighting, still smoking, still believing in the dream.
It's so sad that it's a brain chemical addiction. The body craves it, but the processing in the brain craves it more. Believe it or not, minds are often muted when quitting, being so deprived. Bodies are drained, and ill. Emotions are dark and muddled. The brain speaks the language it knows. When hungry, one eats, when tired one sleeps, when craving.....one deprives. And if you fail, deprivation diets are the worst. If you succeed, bravo. But the brain, that's the funniest thing about it, it tells you with words, "have a cigarette," just like it tells you, "you are deprived of Vitamin C, drink some orange juice," etc. One feels a bit robotic just then, when one recognizes how it works. But understanding a disease is the first step to the cure. My one friend said that he just decided that he had to get used to feeling deprived, he would never get over it, just had to accept that was how one was gonna feel. Me too, in the past. It's like one recognizes that there will always be the next cigarette on the horizon, if you don't say no to this one, you'll just have a million more, and still want. I want to be in control of myself, as much as a person can be. Just got to be ready for the journey.
But alas, here I am, still fighting, still smoking, still believing in the dream.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The famous Buddhist koan, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" An exercise meant to subdue the initial reasoning process and propel one into a state of seeing beyond, thinking outside the box, or feeling outside it, rather? A paradigm? Always a mystery to me, not completely, but as I sit and read about other men explaining it with rationalizations, I do not see that it is meant as an unreasonable exercise, completely set apart. Reason reaches conclusions where two things are equally true and equally opposite, thus a paradox. The amusing thing is that the first step of logic is abiding by the law of non-contradiction, but at it's end, the truth is a contradiction. Enlightenment, using one's brain in a different way, but still, why not reason along the way? Can we really propel our mind outside reason? We do not think anything at all if we do not reason, we must draw distinctions and conclusions even to utilize language at all. Maybe not outside it, but beyond it. Pascal did say something to the effect that reasons last step was to realize that there was an infinite number of steps beyond it.
To see without seeing, to know without knowing, to rationalize without understanding. To just be?
Ah, I look upon my hands and I see openness, and medicine. But moreso, I see the caring of the artist who drew upon my hands. I see the dream to be more wholly myself once again, doing what I was born to do, being who I was born to be. I see hope, I see the marks of suffering, and a desire to embrace it. I see spirituality, a belief embraced and expressed with the intention to help, not to proselytize, nor to hinder, not with egoism at it's base. I hold only good things in my hands.
and if shadows say something
my words then have meaning
when darkness is being
when dreams are still seeing
when walking through the light
make mysteries your potions
make madness your gleening
make reason a bedfellow
he too, retreating
To see without seeing, to know without knowing, to rationalize without understanding. To just be?
Ah, I look upon my hands and I see openness, and medicine. But moreso, I see the caring of the artist who drew upon my hands. I see the dream to be more wholly myself once again, doing what I was born to do, being who I was born to be. I see hope, I see the marks of suffering, and a desire to embrace it. I see spirituality, a belief embraced and expressed with the intention to help, not to proselytize, nor to hinder, not with egoism at it's base. I hold only good things in my hands.
and if shadows say something
my words then have meaning
when darkness is being
when dreams are still seeing
when walking through the light
make mysteries your potions
make madness your gleening
make reason a bedfellow
he too, retreating
Unconditional Love
So we meet again. Let me practice my fingers and exercise my mind, it's been a long time.
Time stands still? Eternity? Unconditional love is unchanging, unalterable, and one? Well, as human beings, we are subject perpetually in part to change, it cannot, as we say, be unchanging but as to the nature of the question, let us ponder.
For time to stand still, a thing must remain forever itself, forever active but occupying no space nor time. A thing must be so completely itself that it could not be another thing, and it must be a thing that occupies no space and if time is the measurement of changes, let us propose that it cannot be moved by time.
St. Thomas Aquinas proposed the state of aeveternity, I believe. Physical things occupy physical space and are wholly a slave to time. God is eternal and is not subject to time, for He cannot change, He is what He is and He could never be another thing. So it is said, is the soul, however, it can change in process not in it's nature, so it is neither a slave to time, nor is it eternal, thus we introduce a third state of existence.
Ah perhaps, we shall break this down into a few more pieces, key note from Aquinas:
" And, therefore, in order that generation (coming-to-be) come about, three things are necessary: namely, a potential something which is the matter, and not-being in act which is the privation, and that through which it becomes in act, namely, the form. Let us take an example: when a statue-is made from bronze, the bronze which is in potency for the form of the statue is 'the matter'; the privation is the shapelessness or the lack of the form (of statue in the molten bronze); the shape by which we call it a statue is the form. The form of statue, however, is not the substantial form, because the bronze before the coming-to-be of this form (of statue) has being in act, and its being does not depend upon this shape (of statue) which is an accidental form. All artificial forms are accidental forms. For art only operates upon those things already constituted in being by nature."
Nature is the question of what a thing "is", accidents are better compared to what that thing can do. A thing, a soul for instance, is capable of loving or not loving, caring or not caring, hoping or not hoping. For comparison, a rose plant can grow from a seed, into a thing with leaves, into a budding thing with leaves, into a supportive rose plant. Or whatever, haha. The rose plant, unless in it's nature, it's not really a rose plant, can only produce roses. However the original seed could have deteriorate prior generation, and it can equally decompose. A rose is not a rose. You can say it has the nature of a rose, but it's accidents are in a perpetual state of change, so you can never really say that a rose is red or a rose is blue or green. A rose at it's peak is red perhaps, with green leaves. Upon death, it is brown until it's non-existence. So it's accidents change, and it's being ceases to exist, completely subject to time.
My point, you say? Let us get back to the notion of the soul which is capable of loving or not loving. It can never, in my belief, deteriorate like the rose, it can never become dirt, it will not decompose into minerals which will feed something else. Supposing that is true, let us say that we cannot be beyond what we are, and we cannot "do" beyond what we are, so can we love and love eternally? We can love aeveternally, perhaps? Hehe, much better than corporeal'ly', at least. So, I agree, for the most part. ;)
Time stands still? Eternity? Unconditional love is unchanging, unalterable, and one? Well, as human beings, we are subject perpetually in part to change, it cannot, as we say, be unchanging but as to the nature of the question, let us ponder.
For time to stand still, a thing must remain forever itself, forever active but occupying no space nor time. A thing must be so completely itself that it could not be another thing, and it must be a thing that occupies no space and if time is the measurement of changes, let us propose that it cannot be moved by time.
St. Thomas Aquinas proposed the state of aeveternity, I believe. Physical things occupy physical space and are wholly a slave to time. God is eternal and is not subject to time, for He cannot change, He is what He is and He could never be another thing. So it is said, is the soul, however, it can change in process not in it's nature, so it is neither a slave to time, nor is it eternal, thus we introduce a third state of existence.
Ah perhaps, we shall break this down into a few more pieces, key note from Aquinas:
" And, therefore, in order that generation (coming-to-be) come about, three things are necessary: namely, a potential something which is the matter, and not-being in act which is the privation, and that through which it becomes in act, namely, the form. Let us take an example: when a statue-is made from bronze, the bronze which is in potency for the form of the statue is 'the matter'; the privation is the shapelessness or the lack of the form (of statue in the molten bronze); the shape by which we call it a statue is the form. The form of statue, however, is not the substantial form, because the bronze before the coming-to-be of this form (of statue) has being in act, and its being does not depend upon this shape (of statue) which is an accidental form. All artificial forms are accidental forms. For art only operates upon those things already constituted in being by nature."
Nature is the question of what a thing "is", accidents are better compared to what that thing can do. A thing, a soul for instance, is capable of loving or not loving, caring or not caring, hoping or not hoping. For comparison, a rose plant can grow from a seed, into a thing with leaves, into a budding thing with leaves, into a supportive rose plant. Or whatever, haha. The rose plant, unless in it's nature, it's not really a rose plant, can only produce roses. However the original seed could have deteriorate prior generation, and it can equally decompose. A rose is not a rose. You can say it has the nature of a rose, but it's accidents are in a perpetual state of change, so you can never really say that a rose is red or a rose is blue or green. A rose at it's peak is red perhaps, with green leaves. Upon death, it is brown until it's non-existence. So it's accidents change, and it's being ceases to exist, completely subject to time.
My point, you say? Let us get back to the notion of the soul which is capable of loving or not loving. It can never, in my belief, deteriorate like the rose, it can never become dirt, it will not decompose into minerals which will feed something else. Supposing that is true, let us say that we cannot be beyond what we are, and we cannot "do" beyond what we are, so can we love and love eternally? We can love aeveternally, perhaps? Hehe, much better than corporeal'ly', at least. So, I agree, for the most part. ;)
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
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