A little doze, a little prose. Some little thoughts to warm your toes.

intro:

I wanted to work on a piece of work for myself. I haven't written purely for myself in awhile. Most of the time I write to throw my anger against the wall, but there it is. I'm going to try and capture a feeling I've been having lately. At first I was going to work on this for a site where I write anonymously. Then again I thought about writing it for a site where I am very well read.

Neither worked for creative freedom. If I wasn't so ego filled I would just write it and hide it in a drawer. Sadly ego and writing are kept in the same place in my mind.

I call it: No Longer Young

Body:

Young no more
The sun rises unexpectedly, a great and simple joy
now that my naivete is spent
I am no longer just a boy

Alas alas, I sing the song
that aged men must sing
A life so full, mistakes were made
Yet I learn
Yet I grew
Yet my first chapter was wrote

If I had done it differently
who would face you now?
If my face were not so lined
would any wisdom show?
I didn't come for vanity
nor wealth
nor fame
nor did I have desire that any would know my name
I sought to be the best I could
and better I became

Yes youth is gone, and bittersweet
the parting comes at last
I hated youth
I hated the unknown
Most of all I hated who I wasn't
Or maybe who I was

An ego large
ambition drives the man to reach so high
yet passion's flame undirected
 more dangerous than disease
A man who seeks an enemy,
an enemy will find
though none will see the enemy
if not inside his mind

Return at last to rise above
to separateness alone
Home kept in heart
treasured and forgot
Yet found again, and not too late
life bounding yet ahead
for many days are left for me
before all my words are said.

Splat splat! Everything is meaning and the delusions aint so grand!

Ah! But what is joy?

Perhaps I will just say the world is a fantastic place.

I'm no Pollyanna either. This world is a world of fantasy. Our entire economic system is an agreed upon abstraction, no fucking physics or material wealth there. I laugh to think that materialism is the biggest lie of all: The more money one accumulates the less one has, and the more one is had.

But I was talking about meaning, and got off on talking about fantasy. Fantasy and meaning are intertwined, I see that now.

When I went mad, and I've never been sure that I came back, I thought the world was my toy and spinning like a top on my finger. Then I came back to what I call reality. Yet all of me didn't come back. The part that assumed that reality was solid died in that heaven forsaken hospital. It wasn't hell either, though my personal belief is that Hell is where God keeps those who refuse under all circumstances to approach him. It was a holding pattern of hurt, pain, and attempts to mitigate the damage.

I'm not mad now. Not even a little. I have touchstones of reality with which I register, and often.

The real world that the rest of humans live in is a terrible place, and I'm aware of that. I'm sorry about it too, as sorry as anyone with a warm bed and full belly can be about the cold, desperate and starving. I delude myself that I have compassion, but I just have open eyes. The pain is everywhere, and I try and hold joy and light within. The goal is to remain stable, rational and cogent.

Programming has produced a new nirvana for me, a world of pure logic, problem solving and where things are either broken or working. It stresses me out with challenge yet brings me unbridled joy. It is not my destination, but it gives me clarity like opium to a man in pain.

I feel like a child, discovering the world for the first time. The past is a different country, one I come from and remember much differently than my fellow immigrants. This present land is alien and unfriendly, but it is unkind to us all and we commiserate in our discomfort.

Poetry used to be so awful, now it makes me laugh:

Ewwy Gooey was a worm,
a gooey worm was he....
He sat upon a railroad track
a train he did not see......
Ewwy Gooey!

Then there is meaningful but funny songs:

Fogging the view cupping face to the window
in darkness you make out a spiralling shape
putting all reason aside you exchange what you've got
for the thing that's hypnotic and strange

------------

Heave ho splash plunk rolling down a hole
heave ho splash plunk roll roll rolling down a hole
down the dark swift stream you go
into lands you once did know
move beyond the world of trees
out into the whistling breeze

------------

My friends all said you've lost your head now what are you going to do
you've been keeping your neighbors up all night
sayin "What the hell's the matter with you?!"

This might sound mean but your digging machine's gonna leave your feelings hurt
you're gonna dig right down to the center of the earth, and find out that there's nothing there but dirt!

-------------

Anything you want, you got it
anything you need, you got it
anything at all, you got it, baby

-------------

Taken from the county jail
By a set of curious chances;
Liberated then on bail,
On my own recognizances;
Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances;
Surely, never had a male
Under such like circumstances
So adventurous a tale,
Which may rank with most romances.

---------------

Ah, but we're all fools in love. I love myself, my life, and my family.

To quote Vonnegut:
A lover's a liar, to himself he lies
the truthful are loveless, like oysters their eyes!

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” – G.K Chesterton