it’s as if a faucet gets opened, and by the twisting of that knob a presence in my brain starts pushing every idea toward the opening. I’m sure I could sit down at any moment and crunch out a thought, for they grow on me like weeds. Are humans just an antenna for creativity, some cosmic entity possesses our fingers to create? I can’t say where the voice that is writing these words resides, I assume it is me. But it does not to me, appear to be the same physical being in which my consciousness sits like it is commanding a robot. Behind my eyes, a chair with the real me sits moving my limbs with little control joysticks and buttons.

Is this why I feel so disillusioned when someone compliments me? Imposter syndrome is just the reality that I am not who I am, and I have somehow stumbled into my existence? This family and inheritance is not mine and i am a thief for allowing them take care of me and proclaim their love for me yet I still feel distant.

These thoughts scare me, society has deemed these the thoughts of a crazy person. This search for the reality of meaning, purpose, and happiness lead you through dark pathways that some never see themselves through. What then would you say of the lost? Was it greed that set them on a path in search of happiness? Was it lust that gave them ambition for purpose? Was it a sin to feel like there is a meaning to your existence or is that too egotistical?

Are we happiest in moments when we have understood our purpose as the background actors in a movie we don’t know is going on around us? The amount of interactions you have on a day to day basis, and yet you still feel like the main character? A thousand people pass you on the street and statistically, you are not the main character.

In fact, no one is. Main character syndome has become prevalent, in my opinion, because of the rise of media centered around the concept of “I”. What would “I” do in that situation? I wanna see a movie where “I” win for once. We have begun to frame the lessons we learn from life as movie endings, and because of it the idea of a community has been lost.

I don’t want to get political in these writing exercises, but just look at what political parties has done to the idea of government. When you frame every issue as an “Us vs Them” you end up with hate at the heart of society. Generalizing groups allows the problematic individuals to hide. We cannot protect “our own” and punish “the other” when you couldn’t recognize either one in a lineup.

As we root out the hate in the forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia it hides itself within our political & religious systems, whispering in the ears of what was once our friend that we slightly disagreed with but understood that life paths lead us through different areas that teach us various lessons, and it is through the very human superpower of communication that we can melt those ideas together to find the truth at the heart.

Good and Evil are immature and childish ways of vocalizing the war at the heart of our culture. Love and Hate is better, and in my opinion, a better way to find common ground between all groups on this planet. Religion has been abused, just look at how many denominations of Christianity there are. Are you telling me that one of these hundreds of options is “correct” and the others are wrong? I’ve come to understand it to be more of a style thing, and what you are raised on is what is “correct”. In my search for understanding (and trust me, I’m still searching) I have come to the current conclusion that religion boils down to “love your neighbor, that might be you or god so it’s just better to be safe”, and I think most peoples journey through religion is one of learning about self, and by learning about yourself you come to understand others and how you can be of better service to others.

The world is currently set up to glorify “getting yours”. That if you pay your dues to society, that one day you will “get whats yours” and that if you don’t or if you don’t like the way it’s going at any point you should feel free to go the other road and just “take whats yours”. When I was young, I was worried about leaving a legacy. That my struggle and the story I wanted to be told about me was one that could be glorified and made into a movie. Action, adventure, mystery, and romance my life would have it all. When I was growing up, Hollywood was glorified and the term Blockbuster meant more than just movies you could rent to watch on the weekend but a ritual that society made together. I wanted to be a key part of that ritual, to be celebrated by the people engaging in that ritual. To amaze and astound everyone for an hour and a half and for the rest of eternity I would be worshipped. Then death would be worth, I would have played the game and won.

I haven’t even gotten 10 years into my career and I’m over it. I still want to make cool stuff, but now it’s just for the sake of making cool stuff. Nine-to-Five jobs are boring and the work you do in video production can be chaotic but a ton of fun.

The mountain top had begun to sink beneath me. Such is life in the land of the quickest sand. What more could you ask for, having been given it all? Would freedom cost half as much as it had cost in the beginning? No more land, no more space, no more time and yet we set out like tomorrow is yet to be determined. Tomorrow is the day it ends. Tomorrow is the day we pack our bags and walk headfirst into nothingness with a smile on our face and a yearning in our hearts for a better tomorrow. 

What was to be has yet to begin and what has ended has yet to find its purpose. Bouncing along alone in a sea of questions, we cling to the only solid surface around us as a means to save ourselves, and in our struggle the weakest among us have been drowned in water we could all stand in if we only took a moment to breath. 

What is anger? Where does it come from? Is hate the absence of love, or a possessive force looking for control. Looking for what it hopes is easy prey, feeding on despair and laughing in the face of fear. Deep within us is a switch that when flipped those around us would never be able to see us the same way. Some fear this switch, some freely flip it in hopes that a deal with the devil will lead to a world where god doesn’t exist. 

To provoke a bear is to release upon yourself the fury of a primal instinct, what then would you do if it turned the other cheek? What then if it asked you what reason you had for such an action?  “You’re a bear!” One might shout stunned anyone or anything could ask you for what reason you would need to take immediate aggressive action against the bear. 

If the moon was full of little green men (aliens, not the toy army soldiers) and we tried to visit and they wouldn’t let us land, would we then be at war with the moon? Does the moon itself hold any issue with us or is it the inhabitants currently standing on the moon? It is a well known fact that if you send the little green men on the moon a fruit basket with a letter that asks for permission to land that it will be given with the warmest welcome one could come to expect in space. 

If you haven’t noticed the ideas within my mind are a bit of an ominous goop that I tend to let dribble across the page in hopes to glean some understanding of my innerworkings. Therapy tends to be too expensive and friends stop listening after you’ve rambled one too many times. Pets don’t add anything meaningful to the conversation, and I can’t be trusted to make any meaningful progress without help. 

Like a fog that settled thick upon a lake, I venture slowly into a mystery I may not ever solve but I can only hope to chronicle. A lone fog horn rings out, seemingly from everywhere but also nowhere. The water a sheet of glass, disturbed only by the ripples the small tug boat had pushed out as it forged its path across the dark night.

A flicker of light pops on the deck of the boat, a puff of smoke several seconds later. The ships captain, a tall pudgy man of about 30, stepped out from under the overhang of the vessel, looking out the back at the white frothy path from the motor that extended until it didn’t. He took another puff before turning to the starboard side and letting out a smoky sigh. He couldn’t see more than 100 feet but it was out there. Hunting him. 

Pulling the compass from his jacket pocket he eyed it curiously before looking at the wind marker he had attached to the malfunctioning antenna. It wasn’t moving, his eyes darted to the water near his ship. It was black nothingness, but he could hear the water lapping against the ship. The sound tricked him into seeing movement that he knew he couldn’t see and he looked back at the back. The white path of foam continued out from his ships motor in the direction he had come from. 

He walked toward the cabin and the door groaned, deep and metallic, and as he closed he he grabbed the radio handheld instinctually.  Pausing for a moment looking at it recognizing he knew it wasn’t gonna work he smirked and clicked it live to say “Are ya still broke?” And then tilted his head toward the speaker in an exaggerated way, before saying “thought so” and threw the handset at the dock where it clattered as it missed the mark. 

Time has begun to pass me by, and I’m grasping at the ground as it slips out from under me. “I wanna to be in charge!” I scream at the top of my lungs to the sky above me and no one around me to care. “I wanna matter!” I shout to the gods that don’t exist in a palace we only dream exists and yet we fantasize living there ourselves. Would the marble seats not be uncomfortable? Would the ground made of clouds and the birds chirping be replaced with voices desperate from below. Prayers falling on a city no one lives in. 

Has there ever been inhabitants in the golden gated community of the gods? Did they create the existence we suffer through as a lark and forget about us as they continue to ramble on about themselves? If the billionaires should pay their fair share, why shouldn’t god support us like the dad that left for cigarettes and never came back. He owes us back pay for child-support he missed. He owes us a Christmas where cancer wasn’t in our stocking and corporate greedy and monopolized fraud aren’t served for dinner. 

Where will we be in 100 years, will we be stuck talking ourselves in circles to death while the game gets played around us. It seems to me we know the problems, and only talking about the solutions. 

Until we are as quick as the sand, the mountains that raised us will return to the ocean and humanity will extinguish itself like a candle smothered under the weight of it’s own melted wax.

it’s a tricky thing, first introductions.

I wish i was a wizard.

i’d even take a vampire…Ok maybe not a vampire, I’m still struggling with whether or not I would be cool with eternal life. The idea of losing loved ones time and time again as life passes us by would be brutal.

We often forget that facts, like us, still have to get up everyday, their pants on one leg at a time and prove themselves, just like the rest of us. The fact that something is the strongest force in existence is something something has to actively defend (and yet we don’t think about the inert diamond defending it’s title), means that it is up for debate.

To me there are several things that could be considered the strongest force. Water, seems to be up there. For many, they might be wondering “why would water be the strongest force? I drink water, bath in water, water falls from the sky, water is harmless.”

Water leaves its mark everywhere, the earth itself was shaped by water and a majority of it’s surface is covered. Many would argue water was the crucial ingredient for life to form and become as prevalent on this planet, as when we look around it’s a desert of empty dead space.

For you and me, without water we could not exist. Not only for our life to continue but for our lifestyle to continue. Showers, toilets, manufacturing and to cheat a little since its life focused, farming are all reliant on water. This is all common sense, but I just wanted to reiterate these points to help make my case about the next thing.

water is nothing without time.

time is just as powerful as time, but its a bit of an apples to oranges situation. how does water carve out riverbeds, and mountain erosion patterns? by hundreds and thousands of years of consistent pressure. how do crops grow, by waters consistent presence over time.

i’m not gonna lie, i’m a bit rambly and it’s 3am so i’ve just got a worm in my brain to get this site started.

My point I was trying to get to was, time is brutal. As someone who has experienced several close loses of people close to me the part I have struggled with is the universes continuing on like nothing changed. Everyone around me offered to help and to let them know how they could help.

Honestly, right now, think about what you would need people to do in that moment of great personal loss. If you can think of something, write it down. Or maybe don’t because you seem to be someone that won’t have the problem I had. I couldn’t think of anything I needed. I needed them back. I needed to not have lost someone. I needed to not think about what I needed and just try to get through existing. Maybe this is helpful to someone, but its how I felt and i’m sure many others go through this too. Just show up and help, don’t ask the grieving to give you a job.

but i love all those people, a huge thank you to everyone that showed up and offered. time has tried to make the world forget about them but as long as we remember we can fight the brutality of time and how it buries us beneath the ever growing layers of detritus that existence creates with each passing moment. with every loss I feel like i am growing more numb to the effects, like a scab that grows thicker on a wound that keeps getting irritated. I truly hope it’s not the case, and I don’t think it is. I just think, maybe i’ve started to love less as a coping mechanism. like a strategy to save myself from heartbreak.

there’s been so many people i’ve loved and hurt, or let fade into the background that when I went to find them again they acted like they didn’t know me, or they weren’t there for me to find. I will never have adult conversations with my mother or one of my brothers. As an adult, it’s all I want. To have one heart to heart with them, but thats wishful thinking because I ask that like i’m bargaining with whatever deity will listen. That I will be happy and satisfied and never ask for anything ever again but i know deep down that I will want it every year and act like the last time i asked was obviously not the best time and the deity was right for not doing it then, but now is the right time to do it if its gonna happen.

I’ve lost love because I couldn’t voice that it was there. Women didn’t feel like I was committed or I couldn’t voice that I was scared of commitment and needed to talk about it in a heart to heart way that our relationship felt like it would be biased in a “keep us together” way. Thats foolish thinking I know, looking back I should’ve just been more open and honest and maybe I could be happier now.

It’s such a trap to think about what could’ve been. About how life could’ve been different had you made that change, had someone not died, had you won the lottery. Life doesn’t work that way, a genie won’t show up and ask you what change you would make, so trying to rank them has no purpose but to frustrate you further.

But, I still miss them. All of them, and wish I could know a life where they were still near me.

Recently I heard the phrase “Learn to love the thing you wish never happened” and it’s helped me reframe a lot of the grief. I am who I am, a person I like, because of those moments that led me here. I can understand a certain persons belief in predestination, as where I am is not a place I would have chosen but its the best path I could’ve taken at the moment.

I know that’s not something everyone can say, and that’s something I hope I can learn to understand without having to take myself to a place of poverty to understand, but life is funny and God will have the last laugh I am sure.

The loss I have experienced both to relationships and death have been something I could not imagine compounding over decades, if not centuries. We talk about eternal life life it’s some attainable goal through science and medicine and how it’s an desirable achievement, but life as we know it hasn’t even existed 100 years, let alone 1000, imagine it 10000 what it will be like. And if you factor losing 5-10 people every 10 years (i’m just throwing out numbers based on my experience) then thats a lot of grief to compound.

That amount of grief would be a huge weight against the idea of living forever, I guess you could just eat a lot of garlic bread to end it all which honestly might not be the worst.

Ok, I’ll take vampire again.