My Eyes

I spent a lot of time being afraid of what might come. Far too much time, honestly. I masked that fear with a saying that I stole from a film. "So Be It". I owned it, used it, abused it, and eventually believed it.

Thank God that I did.

I am not old enough nor experienced enough to tell you everything you'll ever need to know. I am not wise enough nor patient enough to give you the insight you'll need to get by. But I pretend I am and I pretend I am. I think that's what matters.

Those things you'll end up worrying about, do not really matter. Those things you'll lose sleep over, do not really exist. They're all mechanisms we use within our own minds to make our lives seem worthwhile. They're tactics we employ to convince ourselves that we have something to figure out, to solve, to overcome. As if those solutions might somehow give us meaning.

They're tricks that we play upon ourselves to fill up our empty cups, when we have no water to pour.

You have to see the World as it truly is. You have to see it as a dysfunctional machine that somehow functions.

Suspend your disbelief only long enough to understand that what you believe cannot be suspended. Who you are cannot be replicated. Who you'll be has not yet been written.

You can only change your world once you realize that no one else could ever dare change it in spite of you.

It is all about perception. That is what "So Be It" means, as it were.

It is all about what you see.

And I know what you see. You may have gotten your Mother's hair, her stature & even her disposition. You may have inherited her religion, her mannerisms & even her apathy.

I see a world full of quiet people, hopeful people, people waiting to to find an answer that has already been answered. I see a world full of people that have all of the tools and abilities it will take to save themselves and everyone they rub elbows with. I see a world so full of wonder and beauty that even blindness has to blink.

I see a world that is rich and waiting. I see a world that you see.

You do have my eyes, as it were.

So be it.

Paint

The day I left home, the room I grew up within had walls painted white.

That was due to my having sullied them in my teenage endeavors.

When your old Man was a young Man, he made everyone who came into his room write something, anything, on his wall with permanent marker. The wall meant something. It was 1992... before facebook.

You see, everyone that I ever loved or cared about picked up the stick and wrote what they felt. They wrote what they wanted to say. Unabashed, unaltered, unending. They wrote what they desperately wanted the world to know they had to say.

It was beautiful.

When I left home I had to paint over it. I had to make it presentable again. It took 3 buckets of white paint.

But you know what?

Their words are still there. Buried beneath my whitewash. Hiding beneath the roller and hours and cussing. All of their words are still there. Their sentiments are still strong. Yes, they're buried beneath a couple of coats... but that doesn't render their message obsolete. That doesn't strip them of their intent.

It just means that sometimes you have to dig a little bit to understand what a room is trying to Say.

Life is a Room.

Don't paint over what it's trying to tell you.

Oh... by the way... The greatest quote someone once wrote on that wall was simple, crude, but incredibly to the point.

"You better live life wide ass open. If you don't... you'll end up living life wide ass open."

Paint can't cover up that truth.

That Star Still Works

I'm from the Star City of the South (Google it).

If you knew how many wishes I bestowed upon that poor piece of machinery, you'd laugh.

Still... there is a sneaking part of me that believes that quiet little whispers, whispered in quiet little moments, aren't just hovering around some random mountain while quietly waiting to find a forehead to kiss or an ear to whisper into.

There is a sneaking part of me that thinks life is a little bit bigger... and smaller than that.

There is a sneaking part of me that honestly believes...

That Star Still Works.