Have you ever wondered what makes Me smile?

Snow. I love snow. Especially when it lets me work from home.

Your Poppy. He's subtle isn't he?

Autumn.

It knows everything is about to die... but the fact that everything is OK with that... is fantastic.

Screwing with a Co-worker's desk when they're out of the office. There's just something about pasting a Miley Cyrus or Twilight picture to their corner that just feels "Right".

When I think my team will win.

Hope at the end of the road.

Most of all... You.

Now you don't have to wonder what makes Me smile.

Box

This life is made up of fools and philosophers and all sorts in between. Your Daddy is on that bell curve somewhere. Whether he's at the apex or on the fade isn't of consequence. He's on that curve. Just like you. Just like everyone else out there.

I see people worry over unnecessary things. All the time. I see them fret over happenstance & consequence. What's up with this cough? Why does my knee ache? Will I make that payment? Silly little things that only matter in the moment but never, ever, and will never, matter in the end.

Believe me.

The general consensus is that our "things" will get taken away. Our cars. Our lungs. Our Lives. Our Possessions. The constant threat of loss drives us in such a manner that we don't acquire that one little thing that is truly Free and Guaranteed.

Time.

I want you to do a fundamental thought project with me. I want you to imagine a box that holds all of those things that you hold dear. I want you to pretend to put them all in one secure container. All of your loved ones, all of your toys, all of those things that define how you see this world, how you interact in this world, how your world revolves around you. Stuff them all into that box. Your box.

Are they all in there? Is everything about you in that box?

Now look at that box.

Now blink.

Now that box is gone.

No, seriously. It's gone. Adios, see ya next year, gone.

What do you do now? What defines you now? What do you have to show for yourself now? Who are you now?

You do what you've always done, defined in the same way you always were, showing all you have as you've always tried & being who you've always been. Time gives you each of those luxuries. Nothing else. Nothing else & nothing more. Your box never really mattered.

All that really mattered was the amount of time you thought you owned it.

Bengali

I think I've paid my dues. I hope I have. First world problems aside, they're all I've known so I'm comfortable in saying that.

I'm feeling strange tonight. My skin doesn't fit quite right. I know why and yet I want to say I don't know why.

I don't know what to make of this thing called "life". It's bizarre. It's a bit unsettling. I'm aware that the ever changing rules cannot apply and yet I try my best to apply them.

Sometimes I feel like the goldfish that you took out of the bowl. You didn't do it to watch it struggle, you just did it to watch it live. You had no idea that the act of taking it out of that bowl doomed it.

I just don't know what my bowl is. For the life of me, I don't know who took me out of the one I had.

Maybe it was Me.

I can betroth my experiences in this life to you but it will not change what you endure. It can only enhance your interpretation of endurance by way of what your old Man recalled at this moment in time, in this one place we inhabit.

People will forget what you said. They most certainly will eventually forget what you did. But I swear to you, above all, this one thing. They will never forget how you made them feel.

That's all they carry with them. That's every one's After.

This world is an inconvenient train station where we're all jostling for position on the platform. If I could give you any bit of sound advice it would be to not buy a ticket. Just hop the fence, blend in with the crowd & when no one is looking... hijack that son of a bitch.

Ride it to where the winds cannot recall your name. There you'll find freedom. There you'll find truth. There you'll find your own After. That's what we're all looking for... as it were.

And always Talk Hard.

Even in Bengali.

New Year

Today we slayed a dragon, sat upon his nose, scoffed at the bitter winds whipping our faces & smiled through it all just for spite.

It was a good way to send 2011 on its way.

Watch out, 2012. We're badasses.

The Tides

14 Years ago today your Mother married Me.

A lot can happen in 14 years. A lot can happen in 1 year. A lot can happen in 1 day. To be quite honest, a lot can happen in 3 minutes.

That was how long it took for 12 years to become a footnote. You know what the last two have entailed.

This Human Condition is a fascinating and frightening thing. We were never given any cliff notes. Our ships were built with hands of love or often hands of necessity, and we were set adrift on the fluid surface of this thing we call our Time. It's kind of a like a plastic bottle floating on the ocean. Refuse, if you will. Something that seems inconsequential and yet ultimately defines exactly who you are, while you're busy being it. Only you don't control the surface beneath you. You just hover above it. Carried at the whim of the wind and the tides.

I would like to tell you that life is driven as such. I would like to give you that way out. I cannot, though. Not in good conscience. That is just a description of my tides. That is my excuse. That is what I still, to this day, blame on the waves.

The ugly truth, the honest one, the only real one, proves that cliff notes were never needed. None of us ever required a directory of what to do or what not to do, what to say or what not to say, what to fight for or what to let go of. The ugly truth is actually the most beautiful thing of all. It is Itself.

I write these words because I'm still learning... too. I write these entries because I'm documenting my own discoveries. I only do so in the hopes that perhaps, one day, they may benefit you as they do me Now.

The only thing I really know, and I mean absolutely know for a fact, is that as long as you're floating... it doesn't really matter what destination you have in mind. Odds are good that destination never had you in mind either. Maybe you were never meant to find it and maybe it was never meant to find you.

Maybe nothing is "meant" at all.

What if floating is all we can ever do? Would that upset you?

I agree.

I say to hell with the tides.

Vagabond

vag·a·bond  (vg-bnd)

n.

1. A person without a permanent home who moves from place to place.

2. A vagrant; a tramp.

3. A wanderer; a rover.

 

I took that name a long time ago. I guess I just liked the sound of it. I added "King" on the end because it just seemed fitting. We all are, as it were, Monarchs of our own destiny. As it turned out I was far better at the former than I was the latter. I had no subjects. We all want subjects... right?

I wish I could give you all the answers. I wish I could scribble out all of the dodges and ducks that you'll need to learn to make your way on this journey. The ugly truth is that I don't honestly think anyone knows them. I don't think there's any way to prepare for them. I think life itself is a wanderer, a vagrant & and a tramp and I think the only way to greet it is with two fists and a thick skin.

We're a beautiful species, we really are. We have the mental capacity to know injustice, to comprehend it, and yet we're also so very adept at ignoring it. Higher learning. We want to progress and yet we only want to do so at another's expense. We bought into the ideas of freedom and hope, faith and trust, but when it comes down to fighting for it... we would sell our own souls down the river to not have to live up to those words.

 

We will never be an advanced civilization until we no longer require money to define our place in life.

That's why I'm a vagabond king. Not because I know something you don't, but because I know something you do.

 

Oh, and my Kingdom is unending.

 

 

Ripples

I like mirrors. Not because of what they show me but because of what they are.

There was a pond down in the valley behind the house I grew up in. You had to walk through a bunch of locust trees and then you had to wind your way through a pine thicket that was far older than I ever imagined I'd be. Eventually you found yourself at a fence. Mr. Walker owned that fence and the field beyond it. He had quite a few dogs. He had Popper, to be precise. The other dogs were irrelevant to be quite honest.

Popper was a Dalmatian that hated everyone and everything that wasn't him. I'm convinced of this.

If you happened to find yourself lucky, Popper was somewhere on the other south forty. He was few and far between and hopefully well beyond the time it would take you to skirt that fence and run like hell across the alfalfa field. I ran that gauntlet like a Champion more times than I care to count.

Once in the clear, you had to sneak past the turkey coup. No, I have no idea why Mr. Walker had turkeys. They're loud and they alarm themselves so easily. (Yes... intentional)

Regardless, if you were sufficient enough to have overcome such obstacles, you would find yourself at the little stagnant pond that piqued the mere imagination of one little boy who happened to grow up to be your Father.

Now let me tell you about that pond.

It held no beauty other than what it demanded you see in it. It was no bigger than the first trailer I lived in when I first arrived in Georgia... and it was just as ugly, might I add.

But its water was as placid as any I'd ever seen.

Once you'd skirted away the wee bit of pond scum that might float by and once you'd settled yourself over top of that mirror... it gave you exactly what you had come to get. I'm 36 years old and nothing to this day has reflected me better than that little pool of stagnant water on Mr. Walker's property.

I used to drop stones into it, you know. I liked how the ripples would distort my reflection for a bit.

I never really gave a shit where they were washing ashore. The ripples, I mean. I never really cared if they carried a bit of my image or not.

It's funny to think about now. You know, realizing that your own reflection never defined you at all. It was always the ripples. They were what mattered. They ferried you across the pond, as it were. They impacted what you couldn't see. They had no choice.

Yea.