Immortal Memory

The muse pulled this out of me today. It doesn't have a melody yet, but a Sarah McLachlanesque vibe was going on in my head.

When push came to shove you made your choice
How will you measure the cost?
You will be a memory
And I remain immortal

I gave you all of me
But it was never enough for you to see
I would have given you everything if you'd only said the word
That you chose something unworthy was absurd

And now you've made your choice
How will you measure the cost?
You will be a memory
And I remain immortal

It's everyone else that has to make choices you say
But you're a slave to your nature, it's just your way
All I asked was honesty, but it was all a pack of lies
Now you can carry the truth to bed with you when the evening dies

Yes, now you've made your choice
How will you measure the cost?
You will be a memory
And I remain immortal

And now you've made your choice
How will you measure the cost?
You will be a memory
And I remain immortal

Under the Moonlight

Writers write. That's what they tell me. Since meeting facebook I have had less to say here. I used to blog five things a day. It was like a gym for my brain. So, in the spirit of the diarist that I am, today I write, living in hope that I will write again tomorrow and let the words flow from me to you.

For months now I have struggled with something. I have alluded to it, I have skirted it and I have denied it. I have made bold proclamations and secret whispers and woven it into stories. Since I broke up with Jen and took my dating vacation, things became surreal to me. People keep coming into my life and things change dramatically for them. The deeper my investment and the more dramatic the change, the quicker they disappear.

These are the raw facts. This is real and this is to the bone: it's a lonely rollercoaster that makes me question my worth.

"Why was I so easy to cast aside?"
"Am I too much or too little?"
"Am I really just a bad man pretending to be a good one?"
"If I stopped caring, would anyone notice?"

My life, while amazing, has always been on someone else's conditions, never on my own. I choose to be with others, but on their terms, because... what? People that compromise for me aren't the kind of people that interest me? Because I love a challenge, even in friendship? I don't know the answer.

Before anyone starts shedding tears, I'm coming to terms with this. All of my life I have feared being alone, it's really my only fear. I embraced my loneliness and came to love it -- the solitude that it offers, whether I take advantage of it or not.

My friend Angela put it like this: "When the loneliness becomes a sort of companion on its own... you see how cowboys get their reputations."

My loneliness is my companion now, she never leaves me, when she does, and I may not want her to go.

I'm a happy man. I have my shit together. I'm confident and far too proud for my own good. That's why this puzzle baffles me. Is it a curse? A blessing? Did I ask for this? Is this a lesson I am suppose to learn?

I wanted to be like my Papaw, Roy, and impact lives. Now I am, at an alarming rate, and I don't know what to do with the consequences. There are no answers for why, when I've given everything I have, the recipients just casually walk away. Once I could understand, but I'm up to about 10 men and women in four months and that's not something I can mark up to coincidence, even if I believed in coincidence.

In any case, today is a beautiful and amazing day. I'm on fire and all is right with the world because I have my word, because all the words I've ever said mean something. Once given I can't take them back, so I keep my oaths.

Finally, someone reading this, someone who means the world to me, wrote this about me and it helped, because I may, indeed, have chosen this path. I may be a lone wolf after all.

"Lone wolf
Straight out of a comic book
You don't know how long it took
To get along, to stay strong
Under the Moonlight"

Burn with me

From the heart

Remember when you were a kid and your friend would have a birthday and you had spent your allowance on some bubblegum? What did your parents say? "Make them something from the heart."

This birthday, I have gotten a home-made pie (the first pie ever made by it's creator), a drawing made just for me, a poem, a beautiful hand sculpted dragon and a lot of kind and beautiful words.

Mom was right, the things that come from the heart matter the most. And it beats the hell out of anything on my Amazon wish list :)

It gets under your skin

Today I am 44 years old. I am neither old, nor young, but, instead, the perfect age for a man. I have accumulated wisdom and remain youthful enough to enjoy it. I know the words that will unlock a woman's heart, the means to turn tears to laughter, how to listen for heartache, and how to speak into silence without the stir of an echo.

I have begat children, loved women, fought men, and ridden great horses. These are the things of which a wonderful life is composed. My words have reached millions, I have written songs and sonnets. I have brought smiles and laughter. I would say it has been a complete life, but it has only just begun.

If the quality of a life is measured by those who love him and seek out his company (and surely it must be), then the value of this short season of my immortal existence is immeasurable. My friends are countless stars in my heaven.

Life, it gets under your skin, metaphorically speaking. You take one breath and have to have another.

All I dream is you

It doesn't have a melody yet, "You belong to me" was going through my head as I wrote it.

I've known you for a million years
Felt you in my heart
Wiped away your tears
Just remember, Angel
When I close my eyes
All I dream is you
Walk at night with you
Beneath the cloudless skies
Holding your hand
As the evening dies
When we lie together
And I close my eyes
All I dream is you

I just want my arms around you
To feel your breath on my skin

I weave stories
Beneath cloudless skies
Craft you poems
As the evening dies
When I lie at night
And I close my eyes
All I dream is you

I just want my arms around you
To feel your breath on my skin

I weave stories
Beneath cloudless skies
Craft you poems
As the evening dies
When I lie at night
And I close my eyes
All I dream is you

Hallelujah

Watchmen - Hallelujah




Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

“Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion” - Egyptian Proverb

Scorpions are arachnids, close relatives of ticks, mites and spiders.Some species may live for 20 to 25 years. Adult scorpions may have several broods of young. Following an elaborate mating process, which lasts from 24 to 36 hours. Upon birth, Scorpions leave their mother.

Scorpions are solitary hunters.

The parable of the Scorpion
A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly, he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river.
The fox said, "No. If I do that, you'll sting me, and I'll drown."
The scorpion assured him, "If I do that, we'll both drown."
The fox thought about it and finally agreed. So the scorpion climbed up on his back, and the fox began to swim. But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung him. As poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, "Why did you do that? Now you'll drown, too."
"I couldn't help it," said the scorpion. "It's my nature."

The Paradox of the Scorpion
A man was buried to his neck and left to die as a means of torture. The scorpion came to him and the man asked the scorpion how he would keep from going mad.
The scorpion said "Love your pain and cherish it and it will leave."
And then man said "If I love my pain, I won't want it to leave."
The Scorpion said "Now you understand pain."

This weekend I spent a lot of time talking about attachments and expectations. Expectations, I understand better, because they are grounded in the future. I have spent a lot of my life living in the future: I wish I was older. I wish I was 16 so I could drive a car. I wish I was 18 so high-school would be over. I've wished a lot of my birthdays away. Thursday I will be 44 years old, I don't wish away my birthdays anymore.

44 is a good age. According to Ernest Moody, I now know everything I will ever need to know. I don't always feel like that's true. Expectations have to live in the future, but I have to live in the present.

Attachments are a bit different. I bond with people. I call it the "Tin-Man Syndrome." In L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz," the Tin-Man had no heart. As a result, he did not know if he was good or evil, so he would always err on the side of kindness, as he did not want to do harm by accident. Consequently, he was the kindest character because of this.

I become invested in people, I bond with them, because if I don't, I am apathetic towards them. I've been accused of being apathetic toward people, toward their feeling. I don't know if that's true, but I can be cold.

Not having attachments is a concept I have trouble getting my head around. The way it is presented to me is that without attachments, when the inevitable parting comes, whether it be through death or by choice, the pain associated is survivable. I've survived loss all my life, does that mean that I've had no attachments? Is my freedom free floating? Can I have freedom from attachments and still be invested in them?

I was raised by a grandmother that used the word "love" very freely. As a result I am not afraid of that word. My grandmother didn't love baseball, or chocolate, she liked them. She loved people. She was very specific about that. She taught me that the first and last thing you should say to people is that you love them. The last words I said to her before she died was "I love you."

I don't regret saying "I love you" to her that day or anyone else I've said it to since. Even the ones that didn't know what to do with those words. Love means a lot of things. I love a lot of people. I've only "in love" a few times. Is that the definition of an attachment? Do I have to be "in love?" Do I want to live a life without attachments? It seems very lonely.

Someone who is very precious to me has given me a piece of wisdom that is now a part of my lexicon. I steal things from people. Eventually, I'm sure, I will claim this as my own as though it spawned from my forehead like Athena from Zeus. The wisdom is "Start as you mean to go." It's a very old-fashioned, quite British expression, that means acting and sounding as if it were already a success. You've already won, but you still have to play the game.

Do I know what the future looks like? No. Do I have expectations? No more-so than many people, less that most. I live only today, I don't really have a choice in the matter. This is the life I have, this is the life we all have. But I know what I'd like the future to look like. Sometimes the faces change, most of the time they don't.

I have, for the majority of my life, been in pursuit of a dream. When I tell people about it, I'm amazed at how many people don't think I'm crazy. All the ones who really matter tell me I'm not crazy, that I should follow that dream.

So, I start as I mean to go, with a plan, following a dream, into a future with no expectations, with no attachments, while trying to remain invested in people. If it sounds like like a juggling act, it is. If it sounds impossible, you need to understand that it's not. Because anything worth having is worth fighting for. Anything worth believing in, is worth dying for. I suppose that's what is all means, what it means to all of us. We live it. That's the secret to life.

Right now, the Princess, is nodding and smiling and thinking that I just wasted a lot of words on something simple. Just live.

Right now, the Actress is nodding and smiling and thinking that I'm right.

They're both right.

So are you.