Desert Scars

With eight inches of average annual rainfall, the wind wrought canyons of the Southwest are a bleak, craggy, vista. The elements have given way to an otherworldly ecology, haunting and foreign. 

Here, the distinctions between life and death are made thin and mortality is remembered as an immediate reality. Amidst some sort of stoic struggle, the petty doldrums of modern existence are muted, eclipsed by a greater perspective.

The weary parts of my soul are quieted. It is a welcome peace.

UT Route 50 at Sunset

Moving Mountains

There are only a few routes built through the rugged Northwest landscape of volcanoes that 2 million years of tectonic subduction has thrust skyward. What roads exist, tenuously do so, as snow, timber, and rock routinely render them impassible, as if the land itself felt affronted in some way and saw fit to retaliate.

And we fight back. Undeterred from our ambitions, we send resources, time, and materials into these places to push back against wildness; not to tame or destroy, but to assert some right of existence, that we might know the edge of the world and the edge of ourselves.

It is some sort of pilgrimage, perilous and sacred. Let's hope we all find our way.

WA Route 2 at Sunrise

Wordcraft

I find it a beautiful labor, tempering one's very being into language. Pitch, rhythm, timbre, and texture get worked into letters, syllables, words, and intonations. Forged in an open-heart furnace, sentences are affixed to one another in between beats. Paragraphs mired in meaning emerge over the fray of unconstructed communication with a life all their own. Conducting themselves with an earnest vigor down the page, the reader is left with little doubt as to the intent: honesty.

At least, that's what I aim for. I have a hard time of it, as one might imagine. Such self-exposure is so wrapped up in fear and vulnerability, the likes of which implore one away from honest writing at all costs. Through some imprudent purpose of will, I've found courage enough to endeavor and manifest myself as much as I am able. It's sure to be a spectacle; welcome to a front row seat.

I suspect all this is some little jigsaw piece answer to the puzzle of why I listen and with what motives I empathize. By encouraging people to give a voice to themselves and letting that voice be heard, I get to witness something inspiring, something beautiful: the enunciation of the self. There's all sorts of poetry about it, if one has an appetite for such things.

Mine, it would seem, is insatiable.

Failure Reigns

There is so much between us, so much we don’t know. Our feelings, thoughts, actions… all seem wildly foreign. Experiences change us.. for better or worse, self destruction is our reality. I’ve shared poetry before.. poetry about gaelic love that transcends space, time, and circumstance to find understanding, acceptance, and freedom.. poetry about angelic beauty so magnificent it terrifies us, utterly overwhelming our sense of being.. poetry about hope so defiant that it alone, when everything we are is taken, wills us to live.. poetry about how even the most eloquent, articulate words completely fail to capture, to communicate the magnitude, the grand awe that we are..

Yet all I can find are words. My futile words. I borrow them from books long since forgotten, steal them from strangers handily discarded, even invent them into existence, twisting the very language to my fancy. Yet, despite my beguiling, I can’t figure it. It won’t work. The gap I find between my soul and everything else, everyone else.. persists. It hurts. I always hurt.

So I accept my lot of suffering. I stand in view of an relentless life of failure, seeing the pain of every pitfall and mistake, realizing I have no other way. I resolve to suffer it well. I will attempt to lessen that infernal, infinite gap.

I’m not sure what it means.. I’ve purposed myself to something that can't be done. I have chosen a reality of nihilism and tried to build in it belief. I am undone by my own doing. Am I to share such a thing? Should anyone suffer my catastrophe?

I ask questions that don’t have answers. I pick and poke at others, cajoling them to suffer with me, to embrace my wanton world. It is some sort of crime. I am buried beneath my wrong-doings.

For all of this, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies.

I love you.

Autumn

Adolescent pupils surge campus, sun children mourn waning days, harvest bounties color mealtime plates, and I am re-inspired to write. The setting of summer warmth leaves less to hold the glow of hope. Trees begin their fiery crescendos of yellow and red in dramatic refutation to the coming darkness. This turning to cold months reminds me to rekindle my inner radiance. I keep the brightness sheltered in my soul. Like anthropomorphic lighthouses, purposeful others take up the task with care.

We are light bearers now, the brave few burning beyond the bleakness to outshine these somber circumstances. As if pursuing some avowed pilgrimage, we share our brilliance with everyone we find.

Maybe this luminous love will see us all through.

Zombies!

Look out!

What manner of fictitious nightmare are these abominations? To make the question a little less blood covered and brain hungry, let's assume the fictional nature of narratives creates a safer, more comfortable, more familiar environment. Like barring the doors to escape the horde, this fiction lets one take reprieve. Where one would otherwise be forced to face the lock-jawed living-dead with weapons at the ready, they can now interpret their surroundings with a little less conflict.

I find it ingenious. The full breadth of a situation is a great thing to bear. Death, disease, violence, poverty, justice, sex, hunger, emotion, or any other part of the human condition is profound enough to break through one's flimsy feel of the world and come shambling after them for a bite. They might put down a corpse or two with guns of denial or katanas of contradiction, thinning the blistering brood but, eventually, reality comes to confront them in some damnable broken staircase or collapsed corridor leaving no opportunity to evade it's ravenous teeth of realization.

Their blood rushes away as unadulterated terror wrings their spine. They brandish their ignorance with murderous desperation. These former flesh-fellows will not take their misunderstanding without a fight. The bullets and blades wound only the air as the indifferent undead trudge to their harrowing conclusion. Noshed, they are undone.

Now, they know.

Civics

Upon what does democracy depend?

What is the significance of a vote?

How can we make our world better?

These were the types of questions I explored with my local politicians amidst their rabble-rousing election campaigns. The juxtaposition was stark as they're in the middle of 'full-pander' operations. For them, ideology and rhetoric are difficult to abandon in favor of earnest conversation and pragmatism when it comes to policy and legislation. Apparently, it's not enough to reasonably address the issues of the day. There are requirements of division and vitriol.

I'm not sure which is the greater tragedy: the enduring politician, corrupted by this crucible of cruelty, or the public, faithfully following the rhetoric and propaganda.

All this modern civics seems a disheartening thing... but I will persist. If not for the sake of my community, then for the sake of my own sanity.

Hopefully, I can save both.

Teaching

Nurturing creativity is... particular.

Understanding creative impediments and facilitators well enough to repurpose people from the dark and dreary mind-scapes in which they've found themselves lost towards the awesome and fantastic vistas of perspective that instill contagious inspiration is no small bit of learning.

Harsh words are death knells. What frustrations leek out are reconstituted into anger and shame. Anger, like some ephemeral hell-flower, seeds contempt and unacceptance. Shame, rooted deeply in the ground of identity, is kept healthy by fear.

Creativity, innovation, and novel thinking are smote by such culling perspectives. To create something authentic, to fashion some part of oneself into being, is an act of courage. One makes whole their vulnerability with the world as witness.

It's that brutal honesty, through which I pursue love, as I don't figure unconditional acceptance can be realized before unconditional honesty. If I'm not truly myself, I truly don't know love.

The Way

The way is laid bear,

Ready with challenge.

Barriers overcome propelling us,

Grasping toward things

We'dn't dare dream.

Our hopes suffer asphyxiation.

They, fallen victim to fear, fight.

Verve, the mettle which endures them,

We find with reckless abandon.

Joy, a faint echo 'midst a suffered landscape,

We chase toward every precipice.

Hesitating, halted by inhibition,

There, we struggle with ourselves.

Courage, failing our intents,

Leaves emptiness we've not known.

Annihilation, utter and complete,

Compels fervent desperation,

Inspiring our valor.

And valorous we are.

We, youthful sinewy races,

Surging atop shoulders of giants,

Reach ever more magnanimous means.

Hands that offer help,

Arms that extend open,

Ideas that bound tenaciously,

We resolve, persist, and rise.

Photo Credit: Briana Orr

An Invitation

Sometimes I get tired,

Tired of my guilt built from regret,

Tired of my fear fed by doubt,

Tired of my loneliness levied with isolation,

Tired of not being here,

Right here, right now, this moment,

I'm tired of missing this,

This instant between my faults unpaid and my futures unmade,

This place where I can soar through skies across worlds I've never seen,

Roar with oceans that crash on meanings of my dreams,

And stand among mountains ageless in their being,

This point of special consecration,

This wondrous meaning and significance of revelation,

But... it is so hard

To muster my strength,

To cluster my courage,

To leave what's been behind me,

To let what will unfright me,

To grant myself grace,

To behold beauty,

To find serenity,

Yet sometimes I am;

I am forging armor made of freedom;

I am blazing trails through my potential;

I am voicing truth from silent words;

I am applauding passion with my tears;

I am loving without hesitation;

I am here.

Come join me.