I Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

I know that you are afraid this isn’t politically correct, aren’t you?

I am afraid I have some terrible news for you: We are all sick and we are all allergic and we are all keeping secrets.

I am afraid that society is disintegrating. He’s religious? Cut him down.  Excuse me, tell him he isn’t open minded. He has morals? Tell him he is old fashioned. Welcome to the 21^st century , ladies and gentlemen! They say. Welcome to America where the lazy live long and the unrepentant are forgiven.  This is glorious, this is Oz. This is food rolled in plastic and pills rolled in plastic, this is debt hidden in our sleeves as if it a material thing to wrap.

I am afraid the earth is seriously ill. I am afraid we assume that the lightning can't catch us just because the police couldn't. It can.

 

 

But don't you fear now. I am afraid of being caught too. 

I am afraid of being forgotten for who I am, but remembered for who I was. 

I am afraid I don't feel enough because I didn't cry when I was supposed to. I was afraid you would catch that.

I am terribly afraid of potential. It used to give me hope because I couldn't even see the end of my promise, but oh how I am scared of heights these days. I was not prepared to fall that far. 

I fear that fears will always follow me... that maybe the things I love and the things I fear will always be drawn to me because they are a part of me. 

                 

I am afraid I have some terrible news for you: You are afraid, too.

I am afraid I have some wonderful news for you: There is less to fear than there is to love. 

The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing: try not to tread too lightly.

Compendium

We walked among shelves of organisms
petting all their spines and fingering the leaves.
I taught her how to smell them best. You have to find the place that hasn't been touched yet because only then is it fresh and also old.
Some of them gasped, some of them whispered.
We sat there curious at first, and especially at the end.
She doesn't know this yet, but that day changed us both.

A bookworm. I didn't think they were real.

Time Flies on the Wings of Lightning

And I am still a teenager. 

They tell us that that things will change, that we have to change them. But we don’t like change any more than the last generation and the earth is still just as resistant. 

I got suitcases and spoons for Christmas.

Some things never change, though. Enjoy the dress that is too short and some really good candy. It's like kindergarten.

For You, but not for you.

To the passionate, the flawed, the learned, the witty: This is for you. On my windowsill, with my chin cupped in my hand, I’m thinking about you. You think I am kidding because your hand is cupped too, but it is cupped around another cupped hand and mine is only cupped around my face, but I am not kidding.

 I am thinking about you like locks think about keys, like my fingers think about keys, and the way teachers think about keys which is similar to the way basketballs and singers think about keys.

Watches think about time more that clocks think about time, and I think about you like watches think about time. You are time and I am time, but we cannot both be time, because time waits- but waiting is what I do, and waiting is not what you do, but waiting is what lines do and I think about you like lines think about waiting and how lines think about points (maybe you are a point) and how lines think about depth. They wish they could have a little bit of it.

And that’s true, but so is this: Amelia didn’t make it out alive and neither did Balboa, and there is a reason you don’t know who he is. I think about you like compasses think about land, except they usually think about oceans even though they would rather think about land. I am looking for you. I am looking for you in the way that Cytosine looks for Guanine: they need each other, and they are perfectly compatible. They are perfectly compatible and that is why I am looking for you and that is why I am thinking about you. 

Something About the Celestials

It goes like this. I see the pictures of the galaxies and it feels like love. It feels like love because it’s beautiful, but I can’t have it. I can’t taste it like other people can when they lick up the sugar and get cosmic dust on their noses. I can’t see it or feel it or touch it or hold it close to me, but it is there. It can probably even see me, but it doesn’t turn around. To some it comes abundantly like hydrogen and stupidity. To the rest of us, we feel it in rare occurrences like the transit of Venus across the sun; if you aren’t outside and you aren’t looking, you are never going to find it. You are forgetting that it already sees you.

Love is the origin, but it was never original. It is fragile, and this, boys and girls, is why we ask you not to touch. 

Holst's Venus from "The Planet's Suite". Technically, The Bringer of Peace, but also the goddess of love.

The Ancestors Did That

I wish we still broke the bread and carved the ham. The ancestors did it better. They wrote letters to their loves across the sea and sealed them with kisses and ink. They saved their pennies for stamps and root beer floats. They all knew how to dance. They wrote in cursive, they wore gloves, they planted tomatoes. They bought bubble gum and read mysteries. They sat around a radio with stockings and skirts on and they laughed a lot more. I wonder if the ancestors knew how much we would forget. 

So You Want to Feel Empowered:

1. I don't care if you are religious. Even cockroaches should watch this.

2. If I was the crying type, this video would do it, too. Turn up your volume, and then press play.

You are welcome. Have a lovely day!

A thought: 

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

-J.K. Rowling

The Queen's Speech: not my usual brand.

You will never find a person with my eyelashes and I bet we all favor different shades of blue. You and I are not equally artistic, intelligent, or patient. We have felt life in different ways and you have learned things that I will never learn, but the most binding adjective that each of us shares is the nature of our existence.

We are human.  We are the Shakespeares, the Martin Luthers, the Platos, the George Washingtons, the Florence Nightingales. We are also the students, the parents, the homeless, this disabled. We are the learners and the doers, the mature and naive, the Nows and the Laters. All are good and all are bad.

We are human and we have power at our fingertips. Biology taught me that we are bipedal Homo-sapiens with a number of evolutionary advantages that let us thrive. But more than that, we have the advantage of spirit. 

Look at my hands. Look at your hands. We have these extensions with opposable thumbs that can wipe away tears and mold clay. Our hands will write articles that will change history or hold a hand that will change a life. They will pound the table for attention when it is most necessary to listen or they will plug the ears when it's time to stop. 

We have feet, too. They run and jump and dance. We will travel the world on our feet searching for the meaning of existence. Along the way, we will make the ground we walk on richer. 

Sometimes I wonder how my mind works; I only know that it does. We can memorize scores of information, think logically and illogically, and conquer the most difficult problems. We have the ability to remember lists of facts on the nation's history and of our own history.

We feel deeply for each other. I wonder if there are any other creatures who can feel the same sense of pain, loss, longing, fear, excitement, or joys that we do. We love so much that sometimes it hurts. We have pain so real and scars so deep that we start to feel broken. 

And then there is power. I am afraid of our destructive power. You saw her on the bridge and him in the bar and them in the plane. You heard the tears and knew it couldn't be fixed, but then... there is power. I am human, and you are human, because I can create and you can create. In the hands of the masterpiece painter and the breathtaking poet and the concert pianist and the child's song, the world is whole again. We are human again... but we never really stopped.