Looking Back

I’ve been reading back at the original entries of this blog with awe and amazement. I know that people change in life and that change is difficult to recognize, but it’s amazing to read it from my own experience. I am in no way trying to immortalize my life with grandeur or inflated ego; rather I am just taken a back at the speed and dynamic quality of life. I started this blog four years ago while I was working through the most difficult questions of my life and since then I have been able to see those wounds slowly close. This closure is because of the people who surrounded me with love even though I never really knew how great that love was and is. I hope that I am that to those around me.

Shadow of Light

Good morrow dusty blog, it has been a hundred fortnights since my pen hath glossed thine images.
Tonight is not about fickle aspects of life, nor about the daily joys and sorrows that plague an individuals mind. Instead, the topic is as timeless and as constant as Big Ben himself. Ticking away through human question and invention, our topic will acquaint itself with all the heirs and heiresses of Adam and Eve. Good and Evil are our suitors for a stay and in each their own garments they tempt us to sway our opinions and actions to one end of the pendulum. From the rise of Helios till the set of Selene, our every daily lives are wrought and forged with the choices of a lifetime. We sometimes use words to demean the importance of the present second, ‘too long a days work has made me tired, so tell me when is my respite so that I may be done with it’ and this is one of an infinite blind, bold statements which has issued forth from mine own lips. From the same mouth I have been choked with the effort of relaying the beauty of a single moment or friendship.
It is a rarity to understand that as the grain of sands fall, we all place stone after stone to construct the pathway of our lives. This labor might seem effortless if one did not understand the cost and reward behind the action. We sacrifice the effort of breath so that we may have another instant of life; we expend attentiveness to keep beating our hearts in order to squeeze out one more drop of life’s nectar. This process of existence can be sadly ignored if one chooses. Life can become a labor from which the effort is paid in a drowned memory. Life can be a pain that is too great to even speak of let alone bear for an instant. Life can also be the million joys shared in a day, and yet these attributes are what make life’s seed flourish like the most exquisite flower that dies moments after its conception. The miracle of this world is the absolute stubbornness of life. The enigma of life is choosing how to live it, how to perceive it, and to interact with it. We choose sides in this life and we choose who we are. We never choose who we will be in the future, for only the choices that are made in the fleeting moment are recorded in history to be judged. It is only what we do in actuality that provides any resolute weight on our lives. We can choose a myriad of directions for our life to take, and these decisions are weighed with words of Good, Evil, or Benign. We choose to be any or all of these three moods of life and at the end we all will find our choices absolute. This is the oddity of life that I find remarkable. No matter the choice or reason a life is lived, be it for evil or good, it still ends. The moral satisfaction and the internal sanctity match the temperament of our actions and reward them. In parting, I believe it must be said that the good and evil, that seem so separate, do balance each other. I whish you luck in finding a balanced pathway in life for I find it very difficult, but rather enjoyable!
I do believe that is enough for a night!

Change

Soon I will be going back to Colorado to visit my family that lives out there. I’ll only be heading out there for a weekend, but it should be a lot of fun. As the day that I leave approaches I’ve found it interesting on how small amounts of fear can creep into my life regarding the trip. It’s not a desperate fear or something that overwhelms me, but rather a small and slow fear. I am afraid that I’ve change and that my family has changed and that some of the connection points are lost. It’s odd to be afraid of this because I know that I’ve changed and that my family has changed, I want control over the change and I don’t have it. I want a static control over a dynamic relationship, doesn’t really work.

Blinders are off

Recently I have been slowly coming out of my self created hiding spot that has shielded me from spirituality. This hiding spot was originally created to protect myself from a fear and guilt based version of Christianity. It is a scary and slightly painful experience opening my perspective. I at once have been overwhelmed by a myriad of questions that seem unanswerable or at least questions that will require time and dedication to resolve. Even with my Christian background I feel much uninformed of what the bible actually teaches. I know some of the parables and some of the stories but as I grew up in the church I felt that those examples did not apply to my life at all, that some how I was above the teaching. It’s a humbling and a somewhat hard to acknowledging that the majority of understanding that I have about the bible is based off of a rather dysfunctional form of Christianity. I don’t think that I can trust my previous knowledge of the bible and will have to start over in a sense. I am scared to study the bible with a different perspective because then I might actually choose to believe in some or most of what it teaches. I would so much love to remain ignorant to my aversion to spirituality but I choose not to be!

Dreams

I.

I have a story to tell
It’s not so long, it’s not so stale
The story is about happiness, sadness, everything between
It’s about the past, the present, and the memories

To start it off I’ll tell you who I am
I’m a decent guy and hopefully a good friend
I have experience overwhelming in some places
And in others I find myself lost and lacking

I grew up a somewhat abnormal life
With a little extra guilt and a side of strife
My parents loved my siblings and I
But on many occasions they forgot us

As for a family right now
We are broken up and spread out
Some of the bonds where forged stronger that steel
And with other relationships….forced to kill

Three remain strong and somewhat renewed
Number for, my brother in-law I also must include
As for my mother, father and my other sister
They are distant…as distant as a splinter!

That should be enough background for now
I’ll try to fill in the gaps you may be wondering about
Now lets get back to the story present
And I will tell you what I truly resent.

II.

It all starts out in a midnight scene
I’m walking alone on a dark path,
It might as well have been a dream
Again I was thinking about the past

From time to time I get lost in my thoughts
they can overwhelm me in the present
It’s like seeing a compost pile rot
Remembering the actions that I resent

I know it sounds a little disheartening
But that is not the point of this tale
This information is but a warning
If you do not wish to walk in a present hell

When I’ve been lost in the painful past
I cannot be present for my life at hand
When I think about it time goes so fast
But once lived it is finished, a painting on a stand

To and fro I have walked down that wandering road
Not realizing my feet, but remembering things all the way
It’s almost like an addiction to my mind and what I know
Needing and hating my thoughts in a strange sort of way

III.


During one of these episodes of mine
I was walking along and ended up in a line
I know now that I was in a coffee shop of sorts
But before I noticed it seemed so vague

I do remember everything after that moment
It’s been burned into my thoughts forever
I was relieved in the present from my torment
Detached from my usual routine, this seemed better

I felt comforted when I was near her
And yet I felt so selfish to accept this gift
In me a million emotions seemed to stir
It twisted my mind in ways beyond belief

At first I was unable to say anything at all
But as the days passed she began to notice
I wanted to ask her but I felt so immeasurably small
If she could see through me, I had to know this

Looking back I can see that it didn’t really matter
I was just trying to hold up a false image for impressions
In the end it just seems to wind up as extra clutter
I would compare it to believing in a flawed religion



I continued to go to her coffee shop
But would only allow myself once a week
I can remember being so terrified at first
At times I forgot I even had feet.




V.

As time passed we became friends and went on walks together
I would quietly listen and she would just talk and talk
It did not bother me at all because it kept my memories away
And it truth I was still a little scared and didn’t know what to say

Our relationship grew from like to love, something made to last
I was finally able to paint my life without my haunted past
She told me her stories and I told her all of mine
I thought it would hurt but it turned out just fine

The past was the past, finally where it should be
And I was living in the present and I was truly happy
It was something beyond beauty and I wish that you could see
As the smallest moments turn into treasured memories

Now as you can see from the story above
It seemed that my life was following a set path
It was something powered with an endless love
But I was a captive once again to my minds wrath

With sincere sadness I must tell you that this tale does not last
Do you remember when I told you about I can get lost in my past
There is an antonym in my mind and this will drive me insane
It seems that I can get lost in other dreams too, but they are the opposite of pain

By Jeffrey Cook

Thoughts

At a crossroads in my mind,
Looking for something fresh to find
Maybe a tale or poem new
That elder wisdom or tasty brew

Learning to teach, a noble path
Defy reason for fulfillment and delight
One life to have, no wrong path to choose
Leave missing the notes in these measures

Ambient stars are out tonight
With hideous gargoyles, those haunted protectors
Masks pulled off, humanities exposure
Maybe Snow White was fulfilled in her slumber

Rain reminds day to day
Each drop alone can cleanse the body
But all the rain of a passing storm
Can cleanse the “me” from the body

War, countries, Leaders, more kisses from Judas
Maybe a cross can blind a countries morality
If for a minute tears where listened to
Our hearts would reveal that love embraces death and fear.

By Jeffrey Cook

A Path of Healing, A Dream Broken

I was helping them, they where in need and in pain
I was their help and their only hope, I was their savior
I took their gratitude for my personal pleasure
I was not altruistic in my motives, but selfish

My individuality was made more important than theirs
My ability to stand took away my compassion
My ability to heal their wounds stole their humanity
In my eyes their was only myself in the room with bodies

My selfish dream was stripped from me without mercy
Without bodies to heal and without pain to take away
I was left without definition and without any motivation
I was left without anyone to need me and I was alone

A New Way of Thinking

So think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire upon the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is.

So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say. And so, in truth, it does.

So do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads. And so, in truth, it does.

(Mikhail Naimy)