If there is one thing that I want to teach my sons it is that living life is an Art.
Archive for » June, 2009 «
23
June
Life really is a bed of roses: blooms and thorns. If we accept that we will sometimes bleed on the way to making our table look pretty, life suddenly doesn’t seem so dreary or menacing, and the inconvenience of a band-aid here and there is offset by how amazingly beautiful our table looks when entertaining the neighbors.
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21
June
I hope someday that someone will have loved me enough to say these words over my dead body.
I hope someday my life has been such that they are true.
On a poet’s lips I slept,
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt Thought’s wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom
Nor heed nor see what things they be,—
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of Immortality—Shelley, The Poet’s Dream
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09
June
Love doesn’t conquer everything it wants.
Love seduces that which it requires to breathe.
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05
June
Only when one actually is planting a garden
Does the talk about planting a garden cease
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04
June
A life of blood and broken lives is not colorful. I promise. It makes for great oo-ah stories, but that’s about it. People are amazed I’m alive today, but it’s still worthless in the big picture if I have not learned what life is and do not make something of it every day.
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04
June
Once upon a time there was a child who, despite loving to play chess both with pieces and people, grew up—as many children do—and became a monster—as many children do not. He lived a life on the edge, always experimenting with this lifestyle or that lifestyle, playing with that dragon or this unicorn, chasing this dream or that nightmare without thought for tomorrow’s consequences. Eventually, submerged in the Dark Ages, drowning in a pool of blood spilling from the veins ripped from his own arms, the monster realized that he had betrayed life itself and could not continue to exist devouring and destroying everything good around him. Hauling himself out of the muck, the monster stood in front of a mirror and began to tear apart everything about himself. Piece by piece he cut away the skin. He peeled away the muscles, dropped each one to the ground, and watched as everything inside him became fluid and undone to dribble out in a slime of memory. He disconnected every bone at the joint and tossed them on the pile of remains. And then, finally, looking at nothing more than his shadow in the mirror, he filled up his ephemeral lungs as much as he could and exhaled as hard as he could until the shadow itself blew away. From within the pile of muck on the floor, a new shadow stirred within it and began to reconstruct the body and the mind and inhabit that shell. It was a new man, a new creature, a new life. And, giving up the memories of a former life, it had a new name.
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03
June
"But Master," the young man protested while holding out two deformed stones, "these are merely rocks. How are these even relevant to our discussion?"
The old man shook his head and took the rocks. He opened the latch to the first of two small cylinders that stood quietly to one side of the long table on which was laid out an array of sparkling gems and rough cut stones.
"Child, do you not understand anything that I have taught you?"
His apprentice bristled at the rebuke but said nothing.
"Watch, child."
The Master placed both rocks into the cylinder.
"Do you know why we put sand into the tumbler?"
A long sigh escaped the lips of the other as he began to speak in a rote tone. "Because it provides the friction necessary to polish the stones and provide a simulation to the natural forces that usually affect the stones."
"No," came the response. "We use sand because it is earth working on earth, stone working on stone. It is the sum of the rock shaping the rock itself."
He stopped and looked over his glasses at the young man who was obviously hurt over the admonishment of his Master and not grasping the concepts he was being shown. The old man then took several handfuls of sand and placed them in the tumbler.
"Come. Turn the wheel and let me show you again what happens when we place two objects together, united by the sand and the ever-turning motion of their circumstance."
The apprentice began to turn the handle on the cylinder as the Master opened up the second tumbler and reached inside. He pulled out two brilliantly polished stones that sparkled in the lamplight.
"Beautiful, indeed. How much more akin to two human hearts could they be …"
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01
June
The Dark Ages reflected events that happened to me in the course of making bad decisions. But such a lifestyle was not part of my character. It was never my life as I had been raised, the values that I had been taught, or the choices that I made to ultimately succeed.
Category: 2009
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