It actually started long before Midnight.....

You never learned to love the way the world moves, only how the world wants to fall around you.

The lonely pirate that has cast himself away from the civilization that disallows his freedom continues to wander the edges of the Earth, dragging the anchors that keeps his ship in suspended motion.

When was the last time you saw the moon from the shore? When the blue stars rained down from the blackened ceiling, like glitter on New Year's Day, but you seemed to be oblivious of them landing on your shoulders, brushing your lips before they fell away into the waters of Lethe.  The waves gain momentum as they form around your naked limbs, but you can't feel the effervescent foams grasping for the spidery tendrils of your calves.  Your bury your feet in the encumbering sands of the problems you create for yourself, and curse the sea for eroding them to solitary grains that make for your illusive escape.

I watch you from a distance, from the safety of the lighthouse that only wants to guide your way back to the person you once were, hoping that my circling beam guides your broken, weary ship back to the arms that harbored your doubts and fears. I once swam with discarded dreams from the amnesic seas, where I once walked the plank at your behest when my post upon your ship was eliminated.

How quickly a vessel can fall into disrepair! My downsizing was supposed to make your crew stronger, and I was supposed to drown away like so many of those barnacles that attached themselves to the hull, feeding upon the scraps of other carcasses that could not feed upon you; instead, I learned to swim, in spite of my overwhelming fear of being submerged; conversely, I learned to find the power I needed beneath the surface, the darkness feeding the empty spaces where the seeds had not been nurtured.

No, my dear-- I have not been consumed by the sharks, I rode on their backs till I found land once again. I did not drown in my sorrows, they became my methods of irrigation when I returned to shore. I did not choke on the weeds that threatened to suffocate me, they became the ladder back to the abandoned lighthouse. There was no savior that came to rescue me from myself, instead, I learned to fend for myself, to never be a victim-- or a martyr-- ever again.

Where is your crew? What has become of your ship? Are you the lone sailor on the beach, the survivor of a mutiny that brought you down from your mastery into just another peon, searching for a genie's lamp in the sand? Are you still waiting for the wizard to bestow you with the riches you think you deserve, without having worked to keep the simplest prizes that had come your way? Are you waiting for the siren's call to give you the meaning of life?

Imagine the Possibilities...

My love has to live somewhere, whether it is in the realms of my fantastic mind, or in the reality of this world. There are times when my Love finds a place here on Earth, and I rejoice in its glory, bathe in its splendor, and wish beyond all hopes that it stays. Alas, because we are all too human and such perfections cannot last forever, my love will suffer when it is no longer reciprocated, retreating back to its sanctuary within the protected walls of my mind's fantasy. In this place, my love finds its solace in the images which I've locked into my psyche as eternally beautiful, ethereal and non-threatening. They are possibilities for everlasting love that can only be reality within fantasy. They can never retreat, punish, wound, or insult the spirit of my love; instead, my love regains its strength from these images. 

I wish that I could allow my love to live outside these walls, but there is no one guardian in whom I can wholly trust to protect, nurture, and appreciate it. If there was only the possibility of such a savior in this world where my love could fall into its devoted hands, then I could search forever for that paragon. I would need to find another soul like mine that understands this aching need within me to connect my love to that of another..

I truly believe, however, in this day and age of hopelessness and disconnection with the supernatural, the type of love that exists within me can never survive. This is a world that thrives on instant self-gratification and even-quicker disposal. My love is far too naive and too vulnerable to ever flourish. It is dually sought and abandoned for its intensity. It is claimed, but never kept. It is wanted, but then rejected. It is used, and then discarded. 

If this world weren't so filled with rage, anger and greed, imagine the possibilities for what could be... 

...You Could Stand To Be A Little More Honest.

We all lie.
 Let me repeat that: 
WE ALL LIE.

We do it because we say we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. It's really because we don't want to be responsible for the person's owning-up to the reality of their situation.  "No, of COURSE you don't look fat in those jeans" sounds a whole lot nicer than "Let me get some icing for that succulent muffin-top you've got there." You don't tell her that because we think that if we lie to Lady Muffin about her jelly roll, we are somehow sparing her feelings but, in reality, her feelings are going to be a whole lot more hurt when you're walking through the mall and a group of anorexic fetal teenagers starting pointing and giggling.  Lady Muffin will eventually come to question your loyalty to her because you let her out of the house without at least a mention that she may not look her best. Once you've introduced doubt (especially in a woman's mind), that bullet train will make its rounds through every corner of her mind;  and by the end of the day, you're no longer her friend... Why? Because, you tried to spare her feelings-- no, make that YOUR discomfort-- and you allowed her to be humiliated.

We lie sometimes to save our asses, not fully comprehending the consequences that could whip around to lash back at us and/or on others.  Do you remember the mugging you witnessed in a dark alley, or the constant banging and screaming you hear downstairs, or the drive-by that killed a boy in front of his mother? Of course you do! You studied every moment of that incident because for some odd reason, humans are inherently nosy.  But, what did you do when the police officer and the victim/s caught up with you and asked you to identify the suspects and describe what you saw? You feared the mugger, or the old army vet that lives in the apartment beneath you, or the gang members that live on the corner-- you're afraid they would come back to get you.  So you lie and say you saw and heard nothing, and nothing happens. Those offenders are let back on the street and they continue to terrorize the public, only now they come with a sense of invincibility that dares them to take their crimes to the next level. Do you feel any safer, thinking that nothing will happen to you because you said nothing; or, does it go around and around in your mind? The tiny seed of paranoia grows into a giant hedge that blocks you from living your life fearlessly, and leaves you always looking around the next corner for those people that KNEW you were there and witnessed everything. Now you'll go through your life feeling like a loose end that eventually WILL get tied. The other possibility (barring total paranoia) is that you turn on the news and see the mugger was released only to rape his next victim. You come home to ambulances outside your building and find that the kids who used to help you bring up your groceries don't have parents anymore-- the army vet went ape-shit and killed his wife and himself. Those gang members shot up another house and killed a child while he slept in his crib... Why? Because you didn't want to be involved in something that would put you in a difficult position of having to testify in a court, or put you in a vulnerable state. For some, the truth isn't worth sparing another's life.

These are only a few examples of the consequences of lying, and they're not even malicious lies-- the outcomes of that sort are usually inflicted soon after the lies are conceived and spread. The one who gets the worst consequence is the one who told the worst lie. We've seen those instances in movies like Gossip (2000) where the lie is horrible, evil and only seeks to destroy those about whom the lie was told but, in the end, the one who created the shit-storm was the one who paid the most for his action. We watch the news and the smear campaigns, the tabloids and the entertainment news, where he who has the most dirt gets the most views, and most never stop to consider whether their appetite for the dirt sheets are what perpetuate the never-ending torture of those in the spotlight. We all encounter those types of liars, from the public sphere down to the gossip around the water cooler, but those types are fairly obvious and, ideally, we have the foresight to steer clear of gossip-mongers and their malice.

 This is more about the "gray area" of lying, the kind that we think hurts no one, or the kind that we think spares an uglier scene.  The reality is, it's uglier to lie. Our integrity has so little value these days, which is a shame because it really is a beautiful thing to behold when you meet someone who is truly honest.  You meet a person that is straight up with you, no matter how it makes them look, no matter if feelings might get a little ruffled, or if their honesty may risk them the people they love.  A true honest person has no fear of losing those they love, because they know that true love transcends any wisp of a bruised ego or a difficult situation.  Truly honest people know that when you lie, you don't change the situation or the person-- a lie is only a way of denying the truth to yourself.

I've decided to stop lying to myself. It was easy to create this perfect little world where I saw people as the people I wanted them to be, and it was such a far cry from the truth.  Things that I felt were guaranteed slipped away, and things I had no faith in petrified themselves into permanent existence.  There were truths I'd done so much to deny, truths that I tried too hard to not give much thought,  truths that built up beyond my wildest dreams into huge stacks of reality that came tumbling down around my shoulders. There are emotions, which I thought would never change, that burst into flames and whose ashes fallen into an abyss of forgotten life stories. At the heart of all these changes is a little word that loves to be thrown around but is never fully comprehended, appreciated, or honored...

Honesty.

I Knew That It Wasn't Easy... I Just Thought It Would Be Worth It.

I’m coming around to a year since we last spoke. I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t want to hear your voice. I don’t want to know that you’re still as much of an idiot as you were then.  I don’t miss you—I miss the person I thought was you. I look at your picture and have to remind myself that the person I thought you were was an act to get you in where you could fit in.  There’s a reason you have so many masks—you refuse to commit to the face that lies beneath.  You are a kaleidoscope of personalities that changes as your user commands. You think you have control? HA—you can’t have it when you care so much about what others think. You’ll land yourself in jail, have bricks flying through your windows, lose your cars, your freedom and your mind—all because you wanted to keep up with everyone else’s stupidity. But hey, you are who you hang with.

I hate when I start looking for any indication that the “you” I knew has emerged and that you miss me, because I know the real you forgot about me already.  If I had meant anything to you, you never would have let me walk away. You let me walk away so many times, you humiliated me from far away, in front of everyone, and I followed you like a stupid, blind little puppy. You never stopped me from making a fool of myself, because you liked the idea of someone being so stupidly in love with you that I lost all regard for my dignity.  You let your stupid friends make fun of me, shun me and make me look like a psycho.  You wanted perfection and unconditional devotion, but I am far from anything that is perfect, and I am a breathing human who wanted reciprocation. You just knew that you loved pure, unfailing devotion—without having to submit to any of your own. 

You’d kill yourself for just a small scrap of the person I am now, but you’ll never see it.  You’ll go through a thousand girls whose hearts you will also shatter, and you will experience twice the breaks in a cosmic retribution derived from the crone Karma, while her maiden-self will show me her beautiful forgiveness and offer me redemption.  Go around the world and wait for your imagination to create a perfect image of humble submission with a perfect figure—nothing you could ever conjure in your twisted mind will ever compare to the Native Goddess that stood before you in jeans and multicolored Chucks.

Do not speak of love if you did not do all you could to protect the love you had.  Do not speak of love’s rejection if you did not heed its call because it did not present itself in the way you wanted it.  I loved you, but I was not the manifestation of your selfish desires. Your love is a toxic mill that ground me up and burned the mash, until there was nothing left of that person I used to be. I have risen from the ashes of that lost love, and returned a better, stronger person—one that you have no right to ever have a chance at again.

Yes, you fucked love—you beat it, raped it and left it for dead, and blamed it for your sorrow.  You imbibed in love’s tears and blamed them for your drunken thirst.  You gorged on love’s bounty and cursed it for your state of emotional bulimia. Do not blame love for your empty cup—blame yourself for throwing the glass—and when you’ve burned, suffocated, and starved for the very thing you hold within yourself and refuse to give… I hope you forgive yourself, pick up the pieces and find something better than you could ever give yourself the chance to find.

That, my dear, is love—in spite of my anger and sadness for what you have done, I still wish you a path out of your misery and into the paradise that you’ve denied yourself. If I never see you again (which, in fact, is the plan), may you find peace in your soul and love in your heart. 

...Anger Becomes Its Own Person.

Everyone gets angry. It's a natural response when a threat comes into your world. You fear it could destroy you, so you either run, or you stay and fight it off and destroy that which makes you fearful. Some people can calm themselves after an angry situation, and they either deal with it or they stuff it down to the cores of their soul and file it away to be forgotten forever. Others fly off the handle and blow up, and when the red-eye has faded, all they see is the destruction they've caused.  Anger problems occur when the fear never subsides, and it still breathes life into their hearts.  

I have an anger problem. It's not one that causes me to be explosive, as I keep a tight lid on my emotions. My anger is much more below the radar. I've allowed it to eat me up from the inside at times, and it was the factor that caused a lot of relationship casualties. I wish I could say I've gotten over it. All those anger management classes say you can get over it, and all it takes is letting go of that which causes you to be angry. Anyone who knows the real fiend-- Anger, the demonic brute-- knows that is all bullshit.

People with real anger know that Anger is born long before you learn the powers of self-recognition. It's a tiny troll that has been leaked into your mind and takes up residence before you even realize that such a being could exist. Anger finds its nest in the part of your mind where you used to hold the iridescent snapshots of beautiful childhood memories, from a time before the reality of unruly, heartless chaos tore down the walls of your innocence. Anger replaces your puerile fantasies with a moving picture-show, starring Fear, Anguish, Loneliness and Helplessness, then hits playback and repeat. Anger makes your food taste different, because it eats up the pleasure of the flavor to feed its own selfish hunger. One eats, but is never satisfied. Anger grows steadily, until you realize it has become something bigger than yourself. Anger is the monster under your bed, the ghost in your closet, the ghoul in every shadow, the face of your every nightmare.

You grow a bit older, and you find that you can never be truly alone because Anger follows you everywhere. It senses the hate in every heart, and tells you that the hate exists because you exist. Anger tells you that you are the problem, and no one will be content until you know this is true. Anger has grown strong enough to wrangle every part of your being into wretched, pitiful submission, and bleeds itself into the open spaces it cleared. Anger begins to spill from your every pore, it weaves itself into every strand of hair and calcifies every nail, and pours its venom into your bloodstream. Anger is the alien parasite that invades your every cell, poisons your mind, and takes its place as the reigning tyrant of your soul.

The years pass, and you find that Anger has turned you into a shell, eating away everything you knew about yourself. Anger has nothing left to feed on, so it begins its search for fresh meat, eating away at the people around you; and you, the miserable, woeful slave, will do nothing to stop it from consuming the ones you love. You are chained to the illusions of guilt and shame that Anger created to keep you in a place where Anger will always be able to dictate, lead and conquer. Your self-imposed crimes keep you weak in Anger's presence, while you watch as those you love the most distance themselves from you. Anger convinces you that it is because of the filthiness of your existence that they all run away. Anger brainwashes you into believing that no one could ever love you, while making sure that the love in your heart is eradicated.

Anger whispers into your ear:

"They don't love you, you're just their slave,
To serve their needs when it's blood they crave,

No one could love a dirty whore,
That's why they run and shut the door.

You have no beauty-- you are a sin,
and everyone knows it, deep within.

You have no talent, you are a waste,
Looking at you leaves a bitter taste.

You know why you're so easy to toss?
You have no value that counts as a loss.

The only one who can tolerate you is me,
Without my presence you'll never be free,

You could not breathe if not from my word,
I am all that protects you from the herd,


You're just a leftover of one's mistake,
So just give up, for everyone's sake..."

How do you break free from this devil? When you've become exhausted from drudging along while carrying anchors on your back, waiting for death to come but never revealing itself, when Anger has consumed every last article and fiber, what saves you?



Find your power within. Your soul is its own source of energy, the capacity to bring light to break down the columns that Anger has built confine you. That power is fueled by Love, the menacing angel that Anger itself fears. No matter how many people you have or don't have in your life, you still have Love, and that comes from the Love you have for yourself. Anger works to keep you believing that you could not exist without it. But remember- Anger fed itself off of everything good about you, therefore, Anger cannot exist without you. Love in your soul is more powerful than any element on this Earth, and it has the power to destroy all that is destructive without ever having to subject itself to the tactics that Anger imposed upon you.

Build up your Love: Embrace all those around you, those you love and those you don't. Lift yourself by lifting the hearts of those who need the parachute. Save the lives of those whom Anger has shackled to the pillars of Shame and Disgrace. Bathe them with the warm waters of true Love, and when they feel themselves clean, they will find the strength to break their own chains. When you see all these poor souls wake up from the dream-like state built upon the lies of Anger, they will destroy their own demons and make their way back to themselves.

While it is true that you won't save everyone, what matters is the lives you did save, and that those lives go on to find those talents of which they'd thought they lost forever, and they use them to better the world-- that is the greatest expression of Love one can bestow.



I have an anger problem. But the problem isn't Me.

...Everyone loves a Good Puzzle.

Beginnings are great. There's so much to be discovered, and it's so much fun to get caught up in the rush of putting together the puzzles of the people we encounter.

Some of them are only 25-piece puzzles, with simple pictures. The picture on the box is appealing and colorful , even opening the box is filled with giddy anticipation.  Once the lid is off and you begin putting the pieces together, you find that it's just too easy.  The flashy colors are still vibrant and the pretty picture is all intact, but there are only 25 pieces.  There's no complexity, no challenge to bring that picture together. You can break it down and put it back together in an instant. I've met people that are like this. So beautiful and vibrant, but as hollow as a raccoon's knot in a tree.  Getting to know them is already over, just when you thought it had only barely begun. Once you get bored of putting the same puzzle together repeatedly, you pack it up in the box, hand it to the fairy in the closet to hold for you, and you move on to bigger puzzles.


After going through a few puzzles, you find the next challenge-- the 250-piece portrait, the one you have visions of framing once you're done with it. Maybe you're not so much in love with the picture, but it's still a challenge nonetheless. The box is ripped open, you pour all the pieces out at once,  but halfway through the process, you find that you don't like the picture too much.  Maybe you get bored of the landscape, because all the pieces look exactly the same, like that field with all the purple flowers and grass. There's nothing particularly appealing about it except that there are so many pieces-- but then again, are there really? 250 is not a whole lot, and it doesn't seem worth putting together when it's all gonna look the same at the end. I've met people like this, too.  They never seem to get beyond the flowers, the scenery is all the same, and there's no vibrancy.  It most certainly isn't a fault; I mean, there are a lot of people out there that like that element of sameness and consistency; it's just not my cup of tea. Sadly, you lose interest and put it back in the box before you ever finish it.  You hand the box to that little fairy in the closet to hold for you, and slowly shut the door.  So you move on, in search of more puzzles.


The next major puzzle that follows is a 750-piece that you found at a second hand store. You make sure that you really like the picture, because these puzzles are almost guaranteed to have pieces missing.  You peek in the box before buying it to make sure that there aren't too many pieces missing but, you never really stop to count how many there were because-- well-- the picture was beautiful and one-of-a-kind, and you'd probably never score this one again.  Once you begin putting it together, you love it and admire it right at the start, still reeling off the luck you had in finding it.  As you go along, you start to figure out which pieces are missing, and you do your best to ignore the fact that you skipped over that part of the picture to start on another part.  You even think about buying extra cardboard and making the pieces yourself. You might have the box to rely on when copying that missing piece, and you can have the steadiest hand and the sharpest tools, but a part of you knows those pieces are not original, and you can't help but notice the imperfections of their artifice. We meet people all the time that are great, but you know that they're missing a few pieces.  We can care for those people and try to help them fill in those gaps. Ultimately, we know that we don't have the power to fill in the pieces that the person him/herself cannot fill.  Any effort on our part to cut and paste is only for show, and we know it.  That puzzle will never be finished, it will never be complete; and as much as it hurts, you have to leave that puzzle behind-- so off it goes into the hands of the next fairy in the closet, and the search continues.


In the meantime, your closet seems to get a little crowded with all the puzzles you've abandoned, but you just can't seem to let go of them. They all have special meanings-- where you were when you found them, who might have given them to you, how easy/hard they were to find, etc.  Yet none of these find their way into the frame you created with the dreams of your expectations, and none seem to blend well with the glass you chose to hold them against-- they all seem to have blurred when you held them up to the light, or faded with the passing of time.  What then? Do you continue looking for the perfect puzzle, or are you content with having the collections held by the skeletons of the hopeful fairies in your closet?


I still hold out hope that the puzzle I left out on my table will find its completion.  I've held on to many puzzles over the years, and I crudded up my closet with many loose pieces and broken sets, and all the completed ones that didn't hold their luster. I've thrown away all my old puzzles, because none will ever be THIS puzzle; this beautiful, eclectic image of which I only have fragments and landscapes.  I've left this puzzle on my table, slowly building together the image as I find the pieces.  This puzzle is the most challenging by far, because I don't know how many pieces it has, whether I will find them all, or if the image will last. I don't know any of these things, but my faith in the strength of my love for this image keeps me searching.  In my haste, I've taken the incomplete puzzle and I've held it within my frame, and I've altered and colored in my frame to match that of the image. No parts of it have blurred or faded, even when I've held it in the most blazing sunlight.  Nothing is more exciting or thrilling than finding the pieces as they come.  Every piece that's gained is a step closer to my happiness.


One day, I will find all the remaining pieces, and I will finally have completed that puzzle-- and when I do, I will never stop appreciating the beauty and the light that image brings to me. That puzzle never see the darkness of the closet, and every fairy will be revived by the magical love that image will exude.  


Love and Happiness to all, and I hope you find your perfect puzzle. :D