God only knows what I'd be without you...

There is just one thing I need...

If you should ever leave me,

well life would still go on believe me,

the world could show nothing to me,

so what good would living do me?

I may not always love you,

but long as there are stars above you,

you never need to doubt it,

I'll make you so sure about it.

Before I knew it...

There are days when I mourn the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when I cannot sleep, moments when I lie awake and dream of dying or how my life would change if someone close to me would leave this world. How things would be different if I wasn't here or if you weren't. But then I wake, and see the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or I hear the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remember there is such beauty in the world. And I don't want us to miss it - any of it. 

Sharp like barbed wire...

Being forgotten, he thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? What he needs are stories, because they are a way to preserve one's self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Stories, he has found, are a way to live a thousand lives - or to find strength in a very long one.

Do you know how to live three hundred years? The same way you live one. A second at a time. And that is how you walk to the end of the world. That is how you live forever. Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it's gone. And there in the dark, you will ask yourself if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the year of pain? A life worth having is a life worth taking. Always. 

Home free...

Sparks in the air...

I confess, I have setbacks like anyone. But they don't cause distress or coalesce in a mess, for I've learned to take a breath, to reflect and assess where I'm at and enact a simple plan of attack - to press forward, progress; not digress, not give up nor express my despair but address what I can, my mistakes and my faults. For I'm blessed with my faith and belief and a chest that encases a heart that does not know the meaning of "quit". Me and myself, my reflection and I, we are not of that ilk. We strive to resist and we fight to excel, so setbacks to us are a thing to be quashed, to be quelled, to be squished, to be left in our wake as we go on our way, as we sail right on by to impossible ends. This is why, as my reflection attests, there is no time to rest. The struggle is unending ... but I will give it my best.

Not perfect, but perfect for you...

I think it's twisted but I want some more...

I know you dance the mashed potato fine,

but that don't show me that you're really mine.

Once we start dancing,

we're now romancing.

So put that sucker on extra on the line,

give me gravy,

come and treat me right.

My performance review...

Here's the deal: I'll be what I am in the present. I will leave the past behind; I won't carry blame. I am going to eliminate all anxiety about the future. Prepare to work for my evolution until the last instant of my life. I won't let anyone be my judge; I'll be my own. I'll learn how to fail even better and never speak about myself without allowing myself the possibility to change. I will find ways to accept that nothing is mine and I will become the owner of all. I'll become a total offering. I'll give, but oblige no one to receive. I won't make people feel guilty anymore and I'll be an accomplice to whatever happens. I'll stop asking for things and start thanking. I'll obtain in order to give away.

You're losing me...

He moves from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what he needs. Slipping and sliding and flickering through the dreams; and the dreamer will wake, and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can truly be.

Behind closed eyes, I’m floating against a velvet sky, lungs filled with night air. On some level, I know I'm still in the middle of a fire-warmed chamber, yet my wings pantomime flight on a cool breeze. I'm dancing with her in the heavens, no longer imprisoned by gravity. Fluttering our wings in unison, we twist and whirl a weightless waltz among stars that coil and uncoil in feathery sparks high above in a warped and wonderful landscapes. Each time we spin, then return to each other's arms, I laugh, because at last I'm me.

I could really use you now...

Karr reaches out to catch a teardrop on his fingertip. He holds it up in the pale glow that radiates from the few remaining sprites above. A curious frown curves his lips. They cry for him yet bled for him. One must wonder which is more powerful. More binding. I suppose we shall one day know. And Karr isn't even his true name. He is glory and deprecation - sunlight and shadows - the scuttle of a scorpion and the melody of a nightingale. The breath of the sea and the cannonade of a storm. Can you relay birdsong, or the sound of wind, or the scurry of a creature across the sand? For the proper names of the chosen are made up of the life forces defining them. Can you speak these things with your tongue?

If only you knew...

The bitter taste of his fury...

But I'm in the trees, 

I'm in the breeze,

My footsteps on the ground.

You'll see my face in every place,

through wading grass, the months will pass.

You'll feel it all around,

I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere,

but you can't catch me now.

Can't catch me now...

To rock the night away...

These are things I can't change. Not one of them. Can't fix, can't heal, can't put the broken pieces back together. But what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for. Not the battle lines, keeping people in and out. Not the "pro" and "anti" stances, but the presence, the listening, the praying with and for the days when it all falls apart, when life shatters in our hands. I am here. For you. Whenever you'll need.

With the wilt of a rose...

His blood flow, the life-force, the electricity, they're all in there. But what is he going to do with them? This is the only life he's got, so it’s time to move beyond his conditioning. It's time to move beyond his fear or whatever else is holding him back from living fully because that's the way nature meant him to be. His fears are a consequence of a conditioned mind, and they are nothing but a burden. One he must let go.

Here's the thing; when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. And I hate that. There's literally nothing there, waiting to be stumbled upon. It gives false hope, and a sense that life is something that happens, not something that is carefully made. We have to create our own love, our own meaning, generate our own motivation. Then hopefully that leads us somewhere we truly want to be. Towards something we are really happy to have. To someone we'd never want to let go.