Category Archives: Meditations

Dealing with shit and trying to figure “it” out.

DobbsHeadMed #1

Pale Blue Dot from Cassini image: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=52392, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4400327

Image: Pale Blue Dot from the Cassini Spacecraft, found on Wikipedia “Pale Blue Dot”

I thought about the centuries of collapse and rebuilding and maneuvering left in the power vacuum that was the Roman Empire. All these little peoples clamoring to control little plots of land slowly turning into nations wielding the power of the future evolved in the wake of cultural collapse. Little ripples on the surface of human civilization and our time on this world.

Each existence interacting with a timeline not of their own but belonging to the deepest moments of the universe itself. We clamor to adjust to every tectonic movement, world spinning gravity and ultraviolet waves adapted to over the course of billions of years of failed experiments that successfully selected long enough to exist for various lengths of time. Eventually remembering, dreaming, and inventing each little lifeform existing with their own unique ways to survive on a planet. A planet which dances around a star which flows around, with its hundreds of millions of glittering siblings, around a super massive black hole.

Here we are dude, breathing some more.

Focus on your breath. Be part of it all once again.

If I cared to pray.

I feel as lost as always but these days I wonder with a whole lot more gumption. This little life is as meaninglessly meaningful as you allow yourself to be. We all make an impact (with intention or unintentionally) and by the end of the day we must all live only with ourselves and how we’ve coerced our values and the words we’ve said into the deeds we’ve actually done.

 

When I do whisper into the infinite, “Let me be true to this existence. Please let me find lessons in struggle. Help me rise to be better than I was when I awoke. Help me become one who can challenge positively. Please allow my mind to seek lessons that open it in ways I couldn’t’ve obviously perceived. Please help me be able to protect that which I love and those that I feel attached. Let me forgive and give thanks to those who came before.”

 

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Flags

All flags carry with them the shame and pride, glory and depravity carried by those individuals who marched under the flag’s shadows.
Let us not have flags represent who we are but let our deeds speak for themselves.
There is no nation, nor kingdom, nor belief or religion that’s not gilded in gold by the good they accomplished and covered in the blood of its past. All we create are human institutions and that in itself defines them as flawed.

It

Breathing Earth

Sometimes I feel like I get it, some lyrical ‘it’ that few but the dying understand. It whispers at the periphery, it calls to me and makes me feel uneasy sometimes. Othertimes it makes me feel at home, I guess it just depends on which day’s perspective of it we’re talking about.

Right now sitting where I do I remember when I first got it. At first it hurt, over the years it broke me in but eventually it just felt like a well placed callus that you eventually come to appreciate. Sure it’s rough and sometimes it hurts but most of the time, if I notice it at all, it pads me and reminds me of the journey and the places I’ve seen and people cherished.

It’s inevitable you know. I see people flee from it and try to pretend it’s not there but it’s ever present and it could happen at anytime. Why not pursue happiness and fulfillment while you can? It’s just around the corner and every second past this one is just bonus round.

Meaning and Purpose

Meat Suit

Meat Suit

The meaning: I am a biological entity that’s a natural bi-product of the world and universe in which I exist. We humans literally are “a way for the cosmos to know itself.” The meaning of my life is to experience the ability to perceive and the interaction with that perception’s ramifications, also known as experience. My meaning is the experience of this limited life that I get to live. I get to think and live, the meaning is the experience.

The purpose: “The purpose of life is a life with a purpose.” A fundamental question must be asked by those seeking purpose, “What is important?” Your family, your community, your planet? Pursue purpose purposefully, enjoy happiness when it is found in the oddest of places but pursue purpose fully. Open you eyes and see, open your mind and see further.

There are no gods, no kings, no masters in choosing what you do, just influences by other humans and interaction with human systems or human interaction with natural systems. We are cogs of change, for good and for evil, we are pieces of bigger systems likes individuals in a family or a group in a polity or a nation in a geopolitical system (or an individual in a world system). We are each others destinies but we are distracted and blinded by control and influence mechanisms, like entertainment or archaic ideas of control. We live in a world built on thousands of years of grinding and constant societal change and evolution, most of us blindly moving through life without much context of our civilization’s experience and the way in which it’s past affects us.

We stand on the precipice of the future unfolding. Those that live are at the crest of a continually crashing wave of time. Our time is unfolding before our eyes and it’s us that wield this thing, this destiny of us together. The future of human life use to be controlled by others, thought by many that some better version of humanity was steering and guiding us and leading the rest of us like some controlling architect of an unknowable universe guiding our species into the future. But those days are dead, exposed to reality, the ideas of a day far gone.

We, alone in our environment (local, planetary, cosmologically) guide the sway of destiny with billions of others together, we are living in a revelation, the fruit of knowledge that whispers to us that we are the captains of our life the masters of our ships of destiny. The fruit of the tree of knowledge has been bitten long ago and our eyes slowly throughout time opened to a reality that has been unfolding. We are small, incomprehensibly so but we are free within our biological and technological limitations, we are free much like the cap of the pyramid is free of its base. Our foundations, our yesterdays guide us (sorry I started typing, but this feels like a different argument and different tangent).

If we are free to create our futures, what do you wish to create? What world would you help to build?

If we are constrained by our history what should we be seeking to subvert? If we are products of our birth what should we see in ourselves that our patriarchs are unable to tell us? If we are born of nation-states then what portions of our own history are being obfuscated? Where do I exist within the current system? Can I move out of the current paradigm? These have been (are) a few of my questions, good luck in finding yours. Always remember answers are speed bumps to more honed questions.

 

Humming

Here is one I wrote in 2008. First I’ll post the edited version, second I’ll post the near-original as editing is a constant state for me.

 

Humming

 

So nimble in flight

so quick and agile

wings move without a sight.

 

I hum along to the fast beat of your wings,

hoping you the best on your perpetual feed.

 

Wings beat near my face

a little bird with so much grace.

 

Just sitting alone contemplating the soon

concerned about a future that looms so near,

afraid of the impending moment.

The air gets thick and it’s hard to get a breath

 

but then the feeling of little wings beat on my face

curious and sniffing it glides though the air about my brow

 

With its peaceful intentions I calm right down.

 

Air flows and there is peace once again,

I draw a deep breath.

It sticks around for a while until peace is made.

Then off into the night where it began,

 

I pray for the little birds journeys

and thank it once more for its serenity.

 

Goodnight sweet hummingbird.

 

 

 

Now the one from 2008

Humming Bird

 

So quick and agile so nimble in flight

Wings moving with out even a sight

Singing along to your impetuous beat

Hoping the best on perpetual feed

Wings beat on my face

The little bird with so much grace

 

Just sitting alone contemplating the soon

Worried about the future coming so near

Feeling so down and afraid of the impending moment

The air getting thick, can’t get a breath

Then the feeling of wings beat on my face

Curious and sniffing it glides though the air about my brow

 

As soon as I realize I calm right down

Air flows and there is peace once again

It sticks around for a while until peace is made

Then into the night where it began

I pray for the little birds journeys

And thank it once more

Goodnight sweet hummingbird

 

It seems not a lot changed, but those structural changes were huge for me and I was afraid if I edited too much from the original I would loose what it was that I was trying to convey when I first wrote it. In this form I can see the night that I wrote it clearly. I sat on my mom’s porch and was drinking my thoughts away, self-medicating my mind. It was a muggy North Texas night and I was thinking about the terrible aspects of being human; the scary places, the bad people, and hard times. I was caught in that line of thought for a while and I remember wanting to be free of it and then a humming bird showed up and made me feel better, I wrote down the experience in the for you see above.

There is a lot that could’ve be done to make this piece better but I think it’s pretty just the way it is.

Later… I posted this and then looked at it again and made even more changes. It seems putting it out there had an affect on my seeing it in a different light. Now I am happier with it than I ever had. I really feel I’m done with it now (he says until he wants to edit it again, haha!).

Here is tonight’s edit

Humming

 

Nimble in flight,

so quick and agile

wings move without a sight.

 

You arrive into my little world and

I hum along to the fast beat of your wings,

hoping you the best on your perpetual feed.

 

Watching as your wings beat near my face

a little bird with so much grace.

 

Sitting alone as I contemplate the next steps

concerned about a future that looms so near,

afraid of the inevitable future that always floats near.

 

The air gets thick and it’s hard to get a breath

but then the feeling of little feathers flitters on my face,

curious and sniffing it glides though the air about my brow

 

seeing its peaceful intentions, I calm right down.

Little wings move a lot of stale air,

 

atmosphere flows and

I draw a deep breath.

The little bird sticks around for a while

until my peace is made.

Then off never to be seen again.

 

I mutter a prayer for the little birds journeys

and thank it once more for its brought serenity.

 

Goodnight sweet hummingbird.

 

And even with this edit I can see words like ‘floating’ that don’t really work. But the reality is it will never be perfect to me, I’ll continue to learn and to understand language better and I shouldn’t worry about it. Its hard though, because I see these words as a representation of myself and I want that representation to be as me as I want it to be. Though in reality we are what we are and maybe a perfectionists touch on a seven year piece of a fragmented memory in poetry form should be, at some point, left alone to be what it is.

Maybe this shouldn’t even be shared. What the hell do I know?

Proto-Poems and Proto-Prose

So have a bunch of stuff that I’m not sure what to do with. Mostly old proto-poems/prose, things that I scratched out in the early parts of a struggle to see past the past and look toward the future again. Some of the stuff I wrote in what I call my ‘post-combat blues’ phase of life. It was a time in my life where I wasn’t sure where I fit. I had lost faith, lost hope, lost pride, lost my father, and my mind wrestled with my deployment to Afghanistan and a stint in the Army almost every moment of every day and night. Times were tough for me then.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of this stuff since 2007, I tried to edit them, tried to polish them for a long time but for the most part they’re the reflection of the struggle I was caught in. The struggle to be ok is a tough nut to crack for some of us. I think I’ll share some of my scratches on ocher that made me see my own humanity, that made me see horizons again in a time in my life when all I could see were storm clouds.

By posting them here I am freeing them from the cage of the hard drive they’ve sat in for years and freeing me from fretting and watching over them. Now they can be out of my hands. If these proto-poems/prose could hear I would tell them, “Fly free little words and thanks for starting me on a path to knowledge and helping me learn how to be ok with being me.”

Ghosts and False Liberation

mario-star-scramble-2-ghost-island

Picturing my ghosts and I begin to get a creepy feeling that rides up my spine into my neck and crawls through my skin. My ghosts began to manifest.

Shadows of thought and the blanks spots of discarded memories flash before my eyes until I realize there ain’t nothing scary about the thoughts in my head.

I am free. A liberation of music in my ears and a revolt of self-altered consciousness. All lies.

I’m moving from the truth in my heart to the induced trauma of realizing I’m awake, that this moment is life and it’s happening all around me. Not a liberation or revolt but a rout, a retreat from reality.

The phantoms, the specters, the ghosts of me will give chase as long as I refuse to face them. What is required to be rid of my monsters? Face your fear, face fear, conquer or perish, move forward or slip back into the dark abyss.

Who the fuck am I? Am I the mosaic or the smashed little pieces that consists of its whole? Am I the constantly changing self I seem to be always chasing or am I that thing I pretend to be, that better me I strive to be? Or am I that cat that just goes along in agreement to the verbs that others speak, unable to stop nodding my head, thinking to myself “this is all wrong.”

I am the consistency of perfectly cooked chef-made scrambled eggs.

I slide into my soul like a well-worn hoodie.

Love and Anthropology

Heart Pump

An anthropologist named Schneider said, “Love can be translated freely as enduring diffuse solidarity.” Some have accused his definition as not romantic or that it wouldn’t be accepted by poets. I think it is one of the most beautiful definitions of love that I’ve seen.

Experience isn’t romantic, it can be but for the most part it is a dirty smelly boring thing, a reality filled with daily existence and the mundane politic of everyday life. Experience runs the gamut; it’s commutes and war zones, nine to fives and hunger pangs, coffee-shits and cold-sweats at midnight.

The Romantics definition of love is flowers, beauty, and higher powers that intervene beneficently wither gods or governments. Those romantic bastards may have struggled but their pursuits were patrician, where a mug like mine is getting through the rest of this day, the struggle to succeed, to overcome, to resist, to fight is where people like mine realty’s exist.

I don’t love for poetry, even though that may be a bi-product, I love because of trust. I don’t love because of flowers and their flourished fragrances, I love because I’ve found those few who would get my six when shit hits the fan. Love isn’t the lustful passions that overcomes me, love is the companionship felt after love is made. Love is solidarity, love is existing with others in companionship along the paths of life and helping each other beyond the barriers that block our way.

Those Romantic bastards helped us in our understanding, plucked at our heart strings but holding on to the Romantics and their notions of love have set us back in finding solidarity with each other in this struggle of life. Love the way you think you should, not the way some cat sold it. Love in the streets, love in the foxhole, love in-between the sheets, but all I ask is that you learn (if you haven’t already) what true love can be some time before you inevitably die, because it is worth it.

Free

bombed library

We exist within the cultural makeup of the world and society around us. We, for the most, part don’t get to immediately choose the path that we want to take. We’re pushed and prodded by everything from the beliefs of our parents to thousands of hours of forced public schooling, from the laws on the books to the cultural taboos that guide our daily decision making process.

No one can guarantee anybody else’s freedom in this existence as freedom is not given by anybody, freedom is hard and dirty work but it’s possible to push the bounds of culture and to break through the mentality of control to snap the chains of the enslaved mind. You must sacrifice for anything worth having but even if you risk it all and sacrifice, nothing is guaranteed.

No matter what prison constrains me I shall be free, for freedom exists first in the mind of the liberated. Humans are born equal but few are born free. No matter what anybody says I cannot be someone’s property, they may believe it but property in its essence cannot revolt or subvert, just through the experience of cerebration that natural by-product of a human being existing expresses individuality and freedom to choose in whatever limited capacity there may be.

So learn how to choose what you want your experience to be, that’s what trying new things and education is for. We are born into a world of other peoples shit; their hang ups, society’s taboos, the dogmas of fools, and the rationality of the greedy. To find your own voice as the world around you screams, is to sing the song of emancipation.

Like the man said, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.” So sing mother-fucker, sing! Sing the song of your own liberation.