Do you ever think you’re the only one that gets it, the only one who has real eyes to see, the only one who can feel the hurt that burn and cuts like a knife?

I think most people are swimming in their own self-encased perpetual thinkdoms, where we all think we know more than the person next to us, instead of giving in to the idea that it doesn’t really matter so much what we know, but more what we do with it. And more importantly, to realize that the people who stand next to us think the very same thing. So why can’t we all get over it and understand that we all live in an ego-driven world where what you do or do not with your time is the most important aspect of living. I think I have been very guilty of not following my own advice, something I dole out with some kind of frequency.

I have moved through life as a ghost at points, painting myself up, masking what really mattered the most, which was the core element of me.

When I was younger there were all these high expectations, the gifted and talented, the countless books, the artwork. I was always the one who “didn’t have to try”, who had it easy, was supposed to be the big shit. That is, before all my heart was blown into literal fragments. I was supposed to be better.

But what really is the purpose of trucking on in all this madness? Is it to blow the flames out, and caress them like an old friend? for me it is bringing to the table, my energy, either matched or unmatched, and blowing my own daily realities and routines up, to create something better.

I mean, I was counseling a friend today in the throws of relationship chaos, giving advice on growing and moving on in spirit, mind, and body. yet this is something i find the hardest to do. Giving up your grief over pieces that have died, to people that have gone, to daily circumstance and routine changing; it really is a difficult concept to practice. I mean I can give advice out like the best of ’em, but usually fail on my own in the execution. Life is never quite the travesty we make it unless we have hit stagnation, a place where things stop moving and routine becomes the “the” of what we are.

Living is breathing, fucking, messing up, destroying and blowing our ideas and concepts of what we understand know and believe up into unrecognizable pieces. Then we gather up the dust and piece of ourselves and move on with the lessons learned. You can build the most beautiful castles with the pieces of old, like a patchwork quilt of ideas digested. Regret has never been in my vocabulary because it equals lessons unlearned. Living, yes, is learning.

I have been learning my whole life, and it is the people around me who have taught me the most. Either through direct observation or hearing the pain in a friend’s voice about the death or the end of routine. I have my eyes wide-open all the time, but lately for some reason, I have been guilty of the cover up, whereby I mask myself, much to illusion others to what is important.

An old friend has been keeping tabs on me from afar, someone whose connection to me was simply an early Christmas morning make out ride on a Greyhound. I uttered my email to him across a platform, and still he thinks enough about me to check up on me, some 4 years later. Paul, that’s you, and hopefully someday you will redeem that coupon for better things to come.

I have come to a head of what I need to do, something that I have fought and twisted myself into bloody, tear-stained chunks to understand. I have fought with myself and the cycles and natures of things to cut my heart open and watched the tears pour out. I have negated and succumbed to ideas that changed me, changed the way I saw myself, the world, my place in the revolution of days. I have over thought and under emphasized my place in the big wheel of life. I have tortured myself, watched my soul shatter, pretended to tend to the wounds, while I left them all seeping and bleeding out. I have drowned in the misery that life is shit and their isn’t much I could do at the time. I have given in to any kind of control to the way things happen, only to realize that my intent has always been to suffer. I have been a victim, a willing participant in my own demise. I have watched myself kick and scream and die and lift up and rise and fly. In my dreams I fly like a motherfucker, only to have the ground so far below, and yes in color, moving this way and that, paging through the wonderlands of my imagination, the people I have been in dreams. I have picked up, cleaned up, and scraped the lackluster off of countless people. I have pushed, I have pulled, I’d be your biggest fan if you even just tried to try. I have realized, somewhere, somehow along my life that no one can fault you for trying, being, believing. I have spoken to people who want so much to be something but hide in their self-relegated rooms of I just cannot. What is that about? Try try picture picture want want desire change manipulate break up converge spin whirl kiss sex love hate…life is worth living.

I am sensitive to undercurrents of days passing, and I am still scared to death of dying, if not just because there is so much yet that I want to touch.

I have decided to scrap all that and move in steady circles, hands out, heart exposed, pieces left if that is where they choose to lie, pieces picked up, ram shackled together, I will not let this shit fucking drown me, break me, exist as me.

I was supposed to be better than that, after all.