An I Believe Speech

I believe first and foremost in my own humanity and respect everybody's humanity above any label they have been given. I believe that everybody varies from one another enough to justify a nuanced understanding of how they need support, and how they'd like to experience life and how they can undergo change if they'd like to. I understand I don't have to be loyal to people, especially if they cause you harm, but I also can't see anybody as a problem above and beyond their inherent worth as a person. Not bigger than nature's or the law's worth in them. Your problems are always less than you, and an infinite amount of solutions exist within you. But they will be corrected over time, at a plodding pace, and it turns out your habits are going to mean more than anything. Are you going to be kind? That is the question that sits atop everything. That question sits atop the structure of many other questions, such as, are you going to take care of your body? do you know how to care for your mind? Are you interested in being awake? Can you rest at night? Kindness is determined by both your habits and your ability to tune in with what's important. And this ripens on a vine over time. You more often have feelings like, "I get it!" "Or this is going to happen and I'm going to react this one way, but there will be a next moment and one after that, so just get through it hot stuff." When you can say that to yourself you have gotten a good deal closer to sincere kindness. Not like those people who are just kind because they can't stand being seen in this life as being anything but kind. Well, everybody starts off there, but kindness doesn't end that way. There are never two instances of the same kindness -- it is wholly unique. It is a nutrient that will start to run through people, and age them in ways with all sorts of pleasant variables. how they notice stuff, or how well they sense the needs of other people. It's like when you're a teenager and you first start to notice how much people talk about objects. Sometimes if there is something wrong with them, adults will sit around, for example, a sprinkler watering a sidewalk, and try to attribute some history to it. How this happened, what the intelligence of the guy was, and depending who you're with, make reference to his ethnicity. If it's all guys you would have a better chance of hearing about the ethnicity of said guy who made a very controlled decision to point a thing spraying water on to the cement and in to the gutter for the next 45 minutes. And he said yes and signed off on watering the sidewalk before the city council. Everybody jeered and it made the next day's blogosphere. Maybe you should just take a picture and put it on social media. Hashtag it the best and hope for the viral outrage of six hundred thousand people who could be doing something so much better with their lives at that moment. I mean, we all do it. But kind people do less and less of that kind of stuff. They have nothing to be afraid of and so they go outside. 

Order of the Roses

They trim the Tyler Roses at the Capitol.
Down to nubs. Every February.
Just a week short of the holiday.

That holiday, a few weeks passed,
fell on the side of mercy.
At least this year.

I continue to nose in on them.
Nothing to smell. Yet twice each day.
A loyalty previously unknown to me.

What I've begun to notice,
as workdays stumble into March,
is the first thing rose bushes grow back.

Their thorns.
The stems, now smacking with assurance,
sprout leaves next.

Asking the sky -- expectant and green.
Hearing the answer -- blushing reddish.

The order of the rose bushes:

• Fierce necessity
• Sway and be patient
• Expect that brilliant day

The order I have been craving.

So I amble in a serpentine pattern back to my desk. 

Fixing my gaze on the Four O'clock sun. 

And all the while, setting expectations.

Friday night, 11/15--Staying Supple

At the risk of sounding angsty or overly reflective, I have really been hit by the emptiness bug over the past month or so. That feeling of always needing some form of soothing. It's this quality that when people come face to face with it they instinctively recognize it and then feel hesitant of you. My old approaches of dealing with this feeling is an unwritten comic book series. My next life-stage of dealing with the emptiness bug was all of this spiritual perspective, which felt amazing because the ideas were so new to me and you just kind of had to understand the concepts and it would make you feel better. That's when I named and chose the colors for this blog, which I now think looks like total shit. The returns on spiritual perspective can diminish over time. A flimsier approach than I ever suspected. It was a time when "Answers" really seemed like an answer.

But lately, I have been kind of mumbly, doubtful, numb, unsure of myself, uncomfortable seeming, etc. It's not amazing-feeling and good solid routines and habits are just not doing the trick. I don't know how to be so I am just going ahead and not knowing how to be in public. At least it's honest and genuine and so I can take pride in that. And I noticed in conversations I don't really try to tell people "cool facts about me." Which is so nice. I hate when I do that. I hate that I have told so many people about the one time I drank in a camera truck with a famous movie director and make it seem like we were total buds. Hate. And come to think of it, my uncomfortable social behavior perfectly lines up with this other value of mine--that I should never act like I know what the fuck I am doing in life. Like Goethe's insistence that we should all remain an apprentice at life. And that we strive to stay supple. I think I am right in being insecure, showing pain on my face, mumbling, not being able to make simple decisions like where we should go sit in a coffee shop, what to order, and what is an interesting thing to talk about.

But the expectations of your company may boo and hiss at that. Or at best, meet it with indifference. Maybe a grown man should be confident by now? That he should have a feeling of security, even in a critical environment. That one should be an expert or have a specialty at something by now? Well, fuck that. I insist that I am right in not being able to navigate subtextual expectations. I would rather just hold others to the standard of not having them. I want to be a scorned little boy. And sometimes if you insist on staying this way, you get taken aback by an alien sweetness.

Like last night. Friday night, 11/15. Playing by the rules, I set up to meet this girl at a bar for an underwhelming club soda. No charge, dollar tip. The soda-glass giveaway to my no-alcohol ways led to my having to make the justification of why I am happier in life drinking club soda. And I really didn't believe myself at the time and so it sounded apologetic. I looked at other tables, and mind you it was still early and so 90% were laughing and happy at this point and the other 10% were couples. I had full intentions of joining the 10% of unhappy couples if that's what it took to make this feeling go away. And so she hears me talk evasively and then she forgets to ask other questions about me and she had this admittedly amazing dog with her that everyone felt the need to interrupt our conversations to ask about. And then I absorbed an excuse about an early departure and came home and texted an always-kind ex girlfriend because indifference has been feeling intolerable to me lately.  She is always so nice. And I think I might love her. I was telling you about all of those "might" feelings I have been having lately. But she was not on cell phone this night. Checking the screens and my virtual social connections at an increasing pace, feeling the attachment-less mental processes starting to kick in, my practically-brother roommate and I start barking out forlorn tones of voice about the general conditions of being alive.

Cut to us sitting at a French restaurant. Cut to him charming this long-dreadlocked French guy who noted he was in a rock band. Cut to the French guy leaving and coming back out with two truly beautiful women. The kind of women you only want to remain visual input so as not to risk your stolen breath with a personality or something. Cut to social miscues, talks about art, sixteen dollar burgers, talks about loneliness, extremely complex techno-social dynamics and what it might say about the character of people that reject you, and the best lettuce-only five dollar salad you then say is the best salad you ever have. Cut to a hesitation for two men to make meaningful eye contact, but then doing it. Cut to understanding and a feeling of being loved and understood. Cut to the clock, just before midnight.

The ball is ending soon. The bills are being distributed. An extremely-dressed, under-impressed clientelle overwhelms service workers hiding wine glasses in the host booth and then this curly-haired blonde lady walks in and everybody looks and wonders if she is famous. I think it's the rose lipstick. And I wonder if she and her suited man friend have just come from a theater production--that they starred in, and that was set in 1940's L.A. But what I really think is they actually just came from their house. It wasn't worth mentioning. I don't even think my dinner company noticed them, too occupied by a mind fixed on steak fat and cigarette smoke. There was a meal and I devoured all of the grease and fat I possibly could. And the thickest mayonnaise I ever imagined.

Earlier, sitting in our living room, the seedling of a hunger for experience (and a second dinner) had driven us out the door and down the street to a French Restaurant. Hunger had whisked us away. The working men we are, we could go somewhere good. And so we did. My blood felt thick and full and I felt relaxed afterwards. A restaurant, which was maybe a staged experiment in controlling others perceptions of who you are, felt suspended in this viscous mayonnaise-y atmosphere. I floated effortlessly in it and club soda. My old sweater and lazy hoody. Canvas sneakers laying flat among the tapping leather boots. A nice smile and the air of not giving much of a fuck about her appearance got the waitress a 25% tip.

If I remember it correctly, what I experienced was carefree fun. If I were to be a fully confident American male I'd go to lots of school and wear smarter clothes and eventually design a prescription pill to produce exactly this effect. Once in Miami, in fact, I did this harbor tour on a boat and one of the houses you could see from the boat was owned by the man who patented Viagra. His backyard had rare palm trees imported from Africa. His backyard, fully under the hot sun and with no physical shelters in sight, was climate controlled (?!) -- always adjusted to 72 degrees. That is a man truly wearing the man's man's rose lipstick. But nevermind that. My blood is thick and heart full and I'm feeling two steps removed from rose lipstick. Not wearing it. Not wanting it. Instead, going home to sleep. But not a dreaming kind of sleep. I felt like I had everything there and so I just slept till morning.

Stolen excerpt from my own Sunday E-mail

...There's a magical spot I visited this morning, and do nearly every day. It's a nestled away stretch of the creek I live by. It's really city territory, but there's this tucked away spot where sometimes a homeless person will find and hide out in for a week or two, or the rich homeowners will take their dogs for a month or two but then get out of the routine because they can't stick to it. You have to pass under this long sagging tree branch shaped like an arch way to access it. I'm not kidding. It's sharp cuts in rock enabling channels of runoff water to gather in a long deep pool at the end. In drought it gets still and nasty. Even at its grossest, you see a turtle climb out of there on to a log or rock. For a few weeks this summer there were about a thousand tadpoles in there working toward toadhood. It took one big rainstorm and only about a few dozen made it and turned into these tiny toadlets, smaller than the pad of my thumb. I put one on there and possibly altered the course of that little guy's life forever. But animals seem to get over traumatic events better than people. You know what I mean? There's also train tracks that run along this neighborhood and they are the perfect distance where you can hear the train whistle clearly. Any louder would be a disturbance, but it's at a distance that feels soothing. I've been going for eight years, but in a routine way for two or three. 

This morning it was flowing something fiercely magical. I vaguely remember some three in the morning thunder crashes last night. It was a restless sleep and it was all mossy and drippy at the creek this morning. It got me alert. I get to visit with my head there. And then listen to it and trying to slowly ease out of it. Sometimes I gather around some other point of pain or passion in my body. Sometimes my chest just wells up with something personal. When it rains the night before it's easier to leave my head because you can concentrate on the sounds of water flowing by. It feels drippier. Like I said, it was flowing fierce this morning. Sometimes I open my eyes while sitting there and I imagine that the rock face underneath the water is what's moving and that the water is perfectly still. Doing that helps me levitate. Then I get up and say thanks and sprint back home. When I'm running I pretend like there's a hawk chasing me, a vulture circling me, or a crow guiding me somewhere, depending on the day. I've seen all these types of birds there before and they have stayed with me. I know them well by now. I usually go to the creek after a jog so I'm good to go for sprinting--in running shoes and red basketball shorts. When I get back home I proceed to sink into Conor Jensen's life again, but it feels sweeter.

Surveilable Psycho Bubbles

I am starting to place more value on my concerns. I interpret this as a rising sense of being worth it. Moreover, being as honest and observational as possible about my reactions to unwelcome events breeds more authentic, self-generated information rather than the self-limiting attitudes that come from suppressing my feelings and behaving the way I think I'm "supposed to." This deeper embrace of what I am feeling doesn't include expressing the emotion in an unchecked way, but allows for a more nuanced form of neutral acknowledgment spiked with pungent understanding and sweet fondness. The good news is that when there is too much self-generated information to know what to do with, self-generated systems occur to organize it, and this feels something like personal agency. When these motors hum it feels like independence and freedom.

I can also now see internal pain as a way to test and expand my capacity to accept who I am as a man making a go at a challenging, responsible, and productive life. And what is the best container to hold me in that context of trying at life? Certainly not a self-judging mind attempting to coerce its own abstractions by stuffing loose threads within its walls. I see the possibility of a bigger container to occupy. One in which I have space to walk and run and sing and dance. To do everything. And to let what is loose and not understood spill over. In this space I become able to love more of just about all of me. And what I don't love, the container holds that too. Gone are the days of intending to, or hoping someday, that I can "learn to love myself and so love others." How many times have we been told to do this? Here are the days of gaining respect and love for somebody who consistently tries in spite of self-judgement. A man who takes actions in a place where defiance and acceptance converges. Because even atonal compositions harmonize in their own novel way.

The consequence of gaining self respect is that my emotions are starting to feel easier to regulate. At best, I can be swept up by natural life's tendency toward self-correction. By law, chaos begets order. And I can allow this reorganizing stasis to occur internally, and even be enchanted by what's taking place. But even at my worst, I know from past experience that the harsh self-talk isn't nearly as true or interesting as a person who has shown that he can fall, get up, and try again. The man who knows that, at least so far, storms always blow through. The echoes of harsh self-talk resemble the entire person I once was in a shadowy form. Merely an insubstantial entity not really in touch with what is needed to settle in and fill up with the stuff of life. The entity is no longer me now, but a small voice within. I have a deep appreciation for that turn of events in my life. I want to hug the small voice and let it stay in the guest room till it gets back on its feet. I once stayed in that very guest room too.

I also feel empowered as a person who possesses the ability to transform emotions into energy and insight for myself and other people. I can sense a deeper core of universal needs in people and I want to get warmer. My conversations with others about their struggles becomes like a big game of "Hotter, Hotter...Colder, Colder." What gets me closer to the prize and how can I hone the intuition that takes me there? I want to find what's hidden for the benefit of me and for you. Seeing my pains with purpose makes me less likely to resist my own feelings, and being on this mission with other people's struggles helps me be less under the spell of my anxious chatter's inevitable destination of confusion. The data of my mental comments is an unconscious sea of irrational evaluations, reactions, and thoughts, seen through fogged up goggles. I become the lost captain trying navigate what he deep down senses is an unnavigable situation.

The more empowering option here, that of purpose, helps me see a way off the water and back home. It helps me see that peace can be had even when circumstances don't feel resolved. The layer of purpose and acceptance to any of life's events lies underneath, always. And the knowledge that I can always rest my weary self there--solidly so, inspires an invaluable confidence in enduring hardship. This knowledge helps neutralize the overwhelm. It opens up all sorts of possibilities for my spiritual life. It tells me that I can continue my path in understanding how to operate from my heart more than my head. It connects me in a deeply satisfying way. Assuring me that I can meet everyone, anywhere, even when nobody but me is here.

I have a lot of fortunate concerns right now. I love that I have visions and interests in goals and crankiness and sweetness simultaneously. The cup feels very full of juice with added bitters and sugars and muddled up everything. This is in line with what I want out my adult life. A concoction of everything.

Break Up Song

Here is the sheet music to the tune I can’t hum. A composition of your
personality missed, sounding with mine. The traits that make our fates. I
sound this out not in sorrow, nor in hopeful revival, but as the recognition I want
to not fail at making again. Our harmony, which once existed.

I imagine your light fingers on my shoulder, at the ready.
Digits strumming reminders that I am the song.
I am its source. Guts attached from the neck, sinew strung across the belly.

Vibrations flooding my chest, carefully arranged with capacity for hearts.
All finished by glazed-over male hips and coarse-haired bowlegs that splay
into feet—with longish toes. Though not as long as yours.

The details in design are no longer this song. If we were to address the untended
to parts, they would appear to be just that: untended to. We own separate
kidneys and livers for sorting this out. Bendable skeletons house each of our vitals.
Each needing separate resting spots and separate vitamin bottles.

And yet, it's the tune of each other that can't play apart. Nor quite together.
A disparate sound. Driving the mind. And it needs attention.
Constant and careful. 

Our song could swell, or: admiration may not rehearse that day.
But it's just like they say—without pressure, there are no diamonds.

Late April

There was a plan to talk
Around It, over It, through It
And to savor a sympathetic ear.

Because whatever It was, boiled hot.
And you could hear its steam whistle,
even from a comfortable distance.

There was every reason to think
that there was a problem.
And so they walked to the creek to talk.

They did end up talking,
about water,
and he later gave some thought to it.

“Water that is clear and deep,
And can stay wtih you,
Is rare to find.

Water that dares not alter your path,
But can stay with you,
Strikes me as courageous.”

This water soothed the boiling, and quieted the whistle.
And this water sprouted a terrified, trembling seedling
That seemed in no condition to survive.

A seedling too fragile. Too exposed. Too unsure of its roots.
It sprung across the mouth of a man who insisted
That something he could say might make its longing go away.

But the water insisted back, just then.
And the seedling was met by her clear and deep glance,
which seemed to say, our plan to talk about that is not for today.

Only the bold can teach the bold, and only with ears.
And what he saw was her whole heart giving to listening.
And what she saw was his courage to tremble.

And what the water found was something rare:
Two people sitting in union with its master plan.

Jaws of Life

Sure, the minds don't do anything but fear. Still, you can see one impossible glint cutting through their fogged up eyes. You sense a presumptuous faith and so commit to their broke down lives. And they say, "All's about I am right now is here." And you tell them, "Perfect, it's all just heart from here." You tell them, "Don't be scared. I know a smile feels more than far." And you say that the laws of people behaving are bigger than they are.

You tell them it no longer concerns the particulars you may think of you, but that the laws apply to them too. And that it's safe and free, to only be here. And you let them know how much bigger everything ever was than that little mind they fear. Even while out there, battling life's laws with an appetite for anything near. Beyond me, beyond you, and beyond us lies this Great Fact, which ever will be.

And first you tell them the bad news--that they no longer get to be who stands before me. And then you say the good--that the entirety they never saw, the light sky beyond the dark tunnel they are struggling through, it loves you, see. I can show you the way out. And then the sky. And shocker it was to me, it will be to you: see, it loves you. And I truly mean that, broke-down friend.

I'll be the first to concede that this kind of love's tougher than any man could bear alone. But you will behave in small monthly payments--a new lease renting to own. And then, in carefully minded increments, you will own It. And then there's the matter of the sky...Well, some days it will just feel so goddamned close.

So look now, here's my outreached hand. You have ideas about cheer, slipshod fears, and enough regret to fuel a rocket eons away...In my most plain voice, hope is where we begin. Drink ice water. You can't smell nor taste it. Drink up. Touch your calloused hands together, and lift that swelled up tongue. Pray. It won't work, but do it anyway. Wiggle your ears. There's a frequency so near that there's no way you will hear. But put that mind on firm notice: "There shall be nothing today."

There's no such thing as a prowess that can Unmangle the mangled. Nor can just one illuminate a tunnel. We have clumsiness. We have flashlights. We have each other and salutation--and don't forget about that sky. A sharp-toothed glint, drawing shallow breaths beneath story-cracked skin, shines its way through--somewhat resembling a grin.

yes, and...

We don't give up on our dreams, no. but we've seen enough to see what's happened before, to those who un-tether their life lines and aim for the sky. they float away, gradually deflating into disappointment. they may have purchased a lie. Sold in every corner of their Mama and Papa's belief in them. In america and on the pictures, and in the schools. the lie of our own brilliance, not yours. they do it and float on and not know where they are, but maybe by a sound coming off a speaker or a phrase a teacher spoke. A teacher they now feel ambivalence for. Go and float to what you thought of you, yesterday. They float take some wounds, leaking out an essential air. Picking at well-intended scabs, thin-skin hardens, callous over "these times" so unfair. because faith's not there, healing not here. And I'll tell you why, it's because on this flight there is no fucking way to steer. So whimper out, sink in soft whines, but at too high a distance to touch back down--to reconsider. Some can touch again. Guilt can bring you back. Joy. Sin, resolve of goodness. Some other girl did it when you couldn't decide. Or simply, decimated pride. Nobody knows the how, nobody can re-sing the song that commences inside. Some get gifted the want to play along. To ante up and discover the value of responsibility. The lucky ones have babies. Or hurt too deep. The lucky ones get left with no choice in the matter. Get the anime, elan vital, the verve, with sparks and all. How's it come? All things considered, what makes Johnny run? Lips no longer serviceable. I mean, here we stand got two feet rough ground steady eyes, deep-focused. Limited for sure, but still can take us pretty far. Not knowing how far. Not knowing where to. But once we get there, we know we'll be able to see further. No longer sorting through used copies of the "Myth of the Straight Line." Here we stand, considering the vast burden of others. Here we wander, seeing the stars in the sky, and maybe sometimes feeling so close to them. Underneath this tasteful backdrop--not too dark, but never too hot. Just sufficiently bright. Warmed by the life those stars sent, and warmed by that same thing they gave our friends. We don't give up, no. we walk. we run. and we walk when we get tired again. we don't fly though, never no. because we don't wanna miss out like before. I mean, the dreams might even be close too, yet we don't feel like sleeping anymore. Many are good and we are not them by design.