Eleven Fifty Nine Post Meridiem

We’ve got to waste some time.  Time is always spent on expensive things that don’t matter much.  We should pull the waded bills of time out of our pockets and drop it in the wind to fly off wherever it may.  Close your eyes and open your fists.  Let it go.

Whither away in the things that make the world disappear.  Those activities that build a castle around you.  Only let in those who are willing to forget that time is a thing and remember that we made it up to begin with.  Time has no place here.  No clocks, no hours and no minutes.

Don’t spend time on doing things that need to be done because you have to.  Waste time on doing things that don’t because you want to.

At the garden’s gate

Can we overcome human nature?  Is there a point in trying?

When a little boy picks a flower, he picks the most vibrantly colored flower.  He doesn’t go looking for it, he just notices it.  It’s beautiful and he wants it, so he trudges through the garden and picks the flower for himself.

He doesn’t think if it belongs to him or someone else, or whether he has a right to pick this flower.  There is no consideration that other people might find this flower beautiful and they would like to enjoy it as well.  The little boy doesn’t stop to think of the flowers he tramples to get to the one he wants.  The path is now strewn with crushed stems and petals from his triumphant charge.

As the boy gets older will he stop and think that the flower does not belong to him?  Will he consider the collateral damage of trampling through the garden to pick it?  Can he consider other people’s enjoyment of the flower as much his?

Is human nature the destruction of everything in pursuit of individual wants?  Or is it the realization that there are other individuals with other wants that are just as valid as anyone else’s?  Perhaps its both and one overcoming the other.  That it’s the growth from one phase to the next and not everyone is able to complete it, and that’s why we’re in the world that exists today.

Hopefully we can all notice the flower and appreciate its beauty while, at the same time, allowing others to appreciate it too.  And, maybe more so now, protecting the flower from those who haven’t overcome the urge to pick it.

Advice from a drunken poet

You can admire some people who generally aren’t worthy of admiration.  Some of the things they do or say stand out.  Maybe their lives, or certain aspects, aren’t worth striving for but their ideas are.  Their actions shouldn’t be followed by their words heeded.

I discovered Charles Bukowski by accident.  I picked up a book I thought was written by someone else and I started reading it.  I didn’t discover until after I set it down again that it was not by who I thought it was.

The first chapter of the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, talks of Bukowski and a brief description of his life.  It all leads up to the point of the opening to the book, which is written as an epitaph on Bukowski’s grave, “don’t try.”

That isn’t to say you’re supposed to give up.  He never gave up.  He stopped writing for years but it burned inside of him enough to come back.  Two of his quotes that drive me to continue writing are as follows:

“I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy … or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

The first shows his resolve.  It’s given me a look on life for my children and letting them pursue what they want in life.  The second drives the point home.

Most people don’t have their dream jobs.  Few do actually.  You can stay in a job that slowly breaks you down and destroys you or you can flip off society and what they deem as unrealistic dreams and starve doing something you love rather than be miserable doing something you hate.  If you love it enough it will be enough.

The only catch to that is that you need to find something worth it.  Simply not wanting to do the job you’re doing isn’t a good enough reason.  You have to want it to burn your soul.  You have to want to live it until it takes everything you have, otherwise it will never be worth it.

Charles Bukowski is now one of my favorite poets along with Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman.  There are others as well.  Ones who I can’t attribute a poem to their name or a name to their poem.  Poets who I haven’t discovered yet.  Women and men who write the words so they take your face in their hand and squeeze until you feel them.  It’s what I try to do as well.  Make the words felt so deep it’s like you’re experiencing them just as I have.

I’ve found that thing I want to die for.  I want to write the words that kill me.  I’m going to let it take me and spill my thoughts and dreams.  Scream my fears into the void.  Live until I die.  But most importantly, I’ll stop trying.

Review: Omg, dinosaurs are awesome!

Warning:  This is going to be dumb.  Read on at your own peril.

Legion

I don’t do reviews because I don’t think I’m good at them.  I watch/read/whatever things because I just want to be entertained.  When I talk about things I enjoy I just gush rainbows and sugar.  I would liken it to The Simpsons episode where Homer was a food critic and he loved everything but nobody took him seriously because of that.  That’s me reviewing things I like, “OMG IT WAS THE BEST EVAR!!!”

But in an exercise of practice I thought I would try and at least write about one of my favorite shows.  Top 2 at least, that are still currently running.  That show would be Legion.

Vote

I am taking a brief digression from my usual focus on writing and life improvements to discuss something opinion based; voting.  Yeah, yeah I know.  I’m not preaching at anyone but I wanted to run on a few random thoughts I’ve had about voting lately.  Why don’t more people vote?  Why are we forever stuck in the two party system in the US?  (Yes, I still say “we” when referring to the US even though I live and am a Canadian citizen also.)  Why can’t we just vote for who we want opposed to the “don’t throw your vote away” nonsense that is spewed every 4 years.