a drug

Gaze upon my lines; hear the sounds i make;  breathe my scent, taste my flavors; feel my touch.

Gamble.

At times i am pure and other times cut heavily.

Go out on this limb.

i can afford the most alluring high of your life, but i can also can afford a devastating low.

Risk it.

i am sweet or bitter.

Jump.

i am soothing or hoarse.

Chance it.

Don’t abuse me. Don’t rely upon me. Don’t scold me when i am not there, or not fulfilling. Don’t store me away for a day when you are down.

i am only a man.

i need love too.

between

The snow has begun to fall today.

i feel as though i will be trapped here until spring. The warm earth and dormant grass below me and the crystalline layers of snow and cold breezes on top of me. The earth below whispering to me where i will be; the icy layers above percolating to my core the fact of where i am.

i linger between, half full of fear and half full of faith.

i plunge into hell.

i rise into heaven.

i lie here between the two, waiting.

The intriguing nature of life is not composed solely of beauty.

The oppositions dance to create this experience.

Winter and Summer dance within me.

What costumes do your dancers wear today?

Repetition

It’s so difficult for me to be patient.

i want to hold her close, tell her i love her and passionately whisper that i want to take a chance, no matter how big it is. It’s worth it for me. Let’s go all or nothing! i am in love.

Oh, but i remember, i have done that before. It worked for four years, but it didn’t work in the end. Don’t do it!

So the battle continues.

i long for the day i will know.

baggage

Last year it was my goal to walk from the debris littered path of divorce without carrying any baggage. i learned so many wonderful things. i learned a new way to live my life, a new way to see my life, a new way to breath the very essence of that around me. i found the anger that dwells within me and began to love it to death.

Well, i have emerged with a chunk of baggage. i loved my wife like i have loved no other, and may never again. On the flip-side, i hated me. Uh oh. Trouble looms. i thought i could find an answer to my suffering through her. Wrong. My love failed, because i did not love myself. She left. i had all my eggs in one basket; that basket dropped; every single egg broke.

i still look for many answers in women, sometimes all. They fail me; i fail them. They do not hold my answers. i know this, but refuse to believe it.

i no longer put my eggs in one basket and this is trouble. This is big trouble. i have wonderful candidates to join a club that love me and hate me. They would have so much to talk about. The trouble is, they would try to destroy one another in the beginning meetings, turning later toward me.

Fuck.

The need for love and acceptance can push us to such limits.

dining demons

Peace is rare, and welcome in small doses.

Chaos is beautiful, and vibrant.

Silence is excruciating, stagnant, rancid, dark and unbearable.

When my life is on a path…..

Ahhhhhhh! My mind is so filled i can’t even decipher what to write of. You see, when my mind fills, at that point where it slips past the relative comfort of chaos, it shuts down. All becomes black, quite, emotionless, embarrassingly quite. This is not love; this state is anger, sadness, solitude, nausea, jaw tension, back pain, restless legs. This is fucking misery carved up into a jagged cut of fat littered, maggot infested meat being ravenously

another circle

While speaking to my best friend last night i came to a realization.

i lived my life.

i was fearful and distant of relationships.

i craved simplicity and travel.

In the quest for the latter i stopped working on myself.

i failed at one important relationship.

Through the process of this i found the simplicity i was looking for and realized that relationships are very important for me.

In the pursuit of these, i dropped the simplicity i had acquired in my life.

Now i turn to reacquire this simplicity, but realize i MUST NOT lose site of the big picture. i can not push relations away. This attempt must be all inclusive.

Don’t forget. You do not want to repeat.

Perhaps i can sculpt this into a story. i just wanted to jot it down.

today

i don’t know that i can convey the change my life has undergone this last seventeen months with any semblance of clarity or expression. Some know excerpts, and a few now can see the manifestation of such change in my life. The truth is, despite my omnipresence in my very own life i often have limited realization of the different place that i meander through life in today when compared to then. Today is an exception.

Awaking to the warming morning air, after receiving the first eight hour slumber of the week, i am stiff from the probable awkward posture that i remained deeply within for the duration of the night. My first instinct is to breathe in and listen to my heart’s desire for the day, which i do. Two items jump into my heart and flow to my mind: yoga and a pot of the most delightful tea i have ever crossed paths with, ginseng/peppermint, from one of my favorite coffee shops. i also feel drawn to perform some task with a semblance of responsibility to it, but know that without following the heart’s desire that my day, even if very productive, would be empty.

Thus far my day has been full. Arriving at the Prana retail store where they have periodic free yoga classes in the basement i feel mildly out-of-place, but not as awkward as i would have historically been. Shuffling around the new quarters i change from the motorcycle wear and into shorts and greet the instructor, who informs me that the class she will be teaching is Kundalini, as she is substituting for the “yoga-for athletes” instructor. i have done Kundalini once before, which was very peculiar. i smile at the proposition, with memories of the embarrassment i had felt many years ago in that only other class. The chanting, breathing the “breath of fire” with quick abdominal thrusts, talk of lifting my pelvic floor, other peculiar movements, talk of liver cleansing and balancing of sexual energies was face-reddening and heart-rate increasing for me before. Today, instead of choosing embarrassment i approached it with open arms. Despite having only three other students in the class, small groups generally being a trigger for heightened anxiousness in the past, and all of the peculiar aforementioned items occurring in today’s class i feel at peace. After class i felt wonderful. On to lunch, then the coffee shop, where i now sit and write.

Tonight i go to my old best friend’s house, also known as the woman i was once married to. Our interactions over the last 17 months have wreaked my heart and soul with turbulence that i have never before felt to such a high degree in my life. Today, i feel excitement to see her. i’m not certain why, but it has taken over the areas that were once permeated with dread. i know not how our interaction will go, but i do know there is nothing more i would like to do then give her a smile and  a warm hug. She was loved, and still is.

i now move on with my day.

Where do i find here?

i am asking a question this evening about my life: “Why does it seem so empty?”

My life is by all accounts quite beautiful. Perhaps i am simply desensitized to my own experiences that have been occurring for so long.

The stories that i could tell of rafting,relationships, canyoneering, mountain biking, spiritual journeys, loss, grief, love, God, beauty, suffering…….

i really think they would be so intriguing to so many, but to me, they often do not seem intriguing. They are simply, my life, which i don’t believe is truly magnificent in any way. It is average, at best. Tell this to the IBM programmer locked into his florissant-lit cubicle deep within the bowels of the industrial, sterile, emotionally-stark, back-up-generator-wired compound as his sclera turn a shade of red and his vision begins to vibrate as he approaches his eleventh hour of programming and he would perhaps balk. How could a day of sun-absorbing, bleeding, aching, fatigued flesh being challenged to such a degree while high in the circuitous, treachorous terrain of the Rockies that the eye of God becomes tangible to the man astride the multi-thousand dollar mountain bike be considered average to the programmer, as he periodically sneaks glimpses throughout his day of adventure blogs, just to become inspired so that he can dream his way through the tedious process of coding?

It seems at times mundane to me.

i crave something “more.” Travel perhaps to more distant lands, or more superficial relationships, perhaps more deep relationships, or maybe more spiritual focus, or greater generosity……..

Fuck.

i just want to be content where i am, with what i am doing, where i am at, surrounded by who i am with.

i just desire to be.

Where do i find here?

empty room part 2

When the man begins to push away others he remembers his previous companion, the little girl, gasping for air behind the door. With fortune, that memory will be emblazoned in his flesh, carved into his soul, for the remainder of his days in this life and whatever may come thereafter. When you have the knowledge of someone’s delicate past and you somehow forget….. you must remember…. you can not forget again.

You can not forget again.

When i do forget, i rip the scab away, or sublux my emotional shoulder by placing it up like a tree branch against the door frame and shifting my weight forward. i bury my serrated knife in the scar and carve it out to freshen the ache of heart. i bite my tongue and strike my jaw on the dresser to remind myself of the pain my words have the potential to shed.

“You are loved,” he says, “but i am not so sure i will not forget. Please be careful with me. One day, these methods will have diminished effect.”

“What then?”

i do not want to forget.

one ring part iii

As i stand in the kitchen i reach down with my right hand and begin to spin my wedding band on my finger, feeling the tension of the flesh and titanium interface decrease with a twisting pop, then the coolness and smoothness of the ring as it glides around my finger, propelled by my other hand. While speaking of the nights plans with my roommate this fidgeting continues. i then grasp my ring finger with my right thumb and forefinger, bending it mildly backwards as my left palm touches the counter, allowing my finger to snap to the counter.

The usual metallic snap is not there as my finger snaps to the cheap counter top. i stop mid sentence wondering what is wrong. i look down to see my ring missing. “Where did i lose it?” My heart drops at the prospect, but drops further only a second later, as i realize the ring has not been there for ten months. i can’t regain my simple sentence that i was mid-way through. My jaw is as low as my heart.

Where did this come from? i haven’t had something like this happen for nine months or so.

The divorce is heavy on my mind as of late, for reasons uncertain. i have tried to make peace with things unspoken, but they lie beneath.

What now?

Find other people to love me? Check.

Side-track myself with adventures? Check.

Sleep? Check.

Write about it? Check.

Embrace it, feel it, allow it to change me for the better? Check.

How long will this last? How long?

one train

i sit where we once sat, the emotion of the last time together here has percolated into the wooden floor, blending with the aqueous emotion of the million other meetings of the past and present between friends, family and strangers that occurred at this table.

That very emotion now rises through my shoes, funneling with the roar

Fragments

“BE NICE OR LEAVE” are the words painted onto fragments of metal, one word per piece of rusty-edged steel. The rectangular metal plates are joined by rusty chains that hang vertically from the ceiling of the coffee shop.  i drink a pot of jasmine and peppermint tea, mixed with soy milk and sugar, allowing it to linger on my tongue and tickle my nose as it mixes with the essence of the room that is warmly embracing me with it’s painted concrete floor, wobbling tables and creaking benches.

The return is not easy. The energy expands from the Dantien, washes outwardly and manifests itself with haphazard words that arrive on the screen via the process of quaking fingers, shaking legs, shifting, and rhythmic drift. The lapses of typing are filled with closing of the eyes, breathing in, listening to the sounds of the musicians and imbibing the beauty and mystery of those around me.as they are fueling the return to creativity that has been absent for months.

The environment fuels my desire for writing, for loving, for longing, for embracing the pain, the beauty, the complexities, the fragments of the world that make this life so pleasurable.

The barista’s girlish smile starkly contrasts the complexities of her eyes to such a degree the contrast fades..The upright bass player’s poetic stage-presence mingling with the melancholy sax causes my mind to drift to the Jack Kerouac paperback in my bag. The guitar player with the yoga mat that sticks out of the top of her guitar case brings a vibration of humor into my elbows.

Who, or what, holds the key to my creativity?

two creaking chairs

After excitedly noting there was a light on in the house as he parked his truck, bear strode into his home, greeted by four rustling, wagging mountain-dogs, one of which is “his.” At the realization that no room-mates were home a sensation begins to wash

14 hours…

The canyons beckoned to bear from the pages of the guidebook, portraying their facets through the words of the author meeting the mind of the desert-dweller. The one that strikes a tone within the tuning fork of his soul is wondrous…. eleven repels. Inside, as bear reads the page, his sixth sense says, “Good morning sleepy, this is too technical for the group.” Bear smiles, acknowledges, and says, “Thank you, sixth-sense; i appreciate your honesty. Are you ready for a ride, because i am? Hold on, and feel free to speak freely, but be aware of this: i am probably not going to listen. i crave challenge.”

The hot noon sun on the route-finding in…..

The mystery of the frogs croaking in the pot-hole below the first rappel…

The trying new systems…

The learning….

The beauty….

The grandeur….

The dynamics of the group….

The falling sun….

The hunger…

The thirst…

The twelfth hour…

The help of one another…

The ideas…

The weaknesses arising…

The strengths shining….

The moon lighting the belay device….

The final rappel…

The female intuition….

The knowledge that she was probably correct…

Go.

Not enough rope.

Hang.

Trouble shoot, communicate…..

legs go numb….

how to get down from here, without first going up….

there must be a way.

There is.

Go.

Keep going.

On the ground.

Let another’s strength lead.

Thirst piercing throught the tongue and meandering through the lip.

Keep going.

Suck on this pebble.

Thank the moon for her light.

Keep going.

What a beautiful series of days!

What beautiful country!

What beautiful friends!

What a blessed life!

Learn of yourself and of one another. With these, my life will be perpetually full.

Without, my soul will crumble into the darkness.

Darkness

A cold, dark arm reaches, clutches and pulls in the man as a flat voice vibrates into his ear, ” Come back home, where you belong.”

The man’s heart skips a beat as a vibration of terror electrifies the very vessel of his soul, from the spine to his nail beds. The man softly steps