Alive for Now.

Alive for Now.

In the quietest of

Still moments

In the perfect silence

Between one breath

And the next

 

I become aware

That I am alive

 

When I watch

The dawn break

Like a wave

Over the darkness

And shadows

 

I take a moment

To remember

That I am alive

 

Sometimes when

A stranger

Bumps into me

Or our eyes lock

And we both smile

We see each other

In the reflection

Of another

 

And we tell the other

Without any words

That we are both alive

 

I let myself feel hunger

I let myself enjoy the pain

I loose myself in love

And sometimes

I take things too far

I say what no one

Ever dares to say

I laugh out loud

And I learn from

My mistakes

 

Because I need to feel

Alive

I don’t know any other way

To feel

Alive

 

It all comes crashing in

At the strangest of times

Taking hold of every

Fiber that creates

A reality that seems

So very real

While shaking the core

Of the heart

And the soul

With a simple truth

 

That

I am alive

 

It sneaks in

Unsuspected

And unexpected

But there is no way

To deny

Or stop the progression

Once the journey

Has been started

There are more emotions

And feelings to be felt

 

Because

This is what it means

To live and to be

Alive

 

As much as it seems

Like this should be

A comfort

Or that this thought

Should bring security

 

It can be scary to face

The knowledge that

Our stories end the same

And all

We need to learn

Is how to finally live

Like we are

Really alive

2/6/2013 10:30 AM

Growing Pains

Feeling Grown Up.

There are some things in life that creep up on you, there are other things that happen all at once, even if you are not paying attention. Growing up is one of those surprise things and it can be as subjective as beauty and innocence. Everyone has different standards because everyone has different standards for themselves. There are constant signposts along the way to growing up and some days are better than others. The best way to deal with these fluctuations is to blame other people and put it all on someone else, calling them immature because face it, we all act like children sometimes while children can sometimes act much wiser than their years.

Admittedly, growing up was something that always terrified me. For my entire life, I have done everything in my power to remain a kid, not only at heart but in thought and deed as well. It’s a blessing and a curse sometimes. Growing up always seemed like a terrible bore to me, not really something to strive for. Then it happened, I couldn’t help it and I put up a good fight.

My last two jobs made it quite obvious that there is a distinct line that has been drawn between my generation and this current one. First was a water park for the summer, it was horrible. Standing in the hot sun all day with kids that had absolutely no personality and watching families having fun and playing. Being one of the only people of age, most days I did this hung over too and puked on a few people who shouldn’t have been wearing bathing suits that they ran around in with pride. If I had not figured out how to rip them off on my shifts, I never would have made it there without killing someone.

The next job was slinging coffee to the masses. Another pointless job made for kids not grown-ups. Although this was one of the cases where some of the kids were more mature than some of the adults. I wanted to strangle most of them every day. If you grow up and find out that you are not worth anything more than that, it hurts. What was the point of growing up? How was I supposed to survive like that? Eventually I lost it and gave up on the beaten path. Some may say that what I did was wildly immature, I think it is incredibly mature to recognize that I was unhappy and brave to make the changes needed to make it better. Much like having kids, I am mature and responsible enough to realize that I am nowhere near mature or responsible enough to have a kid. If you think about how many people out there who bring children into this world when they are not ready, you will get it. I wish more people would grow up and figure that out too but since the world is already overpopulated, I guess the damage is done already.

So now here I am, trying to take myself seriously as a writer. Doing things like my own taxes, going on diatribes about the world and putting together books for publishing. Friday nights pass and instead of going out to bars and getting hammered while some band plays, I do things like make resumes, apply for jobs in pay scales I have never earned before in my life and work my ass off to build the career I have always dreamed of. Some of my favorite bands have played recently and I just couldn’t bother to move from in front of my computer, I couldn’t stop writing. Now Saturday has come and gone in the same way. Now that I have a resume, I had to spend some time putting them up on different job searching sites. I am hoping for the best because I miss my friends, I miss going to bars with them. There are times where I convince myself that I have done really well for myself since changing my focus and I can say I am putting it all behind me but I now see a time where I emerge from my cave back into the world ready to make my hobbies and interests a paying profession. If that never happens then well, such as life and the nature of growing up.

If I am grown up enough to get my license taken away for drunk driving, I will eventually have to get past that stage of my life too. Now that I am here though, I still feel like I have a million more miles to go to really be a grown up. Getting married should be one of those things that means I am an adult but since he is as much of a big kid as I am, I doubt that will ever happen. I look forward to never having to grow up with someone even though we are going to grow old together.

Now that I have figured it out though, that yes, I really am a grown up, I can stop running from the facts finally. So what if 90% of my music collection is almost ten years old, who cares if I have found myself stuck in an era with entertainment. It’s all part of the process, just the way it goes. Scary stuff though.  It’s like a new pair of shoes, it’s a feeling that needs to be broken in and shaped until it feels right. I consider myself lucky because I can finally see these qualities in myself, once this sort of potential can be grasped and understood anything is possible.

I don’t really question it anymore, I am happy that time in my life is over and for once I finally see light at the end of this endless tunnel. At the time, I remember being pretty freaked out about becoming a teenager too and that didn’t really go so bad in hindsight. No one ever said it’s easy to grow up or figure yourself out but the other part that they also don’t say, is that if you’re lucky, growing up will always be one of the greatest challenges in life and that if it is easy, you’re doing something wrong. Seeing this truth for what it is might be one of those side effects of feeling grown up.

3/4/2012 12:36 AM

The WM3 Case.

West Memphis Three.

Admittedly, I never knew much about this case. Years ago I had heard about it but didn’t pay much attention, even though I know that I should have because it is a case that involved everyone I know and everything I care about in very close way. At the time all I knew was that come black t-shirt wearing metal heads had been convicted of a murder just passed on the clothes they wore and the music they listened to. It was a scary reality but I dismissed it a witch hunt, I felt safe in my insulated little world full of black t-shirt wearing metal heads. The same thing had happened over the years with many artists and it always turned out to be a random connection that had nothing to do with anything other than abject hate and prejudice, paranoia and ignorance.

Tonight I learned more about the WM3 by watching a well-made documentary on HBO. It was the third installment called Purgatory, and it summed up everything that happened from the start. Over two hours I was taken through how the police had railroaded these 17 year old kids and painted them as devil worshiping psychopaths. From the start these guys maintained their innocence. I didn’t know that the victims were actually three eight year old boys, the police tried to say that this number had satanic significance, when really, even someone like me who learned everything about the law from shows like Cops, Law and Order SVU, Dexter and CSI, the obvious answer to me would be, convenience, those three kids hung out together. If the police can use that same theory to convict the older boys, why not assume the same thing about the kids. As I said though, I don’t know much about the ins and outs of things like that so I won’t debate the corruption of the government and how completely screwed up this story was. All the info is out there for people who are interested, all the craziness has been a major story in the news for years, for the sake of continence, I will assume that people are aware of the West Memphis Three and move on.

What really bothered me, what upset me the most as I watched this movie about these poor guys that have now been in jail for a longer period in their lives than they were ever free is that even though they were freed, they had to plead guilty to do so, this does not seem right to me. The most screwed up part of this story is that this government and judicial system STILL did not admit that they were wrong which means that they are still not trying to find who really did it. It is all well and good to release these wrongfully accused men but there still needs to be some sort of justice for these families that lost their young children all these years ago. Now this has become the focus as all the men are now trying to clear their names, after almost two decades. It is a scary state of affairs in this country; another example was the Casey Anthony case. Over the last few years it has become obvious that our legal system is completely broken, democracy and the economy is soon to follow.

More people need to wake up and I wish I had done so sooner. The rest of my evening is going to be spent doing research and learning about how I can to get involved and learning more about this. For a while it was all you heard about but now it seems like you hear nothing, that should really change and all those lives that were destroyed need to be able to find some sort of peace.

Things like this make me angry, makes me turn up my heavy metal and wear my black t-shirts proudly. We know who we are and we know how it comes off to others but like any form of prejudice, people who do not know will always have their own ideas about life. I suppose it is fair, since I do lump all rich, snotty, yuppies together. Everyone needs someone to hate, the differences between us will always be a focus point for so many people in this world. It will be those focuses of differences and hate that will eventually be the undoing of everything.

1/12/2012 11:58 PM