//Distinction//

The ability to foresee the risk versus the gain is what makes my mind clear. Through prayer and humility, all answers reveal themselves. Quietly, indefinitely. In time.

At our birth, we are expelled from our mother's womb. Harvested. Bloomed. Ready to pluck.
Tabula rosa. Undefined. We have no names. No sin. No thoughts. Only sensation. This sensation is extremely high. Our brains are fresh, cells, rapidly reproducing. Heart, fragile. We have no fears or hang ups about what people think of us. We don't even know what people are. We are alien to all of humanity, and its volatile nature.

Life and experience mold us. We are palpable beings. Young spirits. Easily lead. Or misled.
By default, we know nothing but what we are taught to know. Thinking philosophically for a half second--Plato's Cave . If you have never seen it, undoubtedly it will be more difficult for you to grasp. As anything unheard of.

I am, two years old.
The blinding layer of protective skin that shielded my eyes from pain is removed.
Peripheral vision restored. The only problem is, I don't know quite how to use it.

Sensory information is how many of us attach ourselves to reality. If we cannot feel it,
or better yet, our brains cannot feel it, it is as good as invisible. I'm not talking What The Bleep Do We Know here. I'm talking in context of simple internal perspective. We exist through our feelings. But our feelings are so interchangeable. How do we build solidarity within ourselves?

Two years old means very little in this world.
I can feed myself, I can push forward, but I'm still trying to put all the puzzle
pieces together. I know the conventional way is not the best way, but as I figure
out what way is the best way, I stumble from time to time. Just learning to hold on
to my things. Just learning what it means to be am an adult. Just learning how to
protect myself mentally, physically, and metaphysically. No matter how far I run
from my reality, the closer on me it sticks. Like the smell of freshly chopped garlic
underneath your skin. I am still learning and growing. In spurts I see myself jumping.
What was once dire is not anymore. I have Jah first and foremost. Not boys. Not
friendships. Friendship is a funny place. A place in which extreme love must exist.
But all of my friends know my spiritual journey persists. I am not leaving Jehovah's side.
I know too many people that are so lost, they try to find their own way, not seeing that end of the tunnel, it's all the same. I know my tone here is somewhat morbid, maybe bleak and too
descriptive, however each one of us is entitled to our story. Our perspective. I expect no
one to tell me otherwise. I expect to continue on this quest. I expect to persist with my spiritual growth.

I can remember all the years I lived for you.
Knowing nothing better to be true, I could have cared less.
That twinkle in my eyes, she told me God's light was shining inside me.
His child.
These days, I'm not so angsty, so childish, so self serving.
These years flutter by, cloud after cloud. Day after day. Blink after blink.
My voice is getting louder. My walk prouder. My reason, stronger.
I remember when he held me through the night.
And I felt safe there.
I can't say the same these days.
I can't stay the same at all.
And all we know about each other is fading.
A dying wind, meant to stir up somewhere else. (In someone else's life.)
For the first time.
I can admit to myself and the rest of the world,
all I hear is the sound of my heart beating.
With each pulsation I recognize myself a little bit more steadily.
All I have is what I was blessed with.
Nothing is above or beneath any of us.
Those that struggle less, are often more fortunate.
Clean water. Trees. Grass Sunshine.
See. Smell. Taste. Touch. Listen.
Balance. Family. Friends.
A creation, as pencil touching paper.
We are not accidents. We are not here by chance.
But our lives are limited, and how we exist in
them even more so. It is the moment we acknowledge this,
that we begin to wake up. We are really free to do anything.
There is always a way. It may not be easy, or obvious,
or even practical, but it does exist.
In this tiny universe in which we comprehend,
one day we will admit we know nothing, and that we don't age
merely by year, but by principle.

Time management

There comes a moment in life where when your back is pushed up against the wall you either shirk in terror, or you face that enemy or entity head on. Yeah...I'll admit I'm an overachiever sometimes. It's in my nature. I make plans on top of plans. Meet tons of people, help them, and still want to go home and ride my bike, make an amazing dinner, talk on the phone, and do homework chaque jour. What the eff? Is that even realistic? This morning I was tete a tete, mano e mano, with myself. You never want to go to war with yourself. You'll always lose. I wake up automatically at 5:30 AM. My friend invited me to jog. My body must be so excited to do something I actually like that it wakes me up earlier than I would even move. 5 stinkin' 30. Roll around. My bedroom is in a state of disarray. Level 4 on the Hurricane Wind scale. My body and mind are bot telling me that this time I have truly outdone myself. Good. Guess this means I'm forced to fall off that metaphorical high horse. We think we can take on the world, but really we can't. We can only do what we can do. This morning when I got up to go, each time I looked in the mirror at my reflection I convulsed somewhere inside knowing better than to keep pushing like this. It's bound to catch up with me. I have a 9 AM Environmental Management class. Sounds nice right? Except that by that time I'm burned out. The only environment I want to manage is my own. So I dropped his class. I did it. I had to. Absolutely bleeping positively had to. I don't like school enough to allow it to dominate me so much that I cannot find time for myself within its midst. The intoxicating stench of avarice rears its hideous head in between my nostrils. I gag with disgust. The best thing to do at this point is to rebalance and orient myself. As that happens, I can finally cope and attain real goals. Ambition was not meant for the weak.

Remember When...

The exterior of you is hardened, but your core softer than the innards of a ripe peach freshly plucked in the spring. I'm trying so very much not to get too close, but as we both know, gravitation is all too easy when energies are magnetic. I close my eyes. Letting the feeling wash over me, I pray for a new day to make things right with you.
The sun rises, and I know my chance is now. Unbinding my arms and legs, I walk a free woman. Slipping in and out of your consciousness. I invade your thoughts, and you are in mine. But for the first time I know better than to fall docilely into this entrapment of the notorious sweet nothings and late nights cuddling cozy.
My mind is not racing. But my life is. Literally. Flashing. Like the canon camera you hold on occasion, making me as permanent as the film strips and ink mirroring my subdued expression the moment you took it. I am into no one this way.
----

My entries cannot begin to encompass all of my experiences, but one thing is apparent. I am a lover always. I have 3 homework assignments to do, jogging in the morning, a 9 am class after that. a test. a field trip. a math class in the afternoon. books to read. Life to find. There is not a dull moment. Savor each day.

I love my bike like nothing I've ever loved. It gives me hope of this new day. It reminds me that I am growing, moving, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere. It is a symbol of my new found identity. Some think I'm rasta. I think I'm awakening to my very porous being. I am fluid like the wind. You cannot repress me, but I can die down and reappear elsewhere. I must be climaxing, because I just feel myself rising--floating--right out into the stratosphere.

Scattered.

The older we get, the more memories we accumulate.
Mixed emotions surface now and then as I approach this new crossroad.
Every month is a transition. I can't wait for stability.
And I want to lean on something. But it's like a kid trying to sleep in a moving car. At some point the driver will stop, "everybody out." Temporary fix.
Relax? Every moment seems more amazing (and unsure) than the last. Maybe because I realize everything I have is at the mercy of one small fire, car accident, the wrong phone call, and so on.
Our lives are so fragile, and yet we spend it doing nothing. I've been harping on that thought lately. Little ants in the field. Turned on automatic. Scurrying into nothing. But I can't run that way because it's like my brain wasn't built for slavelike progression. If you can be placated by the basics of this society, be prepared for the brick wall that follows. I just want to live and learn, with guidance from others, but in the way people were intended. Not just proletariats following orders. School. Work. Pro-Create. Dance. Sleep. Take your medication. Repeat. Play the stereotype. Put on that wig. That mask. That facade.
I am carefully making my next move into the right spaces. Is it safe to say I'm on the right path? I'm not sure today. Distractions. Right from wrong is not as black and white as we all pretend it is.
I want to lean on my spiritual knowledge, head knowledge, and ingenuity.
But the direction is not clear. I'm my own cartographer, but the direction changes all the time. I am left feeling desolate. I attempt to intellectualize the present and come out feeling more curious and bamboozled than before I began.
Sometimes the best move we can make is to stand still. Listen. Running with no perspective and you may as well be running in circles. I love you. I love...the word itself, and how my thoughts jump heavy as I type this. With each day comes a new realization. As my aunt says,

"The closer I get to the grave, the more life is revealed to me."

2:03 AM. Feeling brand new,

Like fresh out the box brand new.
Like clean cotton sheets against just showered mocha.
Like fresh electrical wiring, blue and red intertwined, winding round and round. Coiled perfectly.
Eyes turned inside out.
I'm melting into somewhere new.

Skin clings to flesh like velcro bending backwards.
The melody makes me gyrate my hips in a way that I can't control.
Sweat trickles. Breath moist and heavy.
Eyelids open. Close.
Betwixt and between the interchanging glances, I can see something really ...primal. Intuitive dereliction.
That thigh strokes me and I pretend I don't feel a thing when inside my body is screaming somehow. In a quiet way. Forget we ever met. Sounds promising. But hard when I've never been able to run away for long.

Show me the light, the truth, and the way.

Rippling sound waves play on me. Rhythms so deep I can't keep hold onto anything but the music notes. It's okay if you can't go deeper with me daddy-o. I know which way to go after we find ourselves bored of nessling in one another's arms. Thanks for the good time. I just left my empty glass of wine, tipped over on your hard wood floor. Bite down hard and say it ain't so. It gets me every time.

The list

(An artsy shot in Tuscania on a rainy night.)

You know. That incomprehensible list of things you want to do over the course of your short existence? The list of goals piles higher and higher. Stacks upon gargantuan stacks of interests, releases, people to meet, limitations to shatter...
I feel like I'm flying and falling all at once, on some days. The mind has the propensity to shoot off in one million directions, but the course society has set (particularly American society) has reigned me in, on many occasion. I think I'm supposed to make a decision, thrust down that rabbit hole, and see if I come out, still able to take on that next hole. I have the tendency to avoid the definitive, but I'm so pratical that everything else is a joke to me. Thus far, life has been pretty funny, as I have dipped and dodged its misfortunes. I like to think prayer has played a major role, but part of it is I have yet to grow up.
So grow up. By the end of this year I will have hit twenty. Or twenty will hit me, I suppose whichever one comes first. I'm hoping I'll knock it pretty hard though.
Definition:
I must define myself, or society will define me.
Fantasy reality:
I want to excel and first tackle the environmental. If I believe I'm living
in the generation of the eleventh hour, nothing is more important than getting my ducks in row, so too speak. Environmental equals projects.
True Reality:
I need Jehovah more than ever. Focusing on the spiritual will help me. I must distance myself from things and people that distract me from my goal. If you are not aware, all I need is to reach spiritual clarification. My relationship with my spirit and the Almighty. If all else fails in this life, I know that is the most prominent actuality that we will all eventually face. In this world we can be distracted by an infinite number of things. But, there is one way which will save you from all the heartache, dysfunction and corruption you will be faced with. The way is found in spiritual clarification. You can study everything else, and without this your soul is as good as dead.

I don't like to tell people that. "It's preachy!" They say. Or, "You're always looking at the negatives!" Question, if you live in a society that perpetuates (and I mean lives, breathes, seeps out destruction [i.e. egotism, murder, starvation, avarice, political warfare, STDs, divorce, oversexualizing children to the point of teenage pregnancy and rape and sexual predators, druglords, crime, and poor health] wouldn't you want to disassociate yourself with that as much as possible?

It's hard to talk about, but with very few. Rarely do I. But every time I find myself subduing to my own destruction I realize the discomfort my spirit feels. It's not fun to share your perspective with others only to have them attack you savagely. We have been programmed to believe that seeking spiritual depth is not as important as the car we drive, the partner we choose, the amount of money we stash, and we are foolish. These distractions--It's like giving candy to a child. They become like puddy in your hands.

Back to the matrix. Guess I will sit down and do a paper on the economic dysfunctionality of our core government and law enforced America. "Money makes the world go round." Money indeed does grow on trees.

[Design] your reality. --Basic

I want.
I need.

Wake up. Slow down.

1. New location
2. Spiritual depth and development
3. Applying to scholarships
4. Applying to schools
4. New job
5. Travel to new lands
6. Be patient with myself. (Be patient with yourself.)

I am able to stay strong and allow my troubles to melt away.
I enjoy helping others and myself. I am open and receptive to all the good
and abundance I experience in Jah's universe. I am able to say what I need to say
and stand for what I believe. I have an amazing job and purpose in this life.
I love children. I eat well and stay healthy, and often make these dishes for others.
I am okay with that. I always have someone to share my experiences with. Those things remain constant in my life.

Selah.