Where Is My Mind?

Walking wide awake on a beach. Wandering through the trees of the woods. Far sighted on a mountainside. Lost in a cloudburst. Looking down on a campfire. Driving aimlessly through town. Smoking the last of it. Losing my religion. Tearing down the walls. Drunk with spirit. Eyes on eyes. Falling off the cliff. Reading your mind. Lying through my teeth. Running away from time. Dreaming of impossibilities. Waking up on the moon. Ditching one after another. Crying deep inside the lens. Drowning the traditions. Peering across open fields. Singling out the wicked. Pushing for new ideas. Stumbling through the dark. Puzzling upon new pieces. Cutting down ignorance. Growing higher than the weeds. Pursuing justice. Struggling to manage the earth quaking. Listening to the sound of silence. Breathing in the invisible breeze. Staring at her long flowing hair. Docking the boat before it sails. Brushing off the years of dust. Complaining about your view. Observing the devastation. Trying to make sense of trying. Saving the memory banks that matter. Finding logic in reason. Floating in space. Duplicating what has already been said and done. Drifting in between thoughts and action. Watching the other planets spin around. Arming the defenses. Staking claim to nothing at all. Sharing the oxygen. Breaking down the situation. Over analyzing your movements. Preparing for the worst. Safely cutting ties with safety. Skipping stones on a river. Flooding the blood flow. Sweeping up the wreckage. Believing the facts. Swallowing all the pride. Giving up on truth. Swimming around the demons. Writing off the past. Laughing for laughters sake. Climbing the Eiffel tower. Jumping through endless hoops. Shooting down the righteous. Waking up inside another dream. Spending the night in the sand. Creating the next motion. Memorizing the shade of your skin. Laying down on the tracks. Minding my own business. Tripping on a flower. Hearing the cries of the dead. Leaving this body. Washing away the guilt. Tattooing the meaningful. Shaping up the future. Burning down the bridges. Doctoring up the scar tissue. Moving from shelter to shelter. Thumbing my way across this continent. Coloring the lines that haven't been drawn. Painting a wall for the last time. Connecting the stars. Fueling up for mistakes. Stepping over the horizon. Riding out the storm. Sowing seeds of doubt. Borrowing information. Playing along with the game. Proving nothing at all. Treading on a thin layer of ice. Cycling around a sea of machines. Dancing along to a dead soul singer. Manipulating the point of you. Realizing I was wrong. Rushing around the waves. Pouring through your chest. Splashing up on the shore. Standing in the way. In the right place. Fishing for compliments. Forehead on forehead. Setting in the west. Looking through the looking glass. Forgetting the names. Sleeping away the pain. Blowing things out of proportion. Blanketing every statement. Locking away the shame. Justifying the unjust. Racing for no reward. Soundtracking every moment. Dusting off the shelves. Buried underneath the rocks. Flying over an ocean of noise. Gazing out into the abyss. Missing the boat. Stroking your ego. Dead upon arrival. Making something out of nothing. Firing off the brightest firecracker. Circling the crossroads. Imagining the first time I imagined. Flocking with the birds. Touching the night sky. Singing the songs of old. Reaching out for another hand. Wishing for some one. Hoping she makes sense. Remembering the colors of the leaves. Wading upstream. Attempting to love. Searching for the depths of the soul. Digging the hole that will hold my bones. Chasing an Indian spirit in a small canoe. Tossing a coin down an endless well. Freeing the chains that bind. Demanding the answers. Asking a million questions. Opening the eye that was once burrowed inside. Thinking about thinking.

Not Quite the Answers You Were Looking For

My room is dark. This is just the way things are for me. I value my time in the sunlight just as much as the next person. When it comes to darkness I believe I might value that more than most. I'm writing down some thoughts for the first time in a good long while. It's dark again in my room. The hour is late. I can't remember the last time I went to sleep before the 1 am hour. My heart is heavy tonight. When isn't my heart heavy. That seems to be the everyday question flowing through my veins. Heavy thoughts flood my mind each day. I have learned to push them aside. I have learned to survive each day with more than I'd like to bare. As humans haven't we learned to deal with the hand we've been dealt. I guess it depends on which side of the card table you're sitting. Some of us born with a winning hand, some of us born with a pair of five's, and some of us humans dealt a folding hand. Most days I realize I have been dealt a pair of five's. In the big picture of this big card game. I'd say a pair of five's isn't so bad. To be honest it isn't the hand I have trouble wrapping my head around. It's the issue of wandering around the big table while watching how the people born with a royal flush treat the people born with a folding hand. At some point in my life I was oblivious to such treatment. I just went a long with it because I thought that's just how the world works. I didn't know much about change. I didn't know people were capable of changing. I didn't know I was capable of changing. Over time I've some how landed right in the middle of these two very different classes. A class that has all the answers, all the power, and all the glory. Right next to the class that is struggling to survive, be heard, and live like a normal human being. I never wanted to choose sides while living on this earth. I'd love to be on everyone's side. Sounds great doesn't it. Every one caring about their brother, sister. Lately though I'm not sure how to bend with one of the sides. I just can't go back to the places I've been. I find myself being so bitter because of the things I've heard and seen from my fellow brothers on this earth. I used to be such a social person. I used to love to get to know people, or so I thought I did. I usually got to know people based on very surface criteria. Stacking up friends in each corner of my house. I thought I was something special, someone special. People knew my name. People liked me. People thought I was a good person. Funny how the thought of who I used to be, well, it just makes me laugh and cringe. I knew nothing. I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew how to love people. How to be a good person. How to Love a woman. How to love my family. How to survive. Now I read letters I wrote from my past, and I see photos from my past and mostly I just want to see them burn. I'd like to think looking back on the past could be a learning experience. That is true in some regards. Mostly I just want it all to burn. Deep down I'm so ashamed of the company I used to keep and demons I left chained up in my closet.

Ever since I was a young child I've been asking questions that no one could answer for me. Oh they would try to answer them. My questions were suppressed by the hand I was dealt. Meaning, I had little chance to get an honest logical human answer to any of my darkest questions. Well the questions never stop leaving my mind, one day they just started flowing out of my mouth. What some people might have seen as a stream soon turned into a waterfall plunging from the highest mountain. With the fear long gone from my bones. I now find myself on the other side of the fence. The side I never new existed. Leaving the stacks of friends left out in a cold fog unable to see where I've strayed. Wondering how I could climb over the forbidden fence and leave the garden of comfort. When some thing like this happens, let's call it change. I've learned that explaining my reasoning or feelings for leaving people behind. Well, that's a difficult thing to do. All I can say is that I now know some things that I didn't know yesterday or the day before. I've been miles behind the curb. I feel I've blown so many chances to live a life. A real life. One that exists on my own terms. I've made decisions that aren't the best for a human living in this society in this point of human history. I know this and I own this, meaning, I know I've wronged others and myself many times. I'm just at a point where I realize these things and it is what it is. Moving forward is the only option at this point. Isn't it. Aren't we always just moving forward, maybe not in the eyes of others, but fuck em. I mean really, who are others to say how some one chooses to live their life. Here we are on this dot in a vast universe, inside of other universes inside of others. Death the only truth we fully know to be true. Who is to tell us all how to live. One hundred years from now these words I'm writing might not even exist, they may never be read and they most certainly may never be understood by anyone. Some people might say, in fact they will say. Well sir, that is no way to live. You shouldn't live that way. It's unhealthy. Well, that's your opinion and yes you have one don't you. I myself have no plans on telling people how they should be living. I don't have any answers for humans. I'm still trying to figure out how to get enough sleep at night, figure out how to eat my next meal, and understand how this whole thing works as it spins on it's axis. I don't spend time with very many people anymore. Why? Well, because I have a handful of people that try to understand me, and that constantly want to explore the under side of the surface edge. The time spent with these folks is quite enough for me. Often we speak about the struggle to understand people in today's society. We labor to gain more knowledge about the world around us. Why things work together and how it effects those of us who are willing to accept the way things are. This life is hard, no doubt. It's also beautiful, and it's also ugly. I have chosen to spend my time with the people that are trying to understand the beauty, the harshness, and the unpredictable nature of living. I have no interest in surrounding myself with people who seem to have all the answers. Who live there lives based on what the status quo tells them. I'd rather drown in a vast ocean than be chained any longer to that never ending wheel of apathy.

Give me the star gazers. Give me the out casts. Give me the free spirits. Give me the so called under achievers. Give me the open minded. Give me the so called liberal. Give me those searching for answers beyond a book. We'll run around with our minds wide open, scraping our knees on all this life around us. Until one day our eyes close and we are buried in the very earth we came from. I'm not the person you thought I was. I'm nothing special. Never was. Just a kid who is still trying to make sense of the hand he's been dealt. Still trying to find sleep before the Sun comes back around to our side of the earth. Still trying to eat enough to wake up and do it all over again. If that disappoints you, then that disappoints you. It doesn't disappoint me. It just makes me another human living in the craziest time humans have ever lived. You haven't figured it all out, neither have I. You won't, and I won't. I hope you make it on your journey, I'm just trying to make it on mine. That's all.

Up From the Darkness the Change Arose

The day was dark. You'd think it would be light. On a day like this. You just expect the sun to touch the mountains you are flying over. The sun however, on this day was not shining. I looked around the plane. I saw a few faces I recognized. Mostly I just saw humans for miles. Faces and names I'll never know by heart. So I close my eyes and slip my headphones back on. What is playing?. Could be anything. The music and melodies are going right through my ears and into the highway locked inside my head. Looking outside again I see the clouds parting ways. My breathing begins to slow as I see what is to come around the next island. Our destination is upon us. It's still dark. The mid day sun should be high and mighty, but it's nowhere to be found. Stepping off a plane into a foreign place will never cease to amaze me. Each time I've set foot onto a new country. I can pinpoint the feeling and the moment. It's one of those things that stays etched in your memory. Maybe it's because of the distinct change you feel in your bones each time your eyes see some thing they've only imagined.

When I travel, I tend to keep to myself. I enjoy the company of others. I do. I also seem to stay locked in my mind when I travel. Upon arriving in a third world country for the first time. A few things come quickly pouring into your mind. You are battling constantly. Battling with how to show emotion. Do you show it right away in the presence of many. Do you just wait and get behind a closed door and begin to hammer away at said closed door with your fist. Do you grin and bare it. Do you close your eyes and hope that the view gets better. These are all questions and thoughts in my mind while driving through the streets of Port Au Prince. The suffering is immense. The distress is immense. The feelings you have in your chest are immense. People tell you of these things in years past. They warn you of what you'll see if you go to these places. They warn you through pictures, letters, and even in well made documentaries. These warnings challenge you to take the journey. Pushing your heart and mind to a place of guilt. As we drove through this ravaged city. I could only feel guilt. Not only a heavy guilt for myself, but also a heavy guilt for mankind. I found myself wishing I didn't have to represent a tribe and throw my own blame around. Wishing only to be a human and nothing more. A human that is largely responsible for the sights just before my eyes.

Haiti is a place of great beauty. People might tell you this your whole life. Maybe you will see this beauty for your self. Maybe you won't. On this day. The one in which I am describing. I had the chance to see this beauty first hand. Piled in the back of a make shift toyota taxi with 10 middle aged men. I looked beyond the destruction and into some thing unexplainable. Face after face after face after face after face. Each one changing in color and in length. These faces were changing at the pace of our speed. Changing my mind ever so slightly as we passed them by. Who am I?. I thought this over and over as we drove through the torrid streets. Who am I to be here now? And what can I do? Why am I doing this? Why am I really here? These are questions that don't leave you on that first drive. I would like to think I would make such a trip with the best of intentions. Intentions of making a difference. Intentions of growing older and wiser as I learn about a different culture. I have not the answers for my decision to make the journey. I've been given more opportunities in this life than the average man. I've thrown away more opportunities than the average man. I'm an american born and raised. What do I really know about life other than what I've been fed my whole life. I don't know how I even arrived in Haiti. My life spinning wildly in and out of space over the last few years. All of the sudden it's a new decade and I'm in Haiti.

I didn't think I was a naive boy walking into his first foreign country when I set foot on that soil. I just new I wasn't ready for the majority of what was to come. Upon visiting the city slums, their isn't much to do other than find a corner to hide. As we walked through the area of haiti in which took the most earthquake damage. It's crippling. There is no safe way to put it. It's just crippling to your soul. Homes and homes stacked atop each other. Destruction on a scale never comprehended. All of the sudden these documentaries are coming to life and coming full circle. Hands outstretched. As the people watch us wealthy americans walk by. They can only look at us with a look that says "could you please take me out of this". Again, who am I?. Just a lucky kid really. Some times I think maybe the kids there in Haiti are the lucky ones. Not being tempted with the things I've been tempted with. Maybe living there amongst those people would have raised me up better. These people with there big smiles and little complaining, only breed more questions in my mind. They make me wonder how happy am I? and What is real happiness?. I couldn't tell you at this point.

Kids playing soccer. Of course. That's what they tell you you'll see when you go. What they don't tell you is this. These kids will ask you to play soccer with them. They will treat you upon first visit as a brother. You will begin to know there names. You will begin to hear their stories. You will begin to fall in Love. Fall in love with big ideas. Ideas of taking them far from harms way. Soon you discover you can't do much. Much in the way of changing the reality they see each day. I found many a corner to hide in upon my first journey through town. Corners I can still see in my mind. Corners I strayed to so I could break down my mind. Let it out. Some people say crying helps your mind and heart. Others say it shows weakness. Weakness is all I knew at the time. I'm still a child inside. I always will be. Seeing these children in this reality and seeing their parents feel guilt for this reality. Well, that's more than I can bare.

You want to scream. You want answers. In fact I'd like to have some fucking answers right now. I wish I could open a book, or open a window in the sky. Some thing that could show me why all of this is happening in and to our world. People seem to have answers for these things I witnessed. I'm here to say, I have no answer for 300,000 people perishing in less than 30 seconds on Jan 10, 2010. I refuse to pawn such a monstrosity off to a higher power. If you wish to do that, well, this is your right to do so. Myself however, no way. I will not hear such things as "these people had it coming" or "this is what you get, when you turn your back on God". These types of comments regarding death in humanity. These comments have no place on this earth. These people in Haiti. They were living their lives that warm January morning. They will tell you stories of the quake. How they were eating in the market with there families. Jumping rope in there cousins backyard. Playing soccer in there front yard. Just living as normal humans try to live each day. When all of the sudden they are forced to witness and experience death on the grandest scale. Death to there friends and death to there families. All in the amount of time it takes some one to complain about having to sit at a red light too long. These people had to fight through this horrific event in nature. Only to have people on the outside try to put a label as to why this has happened to them.

The quake happened and it will happen again. Some where else, to another people group. It will, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What we can do is this. Change our minds and our hearts. We could try and find reasons for chaos, or we could fight the chaos with understanding. Let me tell you, I don't understand much of anything in this life. I have little answers for anyone. I'm not a special child and I'm frequently disappointed in myself and the path I've chosen to take. I do however have some new goals. Dreams if you will. I haven't shared much with anyone in a long time in the way of blogging. I decided to go away for awhile. In more ways than one. I'm finding it hard to come back now and project on to a screen what I'm feeling inside. Especially when it comes to my thoughts on Haiti. I'd rather no one even listen to another word I say. Mainly because I've been a fool the majority of my life. Here I am again on this rambling page. Trying to convey new hopes and dreams while still failing to do so in a respectable manner. What I've got left is this.

Haiti changed me. How does it not. Of course it did you might say. What you can't hear me say is this. I have been given a chance to go to Haiti for the rest of my life. Either I take that chance and do some thing special with it. Or I take what I've learned from those people and those faces, and I run far away. At this point I will choose to remember the names and faces that won't seem to leave my mind. I will do my best to make sure they aren't forgotten or left to a label. I won't do this by myself, it'll be with you all. Because why do it alone. Not with all of you right here with me, feeling just the same about this life. Not many things in this life make sense. Not to you, not to me. Haiti makes sense though. Going back there until my hair is gone, well, that just makes sense. That doesn't make me special or courageous, in fact it doesn't mean shit in reguards to my personality or heart. It just means I'm a human who is trying to love another human. Why Love?. Well, Why not?. If you need to search for meaning in this life, just look at your fellow humans around you. Look into those same eyes, the ones you share. Then tell me there isn't meaning. Those kids we saw, those kids we got to know, those kids we tried to help, those kids we fell in love with. They are capable of shaking up your life. They will change your life. Not in the destruction around them will they change you, but in the love they bring you. If there is anything that I do know, it is that. So we go back and we go back, and others will wonder why and we, we, we will go back.