Category: Uncategorized

What got you here …

What got you here won’t get you there…

a known phrase in business…

also applies to life I believe.

You want to see someone wilt in front of you, become defensive, and just shut down…

criticise them.

It’s been called a lot of things,

Nagging, henpecked, micromanaging…

But what about the voice used when talking to oneself?

I was good at this one thing …

But what got me here won’t get me there…where I aim to be and where I’ve set my goal…

I must become good and go from good to great and this means growth…

I have to undertake difficult things…uncomfortable things…

——-

Everyday there’s countless distractions, grooming us on how important we are…and how much more we deserve …

We have the best economy in the world, the global 1 percent is us…30k something a year and that’s the GLOBAL 1 percent …

We’ve never had it better…

But am I aware or am I just coasting on autopilot?

Just showing up …waiting for my annual raise …

Just showing up …

Waiting for my annual vacation

Just showing up waiting on my “passive income.”

Just showing up …

Like I did in baseball

Knowing I’ll get a photo and a trophy at the end of the year …

Just show up …

Where’s the burden ?

The weight

The work …

Hard conversations …

The practice field where the sweat and the blood and the scars and the bad habits are broken and new ones formed…

Practicing basics …

so well understood …

That we don’t move or compromise on them …

This is where values are forged

This is where we don’t compromise

This is where we look at ourselves and we understand …

Life is a series of stages …

What got us here won’t get us there…

We must be growing …

What else is there?

– E

Concrete Rain

The lights of the evening sunset, run across my car as I drive down 280 in this, a concrete city… a city that was called a magic city…

Only now it’s beginning to rain…

The colours run…

We vacationed in lieu of breaking up …

That’s what I think I wrote somewhere …

Channeling Didion… “in lieu of divorce…“

We went swimming in the ocean

We went swimming in heated pools

In ice cold pools

The sun and the sand burned our skin

The riptide and current and salt

The pools

Cooled us down in the evening

I didn’t drink

I am still sober here

I am trying here

Trying not to run

Trying to face something

The thing inside myself

The fear outside myself

I am trying to write again

A true sentence

Without delusion

Just a truth …

We stand on the outer edges

Looking in

On ourselves

Waiting on a drop

An echo of cutlery on the floor

A raised voice

A shadow of something we’ve thought we’ve seen before

A reason to leave

To return to familiar loneliness

To return to something else

I am 32 here

Soon to be a father

What will my son learn from me?

What did I learn from my father?

Without trying ?

Between the spaces ?

Between the sentences ?

The silent places …

Let there be a hope

A space for truth

A space for patience

Let there be a space for love

For love

For courage

Don’t fall with me

Don’t

Just stand

In this silence

The beating heart

Words on paper

Light in sunset

Across June

32

Becomes time

Time is fleeting …

Oh son …

We are not infinite

We don’t get all things back

We try to stand cautiously or chaotically

Live live live they say…

Or fear fear fear

Even trying not to make a mistake – you will…

And trying to live as tho you want to drink every wine …you will be drunk and lose the moment and memory…

Just stand patiently and be prepared for opportunity …

And ride with the sunset…

Know who you are…

Know who you are

-E

Peace like a River

30 for 30

———

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll—
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well with my soul.”

  • Horatio Spafford

These words were penned around 1873
Horatio lost his business and a fortune in the Chicago fire of 1871 and his four year old son to scarlet fever … sending his wife and daughters on vacation across the Atlantic thinking it would be good to get away, their ship sank, killing over 200 people including his four daughters…
Later passing over the same spot…he penned these words…

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll—
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well with my soul.”

I want a gospel
That tells me
It is well,
Whatever my lot,
It is well,
In the good times,
It is well when I’m poor,
It is well, when I’m anxious and scared…
It is well…
It is well…
Whatever my lot…
It is well…
Not just on the top of the mountain but down here in the valley
In the place I’m in…
Peace…peace like a river…

-E
#nationalpoetrymonth #30for30

Writer’s Log #33

Why write?

And to what purpose?

If the god idea is on the outside of the known universe

Then a creator is on the outside

Of their structure of work…

Or the structures of society…

There are no sharp edges

No walls

No ceilings

You can create whatever you want

But why…

There is a feeling –

And like most things- it’s lonely and likely,likely, a minuscule group and not the reality…

But there is a feeling at least for myself…

That it’s an Instagram society

And we must purchase

Exchange something from ourselves

To attain something – a special key – to unlock ourselves ….

But I don’t think we are a puzzle …

With pieces scattered throughout the universe …

We are whole…

Right now…

And there is a feeling- a pressure- that it must be

Insightful

Inspiring

And useful

——

Again…

Imposter syndrome is likely my culprit here…

If architects build structures

And landscapers lay foundations

And gardeners set tables

Artists

Are the emotions

The colours

The sensations

The memory

For society

Imagination is so important

It’s doesn’t even have to be good or great

Just show up

Even if you sit there 250 days in a row and don’t build anything

But on the 251st day

You do

You’re an artist in and out of season

You matter

——

The older I get

The less I am impressed with people

headlines (they sell stories)

There’s nothing new under the sun

We gripe on our parents

Our children will gripe on us…

We feel important and like we are doing a great work

but we all will grow old and slowly fade into the corners of rooms

Possibly becoming punchlines, ignored and suddenly we will understand how our parents possibly felt

And

There is nothing new under the sun

It’s so easy to just fall in line and be an echo

I could write about how lovely my wife was until we divorced and then it would be so easy to say she failed in the marriage and crucify her…

And most people would be ok with that

It’s easy to occupy an established place until you step out of or over a perceived line and then you become a punchline or headline and are reminded of your place

There was a writer from the Middle East

She wrote me once and asked me to keep writing …

I read her work

And all of her writing was about losing friends in school

And bombings

And religions

I thought what it must be like

To be surrounded by religions

And people selling you something all the time

Maybe we are just another echo when we pray…

I have doubts

Like a flood

But I think about her a lot

And I – I believe in art

And so I ask

Why write?

To build

Brick by brick

Forget about what you think you know

About headlines

About social media

everything is marketing and nothing is as it seems

So …again…

What are you saying and why are you saying it?

Who are you saying it to?

Why do you want to say it?

What happens next?

——

– E

On our way

1

You think the Apex of all pain is losing a parent…

You tell yourself, ok, this is it…nothing could hurt more than this – (losing a parent or a divorce etc)

And then you lose a brother…

And there’s such fresh pain

Pain you can’t even understand

It’s just there…

In such a way

That it feels so unfair

it levels the field

You feel

Cheated from something

You don’t even understand

——

2

There’s no order

To this madness

You think

Ok, there’s parents you’ll lose

You prepare for that

But losing a sibling

Is so different

Whether you’re close or not

You really understand the brevity of everything

It wakes you up

From the grind

From the hustle

And you look around you

And you see

How quickly and randomly

All of this can go away

——

3

This funeral home

Where our father was

Where all of us end up

Through our history

Whatever we may do

We end up here

How strange that

We won’t be living

This ache

This invisible target

We really don’t know

—-

4

How complex

How layered

We take things so personally

I remember losing our father and I thought it was all so personal

And it was

In its way

But there is always hurt

Beyond what you see

There is always layers

There are years

Entire decades

Of complexities and issues

That we know nothing about

It’s all so blurred

The lines

We think it starts and ends with us

A moment in time

But it’s layered

Traits, ethics, work, talents, looks, pain, old pain, new pain, life …

I lit a cigarette and I smoked it

I probably shouldn’t have

But I wanted cheesecake

And didn’t have it

And I felt that I was overthinking

——

-E

Regardingsamuel.com

Beagle in the City #300

Ethan: Well, we made it buddy.

Simon: We did?

Francis: Frashasha! (Plays drums)

Ethan: This is our 300th!

Simon: Oh boy! What’s a 300?

Ethan: We’ve been through a lot together…

Simon: Here’s a sniff back…I was saving that one…

Ethan: it was funny.

Francis: I’m buying you both a jokes book…

Tides

I didn’t know what to write

Was hung up on a line

I knew the world was bleak

I had experienced moments of happiness

But

I’ve always been engaged
To suicide
I just never got the vows right
I can’t explain that either

The claws in your back

Controlling you , grooming you, like a puppet

Rivers of blood

The parasites in your ear

Driving you mad

The blindness

The mad years

——-

Six strings under

Filled with earth

Void

Of soul

And worth

——-

I dreamed about the time they gathered all the art

No laws were broken

Only changed

And called it worthless

Censored

How dare artist make so much money for lines across a canvas

While the working man starved

A child could do this, it doesn’t even give anything to society, it doesn’t lift up…

—-//

Let me tell you….

Religion says to deny yourself

Culture says to conform yourself

Art says to free yourself

If there is gods or god

Yes

There is a madness

But there has always been an autonomy

A breath of a prayer

A single drop of ink

A line

That cuts the page

It speaks life

While you believe you are dead

It speaks hope

While you believe you are hopeless

It is art

It is autonomy

It is your voice

It is your vision

It is yours

Significantly yours

——

I kept thinking about these things

And I kept dreaming them too

I didn’t want to lose parts of myself

I didn’t want to lose any of myself

Maybe this is what you write

When you think too deeply

Maybe this is what you write

When you don’t know what to write

-E

The last line

There was evil, and there was memory and who knows when you first meet either of the two. He knew he saw her standing in the woods in the dark when he was little. Her black dress…long hands…

That was when he saw the lights in the sky.

He saw her again when he was house sitting for his grandfather after his grandmother died. He could hear her long dress moving through the hall at night. Always just catching a glimpse of her entering the rooms.

The night his father died, he saw her through the window, sitting in the rocker. He knew then he had passed.

Maybe it was when he drove the long drive to his father in law to tell him he couldn’t love his daughter anymore…

He saw her then…

He kept hearing the words

Sick in the stomach

Weights around his neck

“You’re not the victim here, if you do this, it will end in destruction, you’re on a dangerous road.”

“He’s just lost. He’s lost.”

He sees her now, every night. In his door. Just like he did before…

She just stands there and then floats away. Sucking all of the light and air out of the room.

Who knows when you meet evil…

There was also a different figure

Blonde red hair

Blue eyes like stars

And fire wings

She was there when he had a seizure in a ditch

She was there, reading, when he was in the hospital, she was there always…

But lately she just smoked and made fun of his poetry…

He wondered if he would off himself

Or where any of these were headed

He wondered what any of this was…

If he was going to lose everything

If anything really ended in destruction

If he was even good

Really

He felt empty and numb

He wondered

If it was really possible to run out of time

Because he felt everything ending

And

What any of it was about