Road Not Taken

Sand & Stars

There are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on the Earth.  Think about that.

Say Something

At what point in your life do you stop quoting others and start having something to say for yourself?

Friendergy

The last 10 times you called one of your best friends what was your energetic intention?  Were you calling them because you needed some love, guidance, help, and attention – because you needed some of their energy?  Or were you calling them because you wanted to give them some energy, love, attention, help or guidance?  Or were your energetic intentions mutual?  You called with the intention to give them some love and you appreciated them returning the favor?  What’s your friendergy?  Are you a giver or a taker?  Do you give too much of yourself to your friends?  Or do you take too much?  Or is there balance in your friendships?  The next time you pick up the phone to call someone.  Ask yourself why you’re calling because the answer might surprise you.

Darkness

The deeper you get to know someone else the more you’re able to see all their sides.  You get to see the deeper side that comprises the light that is inside and of them.  You also get to see their darkness.  The side of them that isn’t ok.  The side that isn’t good for them.  And isn’t good for you either.  But, what do we do with this darkness?  Do we hide from it?  Ignore it?  Bury it? Pretend it’s not there?  Or do we acknowledge it?  Confront it?  And surround it in light until it becomes light.  We do you do with the darkness?  How about your own?

Love Letter No. 4

Summer Love II.

….My love for you is stable and steady – it is a foundational kind of love.  It is constant and flows from me calmly like a gentle river on a hot summer evening.  It flows so naturally it is as if it’s coming from within the Earth itself.  It is something I have never felt before.  It is a type of love that is beyond love.  The love I feel for you reaches another level – the highest level – like the tallest mountain in the world where I now stand thinking of you.

Love Letter No. 3

Summer Love.

….Watching you move is like staring at a kaleidoscope slowly turning.  Your colors rotate and swirl around me slowly sucking me in deeper and deeper pulling me off the ground into a hazy sky.  We start spinning around and around each other floating further away from everything that is known.  We are moving slowly with our eyes locked traveling above the Earth seeing everything and nothing at the same time in streaks of flashing lights.  There are no longer senses, no bodies, just energy moving – increasing speed flying in the darkness toward no end.  We are free spirits transcending space and time.  We are clouds and stars and dust and the sun- still moving.  You breath and I wake-up to your eyes staring at me- inside of me with your hand in mine and we have become bodies again.  My senses return to the smell of your neck and the touch of your lioness hair.  I kiss you and wonder how I ended up here.  I don’t understand where you came from and why I get to wake up with you.  Every morning I feel like I went to bed dreaming the most beautiful dream I could imagine and wake-up confused because it wasn’t a dream at all it.  It was you.  Sometimes even during my waking hours I look at you and can only see slowly turning colored light.  And then I know that you are real.  The real version of my most beautiful dream….

No Longer I.

And to wash away.

To disappear…

Love Letter – No. 2

It is a strange thing how we eventually came to be.  We danced around each other for years.  You weren’t ready.  Then I wasn’t ready.  Then I was and you changed your mind.  I got bored and you got interested. Then you got bored and I got lonely. Our friends teased us about it.  But, we always stayed close.  I cared about you and you cared about me.  We got older.  We grew up and we still stayed close.  We started spending more time together and we had fun.  Nothing dramatic.  We knew everything about each other and understood all those things that usually kept us both single for so long.  You need your space and I need mine.  But, there is a look you give me when there is something you need from me and I know exactly what it means.  It is extremely subtle and no one else could understand it, but I do – and I don’t even really know why.

I don’t know exactly when I knew I was in love with you for the first time.  Maybe because you’re so subtle and complex it took me years just to know much beyond your surface.  And I couldn’t be in love with you until I got deeper.  You don’t let anyone deep and I only got there over many years and after I had stopped trying.  I don’t know when I knew what your looks meant either.  I just knew.

Sometimes you’re really hard on me.  But, never in a way that anyone else would know.  We’ve never been that couple other couples leave the party talking about.  You’re not dramatic and never have been and I’m to old for it now.

Even though you can be hard on me you project a strange unconditional love towards me and it seems so deep I still don’t know where it comes from.  I am confident yet certainly vulnerable.  And sometimes your love for me surprises me and I wonder why I deserve it.  It is funny though because it is always hidden from public view.  Even your intense love for me is a part of your subtlety.  Some people might think you are cold, but they don’t understand that they couldn’t handle the emotion under your core.  It’s too powerful.  And you downplay yourself too much anyway.  You don’t give yourself enough credit.  I mean, jeez, you have to put up with me!

Well, my darling after 13 years together there is really no reason for this note.  Except I had a long day and I greatly appreciate you rubbing my head while we sit in silence because you understand my look when I need your help too.  I don’t know how it happened, but we eventually came together and it was meant to be.  Two strange and subtle people living in our overly unsubtle world.  I would say I love you, but it goes unsaid.

My First Love Letter – To An Unknown Maiden

My Dear Lady of Star-Crossed Quantum Entanglement,

You break my heart. I don’t know why we have connected. But, we have. Perhaps our interest in each other has more to do with the forbidden aspects of our interactions than with any other reality if no said barriers existed. I cannot know any differently though because they do.

My carnivorous instinct is to shred your clothing to bits and ravage your body, yet somehow I’m not even most interested in that process or outcome within the realm of your specific particularities. I’ve already known many undersides of the carriage and will testify to however different each carriage may physically be that each ride is always made most comfortable dependent upon its driver. A ride in late autumn with sun soaked leaves falling upon a quiet road in the silence of still air touches the most tender of hearts, but connects with my core only if it is somehow cosmically ordained beyond the pleasantry of that specific temporal romantic condition.

And oh… do I long to ride deep within your carriage treading slowly far along a less worn path just as the sun crests at its golden hour upon evenings’ take.

I am a patient man. Life is a process of seasons designed to teach its most humble beings rhythmic lessons. For every winter there is a summer. For every fall there is a spring. For every patient man there is an unknowable prize. There are unknowable reasons for unknowable connections, which lead to forbidden fortresses in kingdoms that require great distances to reach. Great distances only a patient man can travel.

As I sit and stare upon my reflection in the small puddle, which encircles the reality of my surf-titude, I recognize the vibration in the water sent transcendently from the balcony of your crisp October breath. I hear you without a hint of the most discreet Latin word. I see you without a glimpse into the window of your vail. I smell you as clear as the most poignant spring rain. I know you as if… as if perhaps, you already have known me.

However, the tragedy of your vibration haunts me. Patient as I may be, I know not the way to your distant shore. It seems directions have always been my Achilles heal and although I accept my status as a lost soul sailing aimlessly with a ship of friends and fools I now seek desperately the compass buried deep within my bow.

As a sailor it is hard to trust in the stars. How can such tiny specks of light and dust guide us to our homes? We must have faith in their infinitely aged patterns and coordinates yet I know not how to interpret their wisdom. I am riding waves desperately seeking your shore.

For now, I raise my signal flag. I declare my longing. I climb the tallest mast pulling my wool cap to my brow and mediate on the idea that as a patient man I will someday be rewarded for my journey into the abyss and back. And I wonder and hope that some affairs may already be cosmically ordained. So, that I may eventually ride with you to understand the power of your lands never again returning to this sea.

Love,

Your man of mirage and mist at sea.

High School History & Heaven

From time to time each one of us wonders into thoughts of the truly vast complexity of life.  There are days when the weight of our world and the worlds beyond us rests in our heads and pin down our hearts.

Humanity is a complex and complicated endeavor a truth that you need not look further than your own individual existence to understand.  Though we all inherently know the truth behind this statement these words only represent one of our lives many truths.  There is no ultimate truth behind life.  However, there are infinite layers of truths that guide our lives like stars.

For all the complex truths living just beyond our comprehensive reach there are those truisms all our humblest children come to know.  Perhaps our most basic and clearly stated truth is defined by our own life’s end.  All life ends in death.

This singular and simple thought carries with it a powerful gravity we all face before our own living story turns its final page.  From the beginning of time through our present moments all conscious beings occasionally toil over this reality.

Generally speaking I would assume for most of us our sophomore year high school world history class would not be the place nor the time to be thinking deeply about death or the afterlife.

But, that happens to be a moment in my life I specifically started to think about what comes after death in an entirely new way.

One day my high school history teacher who was an interesting storyteller in his own right walked into the classroom and started writing notes on the board much the same as he would on any other normal boring day in learning of the histories of the world.  But, for some reason on this specific day he started his lecture out by saying, “I know what Heaven is.”

This got my attention.  What is he talking about?  What does this have to do with history?  What is for lunch?  I hate high school.  He proceeded.

“Heaven is whatever you think it is….”

High History Teacher Heaven

He continued. “Since Heaven is whatever you think it is I know what my Heaven is…”

“Heaven is a place with a polish sausage stand.  And not just any polish sausage stand, but the best polish sausage stand ever created.  The polish sausage stand in Heaven has every kind of the most fresh polish sausages you could ever imagine.  A round and red-faced old Polish man who is also extremely friendly operates this stand.  He has any and every kind of polish sausage fixing you’d ever need or want.  He is always ready with your favorite order calling you out by name and asking you how your day is going with a smile.  And in Heaven the polish sausages are always free.”

I remember his story very clearly.  Thinking at the time – WTF?

He continued, “Also, in Heaven this wonderful polish sausage stand is on a street corner next to a beautiful park with gently rolling hills and nice grassy open spaces.  In the middle of the park on the top of a small hill is an old, large, gentle, and stoic oak tree.

Across the street from the park is a library with ornate and wonderfully carved marble pillars and elaborate glowing stained-glass windows.  When you go into the library there are many helpful librarians ready to help you find any book on any topic you could ever imagine.  They will take you to the card catalog knowing just where to search out the answers to you questions and lead you right to the books you’re looking for.  In this library they have many copies of every book so there will always be a copy waiting for you.  And of course, there are no late fees.

If I am able to make it into Heaven I will go into the library to search out a wonderful read for the day and grab a delicious polish sausage with all the fixings.  I will walk across the street and sit in the shade of the large oak tree on the hill to eat, and read, and watch all of the other happy people eating while others are coming and going in and out of the library with the sun shining and a gentle breeze blowing the wonderful polish sausage smells my way.

This my friends is Heaven.”

Hum.  Repeat thought number 1. – WTF?

After hearing my history teacher’s version of what Heaven was to him I had two preceding thoughts.  One being – that is most certainly not what my version of Heaven would be. And two – well then, what is my version of Heaven?

I’m not sure if I thought about it much more on that specific day, but I have thought about it from time to time since then.  And I imagine that my answer would probably be just as absurd to most people as his idea of Heaven was to me.

My version of Heaven is also fairly simple and for whatever reason I can’t seem to imagine much beyond it even though I have, as some would describe, a bit of an ‘overactive imagination’.

I’m happy with my version.  Maybe someday that will change, but for now I know what Heaven is too.

My Version of Heaven

I’ve likely seen too many movies, but for some reason I imagine that in order to get into Heaven you need to walk up an imaginary set of cloud stairs and stand in line at the ‘pearly gates’.  When it’s your turn to get into Heaven you get to the bouncer Angel and he asks for your name and ID like you’re at a bar.  He has a big book in front of him to look you up and make sure you’re on the list.

The list is determined by a very simple thing – did you do more good things in your life than you did bad things?  Were you mostly a good person?  And it’s all there if he wants to look it up.  He might ask you a couple questions like, “Why did you push that girl off the dock when you where 7?  Or why did you throw away your little sisters toys when you were 9?  Or why did you stop to help that old man change a flat tire when you were 19 on the way to the first day of your new job making you 2 hours late? Etc. etc. He would ask you these questions in the same way the bouncer at the bar would ask you your address, birthday, what color are your eyes, etc. etc. making sure you didn’t have a fake ID.

He would ask you a few questions already knowing if you where in or not.  You wouldn’t be on the staircase in the first place if you weren’t already in, but you don’t know that. After a few questions he’s like, “Cool, you’re in.  You did more good stuff in your life than bad stuff, you get to go into Heaven.  Here are your books.”

Your Book of Statistics

At this point he gives you two books.  One is a book of stats.  And the other is a book of people.  The book of stats is a book that has all the statistics from your whole life.  For example, how many hours you slept in your whole life.  How many times you clipped your fingernails, how many pizzas you ate, how many movies you watched, how many times you cried, how many specific sunrises you watched… it is the book of facts of your entire life.  Any single specific fact you could imagine that you would like to know the numbers on from your whole life would be in this book.

It is amazing.  It is everything.  It is your whole life in numbers.  The thought of this makes me happy.

Your Book of People

The other book is a bit more complicated because it is more interactive.  The book of people is a list in order from birth to death of every single person you ever interacted with in your whole life.  And it has notes about these interactions, it has the specific dialogue between you and that person, your side thoughts on this interaction, and their side thoughts on this interaction – it has a written form of perspective on the interaction.  All of them, all of your interactions with everyone you ever meet in your entire life.

This book is also amazing because you can see your whole life in relation to people that were a part of it.  But, this book also has another element to it.

When you read this book it is in a room that for better or worse sort of resembles a police interrogation room.  There is a small white empty table in the middle of an empty room with a single light hanging down from the ceiling with two plain chairs, one on both sides of the empty table, one for you and one for them.  Because when you read through this book you get to bring the people in you’re reading about into Heaven to chat with you.  One on one.

It works in an amazing way.  You can bring them up into your plain empty room and talk with them at the same point in time you interacted with them in your book (in your former life) or at any other point in their living lives as well.

For example, say you had a fight with your best friend on the third day back to school your senior year of college.  You could bring them up to your room in Heaven and talk about it.  You could figure it out… you could talk with them knowing how the rest of your entire life unfolded.  You would be talking with them not as your college self, but as your afterlife self.

Or in that same scenario after having not talking to your best friend from college for 25 years because you moved to India and lost track of most of your friends from before your mid thirties because they abandoned you after your second divorce – you get to talk to him as an old man.  You could talk with him about the rest of his own life.  You would get to find out about his grandchildren, his various careers, and the cabin he loved in northern Idaho.  You would get a chance to reconnect with a person who was for a time one of, if not, the most important person in your life.  You would get to come full circle and answer some questions that you never knew you needed answers to.

Or you could even begin a new friendship with someone you met only once for 3 seconds when they took your money for a movie ticket when you where 42 traveling by yourself in St. Louis on business.

You would get a chance to connect in a new way with everyone who was ever in your life at any point for any amount of time.

But, that is it.  When you get to Heaven there is no one else there.  There are no new connections.  Your living life was your opportunity to know everyone you’ll ever need to know for the rest of your eternity.  The people of your living life are the only people that get to be apart of your afterlife because when you were alive that was your opportunity to meet everyone you should ever need to know.

Beyond this my version of Heaven has a few other perks, but they don’t seem to have the gravity or importance as the 2 books you are given once you pass through the gates.

I guess my version of Heaven would have a comfy bed, I wouldn’t need to work any more, I could eat basically whatever I wanted via a kind of Heaven room service, (I would order lots of pizza, nachos, pasta, beer, whatever I felt like I guess…) and there would be a really cool personalized home theater system with endless amounts of movies that popped up with whatever I was feeling like watching at that time.  My room would have a nice view.  Maybe mountains, a busy street, the ocean, a sunrise or sunset, or whatever I needed at the moment.

But, mostly my Heaven would be the sum total of my living life with a chance to talk to those people who made it so.

That is my version of Heaven.

Again, I’m not exactly sure at what point this became my version.  I doubt it was the same day as my history teacher proclaimed to the class his ideas on the subject.  But, I find it interesting that as I’ve aged and from time to time think about what my version of Heaven would be I continue to be satisfied with the version I imagined.

I like the idea of having a finite amount of people that make up your life and eternity.  It makes me want to reach out to more people.  It makes me want to make sure to say hi to every girl I see that catches my eye because even if I can’t falling in love her now I might get a chance to fall in love her in the afterlife.  It makes me want to say something to everyone I see who seems like they need help because even if I can’t help them now maybe I’ll be able to help them later.

It is kind of like an automatic second chance at the life you are living right now.  But, not a second chance at a life you never lived in the first place.   My version of Heaven makes real life right now feel more important.

And I love the idea that real life right now sets the stage for our afterlives.  My afterlife isn’t a second change, but rather an extension of the here and now.

What about Hell?

After thoroughly confusing our entire class that day my history teacher said one more thing.

“I know what Hell is to.  It’s being chained to that damn tree smelling the polish sausages and watching happy people go in and out of the library for the rest of eternity.”  I think my version of Hell would be if I dropped my books in a puddle and my life was erased forever.  I would be stuck in a tiny white room by myself forever with nothing to do and no one to spend my time with.

To be on the safe side I’m trying hard to be a good person.  So, say hi, and I’ll see you on the other side!