Editor’s Note: You are encouraged to click on the musical links if you desire, enjoy them as you read, creating an interactive experience whilst we honor the copyright of artists included on our ‘soundtrack.’ but not required if you prefer to read quietly. Options. We here at TSRWM™ aim to please. Namaste.
It seems to me that it seems to be the end of the road for You and Me.
For only now I hope and for all likelihood longer I expect but I am accepting and already have you in my heart and mind, quite sincerely, forever. The Heart wants what The Heart Wants, I suppose. Also, I have read and agree The Heart is The Mind and mine align between body and soul to apprehend what is what from a vantage point approximating thirty-thousand feet up, allegorically speaking, a panoramic awareness of the high that Love offers me in the fantasy, in the reality and its cigarette shared, smokey Moonlit afterglow, your head on my chest, sharing a glass of warm wine, the romance of living a complete spectrum of all that is worth having, the glory and the mess, the sacred and the profane, the hope and the despair, the chance to move the world in even the slightest manner of maneuvers and refrains.
Love is not in the air. It IS the air. It is the stars and The Sun, Moon, The Earth in all Her wondrous divinity, curves, contours, hidden parts of mystery and transparent offerings that delight. Love is Love. Light in its highest form. Still, it’s always hard.
Saying Goodbye. Letting go. Trusting. Peacefully finding a way to abide. Your path is yours and mine is mine, each unto their own and whether the weather is hot or cold, whether we’ll be together until we grow old is not as relevant as cultivating that hope, that together, apart, unioned as a couple, quarantined or throwing in one’s lot with comrades near and far, we yet will make a difference in this tiny place we all call home. We are, after all, on our own. I know this and, still, I persist in enjoying the ride with all its turns, twists, downs and ups to make some sense of it, to leave this life a better person than when I entered and this place better for having participated.
Think of all the unsung heroes who aren’t Karl Marx or Bhutto or Buddha, Allah, Ghandi — Indira or Mahamet — and Fahmida Merza, to name a handful of recent and historical figures whose influence cuts wide and deep. Do we make a difference? Are we a ripple in clear water, deeds of one or a few, even many spreading out to reach the shores of distant people as waves upon the sands of our time on this habitat? It’s an oft-debated look in literature and film. The answer? Unequivocably, unequivocally “Yes!”
If you look honestly, without imposition of ego, on your self, if my ripple never reaches you I trust in that it reaches all those who need.
Your waves crashed into me at the apex of history, herstory and WEstory, looking at the ever-changing, narrowing borders between us and difficult choices, questioning, asking of us all what we truly are, what do we want to be, on many levels from the individual to the grander scale as a global population—economically, morally and ethically? We’re at a fundamental turning point now a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century.
We meet, intersect and move past each other in a near-blur of human liquidity, via trains and airports, walking on bustling city blocks, scrolling along social media landscapes and driving out on open roads, looking forward and glancing back, ruminations and plan making all in the name of keeping one step ahead of what? Sadness? Boredom? The conspicuous nature of our innate isolation as single beings, together—alone, all seeking something and not only the what but for what? To what end and purpose?
Hey, that’s game, set and match whether or not each or some or no one stops to ask.
This is not some existential exercise in rudimentary self-examination. It’s an answer: To be part of the one continuity that has had no beginning nor — as of yet and would we even know if it occurs a when? — end and only for the recordings of humans are we able to pass it along, make any sense of it? Sure, we move the needle forward in the material and scientific ways, technology and some slightly advanced understanding and mapping of the human brain.
Yet we have not changed and I am not convinced that the bloodlust, the greed and the vulgarity won’t ultimately snuff out the good. More likely, they will continue to co-habitate within our four walls, the ones of our minds and bodies, the ones we build to create a sense of hearth and home, the ones to keep others out.
Our highest ideals, our greatest gifts and the pursuit of our strongest interests — these could be the three pillars of a new world, whose order is the fourth, where everyone is bound by a civil and social contract of their own design and choosing, one which at once resonates and works in harmony with each and every other soul because doing the right thing is not that complicated.
I suppose if we need to etch them into commandments and laws then, yeah, perhaps these common boundaries and decencies will constantly be trampled by the gross indecencies of consumption, oppression and greed, culminating in the occupation of sovereign spaces — those of individuals, other species and entire nations.
Our lives are energy, pure energy, vibrations, the causations of those we receive and the ones we send back to each other, the ones we send out to the world in our words, our deeds, our thoughts and prayers in an increasingly interconnected world, reaching virtually — almost and cybernetically both definitions —into every nook and cranny of the planet, every being we encounter from the smallest to the most seemingly inanimate, luminous beings all connected as energy, light in its highest form — Love.
That and Peace are the only choices we have left.
Looking after each other in the stead of all these unceasing forms of division, it’s true. John Lennon imagined correctly that we’d need no armor, no shield nor weapons, no borders or flags nor political affiliation. This constant jockeying for position, staking out turf, is only about exclusion on the one of all outside what is deemed, and by a select group deeming, what and whom and how is appropriate to maintain control over resources from minerals to food, water (a basic universal right for all creatures by the way) and services.
On the other side resistance, revolution or, worse — especially in the Age of Internet, digital distraction — exhausted capitulation and resignation, really another form of trading what is within the bandwidth of terms of acceptable agreements: sacrifice my voice; yield my rights in the name of safety (See: Fear); and permit dignity to be stripped bare if it means I am permitted to keep this little bit I have left right over here. The cruelty is the point. Every day the battle for me is enjoined in what I am willing to do, say and be in order to move the needle, stand up and speak out for what is right. Not left, not center, not right politically — what is correct. Maybe this here is a quaint little exercise. I hope it’s more, a ripple in clear water, a song to fill the air. And yet, it’s a path for my steps alone.
Otherwise, it’s the status quo — “to each his own” but for the problem, the pesky issue around fear of the unknown that is how we continually end up back in the same self-defeated, self-destructive place, hoarding of wealth and information while extinguishing the rest, slowly peeling their fingers from off the edge of the lifeboat.
So, sure, yeah ok? Life — it’s about the constant mojo, the buzz, rattle and hum and all of it helps us inform a reality that is, at its zenith, willing to try and do the math, explore the science, read history and educate our selves to be our best, to do the best we are able instead of dodge and burn, blur the realities of simply being in this place, in this time. Hangin’ out.
We could choose living here and now and not solely on some cloud, even as the fevered dreams and illusions carry me, carry all of us, along through the daily grind of doing what must be done. Hopefully, we can find our way through, combining practical realities with aspirational efforts between the setting and rising, even the passing beneath us as we sleep, of That Lucky Ol’ Sun. Personally, I think The Sun in its entire existence has worked the hardest, ceaseless and is the least appreciated.
Are you a very serious person? I mean, really, are you very intense and singularly only focused on a life in an activist’s work ? You seem to possess great levity, perspective, empathy, a deep awareness, sensitivity and keen interest on a broad range of what it means to be the sum of our parts in our collective soul, our human fragility and tyranny. Dunno. And maybe I read ignorant on these pages but I have a reason, a method to my madness, often times imagining others’ lives all far more compelling, filled with meaning and aimed towards a goal, a purpose.
I have historically skirted most all sense of what I perceive as legitimate — what is carved out as particularly male-defined but also a “traditional” career path and responsibility. If I were born into let’s say an artists’ colony or one full of academics, perhaps I’d be filled with far less ambivalence, historically one foot forward and two steps back.
To take the time to address here with You all the details of what has led me to, for example, eschew a ride through forms, roles and values all stamped out for society’s norms, to avoid the especially successful (even by artists’ standards), hustle of middle class, capitalist roles, would detract from my purpose and is best left to the ongoing dialogue with my therapist, if I could afford to see her anymore. Suffice to say, I fumble my way from one day to the next, making it up as I go, no set plan, taking up causes and commitments, always seeking to redress the wrongs I am able to write and create and regenerate.
All of that is simply not worthy of your time. Possibly it is left best for another post at a minimum. However, simply said: to rub two sticks or dimes together, mix flour and yeast, make fire or bake bread, earn a respectable keep, to save and invest and look after my brethren? That one seems still dubious at best, out of reach for me just yet.
I don’t even question L’eau du Mois is a discount fragrance, a top note with just a hint of desperation, the heart note a romantic longing and the base rounding it all out with a certain joie du vivre. Intoxicated, to paraphrase Selena Kyle stealing Frank Lopez’s cautioning Tony Montano, on my own supply, I still believe and dare new dreams, hopes and inspiring choices injected into The Collective HeartMind Stream, all of which I trust mean something to those whose lives I cross, giving of myself with my natural gifts in pursuit of my most cherished interests. I’d like to say this is MEISM but actually it’s Kreischerism.
Dave Kreischer, known career consultant and coach, heart to heart, keeping the focus on living your truest self, focusing in on your greatest gifts and your highest aspirations. It’s so simple. It makes sense and yet it took me so long to get to that. Then again, Time isn’t after us and it’s just a construct. At the very least I highly recommend we all believe in our worth, value and purpose, if blindly in faith following along that path.
Maybe it means helping move the meter a bit on the human discourse away from discord and division, aiding and abetting social welfare and global participation where we as a race may yet draw nearer, form a more perfect human union — juntos — finally persevere in a singular state of grace, healing and repair. Love may not be the answer but along with compassion, hope and maybe a touch of that blind faith we’ll get to that ‘paradise’ where religions toil as mere imagined place for ‘the next life.’ We can choose instead to regenerate that destination to arrive in the here and now, not merely some day we fantasize is better, to which we think we are entitled or some place we earn for our time toiled away here on Earth, particularly after we collectively fuck this place up?
Sure. Right. Seriously??? A Paradise Room? With space to breathe??
Why would anyone’s gods allow us yet one more chance? Maybe I’m missing something in between the lines of man-made laws positing as The Gods’ commands.
This is the one chance, the one take and the one space.
Let’s maybe all try to pursue a life of Nihalism.
I think I mentioned that one in chapter two, possibly three. It’s all a blur to me. I’ve gone on far too long. Inimitable, inevitable, not-so-pithy me.
Sorry. Not Sorry.
Meantime, I had come upon the writer Kahlil Gibran's words some time ago before I encountered You. I summarily read this passage after I had professed my love to you, to me remarkably yet not without coincidence, the same feel as what I wrote, at least in my HeartMind’s intent, very much so in this seemingly bottomless chortle of prose and an attempt to cultivate my public-facing exhibitionist’s cultured, romantic interlude. He writes:
Somewhere, I believe, is a place for us, all of us, every sentient, mineral, rock and plant being. The answers lie ahead between, with and from me and you.
I Love You. All of You. Always.
ME
Bonus in-piece soundtrack:
Can’t Find My Way Home, Steve Winwood
Bibliography
The Heart Wants, Amia Srinivasan
The Heart is the Mind, Shonali Sabherwal
Whether The Weather, English Nursery Rhyme
Benazir Bhutto
Fahmida Merza
The Cruelty is The Point, Adam Serwer
Makin’ it Up as I Go, Raiders of The Lost Ark
Joie du Vivre, Wikipedia
