I learn from my mistakes.
I don't listen to the intuitive voice in my thoughts (the collective meeting of stimuli, the stream of consciousness, patterned neurochemical firings, etc.) like I should.
On my desk, a laminated sheet of paper - the elevation profile and location of aid stations/Port-o-lets for the 2003 Huntsville Times Rocket City Marathon, which I did not finish that year.
Runner # 979. Age: 41. Sex: Male.
We don't always get what we want, especially if we listen to the wind, pay attention to the wants and needs of others, and put us/them into an external collective meeting of stimuli, stream of consciousness, patterned neurochemical firings, etc.
In first and second grade, I didn't know my best friends happened to have dark skin and adults called black.
In fifth grade, I didn't know my favourite football quarterback happened to have dark skin and adults called black.
It wasn't until the next year, when a white family moved down from Detroit, Michigan, to Kingsport, Tennessee, that I first heard the word "nigger."
That's when I learned about the power of words, even though I still didn't understand what a "nigger" was (I kept thinking it must have been a Midwestern pronunciation of chigger, the way the kids from Detroit tried to explain to me their understanding of the word).
And here I am, almost 40 years later, still confused about the power of words, even though I use them like any skilled artisan creates imaginary worlds or functional furniture with a set of favourite tools, leaving out a paint stroke in a form of a missing comma like the arm of a chair with a pine knot that sticks out.
I look at my wrinkling hands again and ask what they're doing here in front of my face.
At any moment, I could die from natural causes, or seemingly random accidents.
I am a soft, fleshy set of states of energy slowly dying of preprogrammed obsolescence.
I assume we're all intelligent enough to treat each other intelligently.
I take what people tell me on face value because all their words can do is act like words.
I am, as I constantly remind myself in my thoughts and in these words, a glob of reflective glass that reflects, refracts and magnifies comically, un/conventionally and unintentionally.
I absorb the energy of others and pass it on.
I am both my own hero and my own villain.
I am who I am.
The worst of myself and the best of myself I leave out in the open as much as I can see what they are and represent them in humourous fashion as characters using the words you give me to speak in this space.
All I will ever accomplish will be my death.
The rest is an attempt to fill the space we call living.
It is what it is.
We can use any labels we please.
I will not take away your words but I may copy them here as a reminder to myself that "I" is a label to delineate the states of energy that have not been transferred to, or shared with, the states of energy labeled "you."
That is all I know.
Meanwhile, I look at the wants and needs of others and determine what aligns with what in some imaginary manner I call a balance of sorts, knowing that life is not fair and what one has another does not.
Should I care if I hear/watch others comfortably ensconced within their subcultures using derogatory labels and taking negative actions against those outside their subculture just because there is a coming together in a public space that we bipeds share on this planet?
In other words, what is private property, internally or externally to the self (if such a distinction can be made, now that we understand we're all just temporary states of energy)?
I, because I am childless and have no vested interests that prevent me from accepting death any time between this moment and some undefined moment in the future, am up against the rest of the world of my species, and I know it.
Not necessarily "us vs. them," but close enough that I have to ask myself how much my actions are motivated by such a phrase.
Therefore, I think it is in my best interest to push hard against my thoughts that enjoy playing the emperor's new clothes' game, and move toward what I would want if I always got what I want.
I want what others have wanted, to make the discovery that allows me to find a portal, transport out of this shrinking inside-out box of a planet and learn to live in a new set of labels, symbols and states of energy.
Do I get what I want, being fully conscious of the transformation before death transforms me into a nonconscious, dispersed set of states of energy?
I haven't, yet. The future of such a possibility is unclear.
Our future here is pretty easy to squeeze out of these fingers, over and over and over until I am tired of playing the futurist game, except to twiddle my thumbs while the clock counts down the DNA decomposition of the states of energy that are me from time to time.
Sigh...these old thoughts are tired of regenerating themselves and pretending to be something new in the next moment that is never completely promised to exist for every one of us.
I let these thoughts flow through and out of me because I know who I am and what I am capable of.
I believe in myself enough to crawl over and into the abyss of the unknown.
All I can do is die or suffer excruciating pain while alive.
Otherwise, all else is happiness and joy that I am alive to imagine what is, isn't, will be, or won't.
My nest is empty but I am not.
These are just words and words are what they are, sometimes just and sometimes not.
Forgive me while I ignore you for a while and purely pursue my personal dream.
I know who I am and who I must be.
This blog may or may not go silent for a while.
The sign of happiness is quiet as well as loud.
A stalk of wheat does not shout after it's fertilised but it has met its only goal.
My goal is here in the private property of my thoughts and also here in the public space of our lives together on this planet.
My seeds have been these words for almost 40 years now.
Time to look for a new garden that requires a different kind of seed to sow a future in a universe we have barely begun to understand that exists in and around us.
Thanks to my nephew Nicholas who shared a quote from Barry Bonds that it's okay to be lonely at the top.
The word "top" is a label that I've only recently understood.
The power of words.
Silence.
The same thing.
Make friends and influence people.
That's what we do.
Cap'n, give me the wheel! We're taking a new direction that requires a course you won't find on any map!
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