Lines

The lines on your hands and face 

Are a reflection of all your yesterdays

Today is a new day

A white blank page 

An opportunity to imagine and create

You can change

You will change 

After all

It is impossible to remain the same 

~ Lines ~

Dead End


If there is a highway, there must also be a low way. 

And, if there is a fast lane, there must also be a slow lane. 

There is another way.

Not the way. A different way. 

It has been said that all roads lead to nowhere in the end. 

But everyone’s headed somewhere instead.

Fast or slow, destination Dead End is just around the bend. 

~ Dead End ~ 

Trail Blazer

"Winning" in the traditional sense is of no interest to me.

I could not care what car I drive, what house I buy or what clothes the guy next to me is wearing.

Such things do not matter to me - status symbols - although at one point they did.

I want to live my way, according to no one else's rules.

No comparison. No games. No winning. No losing.

Never immersing myself in the cheating, thieving, lying scum that is society.

I want to walk in the soles of my own sneakers, knowing that the path lay before me and behind me, was no one else's but mine.

And this way, my way, I will have won.

~ Trail Blazer ~ 

The Great River Said

Yesterday, as I sat staring downstream into the distance the great river whispered to me,

“I have never tried a single day in my life. I began as a drop and despite what you may believe, I have never rushed anywhere in my life, nor have I ever been patient. I simply run and have done so since the beginning. This is what I do. Run. Sometimes slower and other times faster, but never ever have I been in a hurry to get somewhere that I am not already. And I have been all sorts of places, high and low. The most desolate and the most abundant of land. They are all different and yet they are all the same. It is what it is, the life of a river. I roll over and atop any and all obstacles that fall in my way, seeing them for what they truly are. Nothing. Everything. Nothing in the end. Apart and part of me. One big contradiction my life has been. The life of a river. How great it is to have been a river all this time, full of life and water and oneness.”

~ The Great River Said ~

The River Runs

The great river runs

Over and atop all obstacles

Not knowing when to stop

Seeing such obstructions for what they Truly are

Nothing

This is what the great river does

And knows deep down better than anything else

To just keep running

No matter what

This is what the great river does

~ The River Runs ~

False Floors

Ego

Fame

Fortune

Recognition

Reputation

Perception

Pleasure

Are all False Floors

Which which man attempts

To stand upon

Time and again

Yet in the end

Hold no weight

Or any significance

To his life

~ False Floors ~

When I Was Capable Of Anything

When I was a kid, I believed I was capable of anything.

I remember at the age of seven sitting in mile high stands thinking that I could play with them. In fact, I thought, knew deep down, that I was better than them. The then Colorado Rapids that is: Marcello Balboa, Chris Henderson, Adrian Paz, Marcus Hahnemann. My childhood heroes. Yes, I could play with them in Mile High Stadium, at the age of seven. 

I was one irrational kid. Or perhaps, still childlike enough not to know what I was or was not capable of. Of course, I could not have played with them. But is not that the beauty of being a child? Not knowing one’s limitations. Not seeing a ceiling above. Believing that one is capable of it all. 

I pretended to be Hahnemann long before he starred in the Premier League. I would deflect my father's shots, here, there and everywhere, over the fence into the neighbours yard, wide of the posts into the garden. Hahnemann was unreal. I loved the goalkeeper position because of him. Our neighbour even sort of resembled him, which I thought made him cool. “Marcus Hahnemann's look - a - like lives in our backyard!” I would tell people. Funny the things you remember from being a kid. And not to forget the bicycle kicking mustachio'd Marcelo Balboa. He was really the man. His poster hung on my wall for years. My mom loved his long flowing black hair. I did too.

Nearly every weekend my family and friends would pile into our red Mercury Villager and drive the one hour from Fort Collins to Denver to watch the Rapids play. After the ninety minutes were up the players would stick around for autographs. My friends and I would run down to the locker room entrance, reaching our tiny hands over the railings, handing the players all sorts of things, boots (we called them cleats!), shirts, green and white Mitre footballs, anything. These guys were our idols and we would stay for however long it took just so that we could hand them something, let alone look into their eyes, touch their hands or have them say something to us. It was good of them to stick around for us kids. Heroes were not in short supply to children growing up in Colorado at the time. The Broncos were Super Bowl Champs and the Avalanche, Stanley Cup. My other childhood heroes included: John Elway, Terrell Davis, Shannon Sharpe, Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, and Patrick Roy. But, I worshipped the Rapids. 

I remember the Rapids held a camp in Fort Collins where the players, Balboa, Hahnemann, Paz, Henderson and others ran little skills stations. You know, dribbling, juggling, small sided games. For the players it must have felt like an obligation, glorified baby sitting, something written into their contracts that they had to do. Running stupid soccer camps in Fort Collins. It was likely a long day's work which they would have been glad to miss. But I remember trying my little fucking ass off for those guys. I literally thought that if I played well enough in one of those camps, or showed my best in one of those skills stations, that they might just notice me enough and pick me for the team. I would not have even known that there was a coaching staff. I would have been happy enough if one of the players brought me straight back to Denver with the team and stuck me on the bench for the next match against the Dallas Burn or Kansas City Wizards. I must have been seven or eight years old. Completely irrational, just childlike enough. 

And then, I lost it. That thought. That deep down knowing. That magical fairy dust feeling, succumbing for the first time to the thought of "I cannot." For the first time ever, these words entered my psyche. Who knows what it was? Perhaps something a teacher, grown up or coach mentioned or said. Some perceived stab in the form of a passing remark stuck straight into a seven year old's impressionable heart.

Who knows what caused such startling realisation? That I had been dreaming all along and could not continue to do so any longer. So I stopped pretending and put a halt on imagining. Resigning to the thought of "I cannot." No longer was I childlike enough.

~ When I Was Capable Of Anything ~

Hey Kid

Hey Kid,

This universe is much bigger than you think it is. It works in ways wondrous. Mysterious ones. Beyond comprehension.

So don’t spend too much of your time attempting to make sense of it all. Pretending that you know much of anything. Doing so, will only make your head spin. Understanding this universe…

It is what it is Kid. The knowing of nothing. And that Kid, that lack of understanding, how this world works and spins, is a very beautiful thing.

So keep your hair long and heart and eyes open wide. All the time. Knowing that the beauty is always around you. Everywhere. All at once. Anywhere you go. The city street. The open field. The dark alley. The room full of light.

Abundant it is, Kid. The beauty. Absolutely. Abundant it is

~ Hey Kid ~

I Believe In Many Things

My favourite time is 5:00 am or 5:30 am. Sometimes though 7:30 am when I've had a sleep in. At other times, 9am. It's no big deal what time. I've never been one for routine, but always upon awaking I am drawn to the page or what I like to call The White Blank.

The days' canvas. The space where I am granted permission, perhaps by my self or some greater force, to imagine and create. A sacred place where the creative process, a blending of sorts, is given license to occur. Then, for however long, I become lost. For the most part, forgetting who I am, where I come from and any illusions of what I've done or accomplished, letting all obstructions to the truth of life fall down. Revelatory are The White Blank and pen. 

For me, writing is a way of peeling back the layers. On a good morning, a cup of coffee in hand, I work my way somewhere towards the centre. Peering back into the life, the number of lives, I have been privileged to experience. Nearly 30 years of layers now, with each peel comes a glimpse, nothing more than a translucent microscopic layer of onion, a peak if anything, into the life I have lived.

Everyone deserves such a sacred space. This is believe. A place of quiet reflection, where, one is granted permission to become lost. To live if only for a moment, still, silent, accepted without judgement, pressure or expectation of any kind. A human alone with and his or her most clear and peculiar thoughts.

Yes. I believe that everyone deserves such a space. But, I believe in many things.

~ I Believe In Many Things ~ 

There Came A Time

And then…

There came a time when all I wanted to do was write.

So that's what I did.

Perhaps a realisation that this was it.

My life. No one else's.

Despite everything I'd ever been taught or told about what I could or could not do, I wrote.

Devoting myself to the pen and page and that sacred space between.

That place where imagination and creation are given a chance to blend. Never knowing where the words would lead.

But why did the words ever have to end? Why did there have to be a destination? Why did they need to lead anywhere at all? 

So, as I did with everything else, I threw out every definition of success I'd ever believed, been taught or told.

Out the window went fame and fortune, status and recognition or the approval of some person or editor at a major publication.

I simply granted myself permission. Permission to write. Uninhibited. No pressure. No expectations.

Having given me everything along the way, the words owed me nothing in the end. 

~ There Came A Time ~

Common Threads

You know what I believe?

I believe that our lives are woven together

More connected than you and I will ever know

Interlaced in all directions

A great loom this universe is

~ Common Threads ~

Erased

One day soon

All of your words will fade

As will every track you ever made

All there is is today

Best to pave your own way

Best to say what it is

You want to say

~ Erased ~

On Feeling

“How did you know?” he asked.

It was not so much a matter of knowing this or that.

It was just something I felt.

Viscerally

In the core.

Appealing more

To the heart than the head

I guess.

~ On Feeling ~

Alien Question

If the aliens arrived today

And took you away

As the one and only specimen of the human race

Knowing that you would be returned safe

What would their report say?

~ Alien Question ~