Today, as our annual review time is coming up at work, I began to think about a favorite quote of mine. You see, for our review, we’re required to write up all of our accomplishments for the previous year and present them to our supervisor. I have a relatively short list of accomplishments because a great many of them have required a large amount of time to complete. But most importantly, my job has required of me a very vast number of skills. It has been necessary to be able to work with a great number of people with extremely varied backgrounds, specializations, and to get them all to work in some kind of cohesive mix on each project. And each time I write down a new project that I’ve worked on or had to be involved with, I think of the following quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a

Continue readingYou’ve dreamed a thousand dreams, none seem to stick in your mind

I have a love/hate relationship with my writing. There are times when I can’t stand not writing, and then there are weeks or months where I won’t even bother to pick up a pen and come up with something. This has been one of those weeks. Not because I had nothing to say, but because it wasn’t the right time to say it. My thoughts sometimes need a few days to ferment, and to come to fruition. If I force that, I end up with bad writing and something I simply wish I never wrote. That being said, this last weekend Alison and I went to Seattle. We saw my favorite band, Floater, on Friday night. Of course they played an excellent show, and as is par for the course, I drank a little too much and poor Alison had to help me find the hotel later. I’m sure I could have found it, but it was nice having a sober person there. Ha! I remember asking her if she’d like to skip with me back to the hotel, and she declined. I was bummed. In fact, tonight as we were getting dye to change my hair color I offered

Continue reading…And some people change, others hang on until they can’t anymore…

It may just be the alcohol talking, but you’ll have to bear with me. I have a tendency to over think things, and when I’m drunk, my mind tends to wander much further than I usually allow it. I tend to keep it on a tight leash, otherwise. But occasionally, I give it free reign (scary, huh?). In quantum physics, and more specifically, quantum theory, we have equations that explain the existance of certain phenomenon and effects. We have equations that describe the movement of time, paradoxes, and the way that matter may simultaneously exist in two different states at the same time. The big bang theory explains the creation of the universe, and more to the point, the things that happened immediately after. There was an explosion of unimaginable power, and we suddenly had matter and anti-matter scattered for light years in every direction. In that instant, time and space and all the forces that make everything work properly in our reality had sprung in to action. But why? I know that that is the eternal question. It is such a basic and fundamental thing to say, “Why?”, that we all learned to do so almost as soon as

Continue readingAnd the days were long and the nights were bad… Time erased the dreams we had

You’ll have to excuse me, as I’m a little drunk as I post this. Yes, me. Drunk. I ran across this great quote today, and I couldn’t help but think, “Hey, that pretty much describes my working day.” Ready? “Auditors are the people who come in after the war has been lost and bayonet the wounded.” Yes! Don’t deny it. It’s true.

The most thrilling things we experience are often the most dangerous, or at least, the most terrifying. We need not risk life and limb to have a need for courage. Life is full of situations where we risk something much greater than our lives. We risk living with a mistake, and that, as far as I’m concerned, can be much more humbling than something as simple as death. As Tom Robbins said in, Another Roadside Attraction: Courage? You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you ever risked disapproval? Have you ever risked a belief? There’s nothing particularly courageous in risking one’s life. So you lose it. You go to your hero’s heaven and everything is milk and honey til the end of time, right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That’s not courage. Real courage is risking something you have to keep on living with. Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts, and suffer change, and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one’s cliches.  Love is a lot like that. It takes courage, resiliance, and sometimes, it just isn’t very pretty. In the film, Look Back

Continue readingOne thing I know by now is that in the end, you can never swim in the same river twice

Why is it that doing right is almost always the hardest thing to do? Why can’t the right thing also be the easy thing? This morning, I’m caught between what I know is right and what I actually want to do. I don’t want to make the phone call that I have to make, even though my ethics and morality require it of me. Sometimes I hate the fact that I’m principled. I have no doubt life would be easier if I could simply suspend my ethical objections about something… but that is what makes me who I am, right? It never feels like I’m doing right, even when I know that I am. I imagine the reason for that is that when I’m doing the right thing, it feels like I’m losing. I feel like I’ve conceded defeat and now I’m only reveling in the eye of the storm, and waiting on the rest of the hurricane.

In chaos theory, there is a phenomenon that has been established within just the last twenty or so years. It’s the idea of large scale failures of complex systems because of a single, smaller flaw. In other words, the old saying, “A castle is only as strong as its weakest point.” Within nuclear missile silos, they deal with something fairly similar, called “resonant yaw”. If a missile is even just slightly off during launch, or if it’s tilted on the pad, as it travels along it’s trajectory the missile will fall further and further away from its target. The problem becomes larger and larger until there’s a noticeable gap between the destination hoped for, and the actual destination it actually comes to. Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this. I’ve had a lot of people question me recently. They’ve been asking how I can write so much poetry about God and the like, when I don’t even believe in God. I can understand the confusion, but it surprises me that so few people consider that “God” is a shifting definition, depending on who you talk to. While it’s true that I don’t believe in a galactic super nanny, I do

Continue readingAll we monsters are divinely born, our fingers pointed to heaven, we direct our scorn

I’m writing this from an office on the 7th floor of the building that I work in. It’s nearing 10:30am, and I can see the city sprawled out below me and the sun glinting off of the river in the distance. I can see the freeway, a few bridges, and a good portion of downtown from where I’m sitting. A lot of people would kill to have a view like this from their home. I know I would. The many times that I’ve worked late here, I’ve sat transfixed and watched the twinkling lights of the city and the stars in the sky. It’s absolutely stunning, even in the day. But I find it fascinating that, after a little more than two years in this building downtown, I’ve somehow become immune to this same beautiful view. I don’t stop to admire it the way I used to, and that concerns me. I wouldn’t call it complacency or getting used to something. I suspect it’s something far darker and more worrisome: It’s that I just don’t care. I’ve stopped caring about how beautiful the view outside the window has become, and largely, it’s because I’m too busy to care. I work

Continue readingAnd all we see is outside our cages, the whole god damn world seems to fly

Let’s talk about relationships, life and death, time, distance, ashes and renewal. My cousin, who lived to be three months old, will never make it to four months. Her body labored, quivered, and finally faltered beneath the weight of having been born prematurely. She passed away. I’m saddened, of course, but it’s certainly not the same loss that my uncle and his wife are experiencing now. They are mourning for the loss of their child; a child they will never know but will always question the possibilities that once lay before them. They will wonder forever at what might have been. Of course, that is one of the reasons that losing someone at a young age is so difficult. We are left to wonder what things might have been later in life, or what potential might have existed. I know a girl who talks to her mother every day, even though they are separated by several states and hundreds of miles. There is a connection there, though, and that is  from knowing someone for an entire life.  The relationship still changes and still grows. Even after a lifetime of knowing each other, even with distance, they can choose to learn

Continue readingIt feels like we’re drinking and driving… it feels like we’re running in to our hearts

The brittle stillness and silence, the stars shine, and I’m currently sitting on a playset in an elementary school playground behind my house. The night sky stretches out for an eternity in each direction, it’s 1am, and I’m not sleeping. The wind blows gently out across the field and I can feel the Earth give a relieved sigh in the rising tumult. If I were sad, I suppose that I would weep. If I were angry, I suppose I would scream. I’m not sure I feel anything, though. It’s late and I should be in bed. I should be sleeping and, ideally, dreaming. But instead I sit on a playground and write my heart out under the soft glow of street lights and stars. I’ve written a dozen or so poems tonight, and they all seem pointless and trite. I’ve thrown them all away. The lines and stanzas are dreamt, written, recited, and discarded just as quickly. Nothing that I write will ever be perfect enough; I may tread the line in to mediocrity at one point or another, but I will never surpass that. I’m left without much more than a few paltry lines, and a sad smile to

Continue readingAnd there’s a hole deep inside of me, that I just keep pouring whiskey in… but it’s not filling