Reminiscent…
I sat on the back porch with my guitar, hanging out with my old friend 'Jimmy'... Buffett that is...
He wrote a little song called, "A Pirate looks at Forty". Catchy little tune, about how time just slips away - often leaving one wondering, just where did it all go?
I sat back reflecting on the past year's events, calculating the angle and speed of my travels... hoping to predict my new destination... yet, that still remains a mystery. Today I am in Utah, tomorrow the same... the next Virginia, then Georgia, then Alabama, then... who knows.
I have soaked up Texas sunsets and Utah snowfalls - Alabama breakfasts, and Georgia smiles. They all feed my roots, yet those roots have not found a good hold anywhere. I just keep blowing down the road. Soon to be twenty-four, I seem no closer to anything permanent. "My wheels just keep pouring out the miles."
I don't really know my intention any more. For writing this, or for my purpose in general... I guess I just felt like throwing out a line :)
"I am just a dreamer, but I gotta keep believing, that someday things will go my way... just running from the devil, I have one foot on the pedal, and the other one is just laid up in the grave... I am just an old dancehall dreamer, living my life in the past - I keep holding on to dreams and them slow moving trains, and I don't know how long I can last..."
-- Pat Green
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I wrote this around the time I arrived in Utah -- a place I predicted to be my saving grace. This place turned out to be as equally depressing as the predicament I had in Texas. I have since learned it is the lack of love, the lack of touch, the lack of all things familiar that can make such a beautiful place seem like a living hell. I have learned this because I was forced to face it - by one of my greatest friends (Lauren :)). I also had a little help from those friends here I often discount for their joking opinions. If I had posted this to myspace, you could call that last line an apology to those I so often seek to avoid. I complained, they presented a solution, and I shunned them. It's not easy to find love when you are always at work, or worried about being deployed for months on end. They are my coworkers, and I am starting to realize they actually cared ---
I am twenty-four now, and I still feel like a pirate. Maybe not a pirate, but at least something equally adventurous...
God knows what's next...
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Helicopter Seeds
When I was a kid...
I remember playgrounds and swingsets, and winter changing to spring. Everything in the world of grey and brown would turn green, and new life would emerge. I remember the "helicopters" - when the sky would be filled with one of God's most inventive creations. The oak trees around my house would release seeds that had make-shift propellers -- without which the seed would never survive. If the seed were left to the forces of nature, it would fall to the earth and take root in the shadow of its parent... depriving it of food, warmth, thus ending it's life in the nascent stage. Ironic - that the grand design makes the shelter of the parent suffocating...
However, with the propeller - the seed finds new ground, and takes root. It is free from the empty earth its parent drained years ago, it lies now in the direct light that is its lifeline...
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I have found new ground, and new light -- it seems my new location is a constant instructor. I went flyfishing today, without my iPod or my cell phone, my laptop or my television set. Relaxing on a rock after a whole morning's empty catch, I began to notice the "helicopters" falling from some trees by the brook. They fell, some landing in the water -- others finding a precarious home along the cliff's edge. Meanwhile, some found secure ground in the narrow, empty field at the river's edge.
We all fall away from our beginning, and only then do we truly "begin". Our environment sculpts our lives, until we ourselves are unable to recognize what we have become. We look back on the past, and ask, "How did I get here?" ---
It must have been the wind...
------------------------------
This was a piece of divine inspiration... aside from the "Like a Stone" or "Where the Streets Have no Names" blogs, this is probably my favorite. I was fishing that day in Ogden Canyon, a beautiful mouthpiece to the High Uinta Mountains... The Ogden River flows amongst the rocks, unbeknownst to the trees crowding its banks. It was that time of year, that very day, where the 'helicopter seeds' made their maiden voyage of flight. I ate my lunch on a rock, after realizing hip-waders were a bad idea in a deep river - I was soaked, and cold. I watched them fall. It was like a seen in a movie, somewhere at a graveside where the director always includes some promise of new life. I pictured the withering parents, and their offspring, and drew the correlation you find here. Enjoy.
B
I remember playgrounds and swingsets, and winter changing to spring. Everything in the world of grey and brown would turn green, and new life would emerge. I remember the "helicopters" - when the sky would be filled with one of God's most inventive creations. The oak trees around my house would release seeds that had make-shift propellers -- without which the seed would never survive. If the seed were left to the forces of nature, it would fall to the earth and take root in the shadow of its parent... depriving it of food, warmth, thus ending it's life in the nascent stage. Ironic - that the grand design makes the shelter of the parent suffocating...
However, with the propeller - the seed finds new ground, and takes root. It is free from the empty earth its parent drained years ago, it lies now in the direct light that is its lifeline...
----------------------------------------------------------------
I have found new ground, and new light -- it seems my new location is a constant instructor. I went flyfishing today, without my iPod or my cell phone, my laptop or my television set. Relaxing on a rock after a whole morning's empty catch, I began to notice the "helicopters" falling from some trees by the brook. They fell, some landing in the water -- others finding a precarious home along the cliff's edge. Meanwhile, some found secure ground in the narrow, empty field at the river's edge.
We all fall away from our beginning, and only then do we truly "begin". Our environment sculpts our lives, until we ourselves are unable to recognize what we have become. We look back on the past, and ask, "How did I get here?" ---
It must have been the wind...
------------------------------
This was a piece of divine inspiration... aside from the "Like a Stone" or "Where the Streets Have no Names" blogs, this is probably my favorite. I was fishing that day in Ogden Canyon, a beautiful mouthpiece to the High Uinta Mountains... The Ogden River flows amongst the rocks, unbeknownst to the trees crowding its banks. It was that time of year, that very day, where the 'helicopter seeds' made their maiden voyage of flight. I ate my lunch on a rock, after realizing hip-waders were a bad idea in a deep river - I was soaked, and cold. I watched them fall. It was like a seen in a movie, somewhere at a graveside where the director always includes some promise of new life. I pictured the withering parents, and their offspring, and drew the correlation you find here. Enjoy.
B
A Tree bent down to the River-
Rippled waves fall quietly
Into one and another
Some taking the strength of others
Some lapping at an escape
Each depicting on the surface
What lies below…
A tree bent down to the River -
Kissing the rippled surface, softly -
As if to say -- I missed you
I sat upon it’s roots
Hoping to keep it from falling in -
For a lifetime it’s been but a leaf’s lips distance -
From drowning in the mouth of its deepest love…
--B
---------------------------------------------------
I wrote these words the same day as the following blog, in the deepest moments of my young life -- there has always been something about rivers that has explained so much to me about life. You have a constant current, governed by it's surroundings, impacted by the lives it supports. I think it's why I love fishing so much. Not for the reward in the catch, but for the reward in just being there --- the water's strength governing my movement, the life surrounding, and the quiet kiss of a sun I hope to keep at my back. The mosquitos aren't welcome, but they prove the point that there is no pleasure without pain... :)
-- B
Into one and another
Some taking the strength of others
Some lapping at an escape
Each depicting on the surface
What lies below…
A tree bent down to the River -
Kissing the rippled surface, softly -
As if to say -- I missed you
I sat upon it’s roots
Hoping to keep it from falling in -
For a lifetime it’s been but a leaf’s lips distance -
From drowning in the mouth of its deepest love…
--B
---------------------------------------------------
I wrote these words the same day as the following blog, in the deepest moments of my young life -- there has always been something about rivers that has explained so much to me about life. You have a constant current, governed by it's surroundings, impacted by the lives it supports. I think it's why I love fishing so much. Not for the reward in the catch, but for the reward in just being there --- the water's strength governing my movement, the life surrounding, and the quiet kiss of a sun I hope to keep at my back. The mosquitos aren't welcome, but they prove the point that there is no pleasure without pain... :)
-- B
Walk on the water -
Sometimes you can’t see the way across…
Sometimes the current can curse your path…
But always remember…
The One who walked on the water
Is the wind in your sails…
When all I am has turned to dust -
The river will be there to wash it clean.
When the dreams I have built turn to rust -
The crashing waves will bury them in the sea.
And when the times will come…
When I feel I have done all I must…
The river will find another way… and I will follow - with all of me…
------------------------------------------------
I will probably look upon these words later like they were part of some Baptist sermon... but they meant a lot to me at the time I wrote them on the banks of the Concho River in San Angelo, Texas on my lunch break... trying to secure the strength to finish a hard day.
Looking on it now, I think the "Toad the Wet Sprocket" song 'Walk on the Water' gives a certain feeling to the words... calling on a memory, and hoping for help understanding it.
Sometimes the current can curse your path…
But always remember…
The One who walked on the water
Is the wind in your sails…
When all I am has turned to dust -
The river will be there to wash it clean.
When the dreams I have built turn to rust -
The crashing waves will bury them in the sea.
And when the times will come…
When I feel I have done all I must…
The river will find another way… and I will follow - with all of me…
------------------------------------------------
I will probably look upon these words later like they were part of some Baptist sermon... but they meant a lot to me at the time I wrote them on the banks of the Concho River in San Angelo, Texas on my lunch break... trying to secure the strength to finish a hard day.
Looking on it now, I think the "Toad the Wet Sprocket" song 'Walk on the Water' gives a certain feeling to the words... calling on a memory, and hoping for help understanding it.
1984
I read this book in the 8th grade - a time when I was most unaware of the world around me. I honestly hated it. The writing didn't flow, the words were somewhere beyond my understanding, and the setting was dull and depressing. Upon mature reflection, I realize the truth in the words - as addressed in my later blog, "A New Rome..." I have become somewhat sympathetic to the visionary - to the call for revolution. Something is broken, and we must fix it soon...
The correlations between the following passage and our present conflict are nothing less than disturbing... take it from a warfighter's persepective.
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“It is absolutely necessary to their structure that there be no contact with foreigners…the average citizen…never sets eyes on a citizen of Eurasia or East-Asia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides… that the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.”
“Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory…”
George Orwell, 1984, pg. 162
Sadly, a bright man was ridiculed for being twenty years short of truth…
The correlations between the following passage and our present conflict are nothing less than disturbing... take it from a warfighter's persepective.
---------------------------------------------------
“It is absolutely necessary to their structure that there be no contact with foreigners…the average citizen…never sets eyes on a citizen of Eurasia or East-Asia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides… that the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.”
“Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory…”
George Orwell, 1984, pg. 162
Sadly, a bright man was ridiculed for being twenty years short of truth…
Cold Fire...
Why must I keep a thousand coals burning-
Yet stand hundreds of miles from the fire?
Hoping to somehow keep this cold heart warm…
One day I think I’ll pull a chair up to the fire -
And watch as all the pretty ladies flicker to nothing -
One by one…
Until one will glow -
And my whole life will have finally begun.
------------------------------------------
I have old ghosts to keep me company when I question the hope of a wife - so many could fit the bill, but so many fall short. I wrote this in response to the girls from high school that read my resume before reading my heart, and seek to hold me down should I ever choose Alabaster, Alabama as a final resting place...
Yet stand hundreds of miles from the fire?
Hoping to somehow keep this cold heart warm…
One day I think I’ll pull a chair up to the fire -
And watch as all the pretty ladies flicker to nothing -
One by one…
Until one will glow -
And my whole life will have finally begun.
------------------------------------------
I have old ghosts to keep me company when I question the hope of a wife - so many could fit the bill, but so many fall short. I wrote this in response to the girls from high school that read my resume before reading my heart, and seek to hold me down should I ever choose Alabaster, Alabama as a final resting place...
Lift
Lift your head up, kid -
Don’t let anyone see
That something in and of this world
Got the best of you
Thank the stars
For your unconquerable soul
Thank God
For your unbroken spirit…
Laugh away the tears…
Drink away the sorrow…
These are just drops in a glass -
Broken glimpses of tomorrow.
------------------------------------
Read the poem 'Invictus' by William Earnest Henley... 'Invictus' is Latin for 'Unconquerable'... I call upon it in moments of direst need, and it was the inspiration for this poem.
Don’t let anyone see
That something in and of this world
Got the best of you
Thank the stars
For your unconquerable soul
Thank God
For your unbroken spirit…
Laugh away the tears…
Drink away the sorrow…
These are just drops in a glass -
Broken glimpses of tomorrow.
------------------------------------
Read the poem 'Invictus' by William Earnest Henley... 'Invictus' is Latin for 'Unconquerable'... I call upon it in moments of direst need, and it was the inspiration for this poem.
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