cents

Ahhh, change. Keep it in your pocket and your coin purse. Or do you give the cashier a "keep the change"? Or leave the penny in the parking lot? What? No, not so. Didn't your Grandmother tell you, "Find a penny, pick it up, the rest of the day you'll have good luck." Well mine sure did. So don't leave change lying on the ground, you're passing up an opportunity. Take up change. You'll find a better day and a better you, if you'll just embrace change. 

   Nah, but really. Sometimes it's time to change. It takes so much work, to embrace the good in your nature, and fight years of habit. You need forge new habits day by day. It's easy to say, and difficult to carry out. Oh avoid the adoption of the bad, and seek to remove it at it's earliest stages. Because it's like trying to fill the canyon cut by a river, and create a new course.

   But keep at it. After all, a kid named Billy built a mountain the other decade. And that looked to me to be something worth the work. Yeah, we all need help, but that's there too. And mistakes are made, repeatedly. But better to keep trying, than succumb to that mistake in permanence. So keep digging and don't give up on yourself.

disconnect

it's operating on auto pilot, no one is at the helm. the captain is not in sight. we're just hoping she didn't jump ship. oh but the other day there was singing, inspite of stormy waters. so why the change today, why the disconnect?

    for a more open explanation...I often fight battles over myself, and today I was losing. it has a great deal to do with trust, and you know I'm brilliant at hide and go seek. the plain truth of it is, for someone who values sincerity so much, I have daily struggles right now, during which I seem to say or do, not what I think or feel, but what comes easiest in the moment. I hate the auto pilot. It's a way to get by without the uncomfortableness that sincerity would bring on. But I don't like it. Bluntly, I hate/loathe/despise it. Clearly it's made a place in me because I've let it. Clearly I'm using this as some kind of coping mechanism. But it's a cage, and I need more faith to walk openly. It takes a lot of faith. And faith is a choice. Open hearts are so easy to hurt. But that is just how I'd rather be. I'd rather be honest, and sensitive, than a mask, or shell, or emulation. Deep under it all I'm living, breathing, feeling and thinking. It's easier to appear shallow, so now one tries to shove you under. There is a lot of that.  But I am not what I seem. And I'd rather not be. Really, what scares me most is the possibility that I am in fact slowly becoming what I seem to be. Aren't we defined by our actions? And every missionary knows that if there is a disparity between a person's beliefs and behavior one of them must change. Well the choice is mine and I make it.  I will be what I am, which is better than what I appear. 

No more hide and go seek. No more disconnect.

Midnight Ash On A Tuesday Night

this isn't a deja vu and the street won't carry your name

so go on, and leave while there is still a hope of escape. night time isn't so dim like this anymore. dividings and collidings and no brother at the park to make it stop. the trees have emptied out and the cops are on patrol, and here I'm standing with no place to go. hiding won't mean I won't be found out. and not being found out won't mean I'm free. no get away route and all get away soul.

up

You see, the problem is exhaustion. I need it. If I wanted to sleep tonight, I should have not taken a nap today. Sure, I only got a good five last night, about the same the night before, and the night before that? Two hours awake on a rock with a very bright gibbous moon, and 4 hours half asleep in a tent. Still, in order to be able to sleep at hours I ought to, that state of exhaustion is very important. Today, I ruined it. Can you imagine? Months of hard work down the drain. Hello 4 AM, how's the wife and kids?

    And what's worse? My brain is so full with all you kids give it to sort through, that it STILL wants to be up. What good does it do? All the thinking doesn't change anything, so why not ride the pillow to the end of the rainbow to oblivion? Because I can't stand it. Sleep is death still breathing.

    No, don't you worry. I'll make myself get to it, like eating vegetables or going running.   

Alright, you've been good...

wop diddily shwop

There are a number of things that it's silly to be good at...that I'm good at, frosting cookies, doctoring animals, taking people to the emergency room, balancing in precarious positions, hide and go seek, understanding people who try to talk to me while they brush their teeth, sleeping in unusual places...you get the point. Then there are things that would be useful to be good at that I'm not like math tests, dating, speaking english, or any other languages for that matter, or playing the piano. I still try though. And then there are silly things I'm not amazing at, but still really reallly REALLLLY enjoy. Today this list included: 

(1.) The satisfaction of putting a baby back to sleep by finding it's binki and reinserting it, (it's like magic!) I don't even mind waking up for it...but then again ... well you know me.
(2.) Baking surprise birthday cakes (especially when you know how to make a funfetti cake come out pink...and it's for your brother)
(3.) Doing other peoples dishes.

Point three leads to a new point. And you may question why I claim not to be amazing at this yet The binki thing I'm just still learning, the cake, well it's a bit crispy, but dishes? Well maybe you already knew this, you may have grown up watching the Brady Bunch. I did not. So as a warning... DO NOT use liquid dish-soap in the dishwasher. 

It will not go well. 

But if you ever need some really good midnight pancakes, you know where to go.

This is not a picture of Joe.

Some days, when I get the "mean reds" as was once so interestingly put, I edit photo's. It's a way of putting other thoughts out of my heart. Would you like to see what gave that little heart a pick me up today?

Basically what this picture shows is that my friends are about 100x cooler, 50x more photogenic, and 500,000,000,000,000,000x more fun to be with than your average Joe. My friend Joe for instance is much more interesting than average Joes, and a far better pianist than any John Doe that you've ever heard of, let alone met.  

This is actually from a short series I did a few weeks ago. If you kids are really good, play nice and eat all of your vegetables I'll post the rest for you at an ambiguous time that sounds likely to happen but leaves me uncommitted to anything.