Teenage Dreams

I'm starting to get old, I think to myself, sitting at one of the tall tables by the window. Below me dwell the teenagers, my size yet somehow so much smaller. I can see their little limbs growing out of their little outfits - such nice little outfits, some of them, and some of the girls are wearing eyeliner now, and it looks nice too, they applied it so well, with the little wings on the sides...

I spy a couple, a girl curled up in the arms of a boy, and I wonder: thirteen? fourteen? Their faces are small; their eyes, eyelids, noses, nostrils, lips, lip piercings, all small. I think back to fourteen: the years whirl by like a merry-go-round. Children, I think; just children, just kids. Kids holding hands on the couch, thumbs stroking idly. I sincerely hope it lasts, kids, I say to myself, and even as the words enter my mind, I imagine how it will end.

Everybody's Against Me! (And I'm Loving It, But... Shhh)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just pretend you don’t love being the social outcast, the one everyone’s trying to martyr. I know better. I know because I do the same thing.

I look around at the world and I oversimplify what I see. If I sense any resistance to what I’m doing in life, any opposition at all to who I’m trying to be and what I want to achieve, then you know what comes next. I make a drama out of this. I assign teams and put the majority of society on the side of the opposition. And then I stand on my little mole hill and scream across the valley at the mountains I’ve just made. You all hate me, but I will rise up and defeat you!

It’s so unfair, I cry. Look at the numbers. You’re so big. I’m so small. You’re such a bully, I whimper self-righteously, wiping my tears. But no matter. In the end, I will win, because I’m right.

Just try to convince me you’re not having fun out there. No, you feel strangely empowered when the world is against you, don’t you? But you’re wrong. In reality, there is no such thing as The World. There’s just a bunch of little groups of people like you and me, huddled together for shelter from Everybody Else, convinced that the world is against them. Well, I hate to be a killjoy, baby, but it’s not that simple.

Did You Ever Stop To Notice?

Earth Song by Michael Jackson

Some people speak to me. Out of the masses, out of the ages, certain souls take a step toward me and gaze into my soul, and suddenly I realize I recognize them, I know them. I don't choose these people. They just come to me, and once they do, there is no looking back.

Michael Jackson is one of these people for me. And now for the laundry list of disclaimers: I know he was weird, I know about the plastic surgery, I know about the allegations, I know his career peaked in the mid-1980s and never really returned, I know, I know, I know. I'm fully aware that he led a strange life, a broken life, but none of this changes the fact that when I encountered him on the path of my life, I froze in my tracks and stared, because I knew him. I just did. When I watch his interviews, read his writings, listen to his music, his voice slips in among my heart strings and tangles them, tugging gently. I understand Michael Jackson.

One of the things I understand most is his ability to feel the pain of the world. If you have open eyes, and an open heart, the sad truth is, you are destined to know pain. If you ever stop to notice, you will see that the universe itself is broken. Some nights it just swoops down on me and holds me, this raw, empathic awareness. I can feel it, the crying, the screaming, the trees falling, the guns firing. The world is so beautiful, but so broken. And I just want the beauty to return. I just want everything to be whole again.

This song, and the music video, speak to this desire. I honestly can't hear the chorus without getting chills. I used to walk around my land, on windy days when the clouds were racing across heaven in the high golden light, and let this music reverberate through my headphones, filling my consciousness.
 

This song explores painful territory, to be sure, but in the end, it is a song of hope. I believe, as Michael did, in the ultimate triumph of good over evil. I do believe that healing and restoration will come. I believe it will sweep the globe like a lightning storm, and the healing rain will fail, and the dreams we've abandoned since childhood will come shuddering out of the depths of the earth and splash over us like floodwaters.

To someone I love

I see worlds in you. Dark landscapes shifting, evolving over aeons. Vast wastelands of unexplored terrain.

I see it. The night sky above you, the labyrinth of paths to nowhere. The loneliness, the inner scream.

I see. Silver songs of wolves, swimming upward through the dark. Galaxies piercing the soft muted blackness, swirling, ice.

Inexpressible

Evening Falls by Enya

Floating around the internet is a list of cryptic-looking words, meant to describe indescribable feelings. I've seen it several times now, in several variations, and yet whenever I come across it, I always click, coming in for a closer look, hoping to find what I am searching for.

There is so much inside me that I cannot express. I am haunted by surreal emotions that come over me out of nowhere. I ache to express what I feel, but there are some experiences that not even the most colorful, obscure foreign word can capture. These feelings must be felt to be understood; and even then, you will not understand them, although you will yearn to, craning your neck to see over the horizon of your soul.

I Don't Want to Hurt You

I literally hate hurting other people.

Yes, we may disagree on many things. Yes, our personalities, values, and interests may clash. Yes, I may wish you would stop doing what you are doing, wish you would go away, wish you would leave me alone.

But I do not want to hurt you.

I go to lengths. Great lengths. To avoid hurting other people. Sometimes unhealthy lengths. I tell white lies. I dodge confrontation. I skirt around the point. All because I do not want to do it. I don't want to risk driving a lance through another heart. I can't stand it. I hate it.

And you know why, because it hurts me. Any kind of conflict, even the most trivial, hurts. It's almost a literal physical pain. It feels like toxins are injected into my system. My blood starts buzzing and burning and I want to scream. I don't know why this happens to me, but maybe I am ultimately selfish for avoiding conflict, because I know full well, it hurts me as much as anyone else when I enter the fray and lash out against someone.

I have convictions and beliefs and values and I know them well, I know myself. But I don't want to impose myself on others. I live in constant consciousness of the very different experiences others may have had with the selfsame things that I love and cherish. Sometimes I am afraid to open my mouth, because I know I always run the risk of releasing pain into someone else's heart. I don't want to do that. I know what pain feels like.

I don't want to hurt you, but there is always a margin of error, isn't there? Nobody's perfect, and circumstances arise by accident, flinging accidental hurts into surrounding minds unintended. But my goal is to never inflict grief on purpose. There is too much agony in the world as it stands.

Through me flows the eternal light...

With my hands on the shoulders of the universe, I inhale God and exhale dawn.

Eternal love bleeds through my fingers, flooding the chambers of reality's soul.

This is my destiny, dealing in love.

Love is the source of my being and the essence of my sojourn.

I speak one healing word into the sunken, shattered chasms and a million voices echo back to me...
voices of dreams devoured before daylight.

I sing patiently until the voices remember the Song.