disaster.

clean.

run.

soul food.

it's such a blessing when my eyes get to see the sun rise.
i'm ready to begin.
another chance to get further away from where i've been.
but i'll never forget
everythang i went through
i appreciate the shit because
if i had went and took the easy way
i wouldn't be the strong nigga that i am today.
everything that i did, different thangs i was told
just ended up being food for my soul.

valentine.

would have been better.

these are the breaks.

but the world goes 'round.

sideways down.

maybe i should just move along
but you know i'd draw blood if that's what you want

you found someone who makes you laugh
who'd stick around but that's not what you want

you slipped at the start
and dragged the whole thing sideways down
everybody fucks up
it's just something that's been going 'round

and you found someone who said he'd stay
who'd give it all but that's not good enough

now you're standing alone
and you're living alone cause you don't know what you want
and you're living alone
and you're wondering now, cause you don't know what you've done

maybe i should just disappear for now
then maybe you could see a little clearer now

and you found some one who makes you laugh
who promised you he'd never let you down
and you blame it on your broken heart
but everyone who reaches out gets stung

now you're standing alone
and you're waiting alone cause you don't know what you want
and you're living alone
and you're wondering now cause you don't know what you've done

maybe i should just move along
but you know i'd draw blood
if that's what you want..

trouble child.

Up in a sterilized room
Where they let you be lazy
Knowing your attitude's all wrong
And you got to change
And that's not easy
Dragon shining with all values known
Dazzling you - keeping you from your own
Where is the lion in you to defy him
When you're this weak
And this spacey...

So what are you going to do about it
You can't live life and you can't leave it
Advice and religion - you can't take it
You can't seem to believe it
The peacock is afraid to parade
You're under the thumb of the maid
You really can't give love
in this condition

Still you know how you need it

They open and close you
Then they talk like they know you
They don't know you
They're friends and they're foes too
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu

So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
They trickle through your leaky plans
Another dream over the dam
And you're lying in some room
Feeling like your right to be human
Is going over too
Well some are going to knock you
And some'll try to clock you
You know it's really hard
To talk sense to you
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu

the party's over.

Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn Ilyās.

14th century physician from Shiraz in what was then called Persia. Now, of course, Iran.

I look at this image and realize that, in a way, we really haven't learned that much more about humans than we knew then. Sure we have made many technological advances and can, in many cases, prevent and even cure disease. But in all of the intervening years the only thing we can say about each other for sure is that we know where our livers are, where our bowels are, our hearts, our brains. These very things that make us all equal, equally bound to an inescapable humanity...yet go unseen and therefore forgotten.

Maybe I'm not quite ready to put this train of thought into words, though.

I was just struck when I looked at this image from so long ago...how long we have known the simple truths about human biological form and function, yet have remained so unequivocally enchanted with our external differences. There's something to that, I think.

sand pit.

Sand Pit by Neal McTaggart

dream.

Last night I had a dream that Simba died.

In the dream he was writhing on the floor and his belly started to distend until it burst open exposing all of his internal organs. Everything seemed to be in order with the exception of some green tubular material present in front of the cecum and appendix in the lower right quadrant of his abdomen. In the dream this wasn't out of the ordinary, though.

When his stomach opened, I knelt down and successfully closed him back up like a purse or a clam shell. I yelled to Phillip, 'we have to get him to a doctor!' but he had left the room. He came back in and told me that we shouldn't let him suffer. I said something to the effect of 'what do you mean?' and then I looked at him, at Simba. He was staring at the ceiling, had obviously gone into shock and was about to die. I held him and was overtaken by a palpable sadness.

I woke up distressed and started thinking about my mom and my sister. Both of them had lost dogs in the past year and had to have them put to sleep. Then I thought about the inevitable which I suppose I never choose to think about - Simba will almost certainly die within the next 5-8 years. Will I one day be in a vet's office holding Simba while he dies from a lethal injection? The thought was so painful that I started to cry and I had to get up at 4am in order to distract myself from thinking about it.

....

These are trying times. I suppose I am on the verge of something. It's funny how you can go along thinking everything is fine and reasonable and secure and then, bam!, life is laughing in your face. I'm so good at the game of self-deception. In fact, I am possibly the only person who can get something over on me...I know all my weak spots. Namely, my need for quiet and normalcy. Peace and security. And I will pursue them, even create them in a vacuum.

Is it that I don't deserve to have them?
Do my actions preclude me from having them?
Or does the tone of my own personal energy and thoughts drive them away?

Eventually, though, I wind up in the same place.
Picking up the pieces of an inevitable loss.

Perhaps my dream was more of a statement about loss and how I will try to hold it together even when everything is dying around me - ignoring repeated calls to let it go, don't prolong the suffering.

I didn't see this coming.