The Writings of Tom Grasso

What you feel is life, what you live is another story.

Author: Tom (Page 58 of 71)

Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.

You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".

Good Night

January 13, 2014 /

Starry Night at Elk IslandThe stuff I do, the thoughts I have, the way I tell my story, all are criticisms of me. I want you to criticize me, to tell me the story of my youth, to condemn me as I have condemned you. I will hold the nails as you drive them into my flesh, and I will fault you for doing exactly as I have asked.

I will leave you in the dust, kick you to the curb, hurl insults at you and maim your heart for the pure sense of my own suffering. I will walk, muddy, all over your clean floor, trample the gardens you have spent your days tilling, and mock the very art you have created from the bottom of your soul. I want you to hate me, to call me names, and to piss all over my sense of well-being if for nothing else than to remind me of from where I came.

I will enter into relationships that only serve a single part of me. I will fuck my way into a frenzy that leaves me wanting something more and, not finding it, will turn you into the bastard who disappointed me. I will find something, anything about you to fall in love with, and then find everything about you to reject. I will hate you for my fears, despise you for my choices, and finally kick you to the curb for simply no longer being able to pretend anymore. I will choose the fantasy, and I will end up hating the reality.

I am a dreamer, and in my dream I create the most horrid of nightmares. I chastise you for sleeping in my dream, for sleepwalking in my space, for snoring loudly in my ears while I am struggling to hear the story I’ve created. I will demand your silence, humiliate your senses, and finally, when I think you are finally where I want you, leave you to the desolation I have so often tried to find. That is me, a dreamer, silently creating noise others may want to hear, while never truly finding the right tune to set my soul ablaze.

Who am I? I am me, and I am you. I’m the one who left the ruts in your neatly manicured lawn.  I’m the one who upset your dreamy tales of sunshine written quickly in the middle of the night. I’m the one who picked your flowers, stripped your tree of fruit, and lit afire the shit-filled bag on your porch before ringing your doorbell.  I’m the one you’ll blame for the horrible colors you painted your room, for the tears you cry when you lay on your half-empty bed, and for the deafening silence you hear when you are alone.

Can you see how much I love you? Can you feel how much I care? If not, what stops you? What keeps you from feeling the rays of warmth I shine between the darkness that is mine? What draws your attention away from the stars in your evening sky and from the lone puddle on the dry, cracking riverbed? What saves you saves me, what is you is me, what you have lost I will truly never find.

Now, off to bed I go. To dream, to try to sleep a full night at last. I’m not the one you want, believe me, so be grateful it is not my breathing that wakes you in the middle of the night. I have blessed you with my absence, ensured no future failure of what could exist only in the minds of romantics and poets alike. Ah, yes, when the sun peeks above our Earthly home, reach out to the void next to you and smile, for there is no one to blame but you if you don’t.

Aloneness is feared not because of the solitude it offers, but because there is no one left to blame for your unhappiness. You can blame no one for the choices you, alone, are forced to make. You cannot hide behind the veil of anonymity others provide if those others do not exist, and you cannot claim ownership of the joy that I provide if I am not there to blame. So, enjoy your solitude, and ride the wave alone toward that place where you are not only responsible for all you are, but also for who you have created others to be.

Good night.

I Have Tried, Failed, and for this I am Sorry

January 13, 2014 /

La soledad es de piedra/ SorrowI need to speak your language. I need to speak in a way that you will understand. I need to remember your language, the first language I was taught, in order to talk to you so that you will hear me.

For this I am sorry.

My word will need to become fallible,  and I need to take this personally.  I will need to again make assumptions. In fact the only agreement I have made with myself that will remain intact is that I will try my best. I will try my best to see things as you see them, not as I see them. I will try my best to assume what you assume, and say what you want said, in the way you want it said. I will try.

I have failed you. I have not been fixed to your satisfaction. I don’t see the story the way you want, and I don’t hear the music the way you do. I have tried, of course, to be who you want me to be. I have made a liar out of myself in order to be the version of me you wanted, you needed, you required. I pretended to bloom when my flower had not yet even formed, and I tried like hell to fly when I wasn’t even yet hatched from my own egg’s shell.

For this, I am sorry.

I have failed you. I have failed to dance the steps you have laid out before me. I have failed to hear the rhythm of the song you’ve sung to me, and I have failed to remember the chorus as you have written it. I failed to remember when the woodwinds were to enter, and when the percussion was to fade. I just could not get the song written within me to quiet down long enough to hear the song you wished me to know, to hear, to dance to, and to play. I tried, and I failed, and for this I am sorry.

I have failed you.  I could not end my philosophical nature, and I could not stop asking questions. I can remember as a child, beaten and broken, asking the most fundamental question “Why?”.  That question kept me sane in the most insane moments, and as the answers came I began to understand so much more than anyone could teach me. I could not stop asking the questions not because I love the question, but because I love the answer. I know you valued my silence, those moments when I had no questions and therefore had no answers. I lied to you, pretended that silence reigned and answers were not offered. I tried to be the type of noise you wanted to hear, and I failed. For this, I am sorry.

I have failed you. I tried to see the art as you saw it, and I tried to blend the colors as you wished. I tried to play with the blends of the palette you gave me, and I tried to make sense of them as they touched the canvas of our lives. I tried to hold the brush as you suggested while shading in the shadows of my life with the brushstrokes you prescribed. I did what I could to pretend the shadows were not there, that the voices that had always pushed me forward were now dormant parts of a past that had been forgiven. I worked to prove to you that nothing existed outside of the world we had created when, in fact, it all was very real in my mind. You could not see the love I brushed freely between the frame while I tried hard to remain focused on what never existed for you. For this, I am sorry.

I have failed you. I cannot see love as you do, and I cannot find the silence within me to just allow it to be. I can’t speak my truth without it becoming a lie to you, and I can’t hear your truth without being lied to. I have seen a Great Place, and have eaten of its fruit and tasted the waters from its clear streams.  I have felt its silky sands between my toes and basked in the gentle breezes of its shores. It’s hard for me to remain silent in the face of such a place, let alone not share it with you, my friend, my love, my sacred self. I try, and fail for reasons unknown to the point I wonder if the effort is worth the joy it costs me. Then, you throw your stones and stamp your feet, and I wonder if the joy is worth the price as well. For this, I am sorry.

I have failed you, and in the process have been left unsure in wave after wave of doubt bound in unbridled certainty. An anger builds up within me, reminiscent of a time and place so foreign yet so much like home. I have tried to shed that vein of pulsating heat within me, and in return it has come back to whip me across my back like a withered stick, leaving blistering welts of insanity in a testament to the practice. I am but a man, after all, and I’m not sure why they desire a god in my place. Is the punishment I bear too great for me alone?  I do not know, and for this, I am sorry.

I have failed you. I have dreamt of your luscious breasts and the sound of your beating heart as I press my ear close to them. I have tasted you firmly upon my mouth, and I have breathed your breath and bared my soul to you a million times in my mind, yet never uttered a word to your waiting ear. I have traced unimaginable lines among the countless bumps I have raised upon your skin, yet never pressed one finger to your supple flesh. I have felt you press into me a thousand times as my mouth kisses desire upon your waiting neck, yet I have never once held you in my arms. I wait, wondering if you can hear the subtle whispers from my soul in the light breezes that wisp upon your waiting ears, knowing that if you can you may not even recognize the voice. I feel afraid, and for that I am sorry.

I have failed you. As the winter’s morning sun glistens upon my icy window I can feel the pain coursing through my body. I beg forgiveness for some unseen sin, and ask for no more than I deserve be written in the annuls of my life. The me I know is not the me you care to see, and the me you see is not the me I care to know. Do I succumb to the pressures of being your friend, or do I simply concede to the art bestowed upon my canvas in the manner few can find beauty in? Do I choose to stay my course, or do I choose to force love to again grace my battered timbers? I want the warm glow to light my way, so why can’t I seem to see it? I am lost I suppose, and for this I am sorry.

In this struggle to be clear I have lied to you in the most honest way I can. I have poured my cup out, and claimed the emptiness as some magical place upon which I offer you a drink. I have lost my way, but I don’t care, I just want the pain to end soon, and have it serve a purpose. I want to run through the leaves stiffened by the winter’s grasp. I want to walk through the woods I love beyond my words to describe. I want to carry you high upon my back through the foggy mist of changing times. Heal me, my love, my light, my greatest friend. Feel me, all of you, and know me real beyond the idiocy of our minds conjoined in endless chatter. Here, there, everywhere we find the love we say we seek, and realize that it was there all along.

So now I fade, to focus on the truth I know exists beyond the lies we have agreed to tell each other. I will see you when we crack the surface, embrace the depths, and breath our lives anew.

Peace.

The Dance

January 5, 2014 /

danceHe sits, alone but in a crowd, strong but in various degrees of weakness.  He wanders, tired but not fatigued, certain but not steady. He is a wanderer of vast proportions, a walking yin yang of clear distortions, a breathing oxymoron of blurred clarity. He is a man enriched with feminine depth, a raging beast soothed with a calming beauty, and a liar soaked in the waters of undeniable truth.

He had found, then lost, love over and over until love could never be lost again. He had walked until he nearly floated upon the ground, and had floated until the sky was no longer a symbol of how high he could go. He ate until realizing that hunger was more to his liking, and he starved until he realized that loss was only something his mind had created. He had desired wealth until all his life’s spaces were full, and then gave it all away when the space was all he wanted.

The world around him seemed to dance to a somber tune he could no longer bear to hear. He would watch them endlessly and clumsily swirl to the rhythm until he realized that they could not even hear the music. If they could, they would end the  dance instead of continually falling all over themselves in a mindless, destructive routine whose only purpose was to bruise and batter them out of their slumber. They were so busy moving that they never truly danced, never truly existed, outside the music others had imprinted in them.  They could hear the noise, but they could never truly hear the music, and for this their dance suffered.

He felt no superiority in his realized greatness. He knew that everyone was great, and even as they stumbled their way clumsily to music that fell on deafened ears, they and he were all such vast drops of unrealized possibility. Their suffering told them a story they would ignore and even, in some cases, become addicted to. Instead, they listened to the stories of their ancestors, often forgetting the truth they were told as they were tucked in the womb waiting patiently for the moment when two cells of possibility became one vast being of potential..

There was excitement in the boredom he would feel in their stories of miracles. He could see the stories for what they were, lies they would tell themselves in order to make the dance just a little more bearable. He once would say, “Stop talking, and start listening,” and their responses would sadden him to the point where the suffering was no longer worth the cause. The same illness that kept them from hearing the notes kept them from hearing the truth, and he wanted no parts of the sadness he felt in dealing with their noise. He had become mostly a silent observer, only speaking in those occasions when the feeling moved him to, or the question simply needed to be answered.  He loved the harmony that coursed through his soul, and he liked to keep his focus there.

Soon, the Voice whispered to him. “It is time. Speak. Speak your soul in words not yet invented. Hold your mind in a chalice not yet formed, and fly through skies not yet known. Do not speak to them, or for them. Just speak your words of love and truth and let those who listen, listen and those who don’t move on. You will be hated. You will be ridiculed. You will be loved, and you will be cherished. It’s all one voice within you speaking, and you must listen to neither. You are ready, and Now is the time.”

Stars are born and universes created in those passionate moments when a man realizes his own symphony. There, in the swirling chaos of perfect order, a man finds his entire purpose, his entire Being. The confusion makes sense, as do the parts of the whole as they come together in harmonious good will.  He discovered only his mind knew them as opposites, but his soul knew them as one, awesome experience.

“Go,” repeated the Voice.  “It’s time.”

Miss You (Poetry)

December 19, 2013 /
I miss you
There is just no other way to say it.
And as others draw their hasty conclusions
And think their wicked thoughts,
I just breathe, and blink, and stare,
And just, simply, miss you.
 
I miss the way your long hair flowed
How it felt resting upon my shoulder
How the wavy red locks raised my soul
Even before I knew I had one.
 
I miss your Irish green eyes
And how they’d raise the Sun from its nightly slumber
The way they sparkled in the moonlight
Teaching me that there could just be a place beyond the fear.
 
I miss your sweet, angelic voice
Telling me the secrets of my heart
In words I could have not yet understood
Defining things I wanted more than I would ever know.
 
God, I miss you.
And there is just no other way to say it.
More days have passed since we last danced
Than I ever thought I’d see.
Yet I just blink, and sit, and stare some more
And just, simply, miss you.
 
I take this bath in open honesty,
And tell the tale long hidden beneath my veil.
I see you clearly as I always have,
A part of me, a part of you, forever yet never lost.
 
I hear the song forever sung,
Written by a boy lost in helpless agony.
I play the strings forever strung,
And wander forever in the silence of haunting memory.
 
So, I miss you.
There seems so many ways to say it.
In each footfall of my well-worn feet
I can here it echo in the cavern of my soul.
Yet I’ll just sit, and stare, and blink for a time,
And just, simply, miss you.
 

God I love this place!

December 13, 2013 /

betelgeuseI walk.

I marvel at how the once soft, fluffy sands have become hard and unforgiving in the winter’s chill. I’m alone with my thoughts save the sounds of the surf crashing behind me; the sea hidden behind a shroud of darkness that allows me to focus on that music and the Universe exposed around me. I sit in the chill, gazing up at Gemini hoping to see the faint streaks of light created by the end of things likely born long before man was a dream. I give thanks in each passing blur as I am reminded of my own mortality, my own beginning, and my own end. I am reminded of the distance between the two, and I am grateful for this step in the journey of remembrance.

Through the shivers and the wet feeling of coldness upon my skin, I realize I love this place. I love the drawings I see as my mind connects the dots on Heaven’s canvas. I love the bright gaze of Jupiter staring down at me as I stare up at her. I love the orange flicker of Betelgeuse lighting my way toward the Hunter I’ve loved so much since my youth.  I remember gazing up at his belt, staring at its perfect alignment and marveling at how the dots seemed so close together, yet were so far apart. I remember realizing then that what we see from where we stand can make all of the difference in how we think.

God I love this place.

I walk.

I walk through the paths others have cut through forests created long before I was born. I embrace the stiff silence that allows the wind to make music through the brittle, dead leaves on their Mother trees. I notice how both seem to hold on to what was, neither truly wanting to admit that the time of their union has passed. It’s a certainty that the winter wind will separate those who cannot seem to let go on their own, and that the tree will sleep and the leaf will fall, lightly, to return the gift it has been given.

I cross a stream.  Little tufts of earth peek through slowly moving surface of crystal clear water, reflecting Heaven’s gaze. I notice how everything reflected seems the opposite of what I see, and I wonder which is the truth. Am I seeing things as they are, or am I seeing things through a reflection in my mind that is the opposite of how they are? Whichever, I continue walking, realizing that time and space can change everything, including the distance between giant stars that likely pay no attention to each other.

I allow the cold winter winds of my life to separate me from my leaves. I let go and say goodbye as they drift away toward their destiny. I know those things I think, those things I see, are mere reflections that exist only in my mind.  I am a man, after all, and can enjoy a view through both tainted eyes and the crystal clear waters of Love that exist in the calm stillness I dive into. Both exist for a reason, and a purpose to which both can be known.

God I love this place.

Here I sit. I’ve done nothing on my to-do list, yet I’ve given birth to an entire universe. To whatever blesses me with these words, I am grateful. To whatever inspires me to see beyond my flesh and bones, I am grateful. To the power that takes the ingredients of a man and makes them so very special, I am grateful. To my eyes that see and my heart that feels, I am grateful. Though I am no longer who I was, I am grateful for who I am. To the music I dance to and the voices I hear whispering lightly in my ear, I am grateful.  To the scars and the wounds as well as the dream I had that gave them life, I am grateful.  To the love and kindness offered that has held me steady, I am grateful.  I am grateful for it all.

So I sit, in peace and in stillness as the Sun shines gently through the window, its glow changing colors through my closed eyelids. I inhale its warmth that contrasts nicely through the chilled morning air, realizing both in the same moment. I realize the stretch of time that has brought me here, the limitless experiences and infinite possibilities of what “now” has to offer.  The raised bumps on my skin tell a truth, a truth that says, “Yes, you are on your way.”

God how I love this place.

Ode to an Old Friend

December 6, 2013 /
Karen Hallenbeck August 5, 1968 - December 3, 2013

Karen Hallenbeck
August 5, 1968 – December 3, 2013

I shouldn’t be doing this.  I have so much to do, and I just don’t have the time to sit and write right now. Yet, like some obsessed creature of habit, I have no choice. The feelings well up inside of me and I must, without pause, sit and let them out.

I can feel the emotional tides shift within me.  They come in waves, sometimes they crash into the crusted shoreline of my mind, and in others they gently lap upon the grainy sands of time, pulling those sands away while gently erasing the footprints left behind. I do, sometimes, struggle with it in the face of my own conditioning.  Emotions are for the weak, sadness for the meek and tortured soul with the phony stoicism of men being the standard-bearer of good behavior.  Yet I can’t help myself as I feel it all, and in that moment I decided to let it go because someone, somewhere, feels it too.  And there the lie ends.

Death does not ordinarily effect me in this way.  It is a certainty, and because I have no idea what will happen during or afterward, I usually don’t dwell on it, instead choosing to focus on the act of living.  Death will come to me, as it will to all of us, yet I see no value in dwelling so much on the destination when there seems to be so much left in the journey to get there.  Maybe. One cannot be certain of the destination, except that I have arrived where I am, now, at that may need to be enough.

This week I lost a friend, and I’m not sure why I am so effected. We were once good friends, in our youth, and I’ve always had fond memories of her. She was a beautiful girl, with a happy, peaceful way about her that made the chaotic, confused me stand up and take notice. She was always someone I was happy to see, and I would always enjoy her hugs and her voice, which was unique in its deliberateness as well as in its pure sweetness.  I was fortunate to experience Karen for a few years until, as is quite often the case, I went one way and she went another, and we lost touch.

Enter social media, that often vilified method of human contact that, to me, has amazing potential to make the world smaller and our experience greater. On November 4th, I received a  Facebook friend request from Karen.  I felt like I always did back “in the day”, elated to hear from her and looking forward to seeing how time had treated her.  As many of us do, I immediately went to her page, checking out the pictures and stories in order to close the gap between then and now. She looked just like she did back then, with the same smile she always had.  She appeared to not have aged a bit, with that bright, genuine smile and graceful posture I had always known. It was awesome to see she had become engaged, and that her life had brought her the love she so readily deserved.

We caught up a bit, promising to catch up more after the holidays.  On Saturday, December 1st, I laughed at her admiration of the new recliners at a local movie theater, and her suggesting that they are designed to put you to sleep so you’d have to pay to watch the movie again.  I had suggested the same thing to my own children when we went not too long ago, and I wondered how many had the same thoughts when sitting in those chairs for the first time. Great minds think alike, even on the simplest of experiences. Yes, I smile at the notion, and feel a joy in my heart even through the sense of loss that comes with these memories.

On Sunday, she talked a bit of “trash” as most Eagles’ fans do when our team wins an important game.  Thankfully, Karen was a home-town girl, and not some Cowboys fan who must have been switched at birth.  Yes, somewhere out there is an Eagles’ fan living in Dallas, switched at birth with a half-brained sports nitwit who, with their blue star and pathetic love of a team whose city they’ve likely never visited, dumbs down the sports IQ of the entire City of Philadelphia. I have a feeling there are many out there who understand what I am saying, and are laughing at the suggestion.  Even up in that mystical place some might call “heaven”.

There are events that clearly define a person’s place in the world.  Not their physical place, but their metaphysical place.  You can find a lot about yourself in how you react to others. In this case, I’ve found that I truly value the loving presence of great people, people who judge everyone as equals (or don’t judge them at all). They work to be a positive influence in the world, and rarely create anything but ripple after ripple of positive energy in this sea of life. Of course they aren’t perfect, they struggle like the rest of us with varying degrees of humanness, but they so effect your life in the positive that their negatives don’t seem to matter. They brighten up your day by making you see something in yourself that makes you smile, laugh, or at peace, and they do it from a distance was well as from the inside places of who we are.

So I honor my friend tonight, not because she died, but because she lived. I honor her not in her passing but in the permanent mark she made on others. While her sudden passing made me take inventory of the impermanence in my life, it also made clear the permanent imprints we can make on one another. We can have that kind of effect if we choose to.

It is said that “charity begins at home.” So does happiness. So does joy. So does peace, love and bliss. Anger and fear begins there, too, and we all have a choice on what kind of life we are to lead. The good news is that one can make choices in an instant, and we can choose to take the desires we have for beauty and make it real in any holy instant we want to. It is never too late, it is never too much to bear, and it is never anyone else’s fault. We are the creators.

I’m grateful that the life of Karen has created so much for so many, and I’m grateful to have known her.  I’m grateful that, in her passing, so many of us can share the exact same experience with a woman we’ve known at different times in our lives.  In the case of Karen Hallenbeck, this is not lip service paid to the newly departed, but a true testament of who a person was in the life she lived; a life lived as a beautiful pebble who created a gorgeous splash and wonderful ripple for us all.

So, we move on as we must, shed tears in memorium and smile in honor of a life well lived. There are some flowers you simply stop and smell for a while, and whose fragrance you never forget. I am glad to know so many.

Peace.

In lieu of flowers donations in Karen’s memory may be made to Women of Hope, 14 B Estaugh Ave. Berlin, NJ 08009

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