Author: tomgrasso (Page 20 of 38)

Dream

August 25, 2010 / tomgrasso

Dream for me my love,
Calm down the anger in my mind,
Find me shade from the sun that burns me,
Accept me in my weakness and in my strength.

Take from me all you need my love,
Allow me to calm the anger in your mind,
And shade you from the sun that would burn me instead,
Allow me to accept your weakness and rely on your strength.

Accept me for what I am,
And I will accept you for what you are,
We can give ourselves to each other,
Or fail to fulfill our promise to eternity.

Dream this dream together,
Or create a nightmare in its place,
Decide the now is better than the yesterday,
And the promise of tomorrow is brighter than a million rules to get us there.

To the “we” we decide simply is,
To the “us” we forgo the “what should be”,
To the unending voices that say we shoudn’t be,
We shall simply dream.

Silence – The Relationship with Self

August 24, 2010 / tomgrasso

I frown at the thought of mothering yet another pitiful episode of the mad wonderings in my mind that create a sense of insanity outside of it. Still, when faced with the combined sense of being misunderstood and misunderstanding I cannot seem but help to give birth to such a monster. Gone are the thoughts of rosy sunrises in which we hold each other tightly. Gone are the cascades of kisses thrown around as if they are candy during an Halloween parade. Enter in this scene a morose feeling of incompleteness and solitude combined with fear and a sense of ineptness only experience in both could understand. I don’t sense you have this experience and therefore do not have this understanding. I am happy for that, for I love you with all of my heart and do not wish such a pain to be burdened by you ever in your life.

So I sit in silence.

Riding the wave has never been so hard. Caught between the break and the riptide I am slowly losing my way from the shore. I claw at the water to no avail as the sand and stone fades from memory into nightmare. I drift away into the nothingness from wench I came, into an abyss so dark as to suggest it cannot exist. To what do I owe this moment? Is the “self” I was being so bad as to justify the hell it has been cast into?

The answer is silence.

I once heard a voice that seemed to inspire me. I once felt tears that seemed to move me. I once heard cries that caused me to look inward. Now all I hear are echos from my own mind. The voice now rejects me as if I were poison. The tears now sting at my soul and keep me from being able to open my eyes. The cries now are gone and have been replaced by nothing that matters. I sit here, a soul of wholeness amidst the broken chains that bound me. The chains only rattle, they do not hold me. The links fall to the ground as broken shards of a heart once kept whole by the anger that imprisoned it. It’s funny how the bars of the prison can keep the monster whole until the bars fall and the beast explodes, no longer existing but as a fraction of itself.

Its roar is now silent.

Oh little boy, scarred by those who claim love, brought into the darkness by those who claim to know the light, who do you latch hold of when the coldness comes? Who is your savior when you sin against your fairy tale? Who is your executioner when you are no longer needed to be whole? Time, my friend, will answer these questions. Time, my son, will teach you truth. You will come from solitude and be taught who you are only to find peace in the absence of everything you were taught. You will rebel against who you are in the hopes of finding who you are. You will cry, you will scream, you will grasp at nothingness until nothingness is all you know. You will hear a voice that inspires you, you will cry tears that heal you, you will hear cries that cause you to look inside of you. Through all of this noise you will see the honesty in its absence. Through all of the clatter and instruction and direction and conditioning you will see the beauty of the what comes before and after the thunder.

You will smile. You will love. You will know silence, and in silence you will know your self.

Ranting…

August 21, 2010 / tomgrasso

I hesitate to write what I am feeling. What effects will come of such honesty? A discussion here, a glance there…then it all falls back into place as it is. My world will spin eastward regardless of what I do to change its direction. It’s like I am a hungry soul left to the whims of charity, a charity that gets bored with the effort and moves onto something else. I remain hungry…they feel fulfilled.

There is a lesson here somewhere, the challenge is to find it. To tolerate those who are not tolerant…to show desire where none is shown in return…to feel full when in the midst of a fast. Those seem to be nothing but the introductory classes to a doctorate degree, the scratching of the surface to a bottomless glacier the shavings of which melt too quickly to be noticed. I find the time to find the time but not to do much with it. How sad.

I am just ranting at this point…the frustrations of having to be the yin to the yang…wait, perhaps I am trying too hard to change the yang to be more like the yin. Just let that fucker go…see it float away like a hot air balloon over the horizon. Now that would be an awesome trial. To not need you or your thoughts of me or your thoughts of others. I nearly laugh at the idea not because of its humor but because of its simplicity. How can something so simple be so difficult?

Well, off to keep scratching and hopefully stop caring. Not sure what this does, but certainly sure of what it doesn’t do.

Little Divinity

August 19, 2010 / tomgrasso

In your soul I see nothing but my self,

And in my soul I see nothing but you,

Touching, holding, my little Divinity.

I let go, grasping nothing but air,

“It’s not real” I say over and over again,

Until I can almost believe it myself as I tumble into the darkness.

No desire, no longing exists here,

No need to have, yet a have to need,

This bewilderment seems to follow me everywhere.

How does this thorn become as wanted as the Rose?

“Silly question” says the mistletoe to the tree,

“You are mine and I shall suck the life from your limbs.”

Such truth resides in this destiny,

I mold it, I nurture it, I allow it to be,

So I swing an ax upon my little Divinity.

When held in intense desire,

Do I puncture you as the thorn?

Or do I sweeten the air you breathe as the Rose?

Do you turn your senses from me?

Or look forward to more?

Which do you find caresses your sweet soul in ecstasy?

Questions…questions…I could scream,

I am as unsure about this as I am about the rotted limb I have rested on,

Such is the reflection I see in my little Divinity.

“You fool” says the mistletoe casually ringing the bells in my ears,

“You have created me and now you wonder why I exist?

Don’t blame the nectar for the ugliness you are”

To define myself in how you define me makes me the parasite,

To see myself in what you see in me makes me the fool.

To be my self beyond your thoughts creates such loving ecstasy.

So I must be me in order to be “free”,

And I must accept you in order to be “me”,

For, after all, I am, if nothing else, a little Divinity.

Choice

August 17, 2010 / tomgrasso

So I do not dare find the completeness within me. What would be the purpose of existing if, in fact, I understood the point of it all? I don’t, can’t, will never know it all. That is liberating.

There will be mistakes. There will be demands to which I cannot answer. There will be tears to shed and words to be used as daggers forever. It is our point of existence, our purpose for Being, our mission to which we will never see an end. For every point of evolution there will be another challenge. For every loving embrace a bomb shall fall. For every gentle pat on the back a hard slap in the face. Imagine this life without the one to balance the other. What kind of life would that be if we simply had nothing to strive for?

I became pro-life when I started seeing dead children. I became pro-choice the moment I realized what life would be like without it. I became free the moment I realized I was imprisoned. I became liberal the moment I discovered conservatism was a lie. I became communist the moment I sought to end the thievery. To which box did you just assign these words? To which compartment did you just place my thoughts? To which standard did you judge me at the moment you read simple things entered through a simple keyboard? Did you even realize that I became these things not through matters of my own creation but through the efforts you provided in order to create me as you wanted me to be?

My simple answer is “I am”. Create away…make me who you think I am. Take clay and make it into a vase and it is still clay. You may make it what you want but, in the end, it is still clay. And to clay it shall return someday regardless of what I want it to be. I am meaningless, as are you, except as the Creator, and in being so I am all-powerful. You are as meaningless as I except as the Destroyer, and in being so you are all powerful, as am I. We all have this choice, these billions of small moments that decide who we are although not who we were and not who we will be. Focus a billion times on each of these billion moments as they arise and you will define eternity.

We will make mistakes, and in doing so will continue perfection. We will slap the face of a friend, and in doing so will be the best friend we can be. We will turn our back on our brother and in doing so will provide him a target to focus on. We will ignore our abuser and in doing so turn to face the light of love that surrounds us both. The balance of the moment will never be distorted by the choice we make but exists because of the choice we make. Just love who you are and what you do and allow others to be free as well to be as they are. It’s all just so gloriously perfect.

This post is a result of my midday meditation. It has not be proofread or edited in any way, so please don’t shoot the messenger who can’t speak or spell clearly. Just <3.

Take me home

August 15, 2010 / tomgrasso

I love you.

I have always loved you.

You are in my dreams, you are in my soul, you are the very fabric of my existence.

You are burned into my mind; you are the sight that helps me see.

You are that forevermore.

You are the part that was before the part that is; you are the reason for it all.

And now I rest; sweet slumber take me home.

I Have Said Goodbye to Anger

August 10, 2010 / tomgrasso

So I was alone, helpless as the day I was born. Actually, I was even more helpless, because in addition to not having hope I knew I did not have it. So there I lay, floundering in my own despair, searching for a light to guide my way. I reached for you but you weren’t there, gone was the life-after-life – the solace to which I had become accustomed.

You were my strength; you were my weakness. You cradled me in your arms as I sat helpless and bleeding. You stood with me as I faced torment. You lit my way as I groped down the narrow valley in which I was thrown. You held me up when I thought I would fall, you pushed me down as I struggled to stand. You helped me find my way as you kept me lost. You gave me a name even as I had forgotten who I was.

You helped me escape unbearable suffering as you heaped on the misery. You filled my cravings as you kept me wanting more. You kept me from looking by telling me what I saw; you stopped me from searching by destroying all I had found. You forced me to be who I wasn’t so that I could escape who I was; you created disdain for me while holding me true to a lie. I do not judge you in these descriptions, they are what I see when the blinders have been removed.

I have said goodbye to you. Not because I see you as good or evil, and not because I dislike you. I have said goodbye because I no longer need the walls that you create. I have said goodbye because I no longer fear my shadow. I have said goodbye because I have said hello to the me that was before I embraced you. I love you for the experience you have given me and for the now that I live in joy. I could not have gotten here without you.

Goodbye to you my friend; my foe. I am sure we will meet again someday, yet I can promise you that I will see you this time. I will feel you come and I will simply try to watch you go.

When You Are Ready, The World Will Change

August 8, 2010 / tomgrasso

You keep creating distractions,
Then wonder about focus.
You keep building up walls,
And then point out the divide.

You keep longing for truth,
While creating the lies.
You keep striving for justice,
While committing the crime.

You keep saying you’re lonely,
Then push all away.
You keep saying you’re scared,
While creating the fear.

You keep searching for heaven,
While making the hell.
You keep crying about illness,
While not living the truth.

You keep grasping for straw men,
And blame them for failing.
You create the wrongness of others,
Just to pretend you are right.

When you can see all these mistakes,
As human perfection,
When you see angels above
As the one next to you.
When you see heaven among you
As the cravings are calling,
When you find nature within you,
And find simple truth.

You are ready, and the world will change.

When you can help out your brother,
Regardless of judgment,
When you can hold out your hand,
As your mind is in pain,
When you can forgive what is evil,
As the bombs are falling,
When you can stop all pollution,
Without destroying yourself.

Then you are ready, and the world will change.

Written to me, for me, and about me. Any correlation between my real experience and yours is strictly coincidental.

Forgive

August 3, 2010 / tomgrasso

I tiptoe by the stream,
Faulted sprays of yesterday spray my soul,
I am alive, I am alive,
From there to now – I can see somehow…

Languid waters cleanse,
Wash away the hurt that I have done,
I forgive, I forgive,
To see is to forgive all that’s – me!

For what I love is all around me,
And what is love is in me,
I am, I am,
I alone must sow what I alone must know.

To feel, to touch,
To let go of what I thought was me,
I love, I love,
And in the end I will love you, my friend.

Video games and our children

July 23, 2010 / tomgrasso

My wife and I got into a discussion about the use of electronics by our children, ostensibly due to my youngest daughter’s upcoming birthday and my desire to buy her an iPod touch. Well, not actually what “old timers” would call a discussion, we were texting each other from about 45 miles away, which is very ironic given the topic. Veronica was against the idea, understandably given what is going on with kids and electronics in the world today. It seems wherever you go you can see a young child or teen with some form of electronics (sometimes running into walls while walking), and it is easy to see why any parent would be reluctant to introduce such mind-numbing distractions. Not to mention the costs of getting that broken nose fixed, most people today are oblivious to the world around them when using electronics, with rubbernecking at an accident on the highway replaced with texting about it and good sound family discussion being replaced with texting and an occasional grunt when asked “how was your day dear?” So I get it. How on earth could any parent buy their 6-year old an electronic device that captures their attention better than any explosion could?

Yet, how can you not?

My goal here was not to gift a device that would be used as a new-age version of a pacifier. It would not be turned over to my 6-year old with the intention of allowing it to absorb her mind like the sponge we have seen so often. It would not be to hand it to her at dinner so she could ignore her family. It would not be used in a way that would allow her to miss the world between points A and points B. It would not be used in place of good, sound parenting to teach the boundaries of living in our society. Rather, I see it as a way to teach exactly all of those things and allow good parenting to occur. When I see a person of any age (myself included) so engrossed in their electronic device that they cannot tell you what they had for dinner five minutes ago it does cause the cursory shaking of my head. When I see a man across the restaurant texting away while his wife is telling him about her day only to realize that the “man” is a mirror I completely understand where my wife is coming from. When I see a kid so engrossed in a video game at the dinner table that she can’t even eat her dinner I get it. Hold on a second…

…what did you say dear? Sorry, I was typing on my computer. Sweetie, you there? I guess she’ll text me.

Anyway, my goal in getting the iPod touch was multifarious (a fancy word I learned on my computer). First, I think she would love the games I put on it. Second, a kid today without a great working knowledge of modern electronics can’t set up my home entertainment system for free, which is a travesty in any household (of course the trick would be getting them away from their games long enough to do the work). Third, it would allow us to parent her and teach her boundaries when using the iPod, something that was certainly not available to us considering my parents would still view pocket calculators as “those new fangled contraptions”. What I see in kids and adults today isn’t the fault of the technology, but the fault of parents or of those who are responsible to teach boundaries. You know, boundaries? “Don’t put your hand on the stove Michael”, or “Don’t climb on the table Gianna”, or “Tom, blah blah blah blah” (I am, after all, still typing on my computer). It isn’t the kid’s or the technology’s fault when that kid is handed a video game at dinner and allowed to play with it throughout the entire dinner without ever coming up for air. It isn’t the kid’s fault that you have to call them 50 times because they can’t hear anything but the beeps coming from the screen. It isn’t the kid’s fault that they miss the entire world around them because the are trying to get Mario to a new universe. It isn’t the kids fault he loves to write on his computer (I think I just heard something about the need to evacuate…nah, that must have been the PS3 game going on in the living room).

The fault lies solely on the shoulders of those whose job it is to be parents. It’s the fact that we aren’t teaching and that we aren’t parenting that causes kids to walk into walls. So, my fear is that when my daughter gets to the age my wife deems appropriate for such games, she will not have the necessary skills to put the damn thing down to enjoy what matters (or to learn that getting to Level 1,000,443 does not) nor the knowledge that what those around her are trying to say is more important that Mario jumping to an alternative universe. I can almost hear the arguments now between two stubborn females…one not understanding the beauty of the game and the other not understanding the beauty of the world around her as the veil of Nintendo cascades down upon the world she used to see. So I believe we teach her now so that when the veil does come down around her she can easily blow it to one side to see beyond it, even if Micheal and I would certainly get a kick out of the “female” discussion. I guess the question still is in me that wasn’t really addressed in the discussion (I reread the texts and I am SURE it wasn’t). How can we teach her the place this technology should have in her life if we don’t get her the technology and introduce it into her life? If we don’t, she will only learn from the examples of her peers, something that scares me more than any iPod ever will.

The man in the mirror is laughing at me right now. Damn him and his judgmental ways. I had better go now before my wife unplugs the compu…

The views expressed here are not indicative of any one person or set of events. Any resemblance to real events is either coincidental or simply in your own mind. Get over it, if this angers you, you probably need to talk to the person in the mirror. ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT!!