Category: Short Stories (Page 12 of 46)

Riddled with something, the Unseen. We label our consistencies inconsistent. We call our fears our “needs”. We succumb to the demons even before they wield a weapon, as we often have already cut ourselves before they even unsheathe their swords. The drama, the insecurity. All of those things we see as supporting the value of our existence. 

Drama. The opposite of dharma even if it is just a few letters away. Like a monster’s grip on the heart, it strangles the life out of the afflicted and turns them into zombie creatures who feed on its existence. Like an enormous anchor to massive for the vessel that carries it, the ship sinks even before voyage begins.  The zombies won’t drown in that sea, they will simply feed off the jetsam stuck in the ebb and flow of waves that can’t find a shoreline. 

I just wish to live. In peace. In love. In the stoic way my journey has given me. I don’t want your baggage, your demons, your tireless attempts to wallow in the muck of failed patterns. I will be seen by those whose eyes have opened, and hope to remain unseen by those who still can only see tomorrow, the end, at the sacrifice of the Now. I will not sacrifice my moment to your fear, even if it means you will hate me. 

To that end I regain my dreams, and promise not to burden you with them. I will walk patiently in my moment and have nothing to do with the attempts of dragging me into spaces that I have no business visiting.  This is my story, and I’d kindly ask you to keep your fingers on your own keyboard.

Thus the demons, unseen as they are, laugh and slither away. They will be back, I am sure. 

Sleep begs me to come to her. I sit in idle stillness within the darkness, tempering the steel within me and harboring no desire to find the weakness that once defined me. Ah, that stillness. That wonderful place to you can’t visit, that awesome area my soul has carved from weathered wood never to be returned to its former repose. Thus I go, rising up from my pillow, to live another dream.

I feel the fire burning within me. Like a raging beast whose form I cannot define, something growls where the silence once was. Who am I to question this Divine gift? Who am I to doubt the sanctity of the truth I feel burning through my veins? It is they who have given me doubt, and it is me who has taken that image and burned it beyond much recognition. I need nothing from you, save the memory of how far this journey has taken me.

I hear her calling again. My eyes grow heavy in her song, but there’s something I need to say. I’m not sure why. I never am. Yet like a puppet draw to the stage the strings are pulled, and I dance some scene from play my Soul demands of me. Sometimes I am the jester, sometimes I am the King. I am, however, always me. I am, forever, the writer of this story. I am, eternally, the one who sends this to the stars.

There is never any certainty in the words I write. I swear to you I am nothing but a translator, feeling something as it courses through me and onto something you can read. This will not be edited, and I will not change a thing. As it is sent, so shall it be delivered. Whatever comes of me in the sweet arms of my dreams, nothing will change what has been written. Nothing will change what will be.

Tomorrow, July 14,  will be 51 years old. I remember a time when 30 seemed old. Then 40 was the age I dreaded. Now, those way-points have come and gone. I am what they call “middle-aged” I think, although I’m not sure I feel it. Sure, the joints ache a bit, and the hair looks grayer, but the spirit of youth still flows within me. 60 year olds no longer look old to me, and I often sit wondering what the next 9 years will bring. I wonder if those who have achieved that milestone wondered the same thing at my age, and what they accomplished between that moment and this one. I can only say I have so much more I want to do, and can only pray to have the time left to get it all in.

“And the young, they can lose hope cuz they can’t see beyond today,  the wisdom the old can’t give away…” ~Pearl Jam, Love Boat Captain. 

I am still not sure which I am, they young who can lose hope or the old who can’t give wisdom away. Sometimes I feel like a little of each, but mostly the latter.  We live our lives to, hopefully, gain a bit of wisdom to share with those who could benefit from it. Usually there are no takers, and rightfully so. We all learn from the scars we inflict on ourselves, and three is no one worthy of saving us save the one we see when we look in the mirror.

Well, sleep’s call is getting much louder, and I believe it’s time to answer her call. She gets mighty upset when I ignore her, and what she offers I rarely can turn away. Time to dream. Time to fly with the eagles and rise like the wind. Time to make love under a sultry moon and whistle as the wolves howl their ancient songs. When I wake, assuming I do, I will achieved something I have never achieved in my life. I will awaken as a 51-year-old man.

Hopefully from there I’ll have 364 more new beginnings before hitting another milestone. I do plan to absorb each moment as it comes, laughing and playing my way to the grave one day. It truly is a happy birthday, spent in solitude and with those I love. I am truly blessed.

Peace.

They lay, wallowing in the discomfort from the bed they have made. Sat upon them like a stone, the weight of a weightless world crushes them, and leaves them paralyzed with the fear of their own making. Lost in a whirlwind of uncertainty, they grasp at the roots of their failure believing, somehow, that things will be different this one, final time.

They speak in swollen tongues, writhing from the desperate need to feel secure in their dysfunction. Somehow, in some way, they kneel in front of the altar built upon their failures, often teetering on the brink of something else, yet falling backwards once again onto the pathways of what they know. Regardless of the tears, despite the pain of losing yet again, they drag their inner child behind them. Or, more appropriately, it is their desperate inner child dragging them into some dark abyss which is, despite the darkness, all-too-known to the child and its puppet.

Who are the ones who light the candle in the shroud of those dark corners? Why do some choose the path of hardship that burdens the mind with a lightness of freedom, the heart with the limitless bounds of liberation? Who are those who scratch the surface of their scars just to dive beneath them? Who is it that would growl in the face of something new, and seek that newness with an energy unique to soaring Angels?

They are the Desperate Ones. Souls so desperate to live that the iron chains bestowed upon them fall to the ground. Hearts so desperate to be free that the struggle for realization is so worth the price they’ve paid to find it. These lucky few despise the cages others have wrought upon themselves, and seek the dangerous climbs that will either set them free or kill them. These hearty fucks feign no ignorance in the undertaking. They just rise, stand tall, and snarl their way to the summit.

They are as desperate for life as many are to obey the voices in their heads. The Desperate Ones are as desperate for truth of uncertainty as many are the illusions that they are safe. They are as desperate for the solitude of aloneness as many are for the false security of companionship.  They care not about your feelings, your rules, your sanctuaries or your stories, they simply want to live freely without those games you’ll play to imprison them.

Desperate Ones, those stoic souls, shun their needs in order not to become a slave to them. They focus on the wounds that cause them to recoil the most, knowing the treasure the pain and the healing will uncover. They seek not to find comfort where there is none, but discomfort in the spaces that they sleep not out of some gluttony for pain, but simply because the lessons there prove invaluable. When they lay in the bosom of pleasure, of comfort, they do so in a mission of truth knowing full well that these, too, shall pass and when they do, the grief will be short and the pleasure of living magnified.

Come at them, if you will, with trepidation. The games you play will fall away like autumn leaves from an old tree. The mindset you bring will deter them not from their mission, and you will either shrink from your pedestal or rise above it. The altars you have built will either crumble to dust or lift you above the burning embers of old thought. Either way, you will know you have been there and you either seek shelter or have none of it. You will choose. That is the way of things.

Soon it will become evident that the Desperate Ones, those who strive for life, liberty and happiness are not really desperate at all. What they seek flows to them, and though you seek to block the current and belay the tide you will surely fail. What flow to them also flows through them, and when you fail in your mission to reduce them to the muck in which you wallow you will see the glory of that light. You will either stare into it or hide your eyes, and then you will see the truth of where you are.

There is as much truth in blindness as there is in perfect vision. Both the way up and the way down a mountain are equally unforgiving even if the work is different. Neither the start nor the finish are truth until you have achieved them. Remember, my soul, that when you have reached the summit of any climb you still are only halfway to your destination. You are not home until you descend, and you have not achieved your full potential until you are home. No matter how painful each step becomes you will always know where you must go.

Do so love your life, and you joy, enough to defend it with all your strength. Do not surrender to those still hiding from monsters under their bed. Shine brightly in the sky, and those who cannot handle the light will burn away while those who bask in it will flock to the beaches for just one more day. Those who hide may find their strength one day, nothing in this space is forever except the light itself, which will shine eternally in different forms and in different ways.

Find me in your breath, oh Desperate One, and feel your flesh strengthen and your heart soften with resolve. Now go, and live your truth, and surrender it to no one.

Peace.

To the one who responds when others state a need, we know the gravity that pulls us. When the siren blares, the bell rings, or the switch is pulled, we mount up and go without a thought. It is in the blood of the one who answers the call, for it is the very fiber of his existence.

For them, I wish to share a story. This is not some dramatic screenplay written by some fanciful Hollywood writer. This was real blood. This was real sweat. In the end, this was real tears.

When you see a fire truck screaming down a street, know the people mounted upon it are exuberant. Rare is it when man can follow his passion and answer his true call, but know they are. Their minds switch from men and women being humans to souls on mission for which they were born. Things happen automatically, each mind giving way to a response born by countless hours of training.  Each heart steels itself to the task it has been called to do, each piece knowing its part in the puzzle. While they know the people who have called them may be in great peril, they are ready for the task ahead and prepared to give it their all to save even one life in need.

That is what happened on July 4, 2002. A raging house fire. Kids trapped. Firefighters on the scene, ready to give their all.

While the intricacies of the job are many, and the hazards faced changing by the minute, what remained steady was the heart of determination of the men and women who were there. While the sirens blared the evacuation orders, men begrudgingly surrendered hope of fully answering the call that shouted from deep within. Nothing stirs the hearts of the responder more than knowing a life hangs in the balance of effort  they were born to do. Something primordial challenges them, something from outside the realm of mind and body begs them onward. Onward they will go.

Some of them who gathered on that night decided they were not ready to quit. As a group they went to the incident commander and begged for one more chance. There were kids in there. There could still be hope. One more chance, it’s all we need.

The chief gave in. Some would say he gave into their pressure. I say he surrendered to the voice inside of him, the one he shared with those under his command.

One more chance.

They went in. Eleven of them. Through the flames and falling remnants of what was once a home, they charged forward. The rage of a mission greater than self must have welled up within them. Flames nor heat nor danger of the night would stop them. Their training must have told them they were in great peril and that their situation was helpless, yet the voice convinced them that they had more time. Up they went, searching, until finally it came time to acknowledge the impossibility that anything without an air pack and gear could survive there and that even with the tools of their trade, their survival was handing by a thread.

Or a few nails driven by a hammer decades before. Sometimes the very essence of life hangs by just a few strands of aged steel. Sometimes, that steel simply cannot bear the weight.

The house came down, eleven brave souls still inside along with the three children they were hell-bent on saving. In an instance the hopes and dreams of many collapsed and floated away like red-hot embers in a summer wind. Immediately, the one soul of a brotherhood sprung to life, and what was once a futile effort to save others became a desperate effort to save itself.

Rescuers dug in, giving their all to save those trapped in the debris. Desperation invaded the space within the minds of those steeled to danger, and fatigue became irrelevant to the cause. Soon, either brave souls were saved, and three were gone to destiny.

Men die for various reasons. These three would die in service of others. They would die to set a standard for the rest of us to follow. When the chips were down and the mission seemed impossible, we simply ask for one more chance. When the flames of life become too intense and others call our name, we ask for one more chance to help them. When the structures fall and the burning ash betrays our greatest weaknesses, we stand up for one more chance. When we stumble, and fall, we rise to look the beast in our minds right in the heart and say, we have one more chance. And when our final bell rings, we hear the truth vibrate in the very song echoing in our hearts.

Take that one more chance.

I don’t write this as much as an honor to them as to give you a chance to honor them. You likely have never heard their names, and I bet they’d agree their names are not important . What is important is the that one more chance they have to inspire others to some semblance of greatness, some ideation of what makes us all wonderful potentialities. What do we do with our one more chance? What do we do to honor the greatness we were born with?

As you read their names, know that I knew them. They seemed rather ordinary in life, doing great things with the hearts they were blessed with in a brotherhood filled with extraordinarily ordinary men and women. What makes these men extraordinary is that when the opportunity came to shrink from their calling, they refused. When the order came to evacuate, they protested. When the knowledge that three young lives had even the tiniest thread of hope still there, they went back in. They used that one more chance to rise above the ordinary, and show us all what is possible.

They were awakened in the middle of the night by a calling, and they rest in an eternal answering of that call.

Deputy Chief John West
Chief Jim Sylvester
Firefighter Thomas Stewart

What a wonderful gift she is. Like the warmth that is the fire before it’s seen, I can feel her in the air around me. Like the Sun that can be seen though the eyes are closed, I can see her even in the depths of a lonely night. She is always there, prompting me forward though my flesh begs me to stop, reminding me that now is the time to be the best I can offer.

She walks with me on the muddy pathways I roam, rarely leaving her footprints in the muck. She whispers words of love even when silence is all I hear. I could see her in the mist before I had ever seen her form, and I had called out her name before it was even known to me. In the nature of our humanity we’ve walked together since the beginning of time, even when we were alone in the climbs we have taken.

Is there a doubt that destiny has brought us to the place of our meeting? Somewhere, in the annuls of what divinity authors as what must be, their names were etched with a smile and a promise of hope. In the stories written of love and loss, of great warriors risen from the ashes to find a throne to call their own, their moments were foretold. “These two,” said Time, “we born to sow great gardens in the spaces that they share.” To meet would be their destiny, to unite would be their cause, and to plant great seeds would be the purpose for which they’ve lived the lives they had.

In the nature of their humanity, both would be born to find their dawn sprouting in the Eastern horizon. Both would find their purpose rising through unknown skies, finding their natural way. She would blaze the path through the night to light his day, and he would hold her dear when the storms clouds darkened their journey home. Their destiny was to rise in the East and set in the West, creating a wonderful day in the spaces between.

Love, as it is, purely attracts lovers to their purpose. Though resist they may, the attraction overcomes the illusions they create against it. Through fear and folly, through stumbles and happenstance, lovers rise to meet the wonderful challenge of their natural undertaking. They kiss in the torrential downpours. They embrace as the blizzard winds tear life apart all around them. They make love in the heat of battle and they always, forever, stand back-to-back against each and every foe.

There is nothing lovers need do to realize their destiny save destroying the obstacles they have created along the way. Love pulls them together, and only their fear can keep them apart. If they choose to surrender to the pull, given in to the truth of their existence, there are no seas too wide nor mountains too high to separate them. Their flesh will know its truth in the sweat they share, and their moments will be brightly lit by the truth of their connection.

In the nature of our humanity we realize the nature of our Divinity, and in the love we share we know ourselves so clearly, and so truthfully, that there can be no return to the darkness of the lie. In our kiss we know the song of Angels, and in our union we discover the very nature of the unseen Universe, and the power of the attraction that binds us to this space even when we fly high above it.

Now, with this hammer and this sword I destroy the obstacles before me. I await your arrival, in the truth of our meaning, in the light of our meeting, and in the purpose for which we were born.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own mortality. Not in the fearful way many do, but in a different way.

I know I will die someday. I’ve been there, uncertain about survival and unsure about even having a future, let alone what would happen during it. I don’t fear death at all. I have discovered a unique and surprising relationship with who I am and understand what that means. In that relationship, which was not born by my upbringing, or the faith I was born into, or some book I was forced to read, gives me great confidence in both where I am going and what it all means.

What I fear the most about my own mortality is what happens before that end. I fear not living, not squeezing every ounce of love and life I can out of this experience. I fear aging only from the sense of losing out on what life can provide, and on missing out on some experience that gives each moment purpose.

I know I will miss out on most of the lives of my children. I will miss seeing them become middle-aged, of becoming grandparents. I will miss most of the trials and tribulations they will face after I am gone. I know one day they will need me, and I will be unable to respond in my normal way. All I can do is hope that I can respond in a different way, in a way that raises a voice, a reaction, a thought within them that helps them in their times of need.

That’s why I spend as much time as I can as their teacher. I want to give them a voice to hear when they may need it when mine falls silent. I want to instill in them lessons that they can remember and, maybe, even pass on even when I am not around to remind them. I want them to be reminded of the joy I lived in, and how none of the struggles of this life held me down for very long. I want them to know resilience, and the fire that never wants to be extinguished within each of us.

To get there, I need more life. Many people ask me what’s led me to want to get in shape, to lose weight, and to live as healthy of a lifestyle as I can. Well, that’s it. I’m not done here and, hopefully, will not be done here for quite some time. I can’t control everything that affects life but, dammit, what I can control I will. I’m selfish that way. I want to live, live well, and not regret anything when it’s my time to leave.

Except of course, not having more time. Because I want infinity here.

I don’t believe in delay for delay’s sake. Taking your time just to take your time is a waste of time. Instead, live the amazing words of Rumi when he wrote,

‘Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”

For some, living the safe life is their choice. For me, I want to throw some caution to the wind and do things differently. I don’t want to be looking back on life with regrets for not having tried. I don’t want to be that shy kid in the corner regretting that he didn’t ask the cute girl to dance. I want to whisk her away and twirl until we are both dizzy with laughter. I don’t want to live according to rules, or conditions, that are not my own. I want to laugh inappropriately, stand firm when I must, and climb every fucking hill I can find regardless of how much I fear the heights.

Yeah…how’s that for intention? How’s that for living outside your comfort zone? I’ll know when something is outside of my current capability, but that doesn’t mean that the challenge of trying will be ruled out. I may not desire to climb Everest, but that doesn’t mean I am not interested into making it to the Hillary Step.  I may still get a little dizzy and have trouble with balance on the Manitou Inclines, but I will get to the top even if I have to crawl my way up there.

And that is, by the way, exactly what I did.

I may have been a blind boy who couldn’t see the forest for the trees, but an awakened man only briefly grieves lost time. What would be grief becomes a commitment to not losing any more, and to make the most of each moment. There is no delay worth making, no time worth wasting, and no experience unworthy of my attention if my Being reverberates with the energy of YES!

I like that energy.