Category: Short Stories (Page 21 of 46)

I wrote this on August 26, 2013.  A letter to myself.

At some point, at some time, you will simply be amazed. “Wow” won’t cut it, but it will be all you can muster. Thoughts and ideas will become hollow in the face of the intuition within you. Surrender to it and unfurl the sails of your soul, letting those Divine winds take you to places you have never seen.

You begin a new leg of your fantastic journey. You believe it is fraught with trials and tribulations, with pain and suffering, but such fear is a bastard liar meant to keep you in port. Believe in no fear, for you shall not fall from the edge of this Earth, regardless of what others say.

Do not let the work that is necessary give you pause, for love’s work is no effort at all on the seas you were meant to sail. You’ll go about the business at hand with a smile, a laugh, a few tears, and some groans that will escape your lips with each drop of sweat that falls from your brow. If the seas become too rough, or the effort becomes work, check your compass and change your course. There is only smooth sailing on the seas you were meant to travel.

Then came a now-deceased Indian philosopher named Osho, the Four Agreements and deeper mediation. Then came a sudden, but long-sought move to Colorado. In between all of those came people who guided me onward and deeper.

One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes the beginning of things are in the middle of them. Sometimes the greatness we achieve is in the mediocrity we have surrendered to Sometimes the joy we feel is born after great sorrow. Sometimes acceptance springs from great resistance.

There were a few moments when hope was lost. There were some instances when the lows just seemed to deep to overcome. Yet they weren’t. Those valleys are there so that we can see the great summits, and those summits exist with an unmatched view because of the valleys that surround them. It’s part of the cycle of this life, with our choice reigning supreme over the every situation we encounter. Our choice to climb. Our choice to fall. Our choice to see things in a way that supports us. Our choice to create the very perspective we may have once felt powerless over.

I can’t wait to read this in a year, and see what peak I may be looking at it from. Yet, I’m content looking at it Now, and embracing all that is around me. What a fucking view!

I always thought you were beautiful. I would gaze at you from a distance, knowing you barely knew my name. I would admire your eyes, they curve of your mouth, the way your hair flowed just right. I’d listen to your voice, and I would hear it echo all around me.

I remember it.  Clearly. I would think about you in my childish way, lacking both the confidence and the courage to do something about my thoughts.   I’d meander about in fantasy, knowing what I’d have to offer, yet believing that you never would be able to see it.

Today, there you were, and my breath lost pace with the rest of me. I won’t mention the place, or the forum, or the way in which I saw you, but there you were. It doesn’t appear you’ve changed much over the years, but I know through experience that decades have changed us all. You’re still beautiful, with the soft eyes of a warrior that could both melt and sear through a man at the same time. Your mouth still curves in that way it always has, and your hair still looks perfect regardless of its intention.

I can’t hear your voice, but somehow it is there, echoing in my mind, Remembered are the insecurities of my youth, the frustration of wanting yet surrendering, of reaching and having the treasure fall just out of reach. Those memories contrast nicely with the man I’ve become. Strong, secure, a man who knows himself and has no fear in the desires of his heart and mind. If you only remembered my voice too, what a moment we could have.

There you are. I remember you, all of you. My breath finally catches up, and I just sit, gazing at the wonder of you. What are the stories you have to tell? Where are the scars, the wounds, and the empty spaces you’ve left waiting for the one?  Who is the one you crave, the one you hold your breath waiting for?

So many things, so little time. Just know that I remember you.

The pit. It’s there. I can feel it in my every breath, taste it in the very air that sustains me.

I know I want to find you, to meet under the pines. We’ll sit chatting while listening a mountain stream as it passes, softly throwing tiny shore-borne pebbles into its waters. We’ll tell tales of a journey that led us to the place, of streams we once saw, of pebbles we once threw.

I want you here, your head laying softly on my shoulder, our fingers entangled and our hands clasped. I want to feel your breath on my skin. I want to hear your sigh as my fingertips draw lines on your naked back, teasing you onward. I want to stop you in the middle of a sentence, diverting your attention and shattering your focus with nothing more than a touch,

Yet here I am on this stony path, talking to myself about things that hardly matter. I admire the woman walking toward me, and acknowledge her form and her smile. She is not you, however, so I keep walking. Desires of the flesh can only take me so far, as I am a connoisseur of a truth few chefs can prepare.

I sit alone besides the Boulder creek, watching with joy the couples in love, seeing pleasure in people riding tubes down the crystal-clear currents. Next to me is nothing, just an empty spot where the future lies in a lonely present. My heart screams for you as my mouth stays silent. Only the ether, that lonely space between us, knows my truth. That is as it is supposed to be.

I want you to move, but I say nothing. I want you to hurry, but focus on patience. I want you to know, but can only hope your eyes are open to such discovery. Instead, I’ll sit alone, whispering to the leaves, praying to the wind, and longing for a sun shared with you in a morning climb, a night together making love under a loving moon. All things in their time, everything in its place.

The emptiness speaks to me. It knows I understand each and every word. It once was my foe, and I battled it with random companions, hollow words and meaningless rituals. I once demanded the emptiness be filled, and I needed to change to see it gone. I needed to be different, I needed to be “fixed”. I needed to be loved. Together once meant everything to me, and I once fought hard to keep it next to me. The more I fought, the less “together” I would become.

Now, the emptiness is my friend. It is sacred space, left open for you for that moment when you choose to arrive. Each place next to me is hallowed ground, empty to all but the truth of who I am. My hand is now a holy vessel, empty but for the most cherished of things. I am empty, and waiting, for you.

Your name is unimportant. That is best left to soothsayers and whatever guides us to each other. Your face, it’s there but I just can’t see it. Your word are written for me on some eternal stone, just waiting to be read. Your body is waiting for my arrival, as are the waves of pleasure wanting so desperately to break upon our shores. I hear them, and feel them, calling out my name.

If I do leave this earth, the space beside me still empty, my hand outstretched to nothing but the air, I will come back for you. In some way, in some form, in some crazy manner, you will see me and you will know. I will not leave this place without reading your words upon that stone, tracing their curves with my fingers, playing with their meaning in my mind. I will not leave until you shout my name to the heavens above. I will not leave until our screams of ecstasy move birds from their perch, and serve notice to all things, that Love cannot be beaten. I will not leave until the emptiness is filled, both yours and mine, with something equal to its cause.

Make your way when you are ready. I will be here, tossing pebbles in the stream.

“Stop playing in the shallows!” I want to scream in her direction, yet remain silent in my own repose.  She is where she has chosen to be, and I leave her as the mistress of her own destiny.

Still, I have my indignation. I can hear her soul screaming out to the ether demanding something more. I can see it in the faux, two-dimensional smiles she shares. I can see it in her absent stillness, and feel in the remarkable dreams she once had shared.

I could see it in her disdain as I pulled away, lost in a battle I needed to wage alone, and could feel it in the moment she realized there was nothing she could do. There it was, a microcosm of all there is, in a single raindrop streaming down her face.

We still adore each other, in that there is a certainty. When warriors find their frailty, it is their love that holds them steady. When cuts bleed and wounds appear, it is the love that shines on through. When a man can no longer stand on his own two feet, it is his lover that holds him steady.

One cannot understand the strength of things bound in the hands of such a love unless he has been there himself. One cannot understate the notion that we are brought together and driven apart, by events and circumstances not of our choosing. Still, we are creatures of choice, both blessed and burdened by the very free will that defines us. Sometimes the strong survive, sometimes the dust wins.

I will never know when that last first kiss is coming, nor will I know when that only final kiss will arrive. Yet, I know that first dates need never end, and that a single kiss can be stretched into an eternal act that heaven itself cannot contain. I know that tears are not forever, weakness often fades, and “goodbye” is rarely the end of things.  I know that one day I will type my last, sigh a single, final breath, and fade from view like a cloud on a summer’s day.  Yet, I will never stop loving you. Even in the way we do, the promise of two friends holding hands in the sunlight, of two humans who so thoroughly understand one another, this cannot fade. The Universe is built on such intentions, and though stars made change and heavens may fade away, that which holds them dear lives on forever.

That is the forever bond. That is the promise we are given at conception and the promise we pass on in our final moment. It is the smile, the tear, the joy and the heartbreak we all choose to experience. It is two worlds colliding, a star exploding, a galaxy birthed around the very blackness that will destroy it. It is the beginning and end of things that truly never begin and certainly never end. I love you, and I always will. One day, I will write it in the stars.

Do you ever just want to know that you are loved?

That she’s got your back, that he’s standing firm in your space? That whatever happens the truth that flows between you is real, and that you stand on solid ground even if the Universe around you seems to quake?

I know, you do. I know you want to feel hands made strong by a lifetime’s journey hold you in the middle of your back. I know you want to feel the hot breath of a life well lived sweep hotly across your neck. I know you want to feel held. I know you want to feel safe. I know you want to feel honored.

I want to know what brought you to me. I want to hear the stories of footsteps taken and stumbles made. I want to hear your tales of survival, of grit, of wild determination and tame resignation. Mostly, though, I want to hear your moment, your ecstasy in the space we share, your joy in the gift you are to the warrior you are with.  I want to feel you are present in our time, in our space, without surrender to the past or mercy on the future.

There are no guarantees around the corner. Connections are in the moment, and aren’t a surety in the next. Storms come, rains fall, and lightning burns the forests on which we’ve built our home. But now, yes now, I bask in the sunlight and in the lively green around me, hoping you are too, knowing in my soul that we could live, or die, knowing that nothing will ever be the same again.

Someday we may touch that place where connections meet. Someday we may hear the same stream rush past, and see the Sun rise high about the same wily peaks. We may make love in the soft grasses laid out before us, and wash each other in the chilly falls made warm in our embrace. We may find an indestructible in our intertwined fingers, in our gaze that looks beyond the flesh and into something so much deeper. We may know all we’ve been searching for as our sweat puddles united on the ground. We may…someday.

Until then, I walk in purpose, looking intently on the path ahead but feeling everything that is around me. I clearly mumble my mantra, reaching far beyond my mortal confines in awakening, while feeling you in each and every breath.  I wonder then, do you feel me too? I guess we’ll know in the moment of our quickening.

You know you are in love when the words simply fail to form, when they fail to describe the way things are. As a writer, that provides me with such a dilemma. Emotions that I once could easily describe have become indescribable. Feelings that once flowed effortlessly onto a page now are difficult to transcribe. Everything is so very, very different.

I’m fortunate. I feel such a thing. I twirl around in a state of bliss, approaching this life with a power that such a certain truth provides. I want to tell you about it, but it’s not some easy task. I want to paint a picture for you but no color or brush seems adequate.  My palette has certainly not run dry, but it surely does not seem bright enough to share. It pales in comparison to what I see, what I feel, and what I know to be true.

It would be easy to say that what was once formless in the mist has now taken shape. It’s true, the one I felt in the fog I now caress in the sunlight. It’s accurate to say that the one I’ve always felt walking within me is now walking beside me. It’s honest to say that the love I’d always desired is now suddenly wrapped in a beautiful woman who loves me just as much.

Yet, it just doesn’t seem to be enough. There’s so much more.

How does one accurately describe the cascading waves that overcome me when I look at her?  Waves that are a mixture of desire and admiration, of need and want, of pure selfishness wrapped in absolute selflessness surely escape description. Waves of powerful energy that envelop me, take me away while firmly rooting me in the place we share find words so unworthy.

How can a mere man offer words of truth when swimming in pool of ecstasy? How can I describe the weakened-but-strangely-empowered knees when I bite her lower lip, when I feel her reach for me as the dawn breaks? Maybe the sigh that escapes my soul at the thought of her, when she tells me her little secrets, or shows me a once-hidden part of herself is the best description I can offer.

Perhaps a sigh is all I need. Perhaps that is a billion words crammed into one sound. Perhaps a sigh is the “OM” of lovers, of Beings so completely familiar with one another that nothing matters but their truth, a truth that says, “you need never walk alone again.”

Those Who Dance Are Considered Insane by Those Who Can’t Hear the Music ~Friedrich Nietzsche

To some this is an alien existence. They watch a clock and hear it ticking, never knowing how those who know can be so certain. They see the past and live there, never giving the present its due. They hold firm to ideas that have never worked, that have failed over and over again. Mostly, they are in such amazement as to create a sense of denial. They never quite get it, and we are under no obligation to explain it to them.

We just dance in the rain. To our own song, our own beat, our own complete bliss. Your joining us is always welcome, but your attendance is never required.  We can’t describe it to you, the words will fail us. All we can do is ask that you sit in stillness and watch, and then you will understand. Or consider us insane.

That’s us. In love. Utterly unable to tell you about it, completely devoid of words that can make sense of what we’ve found. We know we are right where we need to be, and we feel exactly what we’ve always wanted to feel. We are going to shock you, no doubt. You may shake your head in our direction. Enjoy that. You may, however, find something valuable if you really want to look, something you can’t describe in the love you see, in the love you feel. You may find something that you never want to let go of either, even if you never really need to grasp it.

You’ll smile, just like we do. You’ll laugh and you’ll gasp in ecstasy just like we do. Mostly, though, you’ll dance just like we do, and you’ll notice the nonbelievers with their shaking heads and pointless advice and you will hear nothing but the music they can’t. You’ll grab your lover and growl, and she’ll understand exactly what that means.

Yes, I’m in love. With her. And I’m dancing.

Sigh.

I often sit alone in the mountain Sun, talking it all in. I breathe the air and listen patiently to the way of things around me, not wanting to move for fear of disturbing the scene. There are spaces all around, never empty and never full, begging for a soulful exploration. I try to do so in the natural ebb and flow of things, and sometimes that means just sitting still.

In the heat of passion  I feel love’s breeze cool my moistened flesh. I hear my heart love loudly, echoing in the silence I seek between each beat. I feel love’s caress raise sweet bumps upon my skin.

You know those bumps, don’t you? They come from somewhere else. They are part of you but somehow otherworldly.  They are like little aliens telling stories in some foreign tongue. Yet, you understand them. Each of them, for somehow they speak your language, too.

I see her and I feel those bumps twinkle like stars on a moonless night. We’ve had conversations and debates and I’d sit distracted by those bumps. I’d read her words and feel her thoughts and those bumps would be talking to me, too.  I’d imagine dancing with her slowly to a lover’s song, holding her body close, and those bumps would remind me I’m alive.

I’m reminded of how something so small can be so big, of how often I get too wrapped up in words to actually feel what inspires them. Sometimes silence restores me to that balance I crave and that space I’ve come to cherish. Sometimes there are such great things in the void that I am filled with all I’ve lived to know. Sometimes I need reminding, and those bumps appear to whisper the sweetest memory.

My desire is read like a needle on an old record player, gently scratching the surface, playing a melody imprinted somewhere deep beneath my skin. It’s her song, my song, our song playing in the ether to everyone and no one at the exact same time, an otherworldly sound echoed by our hearts, and read in the bumps I feel cascading through my flesh.

Find me there, please. Don’t hide yourself in the shadows, I need to see you in the light. Don’t fall silent in the cloudy moments, nor search for shelter in the storm. Stand with me, hold my hand, breathe deeply and jump into the mud. Let’s roll around in the dirt, stopping only to draw pictures on each other’s skin that tell tales of our unbridled joy until….

…those bumps appear.  Then we can tell each other not-so-silent stories of ecstasy set free.

Find me there, please, and hurry.

A word before I go.

I love your hippie soul, your soft edges, your crazy fears. I love the way you sweetly stand firm to your beliefs while sacrificing all you are to the shadows you see. I love how you grasp at greatness, and how I feel with you lying next to me, holding that same brass ring.

I know the waves have jostled your wary mind, and the echoes have prodded your skittish heart into finding corners in which to hide. I tenderly hold you there, knowing that you will, one day, arrive.

Perhaps I muddle in a simplistic fantasy, or perhaps the rays of hope have widened skeptical eyes. All I know is that before I go I wanted to share a word.

Love.

I know of me, as I know of you, out there, in here, and every space between.

I find those parts of me, and I find those parts of you, out there, in here, and every space between.

I am, like you, everything and nothing in any given moment. We are the sparkles and the darkness , the willow and the sky. the needle and the thread as well as the slightly wounded space between the edges that we’ve bound.

In this awakening I unfurl my arms, renewed with the strength of a thousand revelations, to both embrace and let go at exactly the same time. What leaves allows in, what departs makes room for something new. I claim ownership of nothing even as I lay stake to everything that I am.

I feel my existence in the gaps, in the moderation of extremes, in the mixture of the hottest hot and the coldest cold I’ve ever known. I am alone in the emptiness though surrounded by a billion beings, and I am found in the wilderness only through the eyes of my beloved, through the arms of something wanting nothing more.

I await for my Queen to arrive. She will grab the scabbard and pull Excalibur from my chest, rising to meet a heart that’s learned to fly through wind that meets me at my best. With arms so full of her in an embrace so empty in her absence, I stand as strong as purple-hued stars that light our evening sky, and in a voice heard through the vacuum we both sigh, surrendered to the whisper neither of us can hear, but both of us have known forever.

Thus, we are bound. The light, the darkness, the heat and the cold, we are tied together through time and space in an eternity of happenstance. In this Universe we are separate only in our perception, in our ideas. We are one without ourselves, truly known as forever in that which we only see as temporary.

In that thread we find whatever it is that binds us. We are one in the illusion that we are many, we are the same in the idea that we are different. The tears and laughs venture from the same place, the happiness and anger enjoyed by the same experience yet in a different moment. Or is it? Could it be that the present moment never ends except in the folly of beings so bent on finding something better? That is something to consider.

With that, adieu. If these are, by chance, the last words I ever write may you know that I’ve fulfilled my promise. Know that the sword you grasp is not that thinly made, and that it has been tempered by the fires of Hell itself. Know that the wings you see were not granted me at birth, but were forged from a thousand falls from a million different nests. Know that as my head nestels on your breast that it knows countless pillows made of stone. Know that as my body rests buried in a bag that it has walked eternal miles, all in honor of a heart that was meant to live, in a place it was meant to know.

Don’t worry, I plan to live. In fact I never plan to die. <3

I see these visions in dribs and drabs…sacred testaments to a man once kept chained in some unholy place.

Indeed I have felt the lash of life bear down upon my heart, and I’ve survived the sting of a million lessons roughly hewn upon my mind. I’ve heard the ridicule of a thousand angels singing songs from their hellish spaces, and I’ve seen the fires pour from those pearly gates created by those who have called my name in the sweetest song.  I have walked in the heavens and hells of my own design, never truly understanding my own power, a power I freely ceded to those whose words I read and whose ideas I saw as more important than my own.

To those who believe that the strongest marble or thickest block of granite do not feel the sting of the hammer or the chisel, let me assure you that every great work of art suffers some in the unmasking. It is in the relentless toil within the pain that we uncover that which exists. It is in answering the voices in our heads that we write the sweetest song.

My siren, my sweet siren, I’ve heard you in the mangled tone of my own forgotten promise! You’ve dashed me upon the stones of my surly sea, and hurled me upon lone islands where I’ve had no choice but to strip bare and languish in that great despair. Still, I have cast a line to the Great Sea, and reaped the reward of sustenance until I learned to paddle on my own, to beat the breaking waves confining me to the sand, to bask alone and with great promise upon the languid Sea.

I see you in so many things, in so many ways. In the delirium of a great thirst I’ve seen you hold a chalice made of stone. In the pain of great hunger I’ve heard you comfort me in song.  There is no one good way to find you, my love.  I’ve sought you in the my reddened skin left blistered by the Sun, in the cracked lips that bleed as I feign a smile at nothing in particular.

I have found you in the smiles and in the tears, in the suffering and in the truth of great joy. I’ve known you in the empty spaces, and held you in arms left empty by the root of my existence.  I have learned so much in the tools I have been given; from the ax I’ve used to chop down the tree on which I’ve been bound, to the saw I used to cut the shackles of the chain, to the key I used to unlock the bindings that tied me to a paradigm I’ve long since cast away. Like a kite I flew, pretending to be free, yet always tied to a thing that kept me safely rooted to ground not of my own choosing.

I challenge you, my Great Love, not in because of who you are, but because of who I am. I do not dare pretend that you can grasp that which cannot be held, or see that which lies beyond your vision. I do not dare fantasize about your arrival, since there seems no place for you to go. I do not have a single moment’s wish to be you, or them, because to be me is to love the world. You need me, much like a barren tree needs a single fruit, much like a dried riverbed needs a single drop of rain.

You may find your anger in the lack of blossoms or in the lack of rain you thought was coming, but I assure you that you will find abundance in the absence of your own expectations. Do not overlook that sweetest drop of rain, or that fruit that hangs in desolation on your heart, for they spawn a seed on barren ground, a promise upon that cracked and lonely landscape.

Do not focus on the dropped petals on the ground, but the fruit they’ve birthed. Do not focus on the dryness of the soil, but the promise of a single drop of rain. Till your soil there, and plant the seeds that heaven bore in the gift that heaven-sent, and know your power as the Tiller of the Soil, as the Planter of the Seed, and as the Master of the Fruit.

It is not the eating of the apple that gives you pain, but your reaction to what it’s shown you. It is not the taste that drives you mad, but its absence. It is not the shame you find resting in some other’s eyes, but the vision you have of what they want to see. Rise up above the surface, break ground with who you are, and know the power of the Great Creator who feels nothing but joy in every struggle.

That is your destiny if so you choose. Or you can die with only knowing the limitations of your potential and the walls you have built around your possibilities.  Coffins, it seems, surround us long before we find ourselves in such sweet repose.

Sing to me, my Great Love! Tear down those walls of encumbrance, and be wicked with those limitations I have set before me. Splinter the wood and bend the steel on which I’ve bound my flesh, and let my soul rise high above the barren fields I have toiled. Let me not see any height as too lofty, any summit as to difficult to climb, or any soil to rocky on which to plant my seed.

Let me, and not the winds I feel swirling around me, nor the rains I pray fall upon my furrowed rows, nor the Sun I pray shine upon my hopeful destiny, be the Master of the Fruit I sow.

It is in You that I see everything, and in everything that I see You. Onward we go to create the footprints we were meant to bear in every song, in the sweetness of the nectar we were meant to taste in every kiss. Such love will forever be etched in the monument of time, for eternity it shall stand.