There is only one world, the world pressing against you right this moment. There is only one moment in which you are alive, the here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each moment as an unrepeatable miracle.

I guess that's how it's gotta be

There's so much strength and beauty in art. It's fairly ridiculous. So, I unabashedly love Amos Lee. Amos has a song, "What's Been Going On?" Tremendous. Youtube it, iTunes it, steal it, whatever. It's just incredible, and incredibly on with everything I have gone through in this enormous process. A process that still is far from completed...I don't know that it'll ever be completed.

Again, I foolishly expected things to be different after being gone so long. The fucked up thing is that I know in my heart things aren't going to be different. Nothing is the same, but nobody has changed. I want to believe in people. I want to think that as I've grown, that others have grown. It just isn't the case, and that hurts like hell. I'm not depressed, but fuck man, I've cried more since coming home two weeks ago then I cried in three months in Florida. Those three months in Florida, aside from the occasional trip to Seffner or guest appearance from great friends, were pretty solemn, and isolated. I had my Dad. I had Joyce. I had me. I had books. I had group on Saturdays.

The world here, in Buffalo, kept spinning on the same axis, and for some reason I thought that wouldn't be the case. WHY? Less than four days here what am I getting? The same shit, hearing the same shit talk being filtered through the same channels....Directed blindly towards people.

Play this game for a second. Think of all the people in your life who you feel close to. I mean people you know intimately (and if you take that to mean sexually, just stop reading this). Do you really know them? I hope you do, I really do.

All I know of them, those who I know intimately; it's all surface. There aren't three people on this planet at this instant who know how vulnerable I feel...even on my best day. There is one -- MAYBE two.

Think about the next time you sit in judgment of someone. Think about that next time you hear a second-hand story about what so-and-so did the other day. How the fuck can you sit there and judge what and who they are based on actions that you have no background to the circumstances of?

I have no idea how else to say it man. Don't take this literally, please. I'm not a musician. I'm not from Philadelphia....Aside from that, this is exactly fucking right on. It hurts me to listen to Amos articulate all of this word-for-word. I've thrown this up here more than once, but now that I am home, it's never, ever been more painful yet relevant. Self-acceptance, radical acceptance -- "What you did...it's alright. You gotta move on. Seasons change." Fuck yes:


"It's a human thing man." Why are people so fucking voided?

But we all must find our own way

I guarantee nobody has this one...I don't belong anywhere. ANYWHERE. I've given it a chance, I even came home early for THIS? It's terrible. I don't feel like I am supposed to be here. I don't want to be here, and I don't need to be here. What the fuck am I doing?

A lot of where I am trying to get to is this place where I am comfortable with being in my own skin....being alive. I feel so incredibly stifled in Buffalo, like I've never felt before, even through the darkest times.

It's an amazing awakening though. I connect with my therapist on a very, very deep and profound level. I love going to talk to her....She gets "it." I don't want to lose that. SOME folks who I banked on coming back and focusing more on, people who helped me when I was at my lowest point -- there is nothing there. It's like it was a false positive. Distance made the heart grow fonder, but it never made the head grow stronger.

You can hope, pray and think that things will be amazing all you want. In the end it comes back to problem #1 since this all began -- I can't think and expect others to understand (but I do...and it hurts that nobody gets this)....But with that all said, there are five people in Florida who despite all of my warts, have never judged me. They've only embraced me and looked out for me...even when I was hesitant, frustrated and lonely. That hasn't fucking happened for even one day in Buffalo. Not one God damned single solitary time. That hurts more than I can ever explain in words.

But I beat the absolute shit out of myself because of everything else, and I fucking hate it -- mainly, leading myself to believe, magically I guess, that things would be different here after a year. Not one God damned thing has changed in anyone. The negativity still smothers me, the angst, and drama, and bullshit just wash over me every time a word comes out of mine or someone else's mouth. I don't get it, and can't do this.

I LOVE Buffalo. I played soccer tonight, and every last person I played with was amazing. I lingered and talked to a few guys who approached me and wanted to see if I cared to play on Sunday mornings, and at the very least be there next Wednesday to play. They wanted to grab a beer at some bar in East Aurora with me, but I sweat like a whore in the Vatican, so I wasn't about to go to a public place with a sweat-soaked white t-shirt. Anyways, there IS an amazing heart here, but, my mind is sick because of the people I can do nothing about. The heart in Buffalo, the thing that makes me love the 716, is non-existent in the cards of life that I have been dealt.

It's like this -- I will be horrible metaphor guy here: There's a bear right? Well, about a year ago he realized what a dumb fuck he was for continually entering a trap...the same trap that had always been there. He started to hate himself for how stupid he was for falling into it time and time again. Still -- he did it. Something broke in the bear though. He decided one day that he was going to try to avoid the area where the trap was at all costs. He did OK. Sometimes he would visit to see the trap was still there, but he didn't step in it...He just tip-toed around it from time to time. He observed its presence, but never let it destroy him. Never, ever, ever, ever will that trap be gone. As long as it's there, his best move is to avoid it at all costs. It may suck to not go near that area because there is a lot to be missed, but, that will all be long in the past sooner than later.

After a while the bear was saddened by his inability to avoid the trap on a daily basis. He thought enough time had passed....the trap can't still be there can it??? He was a bit ashamed that eventually the only answer was to avoid it completely...so he went back to the area for good, again. Nothing changed though. The same trap was there, only, it was larger, and nastier because he was used to life without the threat of the trap.

I looped myself into self-love which I will never be ashamed of. I like myself, and I love myself. I am proud of who and what I am for the first time in my life, but I am at the realization that I won't be able to live a life worth living (in my eyes) if things stay stagnant here.

I harbor a lot of hope in people, and that hope has been shot to shit since the plane landed.

Can I leave it all behind when it is all I know? And how hard is that going to be?

Eek

This gave me chills (and yeah, it made me tear up a little bit):

You will be walking some night...
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty; you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one...

-- Wendell Berry

The Game

"A man can be destroyed, but not defeated." -- Ernest Hemingway

That seems a little convoluted at first read. Destroyed and defeated are similes right? Dig deeper though, and it sums up the last 15 months of my life.

In every way other than physically, I was blown up, I was destroyed. The pieces were all over the place, and at times it didn't look like they'd ever get put back together. My demons destroyed me, the outside world destroyed me on the inside, but at the end, the game was never over -- I was never defeated and I'm far from it now.

You can't go very far without seeing the parallels in everything. Drug addicts who get clean don't allow defeat; alcoholics who stop drinking fend off defeat. All the way down to something as trivial as sports. I think about the Detroit Tigers...just like I do in most life situations -- I draw the parallel with my Tigers.

In 2003 they were God awful. One of the three worst teams in the history of baseball. They were right there, ready for infamy in the final week of the season. With six games left, even if the Tigers went four and two, they would have hit the record books as the worst team in baseball history. Three of those final six games were against the playoff-bound Minnesota Twins...they were screwed. But it didn't happen. A team of nobodies, historically awful, dug in and won five of their final six to stay clear of the ultimate record for futility. They got destroyed all season long, but they weren't defeated.

Hemingway's quote comes from The Old Man and the Sea. If you know much about the book, it's typical Hemingway. Bleak and dark with moments of shining hope. Santiago, a weathered old fisherman who went out to sea for 84 straight days without ever catching a bite, never gave up despite seeing and living through what most of us would consider hell.

Everyone in town thinks Santiago is a hopeless bum...a joke. He survives the driest of dry spells by recalling the plight of others, and drawing inspiration from their battles, their perseverance, and their eventual mini-triumphs. Santiago thinks of the pain of his heroes, specifically Joe Dimaggio (see, Hemingway deferred to sports too!) and the pain he played in late in his career. Still, Dimaggio's mental toughness carried him through the darkest, most painful days. He was destroyed at times -- by the media, by his own body -- but he kept playing, much like Santiago, who kept fishing. They were never defeated.

In the end, the desire and drive to not be defeated cannot come from anywhere else but inside of you. There is nobody else who can fight for you. Hemingway hits the core of something I deal with every day of my life. The days where I cry, still, but don't tell anybody. Days that could easily erode very quickly. Man cannot be defeated, but I think the caveat is -- if he doesn't let it happen. That's life, and I think that's the key to figuring out this whole giant mess. Never being defeated means always finding hope in the rubble. It means healing depite being broken apart.

That's why I need to leave Florida, and never come back unless it's to Tampa, Orlando, the beach, or anywhere but Lakeland. It's a mess down here (and it has nothing to do with Lakeland or it's people...I actually LOVE the people down here). A man who I have always looked up to as my strength and my rock is letting defeat wash over him.

Your brain is a muscle that, like every other muscle, needs to be used every day, and needs exercise. If you turn the power over to someone else to think for you, and allow yourself to be a passenger while someone else makes all of your life decisions for you, down to the simplest things imaginable...then you're planting the seeds of ultimate defeat.

I did what I needed to do for me while I was away from home. My sabbatical of a year has awakened me a lot to things. I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I respect myself more, I like myself more, and I've gotten in touch with something inside of me -- a soul I never knew existed before my destruction. I can't control how other people choose to live and conduct themselves. It hurts like hell to sit by as a passenger sometimes while loves ones just seemed resigned to defeat, but, to be happy I CANNOT LET IT GET TO ME. The freshest of fresh starts is happening in a little bit less than a month, and that's such a beautiful gift that so many people never, ever receive.

That plane takes off next week, and an icredible weight comes off of my shoulders. A weight that has been off of a lot of other people's shoulders for a while now. I'm the last person hanging onto the ring, but, I'm letting go of it too.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - Chapter 56

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honour and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.

Every time I write I fear that someone will take the things I write personally. It's not at all. It's me speaking on ways that I don't want to be, yet, it's ways that I totally recognize that I was and how that led me to my depression and self-hatred. When you're having a bad day and want to just take a baseball bat to a tree -- well, that's how writing works to get the shit out of my head.

Anyways, this passage really moved me. The first two lines are really powerful. Those who constantly say their lives are perfect, and proclaim to anybody who will listen that they love their lives are truly very hurt. What is the motivation for people to do this? I have no idea. By doing it, it's boasting and bragging and arrogant, and it makes people feel like you're rubbing something in. It turns people off of you very quickly. Those who are truly happy in their lives, again like before, do by non-doing. Non-doing is also non-saying. True happiness is something that cannot be articulated and bragged about. It's something that sadly few know (I certainly don't), but, those who know it -- true happiness (I am going to take Gahndi and the Dalai Llama's word for it) -- say that it comes from within....I've lived to where I thought opulence was the way to show I liked my life (remember, "supposed to living"), but, that just led me to wanting to acquire more, and fill a void. If there is any kind of void to fill -- you aren't happy.

Nowadays, I feel rich through life experiences, and remembering the amazing things I've been blessed to be able to do and experience. It's no longer what I've amassed, or how I make a nice little living while I feel like I barely do much "work." I don't have the need to tell anybody how amazing things are because it's all in my heart and in my head. Instead, psychotically, I'd rather tell people how shitty my life is, which is sadly also an all too common human affliction. But, when there is someone you come across who is truly down and out (believe me -- I know!), it's so absolutely about having compassion.

Taking the time to show genuine care when a fellow human being is down can mean the world, and have a real ripple affect on the planet. Compassion for others opens the flood gates to personal happiness also. This can only be obtained by gaining a global grasp of the world, and the life that exists outside of your bubble. To know of the suffering going on this world will make you so much more apt to true compassion, and again, it's an unbreakable chain that will make you appreciate what you have and what you are that much more.

The middle stanza can be mis-represented and thought of completely wrong if you're in the wrong mind set. All I take out of it is "Temper your sharpness, simplify your problems, mask your brightness." Pretty simple. If you're bragadocious about your happiness or your wealth, people despise this more than anything on the planet. It's just like when athletes and celebrities pull the "do you know who I am? card. How disgusting is that?

In the end, when we're all alone, we're all the same as each other. Money, job, stature, relationships, whatever...It's great if you're happy, but, to borrow (errr, steal) a line from Wavy Gravy "we're all just bozos on the bus." We're on this ship together, and when you strip it all down, we're all fucked up, we're all capable of greatness, and we're all amazing gifts on the planet.