Mirror

I hadn't stared into my eyes in the mirror in quite some time. I've practiced this in the past before some significant even or change, or maybe during some great obstacle in my life. I haven't done this in a while not because I haven't had my struggles...and not because I haven't made some big shifts in my life and philosophy...rather I just simply hadn't given myself a moment to stop and reflect.

I have always seen myself as two. My heart and conscience, and my mind and body...I think that's how I separate them. When I look into my eyes in the mirror, it is as if I am looking into this familiar being that I love like no one else. While the entity that is doing the loving, has no body at all.

A couple of days ago I confronted myself. I looked into my eyes. I watched my pupils waver...growing and shrinking in size despite my steady disposition as I held my face a couple of inches from the mirror. While staring at those familiar eyes, I drifted into the sense that I was standing nearly nose to nose with another being. I became conscious that I was not looking inward but outward. For a brief moment I felt as though I was not looking simply at my reflection, but Ryan.

I let my head fall against the mirror, and it seemed like I was leaning my head against Ryan...and we were understanding our joys, pains, and worries. It was as if Ryan was sympathetic to me because I was sympathetic to him. I reached my hand up and pressed it against the mirror. In the same way, it was as if Ryan and I were reaching out and putting our hands together...feeling moved by that basic human touch that seems so powerful at times.

I stopped looking into my eyes and looked down...and it still felt like I was leaning my forehead and pressing my palm against someone. I began to cry, slow at first. My abdomen and chest tightened and I gasped, holding my breath lightly until I could shiver out shaky, drawn-out breaths. Tears welled up in my eyes, and in my peripheral sight I could see that reflection dealing with the same emotions. Noticing this made me break. I tried to suppress my tears and gasping. My choked breaths broke through though...and I could see the tears falling off of my own face and into the sink. It felt comforting. I felt like I was grieving with someone and supporting them at the same time.

It wasn't until I was writing this that I realized I hadn't cried with someone in a very long time.

Where I come from

My parents are very keen on genealogy and they love to spend countless hours finding links in their families trees...often competing with one another to see who is closer linked to a famous person in history or who can trace their lineage back further.

More recently as I have been interested though, I have come to discover that they have to use distant links even to start somewhere. They use their grandparents siblings or cousins, great aunts or uncles, 2nd or 3rd generation cousins--all as jumping points to start working back. 

In such a way I have realized that all of their, and ultimately my family lineages in a direct descent are unknown. We have definitely been on the losing side of history on both my mother and father's side.

My mother's father was an Scottish-Irish immigrant who came over with his half-dozen brothers and sisters, and they grew up in Texas during the great depression. They left their clan of McGarrah's behind in the UK in order to find a way out of their poverty, only to find an uglier face of it here in the US.

My mother's mother was an alcoholic Osage Indian, and so was her mother and mother before her of Pettit's. I don't need to mention how well the records and treatment were kept of Native Americans...

My father's father was one of 12 Catholic Bennett children that moved from Missouri, Arkansas, to Texas during the depression. Their father was an orphan and nothing is known about his family...well he was an orphan...dead end there.

My father's mother was a Russian/Polish Jew. Her family of Schmidts and Feinbergs came over from Vilnius in modern day Lithuania around the time of the Russian pograms and moved to Brooklyn. Not much of a direction there, it's definitely not as if I can trace any Jews living in Poland, Russia, or anywhere in eastern Europe for that matter.

At least I know who my mother and father are, and who their parents were. That's something! I wish I could go back further though.

Here is an ode from the Greek Pindaros:

Even high deeds of prowess

Have a great darkness if they lack song;

We can hold up a mirror to fine doings

In one way only:

If with the help of Memory in her glittering crown

Recompense is found for labour

In words' echoing melodies.

my sentiments exactly sir

Crush a bit, little bit, roll it up, take a hit
Feelin' lit, feelin' light, 2 a.m., summer night.
I don't care, hand on the wheel,
Drivin' drunk, I'm doin' my thing
Rollin in the Midwest side and out,
Livin' my life, getting' out dreams
People told me slow my roll,
I'm screaming out, fuck that
Imma do just what I want,
Lookin' ahead no turnin' back
If I fall, If I die,
Know I lived it to the fullest,
If I fall, if I die,
Know I lived and missed some bullets

CHORUS:
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine, once I get it, I'll be goooood.
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine, once I get it, I'll be goooood.

Tell me what you know about dreamin' (dreamin')
You don't really know about nothin' (nothin')
Tell me what you know about them night terrors, every night
5 a.m, cold sweats wakin' up, to the sky
Tell me what you know about dreams, dreams
Tell me what you know about night terrors, nothin'
You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow
Rather lay awake in a bed full of sorrow

CHORUS:
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shines ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine once I get it, I'll be goooood.
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine, once I get it, I'll be goooood.

I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine, once I get it, I'll be goooood.

I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know,
Everything that shines ain't always gonna be gold, hey
I'll be fine once I get it, yeah, I'll be good

I'm on the pursuit of happiness
And I know everything that shines ain't always gonna be gold, hey
I'll be fine once I get it, yeah
I'll be good

Pursuit of happiness, yeah.
I don't get it, I'll be good

Ugh.
Ah, man,
Ugh, ayite, ugh
Room's spinnin'. Room's spinnin'.
Matt... Zulie... wait.
Oh my god why did I drink so much and slug so much?, ah
Ugh, fuck.

beep beep

I will miss the bus rides in the mornings and evenings on my way to and from work. The familiar faces of the 20-somethings who cram together with me for our commute. None of us know each other, we are all strangers, yet we all recognize each other from the transit, day in and day out. I'll miss that. It is like we are part of an unidentified society. 

And on those bus rides I'll miss that these New Englanders often leave their shades open to display their cozy homes. The warm glow resonating from inside their homes are just as much a window for me to capture a glimpse of their lives as it is for them to see the day begin and end. So many people. So many humans! So many snug brick-laden streets and American flags.

Gosh...it's really awkward to observe this when all of these atrocious things are happening in Syria. Their city neighborhoods are being shelled by the armies and government that is supposed to protect them.

Wilted

uproot by Grace Kim

I'm like a plant that has been grounded and pulled out so many times that my roots have become torn and lost. And yet I have ripped them out myself. Never in my life have I seriously considered that I would stay where I am. It is as if I have always expected to uproot myself time and time again, so often that it seems practically an inevitable and natural course of my life. 

Home is home; in Texas where my mother and father are, with our land and country home. I think it will remain 'home' until I have a family of my own. But as early as high school, I knew that I would leave, I'd go some place new for college. Then, in college I knew that I wouldn't stay there further than my studies, and go some place new for work. And now everywhere that I have worked, I have never thought for a moment that there was any permanence to my dwelling. 

I now realize that my roots have been long gone; there is nothing left to grasp myself into the ground because of the constant planting and break-away. I know my roots can grow back, but I convince myself of the plan to move on to something else, leaving no time for them to truly regenerate.

What am I becoming?

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Citizenship in a Republic
Theodore Roosevelt Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I'm becoming part of an item.  This is good, and I like it, which is a strange feeling for me.

And, I am having less nightmares recently, my dreams are becoming more neutral.  I have more or less just been wandering around in my dream worlds instead of having something chasing me or pulling me around.

And, something is going to happen soon.  Maybe not.

And, I am probably going to vote for Barrack Obama again this year, I still support him, and fear the ideals that his opponents hold.  I think people forget that no President in modern times is ever truly popular among the people in the United States.  In hindsight things always get special attention and perspectives become skewed. 

And, back in 2005 I came to the conclusion that anything by Writer/Director Terrence Malick was worth seeing for me.  He creates such a deep, emotional trance in me that it becomes hard for me to come back to earth and not remain careless, almost in a state of perpetual melancholy.  Here are a few of his recent works:

 

The Tree of Life

The New World

The Thin Red Line