:: worlds in words ::

We are all two people, if not more than that.  We’re comprised of personas.  There is no simple singular identity that comprehensively defines a person – or so I believe.  Maybe that’s only because I live such a fragmented life.  The person that you are with your parents is most likely not the same person that you are with your best friend, which is also probably different from the person you are at work.

I’m way the fuck out to lunch when it comes to identity.  Depending on who you talk to, I could be described as a die-hard Romantic or a completely unemotional robot Vulcan.  Some will say that I work myself to death and never accept mediocrity; others will testify under oath that I am one seriously lazy son of a bitch who wouldn’t get his ass up to put himself out if he were on fire.  There are so many conflicts and contradictions that it would be easier to say I am actually multiple people.

I think that most of us never really evaluate who we are – what that means, of experience versus evaluation, the cognizant versus the perceived.

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in the short spaces between breaths
he stands transfixed in the gaze of god
and darkness overtakes the mind

idle idolatry fades into incessant wonder
and greatness is defined by a lacking spirit
as we said to our fathers, in days of youth:

“a blissful soul is emptied of desire;
it finds no rest in heights nor low places
and receives the reward of tranquility.”

a thousand years have passed since then
long since those days, ignorance remains -
still he waits for christmas but it never came

raging on, I remember, we continued
walked through the torrentuous day
and swam in defiance of the flood

and from the midst of lies materialized
a new answer, instantaneous infinity,
a completion that dwells within the void

but then he turned and asked of me,
“in the long slumber of winter season
have I been dreaming an eternal dream?”

There’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times by David Brooks, In Search of Dignity.  In it, he discusses George Washington, and how when he, in youth, “copied out a list of 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Washington reportedly took them to heart and tried to practice them in all situations.  Brooks writes,

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Not a lot of people like that around these days.

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he held eternity in his left hand and infinity in his right
but this he knew:
that the prerogative of fulfilling potential was his alone
though he was great and his name was Titan
a legend he was not – for this he feared:
not risk and failure, but unwavering triumph
he was possessed of an unshakable will
that drove his need to need
and this he said:
I am nothing.
lay before me the strength of all the earth
and I shall give the broken pieces of a shattered world.
but he could not match eternity to infinity
and enclosed by the finite
he did not cast his eyes to the unknowable
for this lay even beyond the reach of gods
and this he denied:
that he was greater than the greatest he could conceive
that he was an ingenius immortal
and one night:
a star danced across the sky
and then there was silence.

(from http://www.sinfest.net)

There are a couple things I miss from my old life. Not too many – mainly because I didn’t have to give up many things – but the thing I miss the most of all is music. Most specifically, the music I was making with the band that I had to leave when I joined the military.

I wish there was a way for me to describe what music is to me, what it does to me – and what it’s been over the course of my entire life. Music was the development of my freedom, my distinction, my personality. Music was my refuge, my shelter, my sanctum. Looking at my music library now, you’ll find stuff from Gordon Lightfoot to Simon and Garfunkel; Billy Joel to Elton John; Metallica to Blind Guardian; Dispatch to Phish; Queen to Scorpions; and the list goes on.

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