Monday, September 22, 2008
11:53pm
Today, I am Autumn.
This is the season when I first appeared. I was ushered in with the crisp autumn breeze, the libra sun, the harvest moon. This is the season when change colors the landscape in browns and oranges, reds and golds....when tree branches lovingly release their foliage to the cascading fall.
I greet the autumn leaves....with autumn kisses.....and dreams that make for a season of bliss.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
On Identity - Part 3 - From the Perspective of Who I Am NOT!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
1:05pm
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I’ve spent a lifetime (or two…maybe even three) toiling with the fundamental question: “WHO AM I?” I started this discovery with the grotesquely obvious. However, in their conspicuousness, I have come to re-cognize (re-know) that those indicators are in fact antithetical to my enlightenment. I am beginning to understand that how I once defined myself is no longer sufficient. My old tools for crafting an identity for myself have long since worn out. They don't serve me anymore.
And hence, like Dorothy and Toto in the Wizard of Oz (or The Wiz, depending on your flare), I’ve instigated this expedition anew. I’ve decided that to go deeper in my awareness, I must first separate the wheat from the chaff.
I am not a summation of intricate parts or experiences. No matter how dynamic or complex I would like to think myself to be, who I really am is beautifully simple – once you see past the multitudes of illusions.
I AM NOT….
my family, my friends or my foes
my race, my gender, nor my sexuality
my religion, my politics, the place I was born
my education, my degree, my career
my dreams, my aspirations, my secrets
my success, my misgivings, my failures
this body, this skin, these features
what you think I am, what you want me to be, or what you remember me as…
I AM NOT MY STORY!
This is not a statement of better nor does it come from a place of judgment. This is a statement of truth – a truth I think we all share...a truth that simply says: I AM MORE THAN THIS. ALL OF IT!
Now the question becomes, what’s left?
1:05pm
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I’ve spent a lifetime (or two…maybe even three) toiling with the fundamental question: “WHO AM I?” I started this discovery with the grotesquely obvious. However, in their conspicuousness, I have come to re-cognize (re-know) that those indicators are in fact antithetical to my enlightenment. I am beginning to understand that how I once defined myself is no longer sufficient. My old tools for crafting an identity for myself have long since worn out. They don't serve me anymore.
And hence, like Dorothy and Toto in the Wizard of Oz (or The Wiz, depending on your flare), I’ve instigated this expedition anew. I’ve decided that to go deeper in my awareness, I must first separate the wheat from the chaff.
I am not a summation of intricate parts or experiences. No matter how dynamic or complex I would like to think myself to be, who I really am is beautifully simple – once you see past the multitudes of illusions.
I AM NOT….
my family, my friends or my foes
my race, my gender, nor my sexuality
my religion, my politics, the place I was born
my education, my degree, my career
my dreams, my aspirations, my secrets
my success, my misgivings, my failures
this body, this skin, these features
what you think I am, what you want me to be, or what you remember me as…
I AM NOT MY STORY!
This is not a statement of better nor does it come from a place of judgment. This is a statement of truth – a truth I think we all share...a truth that simply says: I AM MORE THAN THIS. ALL OF IT!
Now the question becomes, what’s left?
Monday, September 15, 2008
On Identity - Part 2 - Stumbling in the Dark
Monday, September 15, 2008
4:55am
Trepidation looms in the darkness. Senses heighten. Ears question the quiet and search feverously for the faintest of sound. Eyes create formations of shadows and lines and the boogie man appears. Mind noise intensifies and no matter how tightly we hold our eyelids together, sleep does not come. There is no rest for the weary. This is the hour of reckoning.
Court is in session, and it is now judgment day … again. You assume your familiar position as defendant, as plaintiff, as juror and judge, and the interrogation ensues. Question upon question examines your fidelity to the immutable laws that demand meticulous adherence: know thyself and to thine ownself be true.
Your duplicity renders you incompetent to stand trial. However, the solace of double jeopardy does not apply. There is always tomorrow.
4:55am
Trepidation looms in the darkness. Senses heighten. Ears question the quiet and search feverously for the faintest of sound. Eyes create formations of shadows and lines and the boogie man appears. Mind noise intensifies and no matter how tightly we hold our eyelids together, sleep does not come. There is no rest for the weary. This is the hour of reckoning.
Court is in session, and it is now judgment day … again. You assume your familiar position as defendant, as plaintiff, as juror and judge, and the interrogation ensues. Question upon question examines your fidelity to the immutable laws that demand meticulous adherence: know thyself and to thine ownself be true.
Your duplicity renders you incompetent to stand trial. However, the solace of double jeopardy does not apply. There is always tomorrow.
Friday, September 12, 2008
On Identity
Thursday, September 11, 2008
11:30pm
My mind has been preoccupied with “identity.” The concept intrigues me. What if the “identity” we have spent lifetimes crafting, at its core, was just a mirage? What if we discovered that who we thought we were was merely an insufficient, phenotypic, optical illusion; and that the catalog of groupings & causes, proficiencies & defects….even the very substance of our gene pool, though intricately designed and extensively studied, were simply pathways of expression for our most true Self? What if, in our quest for uniqueness & distinction….our insatiable need to be different, we have mistaken indicators and descriptors for the infinite substance of who we really are?
Often I feel we are all participating in one splendid masquerade. The scene reads like the opening stanza of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetic lament, “We Wear the Mask”:
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes –
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Adorned in the most elaborate ideas of individuality, we are mesmerized by our own story. We mingle. We schmooze. We ignore the inclination that behind this story we represent is an awareness that there’s something more to tell, but we haven’t allowed ourselves to discover what. You see this discovery requires time we don’t have; discipline we can’t attain; attention that is disordered and deficient; and a willingness to bring all you believe to be true under scrutiny, at the risk of being left overexposed and unrecognizable to yourself. It’s far more easy to disappear into the clamor of religion and sect and family and gang and set and politics and nationality and ethnicity and tribe and creed and race and skin color and body type and gender and sexuality and age and status and pedigree and station and alma mater and degree and profession and privilege and access and limitation and lack and personality trait and diagnosis and handicap and ability and success and failure and right and wrong and familiar and other….. and…. this dance is exhausting!
.....who turned out the light?....
11:30pm
My mind has been preoccupied with “identity.” The concept intrigues me. What if the “identity” we have spent lifetimes crafting, at its core, was just a mirage? What if we discovered that who we thought we were was merely an insufficient, phenotypic, optical illusion; and that the catalog of groupings & causes, proficiencies & defects….even the very substance of our gene pool, though intricately designed and extensively studied, were simply pathways of expression for our most true Self? What if, in our quest for uniqueness & distinction….our insatiable need to be different, we have mistaken indicators and descriptors for the infinite substance of who we really are?
Often I feel we are all participating in one splendid masquerade. The scene reads like the opening stanza of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetic lament, “We Wear the Mask”:
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes –
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Adorned in the most elaborate ideas of individuality, we are mesmerized by our own story. We mingle. We schmooze. We ignore the inclination that behind this story we represent is an awareness that there’s something more to tell, but we haven’t allowed ourselves to discover what. You see this discovery requires time we don’t have; discipline we can’t attain; attention that is disordered and deficient; and a willingness to bring all you believe to be true under scrutiny, at the risk of being left overexposed and unrecognizable to yourself. It’s far more easy to disappear into the clamor of religion and sect and family and gang and set and politics and nationality and ethnicity and tribe and creed and race and skin color and body type and gender and sexuality and age and status and pedigree and station and alma mater and degree and profession and privilege and access and limitation and lack and personality trait and diagnosis and handicap and ability and success and failure and right and wrong and familiar and other….. and…. this dance is exhausting!
.....who turned out the light?....
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