home

It is so good to know that I will be home tomorrow. Life on the road for the better part of the last three weeks has left me drained. I feel like a plow mule who has been worked to exhaustion and is finally being allowed to trudge back to his stable to rest. A pile of hay to sleep on and a roof over my head seems pretty inviting to tell the truth, as long as it is home. I want to look at a Georgia sky for a change; you know the kind I am talking about. The kind of day when an hour or two of winter light remains in the afternoon, but the filter of a brooding storm casts a false twilight across the pines. I want to watch the storm move off the coast, and for that last moment of sunlight to hit me as the sun slips behind the horizon. I want to see my friends and family. I want to be home. I’ll be there tomorrow. I can’t wait.

I am so fortunate to have some great friends that have made the last couple weeks on the road a little more bearable. Seclusion or loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused. I didn’t experience either of them on my trip. My friends came walking through that door everyday while I was away. They weren’t with me physically, but I could feel them with me nonetheless. For those of you who were with me, I say thank you. Your friendship means the world to me, and I do not take you for granted. Just as you were there for me, I promise to be there for you no matter where life’s journey takes you. You can count on that.

I can't wait to be home.

it's simple

Sometimes a moment rears back and hits you square in the face. Every now and then each of us have those moments when we forget about everything else in our lives except what is playing out right in front of us. Thank God for those moments…..

I traveled to Washington D.C. yesterday and made a day out of touring the historic landmarks that line the National mall. I truly enjoyed taking in all of the pomp and circumstance that is our nation’s capitol. But just a block from the Washington Monument, on the corner of 14th Street and Independence Avenue, I came across a very different type of memorial. It didn’t venerate a former president or serve as the shelter for a historic document. Instead it displayed in vivid horror, the brutality, viciousness and cruelty that humans are capable of. This place was the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel widely considering my stage in life. It is something I am extremely thankful for and never take for granted. I’ve seen some remarkable places and met some wonderful people during my short stay on this Earth, but I have also seen just how inhuman we humans can be. The height of human cruelty and the lengths that people can go to in order to oppress and torture others never ceases to astonish me. Hate fuels humans in a way that isn’t observed in other species. It corrupts and darkens the souls of some men, as if their shadows have retreated inside of them. The tears that I witnessed yesterday on the faces of tourists walking through the museum, and the ones still visible in photographs taken of victims 70 years ago are a testament to that. Places like the Holocaust Museum serve a purpose. A no-holds-barred, uncensored look at just what humans are capable of, serves as a reminder to future generations that unbridled intolerance leads to catastrophe. But what else can be done?

The answer is as simple as it is beautiful. Love. That’s it…..Just Love. Love without ceasing. Anything can be defeated by its opposite. Fire with Water, Darkness with Light, Hate with Love. Think of how much better this place could be if we just loved a little stronger every day. It is not enough to be compassionate for someone, you must act. It can start with our family and friends. It feels so good to love friends and family passionately…deeply…to love our friends and family as they truly are, the rough edges and the smooth. Likewise, loving the potentiality and the reality of each friend, standing by one another during life’s peaks and valleys and offering a shoulder to lean on when life’s load becomes a burden to carry.

I charge everyone who reads this with that small task. Just Love More. Start with your friends, your neighbors and just go from there. I truly believe that love is the discovery of ourselves in someone else and the delight that follows in the recognition. How delightful it would be to see love in us all.

forget

There is so much that I would like to forget, but only the small stuff seems to ever slip my mind—like where I left my keys, whether I locked the door, that I’m out of milk…..

In my wallet, I had a slip of paper, tattered…faded…on it read a message from a fortune cookie I got after sharing a msg-filled meal with a person that at one time in my life, meant more to me than anything. Anything. We opened our cookies after that meal and to our surprise, both of them presented the same fortune. They read: QUIT LOOKING FOR HAPPINESS IT IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. We took it as a sign and kept them. For so long, I have started each day by reading those 10 words. Each night, I read them again, sometimes more than once, before sleep, if sleep will come.

So often I have stared at the ceiling while lying in bed, hoping for sleep to envelop me in serene rest only to grudgingly…reluctantly get out of bed with the acceptance that sleep will not be visiting me any time soon.

A lot of times I walk outside into the Statesboro night and look at the surrounding apartments which are usually as quiet as their windows are dark. Nobody outside, no traffic on the streets. The boro looks as if the Rapture has occurred, and only I have been left behind to endure the reign of Hell on Earth.

I always just want to be asleep. My mind wanders; different thoughts meander through my head, and I always seem to end up thinking about that slip of paper at some point. Why?

I’ve come to realize that the tiny piece of paper that I have carried with me for years has served as a shackle, binding me, constricting me, imprisoning me. The words that at one time brought comfort and happiness, now bring a flood of memories that I am certain are a tributary to whatever source feeds my sporadic battles with the sandman.

As of today, I no longer carry that little piece of paper. I didn’t throw it away; I laid it down today in a snowy landing outside of the building that I am living in while I am here in Baltimore. In a literal sense, I set it free. I think, in hopes that I will be set free from the feelings that found their power in the memories that the diminutive little paper conjured in me.

I won’t ever read those words again, but I am sure that I will remember them. Now, if I could only remember where I put my car keys…..

Haiku to kill time

I leave for Baltimore in about 2 hours. I don't want to go. I never really want to go when the military ships me off. Not since I spent a year in Iraq. I was in bed up until a few minutes ago, drifting between thoughts of my friends and the dread of spending two weeks on active duty. I can never sleep before I get sent anywhere anymore. Wished I could.....but at least it's not the desert again right? It's funny, while I was over in a little town near Nasiryah, in Southern Iraq, one of the locals gave me a book of Japanese Haiku poetry translated in English. (I know....An Iraqi guy gives an American guy a book of Japanese poems....Weird stuff happens to me.) For those of you not familiar with Haiku, they are three line poems that follow a pattern of syllables. First line-5...Second line-7...Third line-5. I fell in love with the poems, and read the book cover-to-cover at least twenty times. After a while I started to formulate my own poems in my head, and I jotted at least a hundred of them down while I was there. It became my time killer. I would write about any and everything. I haven't pulled them out in over a year, but something told me just now that it is time to pull them out and share a few. Here are a few of my favorites.

Family Members:

You brought me to life
Your love is my character
I exist as you.

Loving Grandmother
The Great Creator hails you
Guest of all honor.

Gentle Matriarch
Angels will sing your praises
Love is your power.

If not my brother
but a tree, he would have a
hard bark and deep roots.

I, in awe of you
You are a bed-rock of strength
No one works harder.

My mother, selfless
The bible talks about her
Proverbs thirty-one.


Love:

I miss you so much
Sorrow moistens my eyelash
I need you to live.

Paradise to me
My time with you will be long
My time away, short.

Happiness a cloth
Your sweet love a fine fabric
Drape me in them please.


War and The Enemy:

Evil, Death, your way
I have seen what you can do
Your power to kill.

You psychopath bitch
Satan creates your cancer
When will the cure come?

Wait, listen, don't move,
The explosion closer now
Fear envelops me.

A saline trail left
Sad memories and that trail,
All that I have now.

The clock, my warden
Making sure I can't escape
Watch me-blink-I'm gone.

The world needs a flag
Something we can all support
Brothers and Sisters.

The image haunts me
Italian prayer mixed with blood
No one deserved this.

His legs are missing
As I carry him he prays
He is very light.

(I don't like some of those, and I left out a lot of them....but they help to paint a picture)


God and Religion:

He knows the number
Of hairs on my head, He knows.
My breath is his will.

Lucifer watches
While you act with abandon
Apolyon waits.

Author of all life,
A short murder mystery,
Please do not write me.

Our Father loves us
In his eyes we are perfect
You question his sight?


Random:

Faithful friend of man
We, created in image
You, in character.

The real flower fades,
Flowers in paintings and books
will last for all time.

The cricket's soft song
Signals night time's arrival.
We will be safe here.


I hope the next two-weeks are wonderful for you all. Only an hour now until I leave for Baltimore. Wow...these poems are still helping me kill time...funny.