Innocence Once Lost

We live in a world where we are taught that innocence can only be lost and never be gained.  One is forced to ask themselves then what is innocence? Is it just the lack of guilt or something else entirely? In society an innocent man can be perceived as guilty even though he has never committed a crime and the end result is the same as if the person had committed the crime.  Innocence is often used to describe a child which is a truth in many senses because of a child’s naivety towards the world.  Or maybe this innocence has to do with a child’s lack of guile in how they view the world, and the adult becomes sullied by its own biases towards different facets of life.  Possibly it is because as we grow older we are touched by many soiled hands and lose the feeling which we had when we were young the hope, the beauty of how we perceived the world.  People tend to think that we can simply open doors in our minds and decide we don’t like what we see and go back and shut that door, which in reality once a door is opened in our minds it can never be shut.  In part it is this fact that doors once opened inside cannot be shut again that is attributed to the fact that very few adults in a sense are innocent, if you have any doubt about this fact go ask an addict of any kind and see how easy it is to shut their doors which were opened.  Once a neuropathway is formed it simply doesn’t disappear because we want it to as a matter of fact in the case of addiction as taught by the 12 step program an addict must stop doing whatever they were doing for as long as they did it before their mental desire for their addiction subsides.  These actions some genetic scientist believe are not only never forgotten but are encoded into our very DNA and passed on to our young much like being saved in a flashcard and handed to our children.  Such is the same with knowledge in a sense knowledge while it enlightens a person and better helps their understanding of the world it also damns that person.  Knowing this how then can one hope or even care to feel innocent or good in this world.

To answer this question one must understand that we are in our nature innocent, and that we always were innocent.  The reasons for our original “sin” as it were, were always innocent in nature.  Ones quest for knowledge or gaining of knowledge muddied their innocence, while another’s was sullied because of their looking for an escape from the harshness of the world, while the another was for someone to like them, etc… Every conceivable problem a person could have was originally gained through an innocent naïve action, and all subsequent actions stemmed from it.  So in short one can find solace in that our innocence and naivety is what led us to the problem in the first place, and that once a knowledge of the naivety is gained and we move on with our lives we can be as we always were “innocent”.  

The Mind Has Teeth

Since I have throughout my blog written much about monsters and other scary things I thought I would write about something that scares me. Throughout my life I have been scared of many things, but throughout my adult life it has been only one thing.  The song “One” illustrates this one thing very well,  It is being totally alone in the dark with nothing but my own mind for company.  This fear began to arise in High School there where a few times when I woke up in the morning and my mind was awake but my body was not, (or better put my conscientiousness was awake and alert while my body was still sleeping) I would tell myself to move but it wouldn’t this has happened to me many times in my life sense then and it is why I refuse to sleep on my stomach anymore because most of the times it has happened has been when I did.  It took many years to figure out what was happening that my brains serotonin levels (the chemical that keeps you asleep among other things) had worn off while the rest of my body had not.  Every time it has happened my mind has panicked; it even got so back when I was in college that I didn’t dare to go to sleep at night.  To better understand this fear I have dug deeper to find out more about what drives it.

The mind is meant to solve problems both ones you are aware of and ones you are not aware of.  As one tries to reflect inward on their live one would do well to remember when we voyage in the mind it has nothing to pull on but itself.  There were times in my life that being alone by myself was one of the things that frightened me most.  Without the stimulation that the outside world gives I would lie down and try to sleep only to find my mind grinding its teeth on itself, pointing out my flaws and shortcomings.  Feelings of angst towards the world and loathing myself there was, it felt as though my mind was sinking me deeper and deeper into an ocean and not allowing me to come up for air.    This ebbed in and out of my life for years until it got to its absolute worse.  I could feel my mind cracking under the pressure and gravity it had placed on itself and each crack kept pulling me more out of touch with myself and reality.  It was only when I felt as though I was totally shattered crying myself to sleep nearly every night that things started to change.  Through interaction with others and bouncing my own emotions off of others I slowly began building myself back up.   It was only though learning how to step outside of myself, and my own thought process that I was able to learn how to logically counter the thoughts and emotions which were at one time my bane.  In a sense I have learned to analyze my own analyzing, and pick apart my own picking apart of myself.

Now every time I watch the music video for the song “One” by Metallica I think about how terrible it can be to be left alone in your mind with only your own devices and the total and udder hell one must get through to feel normal again I shudder to think of it ever happening again.  

The Thing About Monsters

When your little you are told there are monsters through Books, TV, Movies, Religion, and even deep down you know they exist.  If you were a child like me convinced there are monsters you go and pick up a flashlight and check in all the usual places for them from under your bed to any cave like place you may find them and then you stop having scared yourself but still a little disappointed you never found one.  You’re sure that monsters are there and if you just look hard enough you will find them for something inside you tells you that man was meant to defeat monsters.  Unknowingly going through your life pointing your flashlight in all the wrong places, little do you know that those monsters which you’re sure exist but never find are where a person can't turn their flashlight.

As an adult you know all too well that monsters really do exist, and you wish you could find a better place to hide from them.  You know now that monsters do not dwell in any pit or under any bed they are where they always were in your head and in the heads of those around you.  You’re not sure when or where the monsters came from or how they got in there but that they are there, making you wish you still had to look for them.  True to your belief as a child these monsters need to be battled but unlike you thought when you were a child defeating them isn’t as simple as driving a stake through their hearts or having silver bullets.    Scarier still these monsters don’t only come out at night, and don’t look anything like you thought they would and you’re lucky if you can hide them underneath a bed or in a cave so that you can keep them away from those you love.

To paraphrase a Bible verse, “when I was a child I do as children do, now I am a man I do as men do. “ One can only hope to be able to keep the wolves from their doors and their children safe in their beds. As a child you were always told there were monsters and you took your flashlight to go take a look, as an adult now you hide your undefeated monsters under your bed, and lock your doors tight. 

Feeding Cookie Monster

Most people are all familiar with the Sesame Street character with a seemingly unnatural hunger for cookies,  Cookie Monster.  A Monster who spends all of his life's effort in search of the great to eat but nutritionally challenged cookie.  The purpose of eating is as we all know to get vitamins, minerals, and calories which our bodies require to function properly. Cookie Monster would however rather just eat cookies because of there sweetness and quickly gratifying flavor. It's no wonder cookie monster looks the way he does with all the empty calories he is eating, his twitchy eyes because of his sugar high, his round figure, his fur which hasn't been maintained, I am not sure what blue has to do with it other than the fact that it may be what motivates him to eat so many cookies. Maybe if in his pursuit of cookies he would stop to take a look in the mirror he might have realized how little he resembles everyone else, and realized what the cookies were doing to him then he might stop or slow down.
One may laugh at the Cookie Monster reference, but how often do we fill our lives and time with "empty calories".   There are many ways in which we feed our own personal cookie monsters, whether it is literally eating food which tastes good but is unhealthy or (even worse) filling our precious time with empty activities which are fun but do not help us further our situations or better the lives and those around us.  Hey many people could say that writing this blog is feeding cookie monster (though I hope it has a little more meaning than that).  It is okay to feed Cookie Monster and in fact healthy to do so every now and then, however the question becomes when is someone just feeding their Cookie Monster or being Cookie Monster themselves?  Which I feel is a good question to ask oneself from time to time.

Reflecting on Reflection

From the moment we are born into this world our minds begin categorizing and organizing (building neural pathways) for the information that our receptors (5 senses) receive. Our minds begin distinguishing patterns in our everyday lives so that a person can learn the appropriate responses to situation and begin to establish a baseline of what normal activity is.  This is accomplished through the baby/child reflecting and reflecting on situations and the more the situation is rolled over in the mind it becomes simpler and more compacted much like folding a piece of paper over and over again it begins taking up less surface area in our minds but carrying more mass.   Then as a person ages the brain has crystalized knowledge and has a base line enough to where it begins to not  need to organize the information in  similarities but in what makes each thing unique.  This is why when you stop to think of a person you know you don’t think of them in terms of what makes them like everyone else but in terms of what makes them different than the rest.  This is also why for the normal person we tend to remember our past in of coarse the best of times and the worst of times blotting all the days that fall into our baseline together.

A few of Webster’s Dictionary definitions for Reflection are as follows.

Reflection: : an instance of reflecting; especially : the return of light or sound waves from a surface: the production of an image by or as if by a mirror

a : the action of bending or folding back  b : a reflected part : for: something produced by reflecting: as

a : an image given back by a reflecting surface

b : an effect produced by an influence <the high crime rate is a reflection of our violent society

In many senses our minds are mirrors of what we have seen and what we are looking for in life.  In being such a person can reflect on anything in their lives, which is however a double edge sword.  As was stated before every time we think over a memory we gain not only a greater understanding of the information but we form more of an opinion of the situation and become more pulled into its mass.  For instance if a person were to think of a lost loved one or someone who had wronged them they are more and more pulled into the emotion of whatever the situation they spend time thinking of in their minds.  This can also be thought of as using two mirrors to reflect the same light onto themselves the closer those two mirrors come to each other the more magnified the light becomes and the more heat it gives off.  This is of coarse what leads people to depression and anger problems, emotions and memories magnified.  The more and more it is reflected and magnified the more these thoughts begin to spill into and affect our lives. The more heat which is given off the more likely the mirror is to shatter or crack.    Unfortunately for some people the only way they can leave the mass of those memories and thoughts is for their mirror to crack which leaves some more grounded in reality and others to lose their touch with that reality altogether.

 If one can learn to take a step back from their own thoughts they can gaze at themselves from the mirror that reflects none other than themselves which is their mind and even find its cracks.  Becoming One with Oneself is being able to know that your pain is yours, and that you’re the only one who can both feel and heal that pain.  Things that numb the pain can be given, things to mask it, however only you can decide when you have had enough and choose to move past it.

In This River

Another of my friends has "faded to black  in this river in which no one comes back."  Life is so fragile, and it is so hard to come to terms with that fact that life is like swimming into an ocean, its not a matter of "if" one of your companions is going to sink into the darkness and  leave you on your journey, its a matter of how long they and you are going to be able to swim together.  There is no end to the water and the fluidity of life, there is just an innumerable number of variables which ebb in and ebb out of your life. Having someone from a gentler time in your life,someone your own age, lose the battle to the water is very disheartening especially one who seemed so untouchable to you.  A young person never thinks when they meet someone and fall in love and decide to get married that they will only have the person for a few years and then their time will be up, which was the case for my friends wife.   He had just finished college as well, was smart and a hard working person, now all that he was and all he was going to be is gone to this world.  All that is left is the memory of one who joined us in our swims and like water ebbed both in and then out of our lives as the current. "In this river all shall fade to black, In this river aint no coming back, In this river all shall fade to black."

Pardon The Flame

Lately I have had the image of a flame burning in my head, almost as if it where a video being looped over and over again, so I have decided today to try and figure out why that image is in my mind and what significance it could have.  To tackle this riddle to myself I will use categorical logic.  Very few elements need to be present for a fire to start.  A fuel source of some kind must be present (this could be anything if there is enough heat), Oxygen, and you guessed it heat. I find it intriguing that much the same things that humans need to survive are the same as fire.  This is intriguing to me because the flame is in many ways the embodiment of energy and power, in fact the only element which seems to differentiate us from it is our need for water which we need to cool us because we are basically giant batteries.     We ourselves much like a flame  give off energy which is gained by consuming things and breaking down that which bonds them together.  So we are both consumers of the physical world.
From a symbolic standpoint there is a belief that when something is burned it is cleansed which I find somewhat ironic because both the impurities and true elements are consumed together and the act of cleansing has to do with the separating of those elements much like when metals are purified by the heating and burning off of the impurities   Maybe this purifying belief has more to do with the fact that the thing being burned is being transformed into energy, in a sense potential energy or dormant energy being unleashed.  The flame itself when thought of on a candle stick can be symbol of life, or also even in another context the flame is thought to be a type of ambition.  This aspect comes from the thought of how quickly a flame if unmolested will  devour a countryside or a city block.
The Flame in its nature is unbiased and will consume all that it can indiscriminately.  Often it is only acted on by other forces that seemingly give it its will such as the wind pushing the flame making it travel in a certain direction.  Fire is a bit of an enigma in its nature in that very few things in nature on our earth have similar tendencies.
After having cataloged some of my thoughts and deducing what this Flame could mean to me and why it reoccurs in the images that roll through my mind in a day I have come to the conclusion it has to do with goals of mine that I have not been working towards.  As a flame in my mind it is an idea of mine which has yet to be distinguished especially me wanting to write my novel.  Until I get it figured out this flame will be in the back of my mind driving me crazy and now that I know why it is there it will be even more of an motivating factors.

One Man's Wine

Wine is a drink that many drink to relax, sit back, and enjoy life.  However when a little fuel is added to that wine bottle and a sulked washcloth that thing which can be used for simple comfort and joy is turned into something totally different, a Molotov Cocktail.  Such is life many of the skills and pastimes we have with a little guile or mischievousness can be turned into things that do harm to others and ourselves.  For instance' a person who enjoys playing video games can use this one act to kick back and relax making it a very healthy thing. As state before though when someone decides to start living their own lives through video-games and  shirking the duties that life calls for it becomes something more for that individual.  Even more though like the Molotov Cocktail it has a wide ranging effect and can hurt those around the person who uses it. Sadly even something as simple as a mans active imagination can be turned against them when tied to say pornography or other unhealthy fantasizing.   Many of the worlds serial killers started off in the same way simply being a person fantasizing and conjuring up these thoughts until normal life no longer held meaning or weight for them.
Unfortunately for us that suffer from the human condition life doesn't come with warning labels for everything we do. It is important for us to take a step back every now and then and come up with our own warning labels.  As I have written before intent is only half the battle, I am sure the first person to find that Alcohol was flammable didn't sit down and decide to try and start the liquid ablaze.

Clarity of Thought for Persistence in the Moment

In times of great emotion after the first initial burst of emotion there is oftentimes a period of great clarity, a moment when even your emotions which are often ignored and fleeting show you a sincerity in life you never knew existed.   It is in these moments that for a short period of time our minds, and even our very souls become malleable and that we can be reached.  These moments if you have ever had one present feelings and thoughts that will never be forgotten and will be carried with you shaping or diverting your current path into a coarse which may be millimeters apart from the physical path you where on before but will infinitely different mentally than the one you where on before.  These are often brought about by bad and heartbreaking situations such as the death of a loved one, or finding someone has an illness which will ultimately lead to their death etc.  Moments in which we are able to feel and to touch our own mortality, as if heaven or the other side is so near, yet instead of reminding us of our own impending doom it grounds us to our life and shows us what it means to be a living feeling being.  It defies all logic instead of wrapping us up in so much grief we can no longer live, it breaths feelings and life into our once docile state of being. It is sad it takes such grand and life changing events for this to happen to us, but without these moments there would be no need to hug and hold the ones you love, no point or desire to do so because it would be an only one sided coin. As usual I apologize if what I have written is hard to understand because of lack of cohesion, but I am writing from feelings inside myself which are hard to put in words or to convey to those reading, but in short the clarity of life is that our time with these loved ones in this form is finite so find what is most important for you in this life and make it the focus of your existence before  all your tomorrows are yesterdays and the contents of your heart are out of the reach of those that are in this world. The clock is ticking and the things from your life are set in motion and will never stop til it ends and it stops ticking.

  "Heaven Coming Down"

With nothing to do you'd waste away

Obscure in exile

They've witnessed the times

You've gone astray

Whose fault? now you're thinking...

Theres's nothing to prove

A message from the crowd

To the shore...

And it feels now

Just like heaven's coming down

Your soul shakes free

As its conscience hits the ground

So strange are the ways,

They all have changed

Still life it stays the same

A break from the past

Could make it last

Maybe just a little longer

There's nothing to prove

A message from the crowd

To the shore...

You surrender

Love under will

Rest assured you're adored

And it feels now

Just lie heaven's coming down

Your soul shakes free

As its conscience hits the ground

These signs, this fate

Takes a path you didn't choose

Stay Strong, Keep Faith

There is a change that's

Coming through

Hold on my love

Hold on

Digging those we Dig

The People in this world in many ways are nothing more than 2D pictures for us to browse through and gaze upon as we go throughout our daily chores and routines.  It is only when we stop while gazing upon this pictures and scenes before us  and we decide to pick up our metaphoric shovel and "Dig" into those individuals that they become 3D and a part of our world.  The more our thoughts and mind tug and pry at these images the deeper the depth of the individuals becomes and the more of ourselves fills those holes we have dug.  The mind itself catalogs every new thing we learn of these people making deeper pot holes for us to step into every time we see those individuals or hear mention of their names.  What was once just some person we saw at work sometimes, becomes the cute girl at work, becomes the girl I am friends with, becomes my girlfriend, becomes my fiance, if you catch my drift.  The more we dig those holes and get to know those individuals the more sweat and tears we have invested to them the more we fancy the work that has been done.  That huge pit which we fall into every time we gaze into that persons eyes was once just a spoon full of sand which we curiously decided to overturn to see what was underneath.  

The strangest part of it all isn't that these once 2D pictures became 3D facts of life, oh no it is that these holes which where dug were not dug into the people of our affection but in our very souls and existence.  Every bit of overturned sand can never be put back where we got it, no these pits are here to stay one can only learn not to twist their ankles in them as they pass them by.