Introspection

I reckon for me the problem with emotions has not been being unable to sneak up on them, on the contrary, they are the one to run crashing through the forest insisting on their own way.  Whenever I think of the United States Marine Corps reverence wale up within me for all those who served, this reverence flows over to all the people who have served in the other armed branches. I know that others serve in different ways but I have a special regard for these.

No, I have never had problems finding my emotions; my problem has been not allowing them to run away with me, carrying me so deep into the forest that I may not be able to find my way back. Anger can take me into the deepest darkest part of the forest; sometimes I get in so deep and dark that it is very hard to find my way back. Then from that anger many time hate would raise its ugly head and drive my action in the most unreasonable ways.

Sorrow sometimes comes unbidden driving all other thoughts from the woods of my mind until it was sated with sorrow and laid down to rest. This is when I go deepest into the jungle of my mind; back so deep that I become completely encumbered in sadness to the point I no longer wish to see the light of day. Then the awe of being will sweep over me unbidden, leaving me is a state of joy that had no room for any other distraction, as when love overcame me when I first looked into her eyes.  No, I am not bipolar, not a manic depressive, these are just the range of emotions that we all experiences and have to deal with.  For me there has been moments of inner peace, moments of turmoil, but mostly when I lie in doubt, fear, concern, and in dreams laced with periods of unconsciousness, I strive in spite of doubt, and like Paul I pray, “Oh Lord I believe, please help me with my disbelief.”

While happiness comes and goes, mostly life is filled with neither sadness nor happiness; rather it is the mundane that drives our lives.  The prosaic that gives it meaning, the stuff we have to do but rather we didn't have to bother.  Cooking and cleaning, cutting the grass, or washing the car.  It takes an epiphany to understand that these things are the things where we spend most of our lives, and that their importance is as great as the vacation which we so yearn, laying on the beach, swimming in the ocean, hiking in the mountains, floating our boat, or riding our horses.  Joy, if not happiness, can come from the feeling of a job well done, a task completed, one more chore completed.

I have learned to live with my feelings, work and strive within my limitations.  Concerning myself with what I can do, and not dwell too much on what I cannot do.  True, you can do anything you set your mind, but there are two caveats to that.  First you have to start from where ever it is that you are to achieve your desire, and second you have to figure out how to do it.   I wanted to be a renowned author, have written a column for a newspaper, many pome and essays.   But yet I have failing short of the dream, for it is one thing to write and yet another to gain a readership for what you write.

I wanted to be rich, but the best I achieved is to be well off.  I wanted to fall in love with a woman, who loved me, and we would live together the whole of what life we have given to us together, and you see how well that has come about.  Now I content myself with my horses and dogs, and while I still dream of that woman I realize that my chances of finding her grow slimmer and slimmer.  What I thought about this one does not matter, what she thinks is the proof of the pudding.  They do say that if you want true love to get a dog don’t they?

I have a clearing within this forest of my mind now, all the undergrowth has been cleared out, and as long as I stay within the clearing I am at peace.  It is when I venture out into the land of “could have been”, “what if”, or “if only” that the woods start to close in on me.  I have many good decisions, and many, for sure, bad ones.  I cannot go back and change nary a one, so those paths are best left untrod except for some brief sojourns made for some enlightenment now and then.  I have found that if I try and banish a memory that it will just fester and burst out regardless, so I give each a short amount of my attention when they come up, then tell myself that I must think of something else, and then do it.

Introspection, physician heals thy self, that is, attending to your own fault, rather than pointing out the faults of others.”Gnōthi seauton”   Know yourself first and once you do you will not be concerned much about what other’s think they know about you.  Knowing yourself also give you that starting point in achieving that which you would like to do, and then come the harder part, figuring out how to bring it into fruition.  But all bets are off if it includes the heart of another.

A Hermits life, why?

A Hermits life, why?

No entanglements that's why.

Hermits have to please no one

Other than themselves.

If they love, they love from afar.

Having absconded from the world

No one can disappoint them,

Nor can they disappoint anyone.

Foregoing all the pleasures of society

They no longer have to suffer

The slings and arrows hurled their way.

And temptation of the flesh

Has been delivered far away.

A hermit’s life has its appeal,

But comes with a large price to pay.

Balancing the pros and cons

Of living among them or withdrawing

Is a task we all take on and

We don’t have to go live in a cave

To be a hermit.

We can withdraw into our minds

To avoid any chance of disappointment.

Burnt once, twice shy can grow

Into a never again defense,

Betrayal by deceit, broken promises,

Being left for another, or

The death of one dear

That left way too soon.

Can make us retreat

Shutting out any new relation

That brings a risk of disappointment.

To love is to be vulnerable.

When you develop feelings,

Those feelings can be hurt.

But the price you pay by avoiding

Any chance of being hurt

Is all the pleasure of being close,

Of being loved, of being needed.

Whether the price is too great

Is settled in your mind.

Be careful of judging the new by the old

Do not make a new interest

Carry the sins of the old,

But judge wisely for as

Many a hermit has returned

To the world wishing

That they had never left.

But some have come back to only

To find more disappointment and pain.

As much as I may wish to,

I cannot tell you what to do,

I can only wish what I wish,

And even if you drop your shields

There is no guarantee

That I would be the one

Who’s arms you would come,

But still I would urge you to

Come back to a state of mind

Where you can risk getting close again.

I pray that might be me

That you would take you next

Chance with, a chance on happiness

With another man.

For my feeling grow stronger

With each passing day.

© 

Rexx

Why

If I thought it would help
I would stand up and shout,
If I thought it would help
I would fall to my knees and beg.

But I have done all that and more,
To bring an us into our lives.
And yet you remain ensconced in your world
That seems to have little room for me

Except for the few hours,
Every now and then,
We float in a universe
All of our own.

Moving to the music as one
Two souls cleaved together
A melting of body and mind
So complete that it leaves me confused

As to why you can’t make room for us
In the rest of your life.
Not all of your life,
But a call here, and a trip there.

                    Why?

©


Rexx

Do It Again?

Every now and then I remember way back when
And if I would have done that instead of this.

Then I realize that had I changed that
None of this could be.

Had I stayed in the Corps
I could have been killed,

And for sure I would not have met
The mother of my children.

That would have led to another world,
One without the ones I love dearest.

So a screw up leads to a great results?
Oh she is long gone now,

Another choice I made that maybe I shouldn’t?
That led to the three I love the most.

As I sit and contemplate how
I could have led my life better

They come up missing
Had I chosen a better way.

And had I choice the better way
Would it have been better?


Avoiding the mistakes I made
Would not preclude my having

Made other and worse mistakes.
Then comes the realization

That had I do it all over again
With the same experiences,

Information, hopes and dreads
I would have chosen the same way

No matter how many times I had
To repeat my life.

© Rexx

Maybe she does

Confusion in the mind

With the face projection certainty

Acting like you know what you are doing

When you don’t have a clue

Hoping for an insight

As you go along.

Your feeling grow stronger

Breeding concern

Maybe she does

Maybe she doesn’t?

And in the meanwhile

Time marches on.

More time apart

Then together

Give the mind

Plenty of playtime.

Wondering this

And wondering that

Will the Us

Come to be

Or no item to appear.

Oh how I hope

But if wishes were horses

Beggars would ride

And frogs would have wings

So as not to

Bump their rear end

As they hopped on the ground

So wish as I as may

And wish as I might

And wishing with all my might

It is outside my hands

That she likes me enough

To be my girlfriend

That she likes me enough

To want to be side by side

I have offered all I can offer

I want what I want

And she wants what she wants

Those wants to have to intertwine

For there to be an us

The only prayer I make is

That God’s will be done

For as much as I want her

I do not want her

If she does not want me.

If she can take me as I am

As I take her as she is

Then maybe an Us is born.

It is the waiting to know

That brings the confusion

And knowing that brings peace

Does she

Or does she not?

The petals of the daisy

Have their say

Both sides of the fence

First one way, yay.

Then the other, nay.

One more prayer I make

Please woman

Tell me what to do.

Should I go

Or should I stay?

© 

Rexx

Respect

Respect, a word that we use a lot, just what does it mean. To me respect is something I give everyone, but is something that everyone has to earn. That is to say that I will respect you until you give me reason not to. I will not insist upon our meeting that you earn my respect for you, I grant it as a condition of your humanity.

However, respect comes in different degrees and types. When I get in my car and drive down the road I respect the right of others to use the same highway and follow the rules of the road not just because of the law, but out of respect for other drivers. At the same time I demand that they return that respect. Cut me off and slow down in front of me and you are liable to have me zip around you and return the favor. Pull out onto the Interstate and drive very slow so that I have to slow down, and then you speed up will probably make me flip you off as I pass. I could go on and on, but you drivers know well what it is I mean.

As a form of respect I trust everyone to be what it is they say they are until I have reason not to believe them. Then in the words of that wise old sage, “Fuck me once shame on you, fuck me twice shame on me.” We are polite to one another because of our underlying respect for one another. When you bump into someone it is respect for that person that leads you to say excuse me, pardon, or I am sorry. Those who don’t do this are not only rude, they are disrespectful. Bumping into me and not saying excuse me is one thing, but to shove me out of your way is fighting disrespect.

To use certain disrespectful words the Supreme Court has called “fighting words” and is not protected speech. This respect has to be taught, it does not come naturally. If your parent did not teach it to you, the school of hard knocks will!

If someone is talking, and you just start talking over them, this is not only rude, bur highly disrespectful of the one who was speaking. If you walk into the middle of a conversation and start your own you are showing your disrespect for the ones talking and the one who was listening. And if you are in that conversation and leave the one you were in to continue on with the intruder you are disrespecting the person you were talking to initially. Maybe you don’t give a damn about their respect, but if you do, either for them or theirs for you, don’t hurt their feeling like that. Hurt feeling is what disrespect generates, and many time a rise of anger because of the perceived feeling of disrespect.

If you were sitting and talking with someone you like, and someone else walks up, and you just jump up and you abandon the conversation, and take off with that person without a moment to explain your action, if it were you that were left would you not feel dissed?

We live in a world of perception, of how we perceive others, and how they see us. How well our perception matches reality is a testimony to our insight. How we deal with other’s misperception of us is a judge of our character. The effort that we go to correct a misperception deepens upon who the one that is misperceiving. I do not care if most people think that I am an arrogant fool, for I know that as people come to know me they realize what other’s perceive as arrogant is actually confidence in myself and my abilities. But for some people I do care how they see me, it is way too late to change me into that which I am not, but a greater explanation what I am and how I act in the world may be in order.

The degrees of respect we allow others differ by that person important to us, and their station in life. Respecter of persons? Yes, for sure. Most of us hold those who are, or have, served in the armed forces in a higher respect than those who have not served. Of course the converse is true; some people despise the military and will spit on anyone, at their own peril, in uniform.

Until we have reason not to we give the police a special respect, not only because they can take you to jail, but because they put their lives on the line keeping the great non-respecters in line. Those who have no respect for your right to own and keep your property, and given the chance will take it for their own, those who would take your life for whatever you might have on you, those who cheat and defraud you. Those people have respect for the law too, but not as we do. They will afford respect as it furthers their cause, they will say excuse me when they bump into you, that is if they are not getting ready to rob you. They follow the rules of the road unless they are running from the law. Praise God that they are not the norm.

We give our parents a higher respect they others because of their position in our lives, if we respect our children we will teach them why they should respect others. We respect the priests and preachers because of their position in society, as we do school teachers, and politicians. Politicians, ah that’s a tough one. We hold them in higher or lower respect depending upon whether or not they are of our particular persuasion.

Now to the respect that we give the one we hold dear, that respect comes from the love that we hold for them. Because of the relation we owe more respect, not less. And as we give it to them we expect it back. Asking for respect is not the same as controlling. If we are dating if you start kissing some guy on the dance floor you have dissed me, and for sure hurt my feelings, and probably made me angry enough to at the very least leave the joint. If I were to do the same thing with someone else I would be just as wrong, and should be ready to break up before I ever did such a thing. Now there is a different between actual disrespect and perceived disrespect, but not to the one who feels dissed.

Respect is very important to me, I take offense whenever I feel I am being dressed, what action I take depend on upon not only the degree of disrespect, but upon the situation. I am not going to fight a fight I cannot win unless I have to. That fight might be with the asshole that shove me out of his way, or pushed his way between me and my girlfriend, in the latter case I would be much more likely to throw a hand. Or that fight might be with my girlfriend, if wining the fight means losing the girlfriend, then I will swallow my pride, let it go, and try to explain it later.

© 

Rexx

Reward

I was driving home the other day when as I came up on Wildwood to the junction with Mahaley there was a snapper, right there in the middle of the road. I stopped the truck, got our, and walked back to where he was. Picked him up, and as I was walking back to the truck he was snapping at the air as I was holding way back on his shell. But he was pissed, and wanted with all his heart to heart who/whatever it was that had taking him from his chosen path.

I laid him down in the bed of the truck, jerking my hands away before he could spin and snap my finger off. Getting back in the truck I drove on home, and turned into the driveway stopping in front of the gat in front of the pond where I got out, went back to the bed where the snapper was. Standing on the running board I reached down, picked him up, and walked over to the pond where I dropped him into the water at the edge of the pond. He looked up, turned around, and swam to where the water was deep enough for him to dive, and dove out of sight into the muddy water with no idea that he had been rescued, just a profound irritation at my having interfered with its life, and a great desire to snap my fingers off!

How many times have you helped someone and they disappeared from your life with no sign of gratitude? Well if you were doing it for their thanks you were doing it for the wrong reason. You should help other for your own well being, not their thanks and gratitude. If that is your reason for helping then that is your reword or disappointment. If you do it just because you can, then you store your reward in heaven.

© Rexx