Going...Going...Gone

Soul Searching
I’ve been busy. Busy finding out what I’m made of. When I was fifteen, I looked in the mirror and said, “Who are you and what are you going to be? Why are you here?” Now, at forty-eight, I look in the mirror and ask the same question. The difference, thirty-three years, and the backside of youth. I know I’m not old, but I’m standing on the far side of fifteen and still wondering.

I have learned some things, but it’s only recently. Or, maybe I should say I learned them, but stored them in my subconscious somewhere and am just now taking them out, turning them over, really looking at them and beginning to understand. I think those of us who mature into an understanding of life, mature at different times. I’m a late bloomer. I’m only now really maturing into any kind of conscious knowledge of what life is about. I’ve spent most my life without real, inner character. I wallowed, wallowed in self-pity because life didn’t treat me the way I wanted. Or, refused to play because all things did not turn out the way I wanted. You can’t just live life expecting things to always be happy, always turn out the way you want. Sometimes when you get what you want, someone else loses out.

God finally had to take me away, away from everything and everyone and make me look at this imaginary person called me. “Look,” he said, “look and see and change. Stop looking for everyone else to do the hard work and you do it. If they never change, what’s that got to do with you?” He made me look by taking all away and by that, I mean removed me from distractions that would take my attention from the lesson he was teaching me. Removed me from my kids, mother, friends, until it was only me alone with him because I could turn nowhere else.

The hard part is, being big enough to do it. Pushing away the false layers that have built up over time through hurt and pride and anger and disillusionment and getting down to the core of the individual. It’s hard to take off the rose-colored glasses and get down to the issue of what has been covered for so long. There’s far more to life than just us, ourselves, but isn’t that how people operate, everything is about me and what I want?

When you get your eyes focused on the right things, self seems so unimportant. What’s happened to character and ethics? The worlds a harsh teacher. The world is people so maybe I should say people are harsh teachers. If we follow nature and watch the proper order of things, it all balances out, but people have upset the balance and wonder why it doesn’t spin as it should.

The balance of self and giving has been disrupted. Self wins hands-down and we push and shove for what we think is ours or our right leaving disaster in every direction and wonder what happened or why it all fell apart. To a few of us, this matters. To most of us, it doesn’t. Just give me mine and worry about your own. How foolish! Doesn’t anyone understand we’re all intertwined, that life depends on life, and we depend on nature? Where does gold and silver come from? Where do rain and sun and animals come from? Man acts as if they created these things. What man does is take and never gives back. And, why do they do it? Lack of character. Lack of honesty. Lack of ethics. Lack of anything except greed.

I stood on top of Pikes Peak once, long ago. Very small and very in awe of the knowledge that in the realm of bigger things, I didn’t count, that in the glory and all the splendor that spread out before me, I was just a tick in time that would pass on with the next sunset or sun rise, but the mountain would go on with it’s ageless wisdom forever. And I stood at the summit of a great volcano and understood that though we can claim to be all, we are nothing in the power of the earth. And again, when in the midst of a tornado with its mighty winds ripping and tearing and swirling, I survived to live another day, I knew a power much mightier than a human hand, or mind, or thought.

Yes, I’ve been learning, but only now is it all coming together because I’ve been too busy with what I perceived to be real. I know now that what is real, is life and love and soft kittens, and flowers and a dog at your feet and laughter and home and family and friends and anything beyond that is a gift of the highest order.

Thoughts (portions of a letter to someone I love)
Sometimes I miss the old fashioned love letter. This is quicker and easier, but there’s just no personality that goes along with it, no personal touch. There’s no slip of the pen to hint at what the writer might be feeling, no smudge of ink where a tear drop may have fallen hinting at the writer’s state of mind. Nothing. Just cold words on a computer screen with nothing to define who the writer is or for what purpose they are writing. And, there’s nothing to leave behind. No paper or pen or perfumed scented envelopes to say that someone once lived and dreamed, that they were. Nothing much left for mankind. Just a push of a button and everything I’ve said will be gone and no one will know how I loved you or what I thought about you.

I watched those videos and life has just gone by so fast, hasn’t it? When you’re living it, you don’t seem to have time to see it or to cherish what is right then. In too big of a hurry to get to the next place or the next level or the next time and when you do stop to look, it is all gone. Life is like that I guess, the scratching and clawing for what you want and missing out on the real things then finding out maybe, just maybe you’ve lived your whole life struggling for the wrong thing, living unfulfilled, but not even knowing it until you’re all grown up and looking on the backside of youth and then you say ah, was all I chased after really what life is about or was it the struggle of motherhood, of attempting to raise kids to understand what is real and important, to teach them to understand that nature has a lesson to teach and they must learn from it, that God is real and if you’ll just let it, nature will teach you all about him.

I know, because I’ve lived it. I know what it is like to have a huge animal with mane and tail flying, hoofs pounding the earth, running just because they love you and to feel the power of that animal beneath you knowing that for thousands of years it was the only mode of transportation. I know what it is to hold furry, warm kittens close on a cold night and listen to the coyotes speak in that soul wrenching cry, nose tilted to the heavens. I know what it is to plant a seed and tend it and care for it and when the first green shoot comes up through the hard soil to know the joy of doing something with your own hands and that it will give life and nourishment to not only you, but others as well. The rabbits come and the turtles to take a nip out of the tomatoes and we don’t want them there, but really, what’s it going to hurt to share a little with them? I always had an over abundance.

Well, perhaps I’m a little, what’s that word you used to say, contemplative? Melancholy? It just seems silly to me now to run to and fro wasting time on things that don’t fulfill. My passion is nature, writing, and photography. It amazes me the way the world works together to accomplish what it needs to and few people ever understand that. They don’t understand that when you take out too much, it dies a little each time. Earth is wearing out because of man’s greed. They don’t understand that what they’re taking from nature, they’re taking from themselves; mankind. Few look at it as a whole, but only their little section, but as the world population grows, there is too many little sections. Don’t they realize that one day each section will make the whole?

I miss you. It’s stupid the years we wasted on pride and stupidity and the toll it took on everyone. Live your dreams yes, but neither one of us did. We settled because of rash decisions or because what we really wanted required much work or effort or fear of failure or just fear itself. What character or fortitude lies in that? These are my thoughts. You may not see it the way I do, but for me, this is right.

You are the love of my life. I will always see you the way I first did, the first time I walked into your office; handsome, cocky, but underneath all that vulnerable, lonely, and searching for the same thing I was; trust, loyalty, and the other half of me. I found that in you.

OKLAHOMA by s. streight

Oklahoma sunshine, Oklahoma rain
Oklahoma wind whistlin' down the lane
Oklahoma cattle fed on Oklahoma grain
morals and values deeply ingrained.
Oklahoma crops in Oklahoma fields
Oklahoma sky, Oklahoma hills
Oklahoma people working with a will
tilled warm soil and oil drilled.
Oklahoma Indians quite aplenty.
Iron red dirt shinin' like a penny.
Cowboys, ranches, rodeos and cows,
tornado alley and powwows,
early morning grass, wet with dew
panoramic views, mountains too,
instill in the heart a closeness to the land
making life here, Oklahoma grand.

EMOTION by s. streight

Deep, deep as the sea
is my love for thee.
And swift, swift as a river
flow emotion underneath.
Then hot, hot as an ember
a red, hot cinder
the passion does stir
making all senses a spinning blur.
Now silent, very quiet, my love does grow
stronger and bolder in an never-ending flow.
Higher, ever higher, it will never end
reaching forward again and again.

MOMENTS OF LIFE by s. streight

In these moments of mortal life
amidst all the human stress and strife
it’s been my observation, that the inner situation
dictates the clarity of outer sensations.

Poem

LITTLE BOX by s. streight

I climbed in and shut the lid
On my little box
Looked around, securely sound
Within my own self-trust
But as I gazed about one day
The corners shrunk right in,
the ceiling lowered, as I lay cowered
beneath my own self-whim
the little box that I called home
began to feel quite small
and I began to question then
the thoughts I’d had before
perhaps this place, within my space
was smaller than I thought
perhaps this space, my little box
was not quite adequate
then steadily, deliberately
I began to know
Conceivably, immeasurably
Something had to grow
Maybe I don’t know it all,
or maybe, just a know-it-all
But where before I lived before
Within my special box
And languished there, subjected there
To all my biased thought
The little box that fit so well
my eyes wide open shut
soon began to illustrate,
how inadequate it was
so if perchance you visit there
peeking deep inside
and if perchance you happen to see
the box all dented up
you’ll know that I have moved from there
it’s simply too corrupt
the thoughts I had while living there
were anything but just
at this point, within my life
with wrenching clarity
I’ve begun to rearrange
Everything I must
The lids askew on my box
It’s bursting at its seams
The new ideas, crammed within
To you, might seem quite strange
After all, it wasn’t long
I thought the way you do
Living safely, all confined
Within my little box.