Fountain of Remorse

It's too late at night for me to muse without devolving into unintelligible drivel, but I just wanted to express a thought: it is so hard to choose the right thing to do for yourself.

After making that choice, though, what then? Is it worth dwelling on the wrongness? Shouldn't one avoid giving undue weight to the consequences? A great teacher once taught me that, without knowing it, we are often holding a gun to our own head. Literally, a level of life-or-death pressure is imposed on ourselves: What will we do? Will we get by? Is this the end? Perform! Perform!

So, of course, it often unlocks the door to contentment when we tenderly tell ourselves, "Put the gun down, my love."

It doesn't matter if you made a wrong decision. And, apologies, to yourself or to others, are not a surrender, they are active expressions of love. No matter what you are facing, you will come out okay. You may, in fact, be okay right now.

Light a candle and hope that it glows...

Check out the brilliant Lea Michele in this preview for the Fall Series, Glee.

Quite a turn from the role that she created in Spring Awakening off/on-Broadway, a musical adaptation of an 1891 German tragi-comedy (that errs on the side of tragi-) by Frank Wedekind. Fox Studios having aired the pilot as a "special" (remember those?) earlier in the summer, and after a 10-city promitional tour, this show has already gained an all-out cult following. I'm looking forward to drinking the Kool-Aid.

And now a swift turn to the poetic, little excerpt-lets from the mentioned Spring Awakening, music by Duncan Sheik, lyrics by Steven Sater:

Where I go,

When I go there,

No more memory any more,

Only men on distant ships,

Women with them swimming with them to shore,

Where I go,

When I go there,

No more whispering any more,

Only hymns upon your lips,

A mystic wisdom rising with them to the shore...

Where I go,

When I go there,

No more shadows any more,

Only men with golden fins,

The rythm in them rocking with them to shore,

Where I go,

When I go there,

No more weaping any more,

Only in and out your lips,

The broken wishes washing with them to shore...

Love me, just a bit,

We'll wander down, where the winds sigh...

My demeanor of late has been heavily influenced by one question: Will my attitude/my actions further my way to a happier life? Will saying the thing I'm about to say take a step in that direction? All of this being coloured by an enormous amount of work to do at the ol' job - which I sincerely don't mind, and find enjoyable.

What I am butting up against is the percieved limitations of my control over my current circumstances. There are many philosophies that address this time-long question...from religiosos to nihilists the essence remains:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. - Matthew 17:20

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. - Franz Kafka

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. - Ayn Rand

There are no facts, only interpretations. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. - Immanuel Kant

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. - Plato

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. - Nelson Mandela

And two other quotes on different notes, that are inspiring me right now:

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. - Franz Kafka

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

Yet bizarrely, the thing that inspires me most, is that, in lives as short or shorter than mine, such development of thought and philosophy was achieved.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

The turn of a year is marked for me by the start of school, although I haven't been in a classroom for a couple of years now. I know the bus from the Metro to work will now be packed with awkward teens, sitting uneasily, each inhabiting their own twisted sense of a niche in a bloated and fickle microcosm. I am strongly empathetic, and all of that immaturity in one place really makes me feel...well...immature.

See, I'm starting to learn that parts of me are stunted. I think we all have that problem in our own special way. Certain aspects of our daily modus operandi are rooted in what Alanis Morissette has accurately pegged as our "precious illusions." (Though she is the self-proclaimed "Queen of Malapropism"...although I thought Jewel wore that crown.)

That being said, I continue to try and define...or diagram...for myself, what exactly the process of self-reflection and self-correction entails. How does one find and focus on something "wrong" with oneself without developing a negative opinion of oneself? Meshing the two, prooves particularly perilous when self loathing happens to be one's drug of choice.

I do, however, think that it is important for me to concentrate on this lesson/exploration. It has been my general practice in my life to find a mantra to match a lesson; for now that will be "build a happy life."

A mantra can be very much like a key that opens a door. When I look at that simple statement, "buld a happy life," its tennets seem sound, and I think anyone would be hard pressed to find something wrong with living life by those words. In fact, I can think of a certain grandmother who seemed to have lived by those very words.

I Keep On Lovin' You

(Ronnie Dunn, Terry McBride - writer of, among many other things, "If You See Him/If You See Her")

Love takes the patience of Job, that's what my momma always said,

Faith is the belief in something more than what you know, that's what the good book says,

You've got to play the cards you've got, who knows what fate is holdin',

At times you gotta go without knowing where you're goin',

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

Lord knows we've had our share of fights, our sleepless nights, our ups and downs,

We've had plenty and then some of baby-i'm-gone's and turnarounds,

Sometimes I swear it might be easier to throw in the towel,

Someday we're gonna look back and say "Look at us now."

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the I-take-it-back's, I-didn't-mean-it-like-that's, I'd-never-hurt-you's,

Oh, I keep on lovin' you,

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the I-take-it-back's, I-didn't-mean-it-like-that's, I'd-never-hurt-you's,

Oh, I keep on lovin' you.