My Lucid Reality

Perspective is everything.  One of the most valuable lessons I learned from business management was that perspective makes a big difference and that sometimes you need to take a look from a thousand feet up to see a clear picture, or in order to see that the picture you’ve been working on is slightly jaded. 

For me, this holiday season is a time for resetting perspectives.  I’ve had a fortunate year, and right now it’s very easy to look at being without a job as the worst possible gift for the holiday seasons, but it’s times like these when I need to take a step back and really look at everything from a new perspective.

The other day I found a comic that made me think.  The question is, what would you ask for if you had one single wish.  This allowed me to take a second and daydream about what I’d do with that one wish, and how that would change my view of the world around me.

Despite money troubles, or anything else going on in my life.  I’d wish for super powers like Superman had.  Coming to this realization really set me free, I imagine looking on the things that are trials to me now and seeing how bad they’d be then, and it gave me a peace that I hope everyone else can enjoy when taking a look at their life from a different point of view.  I’ve heard this technique also referred to as “count your many blessings” whatever works best for you.

The real question I have is, “If you had one wish, what would you wish for?”

This week I took a minute to look at some of the really great mangled poems of our time.  What I discovered makes a really fantastic mangled poem is distraction.  This is when someone starts to write about one thing, and halfway through the subject changes, it is similar to the “rhyme no matter what” style.   This kind of poem occurs often when you start a poem with great intent, then come back to it with much less focus and drive.  In many ways these poems do not follow an intelligent line of thought, and it is to this kind of poem that I pay homage today. 

The Rhyme scheme for this poem is ‘a – b – a – b – a – b’

The night holds the key
To passion like fire
I roar like the sea
I have one desire
About a quilting bee
“Does a bee quilt?” I inquire

This poem seems out of place and confusing, but takes place mostly in songs where a “really great hook” doesn’t exactly match anything else at all… but it’s a great hook.

Time, a friend, and an Enemy.

I watch the clock as it tick tocks the hours away.  Never enough time in the day, never the hours I want to spend doing everything that suits my interest before the hours call back to me.  I curse time, the enemy who forces me from the present and takes me to the uncertain future.

Time is an ally, a friend who releases the pain and helps me find a new horizon.  As long as I have time I have potential and a future.  I cannot complain so hard about the present as I know that time will sweep it away and all my troubles of today will be different when I turn around again and five years have gone by.

I’m lost in my thoughts on time, an ally whom I hope will sweep me into better times, and an enemy who makes me move on before I feel I’m ready.

The darkness held onto me.  I felt utterly at peace, weightless and drifting through oblivion beyond description.  I had a feeling that all my troubles were far behind me, and before me, I saw adventure and hope, there was a light calling to me.  I stretched toward the light, I felt so glad to move toward the light, and then things got complicated.  I felt a tearing and had this been a nightmare I would have bolted upright, fully awake.

I bolted awake, the grass a moist mattress for my body, the air was still chilled, but the cold didn’t touch me, mist filled the air as the fog crept between houses, but it wasn’t ominous, it was comforting.  I wondered momentarily at the disturbing dream I had and took a moment to figure out where I was.  My face lay against the earth, the cold wet sensation peculiar, I could hear the earth acutely, beneath me earthworms crawled, about fifteen of them that I could hear.  A heartbeat echoed like the beat of a drum, if I focused on it I could feel the strength of that heart echo off the walls of a nearby house.  It took a minute to realize that this heartbeat wasn’t mine… when I tried to find my own I came up empty, it then occurred to me that I hadn’t been breathing, neither had I taken a breath since I stood up.  It then occurred again with just as much shock that I didn’t remember standing up, and even standing I felt absolutely no weight, as though gravity’s hold on me couldn’t have been more fragile.

My body pulsed with unnatural strength, the skin on my arms glowing in the darkness and I wondered at losing several shades of color so quickly.  I pondered who I was, and how I got here, and slowly, everything came back to me, not in whole, but your memories could be described as a handful of sand, and that handful was poured out, the grains that stayed behind amounted to the memories I retained.  I remembered being afraid, and the dark night… and the pain.  There was blood in my mouth, I remembered something about blood in my mouth.  With that thought I stopped, and tasted… but what I tasted bore absolutely no resemblance to the coppery distasteful flavor that had choked me as I blacked out… what I tasted cannot be described in words… as though someone who spent their life tasting the most exquisite wines finally found the perfect flask; for someone with a tooth for chocolate it would be like finding the richest smoothest bar.  The taste I enjoyed was sweet, rich, deep, full and with just enough salt to be satisfying and absolutely mind blowing.

I stood in a park bordered by houses, I could hear distant heartbeats, I took a slow exultant breath, not because I needed to, but to test my new sense of smell that I imagined matched this new taste… I was in no way disappointed.  I could smell myself, sweet as vanilla and rich as gold.  I smelled the grass and the mist, I could smell where a car drove down the road some hundred feet away about half an hour ago.  Then I smelled something to match that taste that still sent my mind spinning.  On the wind I smelled a myriad of flavors, each a different brand of the amazing richness that spun me.  I imagined an old man with a taste for exquisite cigars in a cigar shop where every one was different from the last, and all of them the more amazing then the last.  It was then that I felt the hunger… a desire to taste every flavor that I could smell, a desire to feel just how rich each new flavor could be.

My body had made changes, I didn’t know just how much at the time, my strength multiplied by about twenty, my skin porcelain white but with a strength that rivaled cold stone.  I had acquired a natural odor strong and sweet vanilla, the smell brought a coy smile to my face, and had someone been able to see me, they would have said my eyes glowed twice as blue and bright.  Teeth, always well cared for were a little more straight, where one had been chipped once, it was now whole, where the canines had ground down over the years, they were now sharp as razors and back to their original shape and size.  The curse of the undead, someone that would later come as a surprise is just how the body changes to accept its new nature.  There are plants that evolution has adjusted so that they attract their prey; there are animals that have evolved the same way.  I felt very much as though I had evolved in this way, and as I inhaled again I knew the direction and the flavor of my first quarry.

I enjoy writing, it’s something I love to do, but I find myself getting my writing styles jumbled.  Right now the world is shaking all around  me as I search for something new to grab ahold of.  While it does that I spend hours each day pouring my heart into pieces of paper that describe to complete strangers who amazing I think I am.  At the end of the day I sit to write to you and find that I wish I had more bullet points. 

I’ve written and re-written my halloween special now about a dozen times, with every day that passes by it becomes more bullet point and less flowing descriptions.  Maybe I should give in and post it with bullet points, authors don’t use bullet points enough.

I hope you are all well.