An Insult or a Fact?: Hypocritical

To call a person hypocrite doesn't seem like much of an insult to me.

To be human is to be hypocritical, contradictory by definition. We are constantly growing and changing, and our emotions and outlooks evolve by the moment. When we are angry we think differently from when we're happy. Things that sound great when we're well-rested and well fed sound terrible when we're sleep-deprived and hungry. We say things we mean whole-heartedly when we're depressed and frustrated, but we take them back aghast and ashamed when we've emerged from the tunnel of bad feelings. We are completely vulnerable to so many things that direct, manipulate and persuade us in myriad ways.
Being so changeable isn't necessarily bad, nor does it mean that what we changed from was less desirable than what we are now. We -as humans, as creatures of the world, as denizens of nature- just change; constantly.
I am a hypocrite, dear, and in some ways I am not happy about it, but I also don't think it is a terrible as some would have us think. It's part of life; it's part of learning. We think we want or like something, but when we have it we change our minds because it wasn't what we expected, or we find that it doesn't suit us as well as we thought. We think we'll hate something, but when we try it, we find it isn't as bad as we once thought. My mom encouraged me to take a book binding class at our local college one winter. I was terrified. I convinced her to stay with me for a few minutes during the first class, but it turned out to be not as bad as I'd expected; not as big or scary or intimidating as I'd imagined. I learned a lot in that month-long class; a lot I continue to do, skills that have proved to be very useful to how I live my life. I've created a couple of journals I've since filled up, and many gifts for my friends and family.
The point is, if you're actively learning and growing in your life, you are probably going to do, say, and be some hypocritical things. You may be perfectly sincere and still become "hypocritical" by changing your mind or choosing something new and different for perfectly logical and sound reasons. Even if you are at a standstill as a human being, you're going to be hypocritical. It's okay. Be conscious and aware, and don't let it define you. We're playing this whole life thing by ear, despite what anyone might tell you.

Limbo

Oh Lord, I'm still not ready.
But I'll never be ready if I keep waiting like I have been.

I have next to no idea how exactly I am going to pay for everything associated with college this semester, let alone next semester. 

Realization

I'm a nineteen year old girl trying to write like an old man.

Pause

"We so dearly want to believe everything in the world is against us. 

But oh, my dear, I do believe so much (if not everything) is for us."

Wise words from my seventeen year old self, August 22nd, 2012

Clumsily trying to comfort each other even though we're all so flawed. But maybe that's why we're perfect, we know what the other is going through, imperfectly, but well enough that we can understand in some way and offer clumsy, incomplete, but absolutely beautiful advice. 

Ohm

Fill your heart with love, not fear. It's hard, it will take practice, but in time you will be happier and life will be brighter and easier. 

Just a thought

Well, I just figured out why this whole "true power comes from within" and "look inside for the answers" is kinda messed up and definitely unbalanced.

It forgets the importance of community and friendship, and the very reasons why we converse with other people. There are so many other viewpoints, why learn only of and from your own when you can learn of and from the experiences and philosophies of others as applicable to your own life or purely abstract? 

We're not meant to be alone, we're not meant to rely only on ourselves, on our own strength. We're meant to have relationship, community, support and we're meant to support others. We are strong and we are weak, and we do life better with other people around us. 

Talking with myself

Yes, everything has been done before, but you still have a unique and personal take on everything. 

Coming to a close

This whole year has felt a little like a breath held in anticipation. Anticipation of what, I don't know, and whether it applies only to me or to the world in general, I am not sure. 

Metaphor

I get sad and I start talking about the moon and the stars instead of my own hands and the brick wall right in front of me. 

December Does Funny Things To My Thinking

Weird how long the days are, and yet the weeks and year are flying by...

Attempting to Articulate

I've got this concept I want to write about, but I really have no idea how to word it, it keeps turning into a list of things in my head, but I really want it to be more articulate and complex than that. 

Isn't it weird, that we can know things but not be able to put them into words? That kinda says something about our heads and hearts and the language we've chosen and created. I mean, there's so much more to thought and communication than simple words and letters, so much more behind that. I think in feelings and colors and sounds and images, moving and still, though I also think in the written and spoken word a lot. My head is an interface, a whole other world that I explore. 

People communicate in so much more than just what they say, there's body language and touch and tone, and yeah, I think on some level there's this undercurrent of pure heart language, a sort of telepathy. 

I don't really know how much of that does or can travel on the written word, especially with digital communication, and maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time articulating this concept I've been carrying around in my head for a week, telling myself all about it. In my head, it's more than words, it's also images and memories and feelings. So when I try to translate it into words, it's like the skeleton of a leaf, none of the color or depth or mass of a whole, growing leaf. 

Guess I'll just explore and think about this idea for a little longer before I actually try to write it out. 

Between the ears

Tiny person walks -

breeze of thought swaying, swirling;
tightrope within skull



(When it will not do
to wax lengthy,
Haiku)

I'm at a crossroads or sorts

I don't really believe in money, therefore, I don't really believe in anything it is hopelessly entangled within or can buy.
I don't really believe in college and the pieces of paper that is a college education's end and purpose. I do strongly believe that I can educate myself on my own and with the help of other people in my life just as well, and in many cases, better than any institution can. Institutions deal not in spirituality, family, community or nature, but in materiality, the workplace, institutionalism (of course) and mankind's development and constructs.
I don't believe in careers or the avid pursuit of money and material wealth, I am pursuing a different path in a different world. I make everything I can, and do without or obtain secondhand whatever I can't. Albeit, I buy personal items, but that may be about to change as well. It's amazing what we are capable of making with our own hands, though; most people have no idea! It's incredibly satisfying to craft and make and create for yourself and the people close to you and around you. We're missing out on an unbelievable amount of connection with ourselves, God, the Earth, nature and it's creatures; other people, and the very materials that make up everything in our daily lives by resigning ourselves to being mere "consumers". A closed loop is much more complete and content than some huge mouth spewing out immaterialities for more and more and more things.

I'm not actually absolutely sure that this path I'm on is the right one or the best one, but it's feels good, so I guess I'll follow it for as long as I can. 

Stream of Consciousness: A response to personal knots untangled and Amanda Palmer's "The Art of Asking"

I am closed, but all the people I admire are open.
In my happiest, greatest dreams, I am open.

I am masked and cloaked and closely guarded.
I keep then all out, so why do I so badly want them in, why do I hope they'll let me in?

The things I want most to be, I keep in myself, away from others.
My heart is giving, my soul is tender, but I keep them draped in watchful distrust, not the blackest or heaviest of shrouds, but very interfering in the filtering of light from within and without.
I want to give, but to protect myself from potential harshness from others, I beat them to the punch and make myself feel bad first, even though they had no such intent themselves. I was not raised to be anything but my most authentic, honest self, I was never told that anything about me was anything but beautiful or multifaceted, and none of my friends have really stuck around long enough or been the kind of person to tell me anything of the sort. And yet, here it all is; the shroud, cloak and mask, the stinging barbs of "What you are you should not be" and "Nobody should/could/will ever like or love you".

But it is all lies, the voice that said I need all of this, the need for all of this, this in and of itself.
The Art Of Asking: it's okay to ask, it's okay to be open.
By asking, you are at your most vulnerable, your most earnest and authentic; your most open.
It is great, overflowing, boundless joy, and people respond to that on a very deep level, I respond to that on a very deep level.

Something will probably always be there (though I'm not going to over look the possibility that it won't), the worm-tongue whispering to the light of my being, "Hide. That is the only way to safety. Stay closed." But that voice is wrong; we get from others what we give, and I want the world to be as bright as I sometimes feel always.

Until then, Nothing is likely

The odds are against you,
But that is not so,
They do not exist until you win
-or lose
But even then,
Whatever happens has a 100% chance of happening,
And nothing else exists.
There is no such thing as odds,
And chance is not chance if it comes to pass.

Irony, or some such thing, don't much care right now.

I'm trying to figure out if I should want to write like other people, or if I should just like writing like I already do.
I think I'm going to stick with wanting to write like other people, because that sentence was horrible.

Analogies

Before me sits a blank page, an invitation to write, black ink to form letters to express invisible, silent thoughts.
Slowly, this blank page is filling up, a cup half full against gravity. Or rather I should say that the words and the space they begin to occupy is more like a waterfall, letters tumbling down a white page like water down a rock face.
Like a curtain drawn down, the ending punctuation to a performance, but in this case, the curtain is drawn down as the performance; when it has hit the bottom of the page, the show will be over. The curtain covers an empty stage, the curtain is actors, set, lighting, narrator all wrapped up into one rather than merely being an end.
This paper is now more than half full, more than three-quarters full, and filling up fast. The waterfall will soon hit the basin, the cup will be nigh unto overflowing, and the curtain will soon touch the bottom.
No longer blank, this paper is now a story.

Life Lesson One

Don't think you can always help people. If they want your help -if they are open to your ideas and advice, they will ask for it, and only then will you actually have any effect on them.
Don't barge into people's privacy to give them your help, it is their pain, their heart and mind, their home and their feelings. You don't know the whole story; you, quite honestly, don't know how to help them.
There is nothing you can do until you are invited to do something. They probably don't and won't need your help.
Until they do, they will find a way; they are strong. They need their own pace, their own space; it's not your life, it's theirs. Don't think you have the permission to try to change it.

Prayer

Bless us to bless each other