The problem with understanding things is that you understand them.
So when you interact with the world, you do so with that understanding. And what may seem like an ‘of course’ to you may seem like an insurmountable obstacle to others. What seems simple to you, seems like magic to them.
Technology is the easiest example. What I view as common and everyday is something many would find to be frustrating and opaque.
And when that understanding moves beyond the realm of physical things…you’re distance from others grows as well. Because the world you are experiencing is not the world they are experiencing.
I often say to myself, “Sonder.”
Sonder is the understanding that each being you experience is living an entire reality that you cannot understand.
And it applies to yourself as well. The life you are experiencing, cannot be fully understood by anyone else.
We can be truthful. We can be open and honest. We can be emotionally intelligent and caring. But our understanding of our reality means that we will leave things out of that discourse. Because, to us, it is a given. Something we just accept and know.
This is why we experience pushback when we explain things to people. Because our inherent understanding is different from their inherent understanding. And what they perceive as real is not what you perceive as real. Not fully. Not completely. Even when you approach parity.
All we can do is understand where they are coming from, as much as possible, and meet them where they are.
And beyond that, be humble. Because what you understand needs to evolve. You cannot rest on your own understanding. Stagnation is death.
reality
An interpretation of an interpretation
We see the world through the lense of our biases. These ideas about what is that we don’t even know we have.
I used to think that cops were the good guys. Way back in time. Before I saw them drag my neighbor out of his grandmothers house. He lived with her and took care of her. He did the yard work and did the grocery shopping. He was a good grandson.
He also dealt weed. He was a drug dealer. To my parents that was it. The sum total of his character.
They came for him in force. The whole neighborhood cordoned off. They had us move to the back of the house. Just in case bullets started flying.
He wasn’t home. But they sure terrified his grandmother.
They lay in wait for him and scooped him up before he got in his front door.
His grandmother had to sell the house. Collateral damage in the war on ‘drugs’.
Before, I never gave the cops a second thought. After, I never felt safe. Sure in the knowledge that they could snap me out of my life and ruin my family without a care for what’s real.
I used to see America as a promise and an experiment in equality. A grand idea which seamed to be bearing fruit. Leaders in freedom and truth.
But I grew up. And I see the rot built into every 3/5’s compromise. Broken and rotten from the beginning.
A foundation built on blood.
If something doesn’t directly effect you, you get to live in a world that doesn’t exist. You get to live a fantasy. Your bias is built-in. You can’t see what you don’t know.
The first time I dated someone from a different socioeconomic class…my eyes were opened up. I couldn’t not see their struggles. Things I took as simple became hard.
Everyone’s life is living in this bubble reality.
We can be empathetic and see what is happening and determine a course forward that includes us all.
Or we can double down on this false narrative and refuse to see anyone else’s experience. There’s a whole political party that’s into that.
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A moment of silence please
Give me that fabled simpler time
Where I was yours
And you were mine
That picture painted with a false bottom
That overpaint of an overpaint
That lie we say so often it becomes truth
Give me that yesterday when all was harmony
When all people were united
When the feeling on your neck
Was the arm of a friend
And not the heavy boot of thuggery
That false remembrance which they say is possible
If only we’d be quiet
Be silent
Be closeted
Tell all the lies of the heart
They were forced to
It could be grand
Give me that hopeful tomorrow
Where retirement is real
Where lips pressed to mine
Where our world is not aflame
And the vocal few don’t drown out the cut tongue majority
Give me none of those things
All I want is a harsh truth
All I want is a plan with some spine
All I want is a chance
But I am not so naive
No longer trapped in what you conceive
Instead I cry
For all you know is the lie
And truth
No matter how sharp
Cannot cut you free
From the honeycomb cage
You call freedom
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Love is door and lock and key
I have a theory that I have seen played out over and over again in my life and in the lives of others. Maybe it’s me seeing patterns where none exist.
Maybe it is a glimpse between the seams.
In every relationship which results in love, there is a test. A moment where everything goes wrong. Some health issue, some natural disaster, some conflict that places enormous stress. How that test is weathered tests the strength of the love.
Some it shatters and the relationship falls apart.
Some it breaks and though unknown the relationship begins to dissolve. It may be mended bit most often it dies under its own weight. Or is buoyed along by complacency and comfortable.
Some it draws closer together. It creates from pain and destruction something new and strong. As it should be, the strongest creation is born from destruction.
This will happen within the first six months. The soft strains of music will begin to play behind the scenes. Each note bending around until the snap and catastrophe. In the silence, the people involved either build their own symphony or off key plucking or yield.
Maybe life is full of such moments. Maybe I’m just attuned to this type and so I see it. Maybe I’m mad.
Just a thought. A possibility.
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Perceive perception
The light bends down convex lense
Pushing with insistence
I am real it shouts
REAL
hear the murmurs
Feel the pressure
Know the other
Sight is a spoiled child
Screaming that it knows the way
Let us touch
There are realities
Beyond the border
Of the lense
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Sometimes sleeping sucks
Just sitting around at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep. Or rather I did sleep for about an hour. But then my dream turned all creepy, with the door to my bedroom open, which it never is. And murmuring voices right outside of it. And I kept getting up to close it only to find myself back in bed, looking at the open door. After about 15 tries and rising panic, I managed to force myself awake. So I get to deal with that panic and being bone tired but kinda afraid to go back to sleep. And wondering if this is real, as all of the trapped in my dream effects cause this disjunction in what seems real.
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Thoughts on relationship hopes
I have two scenarios in mind when I am with someone. There is the ideal. Which is that we are together and spend our lives in the band between content and happy. We express our love out loud and without reservation. We are words and deeds and compromise. I have no illusions that we won’t fight. But I hope we can get through the fights with grace. And find peace and passion in each other. I want the thousand little things that make up a life.
And the second scenario? I hope that we are honest with each other. That we both get what we need, for now. Even if we are not going to be in each other’s lives forever, I hope that we make each other’s lives better while we are. And when it ends I hope we part as friends and not enemies. There is enough pain in endings without adding bitterness and regret.
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Penned in
You’ve missed nothing
There’s nothing here to miss
Just an avalanche of words
Blowing in maelstrom like autumn leaves
Just my truths left on the ground
Trapped by being written
I wish it were otherwise
That your touch on my skin would be physical reality
But no, just this story we play
But no, just a dream
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Ritual of Winter and Summer
The blade spins round
silver flash
crimson drips like rain
hand dips into cool waters
sudden flung into night air
droplets suspend like stars
each reflect back your beauty
my goddess
you press lips
and lick my blood from blade
our joining shifts the stars
all that was and is shivers
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Damaged film
You ever see a bright white spot
surrounded by a color shift like blue
reminding you of damaged film
but you see it in your life
and for the briefest of instants wonder
“Is my life real?”
Pelgris 