You've Eight Years? More Like Eaten Them.

When I got married, my mother said that we would grow together or grow apart. Eight years later, and that statement still makes me stop and think.

Voyeur Moon

my wife’s music plays loud

driving south as the moon shines down

she belts out the tunes

on the way to a good friend’s wedding

i listen as she tells me how good each song is

and which ones used to remind her of me

over the years i’ve learned the words

and offering my voice brings peace

-JB 08/12/11

Love is like the wind; a stirring up of emotions.  Love is like the wind; it can be there and gone in moments.  Love is like the wind; it helps by pushing you onward.  Love is like the wind; it will break your umbrella if you aren’t careful.  Love is like the wind; refreshing.  Love is like the wind; you’ll fall on your face if you lean into it when it doesn’t blow back.

There is no recipe for love, nor is there a snake oil cure for being unlucky in it.  It’s human nature to want to share experiences when one feels they are relevant.  This isn’t a self-help book and I’m not opening an ashram, but life teaches as one goes and I find myself valuing two lessons more than others. 

1. Speak from love, and hear love.  Assume the best of the others’ intentions.  When an argument arises, it’s more likely miscommunication than ill-intent.  Have the maturity to let go of frustration and remember that the other person is trying to understand your crazy self just as much as you are them.  Rarely is somebody not trying, so don’t let that be your reflexive response.
2. Be willing to lose yourself to the marriage.  Open up and find the new you.  Your mannerisms are not solid gold to everyone and may not even be solid gold to you, if you only knew better.  More likely, you stumbled onto your habits through happenstance and repetition.  That’s hardly a good reason to cling to anything, and may be just the reason to run away therefrom.

Mid-Mountain Meditations / Math and God

We've all got our paths to walk, but as I look up from somewhere part-way up the infinite mountain, I find myself both exhilarated by the journey and stunned by the impossible-to-mind-wrap magnitude of it all.

Un Enlightened

my mind careens wild

down roads known

yet never explored

a path worn well

to a destination

never reached

light floats in the distance

ghostly, ethereal

never to be attained

-JB 08/08/11

The thing about the infinite mountain is that, no matter how much further I go up, I never quite get to even a percent climbed.  I can look back down the mountain and track the path from whence I came.  Even so, I haven't even begun to climb, statistically speaking.

From where I stand, (part-way up and guessing at it all), that is what the Prophets of God mean when they discuss Him as "unknowable."  My philosophy teacher liked to claim that as contradictory, for even to know God as "unknowable" is to know God.  Statistically, though, it is less than irrelevant.  I know of God, I do not know Him.  To me, that is a significant difference.

Some also ask:  

Why climb if you can't get to the top? 

I can't answer for you, but for me it is simple.  I can always move up relative to where I was/am, and that is quite rewarding... when I am able to mind-wrap the significance.