Kodachrome Once Captured

We listened to Tracy chase a Cat, and our chaperone laughed as she drove us to the Devil in your red Pontiac Bonneville.  You a tan peacoat and me my expectation, we saw a sunset burning in the trees and everywhere the sumac was bleeding.  I breathed in life with every breath and the crying down of leaves at the end of the season felt more like a new beginning.

Those are my favorite shoes I've ever owned

We climbed Boulder Mountain with the sweet taste of apple still lingering in our mouths. Driving home in slow motion, your smile lingered long after we'd forgotten about the apples.

 

For so long, I labored under the impression that I look much the same as I did before... and for so long I was right.  It startles me to look at photos from a decade ago and realize that this is no longer true.  Some dour, heavier Jamal has taken the place of the smiling, near-cute one that Kodachrome once captured.

Damn it all.

Everything (Always) Is Full Of Life

Look At That, He Said Pointing

i passed an epiphany on the floor one day

missed the point and left it lay

growing none the wiser

JB - 09/01/11

We’re all still trying to get to that concert; the one where our favorite band sings a song of freedom to the heart; when our friends gather together, growing bold and new from the experience; when everything is different after, seen from the perspective of one who stood on the threshold of ecstasy and looked down over the sea of life, understanding it all.

Always it rides on the edge of our vision.  Every moment and none are that concert.  We live unaware of the splendor that surrounds, never having consciously acknowledged the import of it all. 

In the end, only the end matters.  If we could lift our heads to gaze out on the horizon, all would come into focus.  Yet, even knowing this, we are distracted by that which blazes past as the world spins madly on.

Life, as always, couches its answers in a new mystery to solve.  It is not the passing epiphany which carries import, but the implementation of that which one knows they must change.

Decades? We Ain't Got No Decades. We Don't Need No Decades. I Don't Have To Show You Any Stinking Decades!

In the Baha’i Faith, the number nine carries symbolic significance.  The unity and oneness of mankind is seen as one of the fundamental truths which humanity is newly mature enough to accept and cultivate in this era.  As the largest one digit number, nine is, therefore, seen as the symbol of this truth.

In roughly two weeks, my wife and I will privately mark the anniversary of nine full years having passed since that night (and subsequent morning) that we spent chatting on AIM and decided to go down this road... and in another eight months or so we will mark our ninth wedding anniversary.

Nine years ago, my roommate (Asher) had to stop into work and I decided to go with him.  What ensued was one of the few nights in my life when I literally did not sleep at all.  Instead, I chatted with this girl I knew – first in a public radio computer bank on Purdue University campus and second in Asher’s room (the only computer we had) while he slept.

What better way to celebrate an unconventional beginning to a relationship than an unconventional, yet spiritually significant, anniversary party?  We haven’t decided what we will do, precisely, but we will be treating this anniversary as one of the big ones.

THE big one, actually, so please save the date.

One can keep its paper, five its wood, and ten its tin.  Gold?  Diamonds?  Who needs ‘em?  We’ve got better.

After nine delightful years… we got soul.

A Revolution: Not To Change, But To Return

I attended the Green Lake Baha’i Conference this weekend.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and was even introduced to the work of Anis Mojgani – a slam poet who produces amazing, expressive, thought-provoking work.  Potential poetry, his is not.  More to the point of the story, however, one of the breakout groups they had was about telling your story.  The description mentioned blogs, so I wandered in.  Wandering out, I took away the view that expressing ourselves is one way of encouraging understanding.  There was more to it, but those are the words I have settled on for the moment.

We spent maybe 3 minutes writing about our spiritual journey, starting sentences with “I remember.”  From there, we then just started writing what came to mind for another 10 minutes.  Afterwards, I spent some time putting the resulting words into a semblance of order and this is what resulted.

As I post this, I am no longer in the same place emotionally.

~~~

I find myself thoughtful without direction.  My over-active nerd-brain runs wild, stampeding violently past as I try to lasso a stray thought.  The ones I capture are but mere shadows of the stallions I see blazing past.  I circle back.  I circle back.  I circle back, but I never see them again.

Recalling the Genesis of Ourself

i remember a little girl

i remember a hill

i remember a drink dispenser

a conference at camp tecumseh

i remember mysterious paths

cars in the woods

hidden schools just over the hill

rocky inclines where water used to be

i remember friends and community

gathered at happy hollow park

i remember the speech they had us practice

and the games based on virtues

i remember memorizing a prayer

on the way to somewhere i’ve forgotten

and the feeling of pride in the accomplishment

i remember our father snapping his fingers

when we talked during prayers

and the sternness of disappointed stares

i remember wrestling and jumping on the bed

sent to play after devotionals

i remember a number of things

enough to reflect

too little to recreate

-JB 08/27/11

I know that I come back to the same thoughts, the same emotions.  I’m a record skipping willfully - an out-dated version of myself trying to hold onto cherished relics from a past era.  One such is recycled regret over, more than the loss of innocence, the forfeiture of myself (even if just a little) to a world that continually moves on, allowing no return to pick up the pieces of poor choices.

If I could find that truer self who I took out in the woods and told to stay, I’d let him know that I don’t think remembering him is a waste of time, and I try to remember as often as possible.

In the absence of Marty McFly… remembering will have to do.