Occupied

5:16 pm

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

SELF-IMPORTANCE

Self-importance can't be fought with niceties.....Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it--what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.....Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy.--Don Juan

If everyone has their own path and struggles, demons, and sicknesses; then not everything actually happens to (or because of) us.  Sometimes we just get someone else's destiny splashed on us.  

There are almost 7 billion of us trying to work our shit out or operating on some fucked up autopilot.

Bad things happen and we all get hurt.  Some of us a lot.  There is no denying that but maybe we could save a little therapy money if we didn't insist on taking everything so personally.

Love is

Corinthians says love is "patient and kind. Love knows neither envy nor jealousy. Love is not forward and self-assertive, nor boastful and conceited."

Buddy Guy and Bonnie Raitt say love "comes out of nowhere baby, just like a hurricane and it feels like rain."

 

Rama-Kandra, who is a program from the Machine world in the Matrix says love is "just a word, but what is behind that word is what matters."

Oliver Wendell Holmes says love is "the master key that opens the gates of happiness"

Peter Ustinov says love is "an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."

Dorothy Parker says love is "like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." 

But for those most effected, the wisest among us, of which I am one:

Love 
is 
you.

Why do I Write?

"Why do I write?  It's like I am slowly untying knots that have somehow formed inside me emotionally."  BBC interview heard on August 5th.  I have failed you, I cannot find the author of the quote.  Lo siento.

I have known for years that writing was an activity that I too should engage in on some level.  And for all those years, I have known why I did not write.

• I didn't feel I had anything to add to the conversation.
• The things I had to say, my stories, might be too much, perhaps seem like works of fantasy rather than truth.  
• I didn't want to be discounted or doubted or, much worse, find out I was a failure as a writer. 

Now I am writing and hearing this man's reason for writing resonates with me.  I liked the simple imagery of the emotional knots.  Imagining each admission or disclosure as a relief and release, a knot dissipating and leaving my being freer and lighter with each key strike.

This was my reason for starting hippos cant dance.  My hope is that post by post, the specters will lose their power and energy over me. Silence has always been their biggest weapon since silence is a weapon best suited for children.  But I did survive the first molting and cannot be made to be silent any longer.

There are many stories that may or may not make their way onto these pages.  I am not attempting the raw stages of some American prose.  My ambitions are much humbler than that.  When the buzzing, pressure, and otherwise distraction fills my inner reality, I create a post. There is a general loosening, muscles relax, concentration returns. A knot unties.

The biggest benefit of posting is I don't have to worry about what someone thinks or how some terrible recounting might affect a listener.  My journey is toward humanity; commonality; and away from secrecy, shame, and freakdom not to inflict discomfort on or elicit sympathy from anyone.

In the favorite words of a wonderful, imaginary friend: 

It is what it is.

Why do I write?   

For so many years, under direct duress, I couldn't speak my truth.  I kept secret after secret deep in my chest carrying the shame as my own.  Now, I lay those secrets at the graves and the feet of those responsible.  I give the burdens back to their rightful owners.

Why do I write? 

It's my revenge, my reclaiming, my reckoning and my right.  

Why do you (or don't you) write?

Psalm 124

Had it not been the LORD who was on our side,

         Let Israel now say,

Had it not been the LORD who was on our side
         When men rose up against us,

Then they would have swallowed us alive,
         When their anger was kindled against us;

Then the waters would have engulfed us,
         The stream would have swept over our soul;

Then the raging waters would have swept over our soul.”

Blessed be the LORD,
         Who has not given us to be torn by their teeth.

Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper;
         The snare is broken and we have escaped.

Our help is in the name of the LORD,
         Who made heaven and earth.

This is my favorite Psalm.  I definitely had help.

FOR KATE DANGER

Why is it that you think people get married?

Because we need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on this planet. I mean what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything-the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things...All of it. All the time, everyday. You're saying your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness...

"Shall We Dance?", Miramax Films 2004