At the End of Violence

I feel as though I am yelling to the world and my voice is echoing off every wall, every tree and passing object, bouncing back in my face and deafening only myself. I'm telling them all I want peace! Begging for it over the loud roar of emotional gunfire. I'm in the middle of the war with a flower in my hand and no shoes. I'm fucked.

When my brothers big hands grabbed the fabric of my clothes and I felt myself tumble towards the desk in my dining room, a thousand thoughts raced through my mind. When I felt my body propel backwards and found myself face to face with the floor, the only thing keeping me from hitting it - Max's bicep around my neck, I felt a real fear.

As if it were poison, my own brother's rage seaped through his skin and stained my neck. He screamed at me and it was loud but all I remember now is a lull of confusion and the bewilderment in his eyes. Who was that person? What had finally become of him?

His veins were screaming beneath the surface and his nose flarred like a dog. He told me never to touch him again. He came at me as though I had put cigarettes out on his arms for years. Whose glasses was he wearing? What was he looking at when he told me never to hit him again? I'm so little next to him. I'm harmless.

Even his arms were red with anger.

I didn't understand any of it in that moment and I don't understand it a day later either. I became hysterical once he left. I had never seen that look on his face or that anger towards me and it scared me more than I ever thought my brother could or ever would.

My mother seemed furious at first, remembering her husbands face inside her own son, getting sick at the thought but was she scared of him to? I'm not sure of anything. When we talked the inncident out when we got home she seemed angry at me still. Because I am with her most, we fight a lot. I say and do a lot of things that remind her of her mother and it makes her resent me. Did she somehow feel I got what I deserved?

She made him come home from work at 9pm and talk about it. He entered with a annoyed look on his face, he laughed at me for being upset and at the end of a 40 minute circle argument, I stood at the doorway and my mother was mad... at me.

"Where are you going?" she wanted to know. "You're making this worse by stressing me out because you're leaving!"

I just looked at her angry face then I looked at him, smiling. Disgusting, the both of them. Their lives wildly out of control and me, just trying to pass through the cracks of their anger and getting wedged between them. I walked out.

I mourned my loss last night. I mourned the little scraps of faith I thought I had left for my mother and the traces of friendship I thought my brother had for me. He never had respect because he doesn't understand what respect is. And what was I expecting from them?

How long will I be punished for a past I'm trying to patch? How long will it be thrown in my face to remind me just how poorly I did things? Will I ever learn to be deaf to them?

Was it beyond reaching to hope they could just accept me? Even just my mother?

Heather said it was a test. But how can you go into battle, when you've only learned what kind of gun you're holding?

I wasn't ready.

On Understand the Material

As I've watched my friends and family alike going through some rough patches lately, I've felt sound in giving them advice. It feels as though if I am able to regirgitate the information I've learned from Michael then I must be understanding it. Of course this new ground I walk on is rocky and if the confusion were cutting my feet, well then I'd just have to ignore every scrape and scab because I'm still walking forward.

It reminds me of the beach (I go to). You get in the water and all the sludge, darkness and rocks are right at the shore. No one likes walking through that with bare feet to get to the sandbar but you know that once you pass crab corner and rock central there is soft clear sand waiting to be squished between your toes. And those big ass crabs are scarce but easier to spot should they pass by. In their place are small little hermit crabs scurrying over your toes and they are harmless. What an analogy to life!! I live by the beach, obviously...

Being there for my friends makes me feel better because it only proved that all the work I’m doing with Michael is starting to filter through and it shows that I'm grasping new concepts that I’m learning. Sigh with me, ahhh. I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am so thankful to be there to emotionally guide them, when once they were the ones guiding me through. I feel like I'm able to be there for each them in ways I have never been before. I’m starting to appreciate the dynamic of my best friends a lot more. I truely care for them all and each person that gives part of their life to me, whether I've known them a month or a millenium, I honor and cherish their presence and what they've contributed to my knowledge of the world and it's people.

I would never downplay that. I wish some of them wouldn't either.

To Train Patience

I was never able to finish pictures that I drew. I am an accomplished artist in my own eyes and the eyes of the people who receive pictures from me. I've shown work in only a few galleries. My art doesn't define me although so many people associate me with art automatically.

Normally it is my writing that gives me fill. The power I have in describing what I see and what I need. Fluid sentences and reader reactions stay with me longer than phrases accompanying my art like, "it looks so real". I know, that was the point. Writing is my challenge and whenever I master it and actually bring readers to tears, I breathe well. I like that my writing affects people. I like that I affect people.

However, every couple of months I get a calling back to the pad and I desire a sheet of clean, white paper. I appreciate the base of what I work on and with. Like a perfect human body before it is inked. A blank canvas can turn out to be so many things.

Pictures with no backgrounds. That defines me in a way I probably couldn't put into words but still, on the surface, it shows my inability to follow through. I create some of the most beautiful, vibrant images and these faces and characters are floating in space. I never have the patience to give them a landscape or a setting. I focus on people.

The other part about my art that frustrates me is the timing. Some days I can draw anything. Other days, nothing. When I can draw something, I want to see the finished product so bad but the amount of time it takes to create an incredibly life like drawing is tedious and feels like it can go on forever.

I am inspired these days. Inspired by the very thing I've studied for so long and misunderstood for longer... People.

As people are my focus and patience is my obstacle, I will give myself small lessons in patience and pushing through the frustrations of time constraint. I will draw a picture to move me... and to teach me.

On Finding Spiritual Grounds

We live to know a breath of life.

It's nine thirty and the ceiling fan is on low. The rain is slow but fat outside the screen sliding door. It's bouncing off the wooden deck and The Last Samari is sinking into the folds of my brain. Soaking up talk of honor and self disapline. Expecting respect and recognizing rain and it's affect to the mind.

Men of culture, destiny, duty and strength. People with different eyes and skin, both alike in dignity, both alike in heart.

"Do you believe a man can change his destiny?"
"I believe a man will do what he can until his destiny is revealed."
Last Samari

Channeling bravery and power through your pores, into your skin so that every cell of life is resilient. Retaining the peace to return to once the bravery is not needed. It's about appreciating and respecting human instincts, human interaction and the world in which human resides. A carfully woven web of connections and energy passing between the living and the non.

I interpret this system as religion within each other instead of the unknown air above our heads. Dedication to each surviving warrior that with stands nature against the human life. Respecting the short lived nature of our stay and treating each boned structure with skin and eyes as the temple it was built to be. They let themselves live within and throughout the bodies of themselves and each other. Relying on the power of the human spirit to shape the understanding of their own and their species.
Brilliant.

Discipline. Belief. And the power to put them together within a unified cause. Fighting with passion for the roots of pride. Seemingly fearless faces lined together, staring down the weaknesses of jealousy, greed and deceit. The moral fiber of man out weighing the burden of injustice.

The Human Connection.
It's what I've called it.

The caring relations of our species and the desire to do what's right as a whole. Fighting for your honor, speaking against untruth, sacrifice for greater good.
Respect.
What man gives everything for. What man dies for in the face of wrong doing.
Peace.
The pampering the soul gives to the body for respecting the living, breathing vessel.

What a tremendously powerful belief system.

When 400 men get on their knees and bow their heads to one fallen soldier, that is humanity blossoming for one moment.

I lack an order of diplomacy to which I owe everyone if I am to find the respect I deserve.

"As for the Captain... I like to think he found the peace that so many seek and so few ever find."
TLS