True Love of Coffee

Growing Up
*****

When I was younger,
I found many things that amazed me.
Exotic things, erotic only in the imagination,
Little nuances that no one else cherished.

Then I realized, gleefully feeling
That no one knew what could be seen.
I was a child, blissful, never wishing
Ignorant in how life could have been.

Yet I learned how to believe,
In me, the very things I could be.
With my childhood, perfect clarity
that I simply now can see.

*****
Listen to the Rain
*****

You didn’t know me,
Not like I wanted to know you.
I had lost my peaceful heart,
Without semblance or recollection
of standing in the calm.

Yet when it rained,
I thought of you,
Tempting words I didn’t say,
Falling upon silence
like drops lost in the storm.

I kept failing to fly,
A thousand times,
Again and again.
Lost, befuddled, amused,
Usually hopeless, sometimes yearning.

A thousand times,
I threw myself from heaven.
Daring to try, just once,
To touch your face,
Caress your lips.

When the sky sheds a tear
With but a chance to touch,
May I find your heart below,
Peaceful in knowing, I love you.
Even when I’m falling.

I find myself amongst scattered stones.
Fallen heroes and indifferent hearts.
The chaotic rush of defiant inhumanity,
And the deafening thunder of war.

When I live such things,
I no longer find my honor,
I find my soul to be untouchable,
The search for a king is over.

I hold onto a blade,
That once defended all I cared for,
By destroying the very thing,
That someone else needed so dearly.

No one, not even I, can define why.
There was a time when great cause,
Gave inspiration to a time of excellence.
But that moment is over, death comes to all.

What is this hope we seek;
is it the futile hope of everlasting love,
or the disdain we all have of our possession?
Covered by the tears of loss, we all find only want.

Day after day, year after year,
The very heart that held my world together,
became harder than the world around me,
and my only love was turned to stone.

I wish that my life,
Could be remembered,
As if someone cared.
Wanting and hoping,
For when the day comes,
And they recall.

I wish for so many things
Curious and cluttered dreams,
That fade into a place I cannot go,
Where I may find myself,
Trying to hold on,
To just one.

I wish to be,
So unfettered by such desire.
Believing myself to be true,
Searching for everything lost,
I dare not succumb,
For I cannot survive such cost.

I wish a dream for me,
Beginning again and again,
If I need to be, so willing
Where I cannot fall into darkness,
And I fight again for the first time,
Knowing that I am wanted.

I wish to be remembered
To be valiantly held, so tightly
Without losing myself
To a time when someone knows me
Where I feel safe,
And I am not discarded.

Like many people, I have greatly pondered the aspects of my personality. I am introspective on a level that often gives me pause years later, learning from my unfortunate mistakes of the past and trying to become someone better tomorrow, hopefully today.

In my ponderous thought, I do not fail to realize what I consider to be the ultimate lesson of the human condition- that every experience is layered with emotion and feeling. Thoughts and actions are irrationally flavored by dreams and desires.

The essence of the simplest action can cause both ultimate suffering and the purest of joy.

This is the best part of experiencing life.

The reading of simple words can define who I am today, and possibly give me insight into the person I need to learn from in the future. I have found that my own experiences are incomplete in definition until I accept them for what they mean to me.

I realize that I am still learning. If I can only hope, I will learn to the day I die. I will be ignorant of things and then be enlightened, hopefully sharing what I have learned with those who are willing to listen. Perhaps this is the essence of wisdom “having gained knowledge, understanding, experience, discretion, and intuitive understanding, along with a capacity to apply these qualities well.”

If I can apply myself well, then I will not have failed.

For me however, the largest driving force in my application of learning is the happiness of others. Perhaps you could call it the pursuit of love. I am to my knowledge one of the most hopeless of romantics. I am a reflective personality, trying to give of myself more than I have. I found with my divorce that the ultimate act of understanding love was the acceptance of being altruistic, believing in yourself on such a level that failure and success become irrelevant- there is only personal effort and intention.

This is not without cost, emotionally accepting that those you love may not love you, or that they must pursue different paths to experience life for themselves can be a lonely road. There are of course many versions of love. My own definitions of love and friendship are entirely formed upon from my past experiences and knowing who I am.

To examine my belief however, I look at the quotes of not only great people – but those who have touched large portions of the world:

I Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

I believe this is one of the best written statements of love that has endured. Love is patient, love is kind. Remembering those words has kept me out of a great many conflicts with those I care about and has also aided me greatly in understanding people I do not even know. Love of a person is only one aspect, but love of a fellow human tempered with the compassion of patience and kindness creates a better person in my humble opinion.

C.S. Lewis- Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.

Somewhere, someone loves me. The intangible security of love is a hard concept to grasp and hold onto. I cannot deny that I’ve had days where I thought I was alone, but the act of loving others without question has provided me with great comfort on many occasions. I am an unusually different kind of lone personality, because I accept that for some reason I am worth loving on a fundamental level. Love as an act is worthwhile and does not need return to be rewarded, the act of loving someone is a valuable piece of loving yourself.

Euripides: He is not a lover who does not love forever.

This statement was painful in my own personal lesson. My x-wife didn’t believe in such fundamental acceptance of love at the time, of having perseverance over time to endure and evolve. I hope she has learned that lesson and changed for the better. My own definition for the love of my partner is very long winded, but also very short. It doesn’t fade with time, not because emotions do not change, but because I am committed personality. I have the ability to choose if I will fail or succeed at love.

As a person- I choose not to fail. That isn’t something that changes tomorrow or in ten years. My word is my soul. It defines who I am, and if I care so little to set my goals and aspirations on a worthwhile goal, I have chosen to fail. As an adult I have struggled with everything I am to keep my promises and define my own life. Like any human, I have had my failure, but I have used each failure to help reach success the next time.

This personal decision was based mostly on the glorious aspect of being a father. I must set an example for my son, and I choose to reach for things and commit myself to them with all my heart. If you are to undertake a goal, in love or in life, do so with every fiber of who you are and do not let go of that dream. Even if I fail, I will be assured that I taught my son to reach for the stars, instead of being satisfied with looking at them.

HH the Dalai Lama: When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.

Who can argue with the Dalai Lama? I had the opportunity to meet him the Rainier Club back in April. From my own perspective- It is a unique aspect of giving of yourself that creates a worthwhile person. In regards to the typical concept of being poor, you are never poor if you have enough to help someone else. Regardless of who you are, you always have the ability to help someone else. This is choice.

Jack Kerouac: “No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”

A few of my friends had related my writing to Jack’s style years ago. Yes he was crazy. So am I (proud of it too.) When I came across the quote above I didn’t see it talking about the wilderness, honestly because I had spent months of solitude in the wilderness finding my own hidden strength when I was younger. I saw it was about love of yourself, being worthwhile, and of being unique. When you cut away all the crap of society and have only yourself, you begin to define the world in an entirely new way.

William Wordsworth: The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person’s life.

Ah William, if you only knew that I actually take this statement a little further. Unremembered acts are worthwhile, but I often find that I don’t like taking credit for every act of kindness and love. Sometimes it is unavoidable and you cannot keep it secret, but I have sent out various secret admirer gifts to both friends and family, or simply gone out of my way to make sure they had a good day for an unexpected reason.

The very act of loving, for me, is often tied to being very altruistic. If I expect return, if I demand action, I am asking for something that is not of the purest intent. This doesn’t mean that someone shouldn’t ask to be held or remind someone they need a certain type of acknowledgement, but that when it is given without request for credit or validation, it comes from an entirely different place in the heart.

Can I stick my own on here?

Barry Hurd: “The only answer to love is “without a doubt”

I don’t mind going into a rambling of what love is and is not. I mean really, with a thousand or so poems and creative pieces I’m pretty sure that everyone knows I’m slightly insane. I don’t mind being different, I think we would all be better off sharing a little of our insanity with the world and creating a more colorful canvas.

When I originally started dating my x-wife, I wasn’t nearly as well versed with detailing my thoughts in writing. We lived about two hours apart and chatted over the internet on many nights, and when she finally had the courage to ask “do you love me?” I smiled, and typed my reply- “without a doubt”

Those three words defined so much of my life for the next decade: Without a doubt.