Thursday, November 19, 2009

How it all started...the freeflow of ideas, writing, potential...going back to Summer 1996

The hot, waterless desert
Hot humid summer is unbearable
Not enough fresh air to breath
The Rain is a little better
But it becomes even more humid,
I can barely breathe.
The fire - hot, red, and murderous.
The place I love is far away accross the ocean.
America is beautiful I wouldn't want to walk away.
Remember my grandma's farm.
Can only imagine the cemetery,
hardworking women, men,
War all over the world.
Never really ends,
always conflicts, problems.
The noise of the city unnoticeable
to some, unbearable to others.
War, fighting, death, torture.
We never lived long enough.
Those who come back are reborn.
Fighting, beating, violence.
Can't think when you want
to protect. Falseness, lying,
dishonesty. Only a dream fantasy,
never happened and never will.
Always want to be away at sea.
Can't think don't understand
Noise words doesn't make sense.
Bright light is followed by a
lunatic, noone knows the truth,
is unknown, unfamiliar, unearthly.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Planters v. Hunters

At a certain stage of life, when you're passed getting all the education that you planned on getting, and you have gone through your first full time job you start to think what is next. You already know that the next part of your life may determine the part after that, and the part after that. While you feel like you're planting a lot of seeds by starting a project here, a job their or volunteering in a third place, you sit and wait to see the results and the fruits of your labor.

In the meantime, you nurture the land, you water it, you take care of the offspring month after month, year after year until that one hopeful day someone is able to see that you have grown a flourishing masterpiece. As an impressionist painting, each independent stroke may not seem significant until the whole painting is completed, and then you get a Monet or a Van Gogh.

The alternative is being the one that goes after something with full force until the result is achieved. A quick fix. A hunter. If the result is good - when a hunter catches the prey and takes a proud photograph with the prey in one hand and the rifle in the other - it satisfies your necessity of that particular moment. You quickly move on to the next project, perhaps a new forest to hunt in.

If the result is not so good, you may or may not learn from this experience but still move on to your next 'prey.' While each project requires your full attention to be successful, your results and achievements, collected over time create the masterpiece. If you look at a Salvador Dali painting up close you see individual figures with their own expressions and context, but if you take a few steps back, together these images create a wholly different world.

We pick and choose where to seed and what to hunt after, yet we should all take a moment in our life to look at the masterpiece that we have created thusfar.