Hot Damn!

Despite all of the bad stuff in the world, and there is admittedly a lot we see these days, there is still the need to relish the good. Not feel guilty about the joy you find in your own life or in those around you.

Perhaps to counter the bad, it is even more important to feel deeply the good when you encounter it.

So, I am reminding you all (we all know this...) to find something, or somethings, or someone, or someones that make you say "Hot damn!" Seek it/them out. Find it.

It may be that it's right under your nose. It could be you, if you remember yourself, after having forgotten yourself for so long. It could be your family, your friends, the book you just read, the realization that you just experienced a perfect day, which is rare. Perfect? That doesn't come along all that often.

The point being that it is a part of all of us, a part of the human condition, to feel joy. Unmitigated, unconditional joy. And, it makes no difference how it is manifested. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. Maybe that makes it even more intense, or special, or exquisite--that it is your own intimate connection to something either outside of yourself, or within, that moves you. To be moved! To be awakened! No longer sleepwalking from one moment to the next, rather feeling a moment or moments in a day so strongly, so deep within your heart, that it's as if you are connected to the infinite, however you may define that.

You either have to seek this out, or be open to it coming to you. I won't wager on which is more likely. I think if you're not open it will never happen. If you don't seek it out you will never find it. Maybe it's a tie. It is active. It is going about with your eyes open. It is being ready in your heart.

You have to make room for good to flood into you. Nature abhors a vacuum and wants to fill it. Isn't that remarkable? If you make the space, it will be filled. It just will.

You have to get quiet too. You can't hear the angels singing if you are too loud. You can't be touched by a rare, elusive creature if you scare it away with chatter, with whining, with rancor, and discord.

The world is too loud. You can't counter that with more noise.

And you deserve to say hot damn! Everyone does. This includes you.

At one point in my life I was depressed, terribly depressed. Point is probably the wrong word. I was depressed for years. I had a huge sense of the injustice of the world and thinking about it propelled me forward, but was no impetus for me actually doing anything about anything, because I was depressed. It also allowed me to ignore myself and not face my problems and get myself together. Depression is so tiring. The work to get up out of it is immense, and sometimes feels like a sisyphean task. But, you just gotta roll that stone up the hill any way. That is the nature of life.

Because of my sense of the cruelty of the world and seeing the inequity, I somehow forgot that I had a right to be happy, and that my sadness did nothing to increase joy in the world. I forgot that I was a part of the world, a member of the tribe, that I belonged too. I forgot that my happiness would be a net gain for the whole, because I was a part of it.

I'm not preaching the prosperity gospel here. I don't think it's all just about you, you selfish bastard... I just mean that sometimes we forget that being joyful, and finding things that make us joyful, and seeking it out with earnestness, allows the world to dull a little. I think your joy, my joy, his joy, her joy all contributes to more joy for everyone. It becomes exponential because it is infectious. It brushes off on others as you float through the world smiling. It warms others as you glow near them.

Try to find something that makes you say hot damn! Or whatever exclamation would make sense for you. Try to find something that makes you feel deeply and reconnects you to your heart. You need this.

The world needs this.

Hot damn...

Long Time Gone

It appears to be a long time before the dawn. Hold on everybody. It's darkest right before.

In Clover

In Clover

Verdant green grass dotted with swathes of clover

Blossoms of white

Some purple tinges at the edges

Bees a-buzzing dipping in the nectar found within the flower petal folds

An intoxicating aroma

Air perfumed by the scent wafting up from dozens upon dozens of blossoms

No French perfumer could compete with this

No mere man

No mere woman

Nature's evocative allurement

Drawing us in as the scent reaches our nostrils

A simple walk through the grass

What is that scent?

Nature's perfume

Bees' addiction

Can't keep away as a lover needs to feel their beloved

Hold them close

Kiss them

Touch their bodies in all ways

So the bees can't fight it

So seductive this clover

Dotted through the grass in waves of white

Intoxicating, beguiling seduction

Clover

We're all in Clover

Do you smell it?

Do you know it?

Do you feel it?

In Clover

Lay in the grass and let the perfume encompass you

Lover touches you

Kisses shared, taken

In Clover

Scent reaching into brain stem

Primal sense

Reckoning all of our shared past

The smells of our forebears

The knowledge deep in the hind brain

Smell It!

And the bees taste it, knowing to sip is to live

Sip it up

Drink in

All senses touched as a lover

To taste

To smell

To feel

To hear

To see

See the white dotted grass

Know it

In Clover

Words...

Are you ever so moved by someone's words that you feel swept away by a tide? But, it's not scary at all. It's powerful and energizing. It can be peaceful and calm as you float on it, in it. And their words reverberate. They echo through your days and you recall them, or they come unbidden into your head and seem to push out all other thought, all other words, crowding out noise and chatter and filling you with something substantive and clear. And it makes you feel alive and attuned to everything else in the universe. And it feels warm and loving and real. And they are just words... Only words... Simply words... Do you ever feel this? Do the ideas you come across ever reach into you and caress your soul? Do they massage the wrinkles and folds of your mind and then reach into the chambers of your heart and gently touch and brush the edges of you and hold you firmly, and own you? No? Then you should do what you can to find those moments in this life, because that is magic, and it is necessary. Try to find it...