Thankful

This morning, I read my Thanksgiving post from last year.

A lot of things have changed since then.  I've relocated to a new city and am still trying to adjust to the area.  I've started to more ambitiously pursue my writing career, although the process is going a bit slower than I anticipated.  I've made some new friends and fallen in love and tried to become a better person.

But one thing remains the same.  I am overwhelmingly thankful.  For every good thing in my life.  For the moments that challenge me.  For the growing pains and tears.  I'm learning to be content, as well as striving for greater plateaus.

For my life.  My health.  My family, friends, and the ones I love.

I remain thankful.

And when I wake up each morning, thanking God for another day and all of these wonderful people and things in my life, it feels good to have reasons to be thankful.

Even if you can't be with the people you love today, give thanks that they are out there.  If that job you love hasn't come through yet, give thanks for the day it arrives.  If you have a dream that hasn't quite come into fruition, give thanks for all the moments building up to it.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there.  Let's continue to use each day to make this world a better place.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Mental Escape #7

(pic via Ferrari Sheppard)

I picture myself, all the way at the top, a

cigarette lit,

legs dangling, contemplating

everything and nothing.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

A Heart Beats in Carolina

369 miles.

It feels like an insurmountable distance.  I picture him daily, doing things, and wonder how he's been.  For a parent, to not see your child is an emotional solitude words can't properly describe.  

I wonder if his misses me.  I replay the phone conversations in my mind, feeling they are few and far between.  I hope that he knows I love him.  I hope he knows how I want to see him soon.  I wish I could shrink myself in miniature, and hitch a ride on the next good breeze, arriving at his pillow.  Just to let him know how much I care.

Granted, for the most part, I am certain that my son love's me very much.  That he knows I love him with every ounce of me, and would be there if I could.  But there's that inkling of doubt, perhaps growing from too many seconds where I can't lift him in my arms.  Too many pivotal moments in his nearly three year old existence that I have been forced to guess about.  The last time I saw him, it was mid summer.  I fear winter will be brimming before I see him again.  I hope the ache isn't unbearable.  I hope he can understand.

This is Solace, my son.  He is truly the love of my life, and it pains me that I can't be with him.  I hope my physical absence doesn't rob him of the peace his name entails.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

  

Because It's How She Makes Me Feel

Love is….

The flutter. 

The sway. 

The swell of chest that mocks your heart

for not previously beating properly.

The absent sighs, and random grins.  The moments when the wind

mimics a hug.

How everything suddenly matters.  And nothing else seems to matter.  And how

the two combine, into a telling collage that lips and ears

and eyes can’t quit painting.

On nights, together alone, how you curl so close

you can feel their breath, and even taste it. 

It hangs at the roof of mouth, slips

over smiling lip, and gets tangled in your hair.

 

On nights, when they are not there, the very

presence seems plastered everywhere.  In the dimples

of your pillow.  In the tassels of the blanket, all reaching like

fingers.  In the way the ceiling hangs, above you,

lowering like a body greeting.

In radio songs.  And commercial songs.  And the songs your

mind can’t stop singing.  La la lala la.  Lala lala la

And you know they are singing the very next line.

A lightning strike that crashes against your sternum.

The thunder that rolls in the pit of your stomach.

The cute hellos.  Extensive goodbyes.  The way

you always wish they’d be there.

The flutter.  The sway.  The fear of falling, combined

with the leaps you faithfully take.

Skin seeking skin.  That perfect embrace that

you both hope never ends.

The constant throb of hearts beating.  Lungs expanding.

Veins on edge, requesting injection.

The fill and the feel.

The sounds of words like ‘whole’ and ‘forever’.

That first second when you noticed how
the blood rushes through you,

realizing just how much

you expand.

Life's Not So Rare Lessons, Nov. 4, 2011

If you've read my previous post, then you know that my will to blog is back.  Yaaaaaaaay!!!  It feels good to be back at it again.  And it just felt good to introduce a new recurring portion of the blog.

All the time, I hear people, when comparing life tales or discussing their experiences, talk as if they have been stranded in some isolated portion of the cosmos and whatever is occurring is only happening to them.  But one of the biggest concepts we can grasp as human beings is how interconnected our lives and experiences really are.  There's a good possibility that, if you're going through it, someone else has done so as well.  It's recognizing this connection, and taking something from that recognition, that makes us truly human.

So I decided to start writing about things that we can all relate to.  And the first thing that came to me was love.

Love is simply love.  Or at least, it should be.

Chances are, if you've been living on this planet for at least a handful of years, you're experienced some form of love or another.  Even the most miserable people manage to soften their heart for someone.  But often we take love for granted, exploit it for selfish reasons, or never really grasp its power or potential, until it is far too late.

I've been in each of these instances, and have come to understand a life lesson that we all should embrace.  Love is given, period.  It shouldn't need to be reciprocated, returned, justified, validated, or any of the other one-sided things we are constantly guilty of doing to it.  When you love somebody, like Nike, you just do it.  

Now don't get me wrong.  It sucks to love someone who doesn't love you back.  But if your love is genuine, it still remains.  Even when you can't be with a person you love, it doesn't erase it.  I think one of the biggest flaws in the way we love is that we place expectations on it, which immediately diminishes it.  I still have love for all of my ex's, even though it's not the same type of love.  I still have love for family members who I haven't seen in years.  Love can change.  There's no law that says you have to love someone the same way forever.  If you do, you're probably loving wrong.

I think this picture kind of sums it up.  The heart is love, or our capacity of love, and the water represents all of our expectations and presumptions about how love should be.  But the more we cover our love with those things, the more it washes it away.  Until soon, we're left with nothing, except a whole lot of longing.

Love is a powerful thing.  It motivates our actions, alters our moods, and factors into our measure of our life as a whole.  But until we learn to love, wholeheartedly and without presumption, we are cheating ourselves out of life's most rewarding experience.

Love.  Without exception.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet