It's certainly been a long time since i've kept a steady blog, but i'm starting to miss it...it's come to my realization that i'm definitely not expressing my creative outlets enough...I've spent so much energy trying to rejoin regular society and i've forgotten about what makes ME happy....soccer has started and that's wonderful, but now i really need to get back to communicating my thoughts and ideas...atleast, beginning to refine them...so, once again, zaadi, i'm gonna use you for inspiration....please stop by here for a breath of fresh air and something to contemplate in the coming days and beyond...

i'll leave you with this thought i came away with from my last visit to the buddhist temple...

it's not what we do, it's why we do it...

hope all is well....peace...

but i miss the mountains!!!

This was a very revealing journal entry that i came across...i think it adequately tells the story of where i was 6 months ago, and where i am now...how my mind has changed...i wrote this november 26, 2006...enjoy...


wow...i just finished watching one of the most amazing movies...eternal sunshine!!!! i love this movie!!!! i love this movie!!!! i love the whole concept and writing of that movie...fucking fantastic!!! i've seen it before, but, like everything, we are drawn to certain things at certain times to show us something and this movie was meant to be in my life right now...so much insight...right now, i wish i was joel's character...did you ever want to change and accept all at the same time?  

the part where the house is falling apart and he regrets leaving her...she calls him back to have a proper good bye even though that's not how the memory is...awesome!!!! he spills his heart to her and apologizes but acknowledges fate at the same time...wow....it leaves my heart feeling so alive...to be so free spirited...lately in my life, i've been anything but that, or maybe that's how my whole life has been...i don't know, i can't tell...but i realize that deep down to some extent, i haven't fully appreciated ME in a long time...maybe never...maybe i've always been trapped in my own head, in my own fears...wow...to let go...to be free from fear...to be conscious, to be responsible, but to be happy with who i am!!!! let me say that again, who I am!!!!!  

i had this dream the other day...normally, i don't understand any sort of meaning in my dreams, but this one struck me BAMN in the face...i was walking down a pier in miami (how'd i know it was miami, don't know, just do)...anyway, as i walk along the dock, it sort of fades away, more, blends into the ocean and i'm swimming in the water...i don't really understand how i got there, but i'm swimming for my life to make it back to the dock, but the current is pulling me farther and farther away from shore...that's when the panic sets in...but, in the distance, i can see a raft paddling towards me, presumably to save me...but i keep swimming, swimming toward this raft that is getting closer and closer, though i am still drifting farther and farther...when the boat finally reaches me, i'm in a full blown panic and am so thankful that they had come to save me...i could barely see the shoreline at this point...the guy on the boat said, "what? didn't you look behind you and see the island approaching?" when i turned and looked, i was like 30 yards from an approaching island that the current was carrying me toward anyway, thus saving me, not sending me out to sea...i realized in the morning when i woke up, that that has been my life lately...swimming toward things, people that are only drifting further and further away in my past...i cannot swim towards them even if i tried my hardest, life has changed and i need to change my perspective...if i only turn around to see what's ahead of me, life is going to provide me with someplace safe to land...i just need to "go with the flow"....

how can i want two things, two totally separate things, so strongly...and am willing to give both of them up for the other...passion is a strong force...

it's three days until i leave, and i'm having a hard time focusing...my birthday was on thursday, college basketball is in full swing....things are great in my life...i've quite work, and now i kinda miss it...well, not the work, but my co-workers...the situations that i get into on an everyday basis...for some reason, right now, i think i am going to miss all that...the quirks of the people i work with, under normal circumstances, well, i have to laugh to prevent anything else...but, that was apart of me, and for the forseeable future, i will miss all the inside jokes, the customers, the comraderie of my co-workers...i don't always realize how thankful i am for the people i work with...not all of them are pleasant, but they all offer me something to learn from, whether purposeful or not...patience, acceptance, understanding...

my mind is somewhat immature, and i am very thankful for this trip...what do i hope to get out of this:
1. a sense of accomplishment
2. a true understanding that what i want, i can achieve - confidence
3. patience
4. adventure
5. the ability to maintain and persevere
6. to find more of an appreciation for who i am

appreciation is something that i have been doing really well with lately...i used to not like who i was, or i had a hard time accepting my funny like "quirks"...sometimes i can act like a little boy...i know, i know, typical man...but, when we met the right people, we let down our guards...i have learned that who i am, even with my constant romantic ideals and my sensitive ways, is a wonderful person...if these are my faults, then i have things going pretty well...

man, its funny...i can be selfish sometimes and not mean it...and when i need to be just thinking about myself, i can't...why is that? i hope to get my heart and my brain in some sort of syncapation on this trip...somehow, begin to develop a more workable relationship between the two...someone here is going to be the boss, which one is it going to be? my heart is a flutter and my brain is trying to concentrate on the tasks at hand...classic...

i am completely living in the now...regardless of how the outcome may play itself out, i'm living in that touch, that embrace, that smell, that look...that feeling of excitement...why not? i can realize its impermanence and still saturate myself in its essence for as long as i'm blessed...

"questions of science, science and progress, don't speak as loud as my heart...
tell me you love me, come back and hold me....oh, what a rush to the start...
runnin' in circles, chasin' our tails...comin' back as we are..."

life deals us so many different opportunities...


ps...mab changed my life... i am a totally different person..."confucian never stops, closing walls and tickin' clocks...."

soccer is the best! bob's just doin' his thing...

I couldn't have written it better myself:

White History 101

"That's because so much of Black History Month takes place in the passive voice. Leaders "get assassinated," patrons "are refused" service, women "are ejected" from public transport. So the objects of racism are many but the subjects few. In removing the instigators, the historians remove the agency and, in the final reckoning, the historical responsibility."

" The purpose here is not to explore individual guilt - there are therapists for that - but collective responsibility. When it comes to excelling at military conflict, everyone lays claim to their national identity; people will say, "We won World War II." By contrast, those who say "we" raped black slaves, massacred Indians or excluded Jews from higher education are hard to come by. You cannot, it appears, hold anyone responsible for what their ancestors did that was bad or the privileges they enjoy as a result. Whoever it was, it definitely wasn't "us." This is one more version of white flight - a dash from the inconveniences bequeathed by inequality.

So we do not need more white history, we need it better told. Settlement, slavery and segregation - propelled by economic expansion and justified by white supremacy - inform much of what the United States is today. The wealth they created helped bankroll its superpower status. The poverty they engendered persists. But white history does not mean racist history any more than black history means victim's history. Alongside Blake, Milam and Bryant, any decent White History Month would star insurrectionist John Brown; the Vanilla Ice of the Harlem Renaissance, Carl Van Vechten; civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, murdered near Philadelphia, Miss., during the Freedom Summer of 1964; and Viola Liuzzo, murdered during the Selma to Montgomery march."

One thing i haen't yet reflected upon, but has touched me is the Dalai Lama's instruction on visualizing the other person's perpective as a way of cultivationg patience, understanding, empathy, forgiveness, and acceptance (my five favorite words). This seems to be the true key to life. As humans, we have the ability to analyze any given situation, but the flaw in that that is we can only truly do it from one perspective. *The first step of ignorance is when we assume our assumptions are correct.*

With this one single concept, the entire world could change. I was recently watching The Inconvenient Truth and in this movie, Al Gore talked about a lake that borders the Sudan which has progressively diminished in size over the last 20 years. Now this lake has been for centuries the major water resource for the people in an otherwise desert-like part of the world. Imagine for one second being a native of the Sudan, slowly watching the dramatic decrease in your fresh water source. How would you feel? How would your neighbors feel? The average Sudanese have no concept of global warming, they aren't even major contributors to the epidemic, yet they're being affected; And what's worse is we sit here watching our TV's wondering what type of people they are to do what they're doing. They're lost, they're scared, they're desperate. They have no understanding, but we judge.

Now really put yourself there. What would you do? Can you see how the army, the government, could manipulate your mind? Can you see how the "anti-government" citizens could bear arms for their families? Can you see how intolerance, injustice, HATE could spread? These things are real, and these things are happening. When we step away from our perspective and look through another's eyes, all situations change. I can see how I, as indirect as it may be, have somewhat contributed to their plight and their pain. No more can i just think about "their" problem, but now in the global community sense, we have a problem. Now i can really begin to think about what I can do to help and this takes away the convenience of disownership of problems that i don't want to deal with or think about.

Obviously, i still don't condone violence, but atleast this exercise blasts open our perspective...Sometimes we are forced to change.

i love the new perspectives i've been gaining lately...well, all this isn't new to me, i was going really good there for a while last year, i started to lose focus and lost a lot of the skills that having a calm mind requires...i'm back though, back on the right track....

see, these things that i write about, i have been drilling into my head and using on a daily basis...zaadi, i recently had a near love connection...i found someone that i am crazy about, but things just didn't work out...at first it was hard on me and my mind was out of control...but, i went back to what seemed to work well for me in the past, and boy am i glad i did...i instantly found salvation in the word acceptance...acceptance...this one word has such strong meaning and power...i had to accept that the girl i was crazy about, just wasn't ready for me...i had to adjust my perspective to see things from her vantage point...

see, lately i've been realizing that a lot of what we feel inside has roots in selfishness...my sadness and disappointment wasn't because of something that she did, it was based on something she wasn't...she really can't control the point in her life that she is in...i'm ready, she's not...period...to be sad or disappointed stems only from the fact that i didn't get what i wanted...i wanted a relationship with her, and when that didn't pan out, i acted, through selfishness, to find sadness and hurt...it's like a baby who cries because their favorite toy was taken from them...

so, what i did was adjust my perspective on the situation...i tried to imagine what i would feel in her shoes...how would i respond, how would i feel...and when i did that, i understood completely what she was doing and how she acted...(i could give all the "fill-in" details, and you would have a greater picture of what i am saying, but i'm gonna keep this surface level...so to some extent, your just gonna have to go along with me on this...) while this is hard, it made things easier for me...

i'm still not over her, and i still get the upset stomach sometimes when i think about her, but my mind doesn't race uncontrollably for hours anymore...thank god...i guess i relay this little message for a couple of reasons...first, i get it off my chest....second, it feels good to "expose" myself and make myself vulnerable to the world...but thirdly, i hope that it shows how the things that i talk about can actually make a difference in someone's lives...i may be preaching to the choir a lot with this, but there is always circumstances that we need to be reminded of the things we already know...

peace...terry