Early morning thoughts.

This scruff and odd bark. So suiting of his appearance. Funny how we have obedience schools for dogs. Train them to fit us. Beat the masculinity out of them, physically drain it from their man parts. Palpitate their spirits out and re choreograph them, so they make more sense to us. Coexist with us. The superior race. And my friend Cindy has this idea that the crows are actually the superior race. Has this entire theory around crows. That they are more intelligent than people. I feel like stupidity and intelligence walk a very fine line. Squat like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Perspective. Continuum. Fluid. Changing. Flowing. My mind feels although busy, vacant of actual concrete and logical thoughts to commit to write about. Maybe it is because I want to re read my morning notes. Was getting too into the process. Cheated. Fucked up the process. Self sabotaged a little, for old times sake. To remind myself that I am still me. Such a strange procedure, such an irritating habit.

Yesterday marks the three year anniversary of Kai’s death. That absurd, disconnected, and seemingly unrelated to him at all, but what they called his funeral. The compulsive hail-marys. The random strangers that spotted irrelevantly through his life, gathered together, physically together but separate in all the other ways, gathered to beg forgiveness to some power bigger than we are, beg forgiveness for his mistakes, how he spent his days. Flawed like every other beautiful soul in this human experience of mistake making and learning. My daughter wants to know what is going on and I tell her we are saying good-bye. Also that nobody really knows how to do that or what happens next. We are doing the best we can, its all we can do. When it finally passes, and I feel as though I have just witnessed some foreign and completely over my hear ritual that I want to shout out in disgust and disagreement about, we move into the basement of the church. His friends conduct a toast to Kai here. The solid beings that supported his existence. Loved him for who he was. Spent their hours and days with him. They are kids. He was so young. They are young. Not yet tainted by age and experience, still intuitively present to life and its moments. Without having to work at noticing. Living. Experiencing. Naive and also wise and trusting of themselves and of others. The re live the memories of Kai. Display pictures and videos capturing his smiles, show us his experience. Let us stay in love with him for what he was and not what he should have been or shouldn’t have done. Still see the glass as half full. Even though it tastes like shit right now, it is just all part of it. Teenagers really exhibit this camouflaged and other worldly brilliance and knowing. We sometimes get too busy and jaded and educated to see it as adults. Through short sobs of breath and hot tear clouded lids, we get to bear witness to the joy my little cousin brought to so many. We get to see his smile never faded and never changed. We get to learn that in contrary to the brainwashing session upstairs of pleading for pardon, he lived this life of touching people, even if his time here was too short by opinion. He will be missed, cherished, loved always.

And it irritates me to no end when people complain to me about their lives and refuse to make change. To even try. Blame time. Business. As if anyone ever relishes in the amount of time they have been given. And Jason warned me that people always make time for what they want to be doing. I think we all kind of inevitably do what we want to in the end anyways. We are gifted time and we choose how we fill it. Even if we slip into victim dance periodically or ironically choose to hang out there longer than we ‘should.’ We build our hours. Create our habits and patterns and rituals. Unconsciously most times. Brand them into our hearts.

And the habits both build and break one day at a time. The good ones and the bad. The good ones break easily. You forget one day, or sleep in or ‘run out of time’ then the next. then suddenly its a memory, this thing you used to do and now idolize in your mind. Attach guilt and shame to it and scold yourself for not following through. The bad habits are easier to form and difficult to forget, take time and effort to do without, constantly. They become second nature. Primal existence. To stop is to mourn them daily, hourly, until we break them, subconsciously miss them, until you don’t anymore. We don’t anymore. smile when they are forgotten, even momentarily. Progress. We are a strange species.

When I stopped holding my breath

Lately, what I have learned is this: I cannot suspend my life until the “dark patch” is over to live it fully. I cannot keep waiting for the stars to align for me to find my smile and breathe again.

So, I will do the work I love, for as long as I can, even though I don’t know how long I can hold onto it. I will always be swimming in a sea of uncertainties.

As mortal beings,
we are always craving certainty.
More, and then more,
and it is never enough.

We want to know our finances will hold,
that taxes will get paid, that the numbers will add up.
We want the nods of approval, to know our job will last
for many more tomorrows.
We want love to stay love, always honest, always anchored, always loyal.
We want our friends to be the forever kind,
to never blur into past tense when we blink.
We want the map to remain the same —
always intact, neighbors waving with friendliness,
no new borders drawn while we sleep.
We want our body to stay a silent, uncomplaining ally,
that no hidden malignant cell is growing inside us.

All those always and never we crave.
They just grow like weeds.

We suspend our life waiting for that ‘time’ to come —
when the dark patch lifts,
the letter arrives,
the phone rings.

We wait, and wait, for when
we have everyone’s approval,
what we grieve stops hurting,
who we long for finally looks back.
our bully at last releases us.

We tell ourselves: “When this is over, I will breathe again.”
But here is the truth:
Craving certainty, while human, is dangerously addictive.
The more answers we chase, the more fear we uncover.
The more safety we seek, the more fragile life feels.
We look for new ways to make the world secure, to make it predictable, to make it neat.

Meanwhile, life does not wait.
It keeps moving, messy and relentless, while we
turn a blind eye to the truth that life is shifting under our feet.

The reality is that there is no solid ground, only a flowing river.
And as we know, no one steps into the same river twice.

Our only way to be is to meet life as it is — fluid, unpredictable, and fleeting.
Not to fix it, but to be with it.

And yet, we resist.
We find ways to deny our fragility, our impermanence.
We distract ourselves with routines, bury ourselves in tasks.
We cling to the illusion of control, hoping it will shield us from the truth we are too afraid to name:
Our impending mortality.

While we suspend our lives — our joy, our courage, our biggest smiles — waiting for certainty and answers
life rushes past us.
memento mori.

Our end-date does not pause for us to tie up loose ends.
Do we really have the luxury to ‘wait until’?

Life does not pause for us to set the stage with our craving for control and perfection.
It spills forward, untidy and relentless.
So,
Say what you mean.
Scream as loud as you need to.
Tell them you love them.
Tell them you are upset.
Laugh and cry as much as you need.
Do the work you love.
Make the art you make and screw perfection.
Do it.
Do it with the questions unanswered, with the weight still on your shoulders.
Live now,
because you just cannot afford to wait ‘until then’.

And so, I, too, have decided
I will breathe, act, love, and create — before the river carries me to its end.
Life does not wait, and neither would I.

-Imi Lo

Goddess give me the courage…

Goddess give me the courage to accept when one version of me is dying so that another stronger, brighter phoenix can be born.

To celebrate my endings with the same heart with which I open to new beginnings.

Goddess give me the silence in my soul to mourn my old self down to ashes until there’s nothing left of me but hope.

Give me the grace to learn so well the art of falling so that I will have no choice but to fly.

And Goddess please protect me from my ego, don’t let my fear decide my fate.

Let me be humbled and not shamed by the imperfect, the too much, the not enough pieces of me.

To accept what is, to release what was, to create what must be.

To love and trust myself, the way you love and trust me with this life.

Thank you, Amen.

-Author Unknown

Life as a blank slate…

The Journey Through Loss & Grief by Jason B. Rosenthal Watch Now