Artistic Musings

I was tooling around on the net last night checking out some of the links that came from people reading this blog when I ran across a poet.  I’m always in the mood for love and people’s slant or writing on it so I hopped over to this woman’s site.  What I read made me want to put a link here for her insights and houghts were provocative and a little different.

She has some cool links and great photography.  It just seemed interesting to me so I thought I’d share it.

Count Down

Two more days to complete freedom.

Letting Go

I’ve learned a vital lesson:  I cannot solve most of the problems I see around me.  I can barely keep track of my own sphere of influence let alone deal with those I encounter on the fly.

Yet I ache for so many people who are blind to the path they have chosen.  Then I wake up from my daydream and realize that I struggle to solve my own issues and problems, so why am trying to correct the mote in someone else’s eye when I got a log in my own?

I don’t know, except to say that may be we try to solve other people’s problems because it makes us feel better about not being able to deal with our own.  If we can at least help them, we can’t be complete failures, can we?

I’m doing my best to let go of my “answer-man” desire and begin the task of being a good friend, confidante and alternate perspective.  I’m really tired of the role I wrote for myself in my marriage and probably most of my friendships.  Now before you think I’ve solved this problem of trying to solve other people’s issues, think again.  I’ve just been able to recognize that I do this, it’s gonna’ take me awhile to get out of the habit of doing it.

Les Miserable

Been reading this fascinating book.  It’s no wonder people consider it such a classic.  I am now gonna’ have to read The Hunchback of Notre-Dam next or soon.

Baby Steps

Learning how much we don’t know is the first step towards wisdom.  Learning how limited our ability to see the big picture and comprehend it is the second step.

On the Surface of Things

Marvin, the guy who wrote out a paragraph of thoughts for the last two songs I posted, grew so used to his condition that he used it as an excuse to get out of trying after a while.  How do I know this?  Well, I lived and worked with him for several years.  I worked to get him a trained dog so that he could be safe when he went out, he lost interest once the work started.

After a while, I stopped trying to get him involved because he just never followed through with anything.  I guess someone could say that I should have insisted but this guy was older than I am and had let all his potential go for simply existing in a wheelchair and letting everyone else do the work.

In contrast, there was another dude (I forget his name) with CP who couldn’t even talk or move as well as Marvin who was so ambitious and self-motivated that he ended up working in the Lieutenant Governor’s office as part of the staff there.  To even be understood he had to use a computer talking unit that would help us grasp what he wanted.

Yet when we look at disabled, those who aren’t “pretty” by commercial or Hollywood’s standards or just those who are mundanely human, we judge them completely by the packaging.  We do this to our own loss, I believe, for there are worlds within worlds.

Some of the most beautiful people I have ever known wouldn’t grace the front of a magazine because they were not 16 and skinny, but once they opened up their hearts to shine on anyone, the exterior took on a new beauty all its own.

Now I’m not saying that I don’t have a preference for slender women or anything like that because I too have been programmed by submitting my POV to the advertisers whims.  Yet I want to be clear that I know this to be a damaged view of beauty rather than just a preference.  I bought into the perspective of someone who was trying to sell me a product and ended up programming myself according to their preferences.  In other words, I abdicated my own preference for theirs.

Anyone who has given in to the popular view of body image has done the same.

So how do we correct our malformed perception of what is beautiful?

Reprogramming.  It takes a constant and vigilant effort to redirect our thinking to look at the outside as merely packaging, which then makes us aware of the person within.  Once we know the person inside, we see them completely differently than we would by merely judging from whether their butt’s too big or small.  I’m not saying that we can’t have a preference, rather that we need to buy into our values on what we like in contrast to having our opinions spoonfed to us.

Working with the disabled threw me into the extreme physical deformity arena to bring some balance to my skewed view of beauty.  In the course of working and living with these people on the outskirts of society, I grew up and learned to look behind the packaging to the person.  And even though I know this truth now, I’m still finding areas in my life where I have to rethink my perceptions, correct my myopic, blindsided and remove the catarachs developed over years of eating commercial junk food.

Song Lyric: To be Seen as a Man

To Be Seen As a Man

 

I feel them watching me

everywhere I go

Like I’m some circus freak

in a traveling show

They avoid my eyes

so we never meet

and they apologize

if they see me on the street, but…

 

all I ever really wanted

was to be seen as a man

to take my place,

join the human race

Now I’m gonna’ show them that I can

 

I sense the fear on their faces

it seems I create

In the words they refuse to say

about a man and his fate

If they could look past nature’s damage

to the heart of who I am,

They would find they wouldn’t notice it

‘cuz nobody would give a damn!

©1992 Jonathan Varnell & Marvin Thorsin

Loving Hard

I wrote the previous song “Make You Stay?” when a client of mine with CP (cerebral palsy) wrote out a paragraph of thoughts about a woman he would never be able to be with as lover.  His condition was such that no woman without a lot of guts would ever get involved with him and he knew it.  This song was his lament.

And it’s become mine today for my ex.  I know I couldn’t make her stay with me, I know she wouldn’t have no matter what.  That knowledge hurt for a long time.  Now it only brings up a pang of regret.

In little more than a week, my ex will be getting remarried.  Now while I am comfortable with our separation, I find myself grieving over lost opportunities, the impossibility of reconciliation and going through the laborious task of reminding myself why we couldn’t make it as a couple.

You would think that after four years I wouldn’t have to do this anymore…but I do.

You see, I’m one of those who marry for life.  I can’t really help it for the mentality just goes along with my personality.  I wish I could say that it was a character issue for me but I’d be only telling a half-truth.  The truth is I could have remained married to my ex, with all our struggles and differences, for the rest of my life and been satisfied.

If you knew our relationship (and some of you do), you’d know why this wouldn’t have been a good idea.  We were mismatched from the start, kind of like rubber and iron melted together through the forge of experiences at the time, so that what came out began to separate on the edges right away.

But I can’t stop mourning the final loss of her to someone else.  She will marry this guy (a pretty decent dude as far as I can tell) and there’s nothing I can do to reconcile us ever again.  The chances of divorce for her are high because she still hasn’t dealt with the root issues which bring about running away yet, but once she puts that wedding ring on, she and I can never even talk remarriage.

For everyone there are reasons for the boundaries we set, I’m no different.  I have set the boundary for myself to cut even the possibility for reconciliation with my ex at remarriage.  Once she does this I can breathe a sigh of relief and drop any hope down a deep well to be washed out to sea.

Why would I have even an drop of hope for something so disasterous?

Because my nature is to love hard, without guarantees and by principle.  I was raised this way, my folks lived this way and because I’ve chosen to think this way and believe it now it now more than ever.  But everything has to have cutoff points–or boundaries–where we can completely let go of them.  This is mine.  Due to my beliefs as a Christian, I cannot give up restoration of any relationship while I have breath in my body until the person crosses the line of death or goes to certain lengths to cut off all the possibilities.

Remarriage was the boundary set in the Bible so that’s where I set mine.  Some might think this is artificially created so I don’t have to make a decision myself, but really it comes down to the fact that I believe in this God I’ve dedicated my life to and use what I believe He said as my guidance system.  So when asking myself how long I will hang on to any hope of a possible repair of our relationship, I found it in the Bible where it says that if a married couple divorces then remarries other partners, they won’t be able to divorce their current partners and remarry each other again.

I don’t know why that’s important exactly and would have to go into a theological discussion to understand it.  What I do know is that it is for me the only line she can cross for me that will let me let go completely of any hope for us.  Giving up hope just isn’t the way I operate–no matter how I intellectually reason it out.  I’m wired for life this way, and you know what?  I’m glad because I don’t want to be wired the other way where relationships are disposable or just matters of a moment.  I would rather have this ache of regret and pang of loss than careless about it all.  I’m standing at the gate saying goodbye to a relationship again.  She’s walking through it cheerfully and by doing so restructuring our communication for life.

I am content for her to do so, though the desire to repair still lives in me.  But the letting go of one connection for a less involved one now faces me and I’m ready for it to be completely over.

I only have a week and a couple of days to wait now.

Song Lyric: Make You Stay?

 

Make You Stay?

 

 

Your brown eyes draw me in

to heart lies I tell myself

and disguised behind a wall

the world cried out

against one who felt

 

I can’t make you stay

You won’t anyway

We bow to society

These chains were made

just for me

A line is drawn I dare not cross

 

I’m walking the beach alone

and praying into wishing wells

No denying, I wanted more

I’m understanding now

what only time could tell

©1992 Jonathan Varnell & Marvin Thorsen

Autobiography

If each person reading this or even in the world wrote down all the things they had done or accomplished, what would their story be?  Would we read about adventures, struggles against odds, failures, accomplishments, setbacks and successes?

I do this recorded process to remind myself that life’s an adventure to be lived.  If my life was a novel, would it be interesting?  Could it be that life isn’t just about the high points but rather about the mundane?

I believe that everything comes down to attitude. 

How we look at something changes the way we approach our lives in general but it also dictates the taste in our mouths afterwards.  I’ve met accountants who so enjoyed what they did that I caught their enthusiasm for it…at least for a while (I can’t maintain any enthusiasm for accounting).  I’ve met guys who loved working in sawmills, found it intersting to work on small robots, computers or had hobbies that kept them at their “boring” job because it paid the bills.

Our point of view makes our attitude; our attitude predicts our actions; our actions predict our fate.  Some people, though, might trip and be a success, others couldn’t win a Chuck E. Cheese game if their life depended on it.  Two proverbs which have always encouraged me to keep on go like this:   If the axe is dull and the edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.  And the other one:  Do you see a man skilled in his work?  He will serve before kings; he will not seve before obscure men.

Though calamaty can happen in anyone’s life, the above proverbs hold true.  A person who through constant effort seeks to improve, will eventually produce the fruit their labors, if they don’t give up.  It might be that we benefit only those who come after us.  But what does it matter?  The joy must come from the work, the living, the being or the life is lost in obscurity.