This song has taken the mantle as the favorite track from the album.  Listeners seem to identify best with it.  While I was recording it, I also enjoyed the process of laying down the vocals a lot.  Some songs...  you have to drag them out kicking and screaming.  But this one came pretty naturally and just seemed to flow easily.  Also, being radio friendly and having a pop sensibility, "Home within the Sacred Silences" has more people tuning in, and identifying with the message behind its lyrics.  Don't get me wrong; I am very happy about how it's being received.  So, keep tuning in...  and maybe stay around for a while, to hear what other songs might speak to on the inside of you.

To be honest, this song embodies the principle at the center of what I'd like to achieve with my music.  I have always been on the outside of the world looking in, but also looking inside of myself.  I want to inspire the black sheep of families, feeling at home on the island of misfit toys, to do the same.  It's one of the benefits of being an outsider looking in.  As they say in one of my favorite nostalgia movies, The Perks of being a Wallflower, "You see things, you keep quiet about them, and you understand".  It also helps the nostalgia factor that I grew up in Pittsburgh (where the movie takes place).

I'd like to share this, too.  Please...  don't give in to the dark or the light, but maintain a balance between them, on the inside.  Spiritual or not spiritual, there is always something under the stars, and among the stars, to learn.  I'll close with a second quote from Carl Jung, a man whose work has always resonated with me.  Take care, my friends, and try to enjoy the short time that we're around.

"In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. In our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers.  We make our own epoch."

​--  Carl Jung

This is a piece that I've been kicking around in my head, and intend to add to the 50+ poems for my upcoming book of poetry:  Cornucopious.  It's by no means finished, but I figured that it marks where my mind has been recently, so I decided to share it with you.  Feel free to comment on your thoughts about the subject, and where you are in this dreamy process that we call life.


"Delusions of Humans"
--Hobbes Deutsch, Jr.

​Your own home, and the others you've known, leave indelible marks on parts of your soul.  I'm certain that I could not make amens, for the wrongs I have done to strangers and friends.  And the cost is far too great when our company we have come to hate.

Oh, the delusions of we humans: we break love to make love.  Whether past, present, or future; there's no healing suture.

In this life, it seems that I can't achieve, the things which I can't bring myself to believe.  Existing in the company of thieves of the heart, is reason enough to grieve and fall apart.  But we pick up the pieces, and stitch up those wounds, to make scars of the creases, a Frankenstein monster doom.

Oh, the delusions of we humans: we break love to make love.  Whether past, present, or future; there's no healing suture.

Then as I follow the imperfect path, laid down to shield demons from God's wrath, I remember that even they were angels whom fell, from the lofty heavens into an imperfect hell.  And Satan always preferred a Chinese water torture reign.  So I hide my mortal weeping behind a fogged up window pane.  None know I mourn our passing under passion's wicked spell.  Unsympathetic daydreams rule our minds...  I cannot speak; I must not tell.

Oh, the delusions of we humans:  we break love to make love.  Whether past, present, or future; there's no healing suture.

For my next project, an old idea that my partner suggested, I am coming back to writing a poetry book.  It will have an example of as many of every type of poem that's out there.  Some examples, I've written one of Ginsberg's concoctions (The American Sentence), the Japanese invention (haiku),  and a few pieces loosely based on James Joyce's form:  the (Stream of Consciousness).

Having started, I am doing my very best to stray away from the last form as much as I can, seeing as how it's the most comfortable.  I need this project to challenge me, and am looking at possibly 50+ works to be included.

This Poetry book, tentatively titled "Cornucopious", has no future publication date as of yet.  Currently, there are 25 works completed.  I had more, but several poems were pulled from the list, while I was reworking the debut.  We'll have more on this story as it develops.

Below is an older poem slated for this project.  I wrote this 5 years ago, and it came up on Facebook as a memory post.  After working it over and over, I feel fairly confident in this liberal offshoot of a (Shakespearean Sonnet).  I hope that you enjoy reading it.  Comment below and let me know whichever way your opinions go. 


"Nomads & the Damage Done"

The ground massages his tried, tired feet
travels unbound upon barren concrete.
All of this reminds him to tread lightly
if he wants words to come out politely.
That would mean a lesser pain born nightly.

But oh, the times he tried to give and take
only made worse his troubles and heart ache.
And then when he cursed and swore at it all,
it only slightly slowed his certain fall,
leaving only crumbling stones from his wall.

And so he asks of me with final breath:
"Perchance, I solved the riddle before death ?

​I'd like to say a little about this album.  Released in the beginning of February, well...  this is the first time that I've tackled the subject of what this album means, and how it was created.  In fact,  it wasn't until the whole project was finished that I looked back and considered what songs fit and which should be hacked off of my debut.

Compared to the concept albums that Jake Kuderski and I recorded together, this seemed disconnected.  The only real central notion was that I wanted it to be contemplative, complicated, but blatantly honest.  "A Brush with Death (Condom-Nation)" is the album's shining example of it.  Those lyrics have been around since 1995, but when they met with the music it was lust at first bite.

I went back and forth, over and over the lyrics for "Imagination, Mind, Soul, and Heart" until I just threw them out all together and pasted in a little piece that is only four lines long.  It evolved from a charity account on Instagram. Each photo you shared had a filter that raised awareness for a specific charity. Then Johnson & Johnson donated a dollar to the cause that you chose.  My choice was a charity that helped fund a college student's education, hence the subject of my post.

So I was writing and composing separately, and kept smashing the two entities together.  Yet, somehow the message in the lyrics for each song evolved into something that still has a poetry to it, but especially "Truth of a Soul's Whole (Halloween)".  As I have grown, my take on Halloween is more aligned with El Dia de los Muertos or All Saints Day.  There's a justice to the chill of Autumn that for me will always be beautiful.

I have my testimonial, my update as to where I am in all of this, but the original forms of lyrics and compositions were slashed, crashed and burned.  Again, it was a well orchestrated train wreck of a process.  But from what I can sense of it, I'm pleased with my creation, and I have my favorite moments and songs.  I hope that it meets its audience and is well-received.  I can't wait to see how this turns out.

You and I, on the way through.  In these times, we have nothing to prove.  And we're true enough to, work through the tough, too.

Why the delay before our purpose is served, the breaking of words which no one has heard ?  Here's to a breaking of bread.  Hope it's not too far off ahead.  Sharing thoughts that we've bred, we find friends in those who just said something true.  From me to you, it's the best we can do.

Too late, it's passed away from us.  No, it wasn't sent for you and me.  That was meant for someone else's story.  You and I are, better off by far...  without it.

So for now, reflection rules my mind.  Empathy rules my heart with this pain inside.  It's the pain reminding me that I have a soul.  Present in the here and now, it builds my faith in wisdom somehow.  Those are my heroes.  Those are my guides.  No need for a crown.  No good reason to hide.

And the moon's now found the horizon.  Something to focus our eyes on.  Because hope always puts a prize on, that which our hearts may inspire from.

Love lies in between the case of life and the case of death.  Both are included within us, consistently and constantly, though rarely balanced in regard to one another.  Although I am certain life is the mirror image of death, I'm not entirely sure what to do with either of them.  Indeed, the very nature of perceiving without any prejudice may very well be impossible in my lifetime.  However, the obvious tendency of my tenderness to recoil from the light of the perceived social commentary, proves me no better at reaching out to you than to anything or anyone else.

Ever since I can remember, I have been in possession of an avid curiosity of how my mind works in relation to the social contract, which is inherent in all aspects of living.  It will almost certainly lead to my downfall.

You see, our individual concepts of life and of death are colored by the tendencies of our minds to decipher the collective reality.  Each of our personal spiderwebs of sensing relative intellectual, physical, and emotional connections... they affect everything and everybody existing around each of us, much as with the concept of the butterfly effect.  Supposedly belonging to all, it is that which is infinitely interlocking with everyone's contributions to a collective consciousness, accessible to every last one of us.

Three-pronged manifestations (emotional, physical, and mental entities communicated into existence), and their measured scale, expand and contract dependent upon the amount of information being present.  Also, I tend to notice its presence (the 3-pronged manifestation) when I don't feel conscious of my humanity.  That is, it begins when I don't feel my heart and soul's presence within my chest, when my breathing is erratic, when my mind is racing, and when my anger has welled up with an inability to shake off the overwhelming sense of foreboding.  This preoccupation involves solving the mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing matter at hand.  That problem and my preoccupation with solving it, feed off of each other, causing the 3-pronged manifestation to grow exponentially and without bounds.

It is imperative to remember that all three of them are measured internally (to define and communicate a quantified factual statement), and measured externally (to associate proportion in degrees relative to one another).  Without the two associations, it becomes impossible to communicate relevance in all things.  Everything is measured in quantifiable, relative degrees.

It's important to realize that all things in life and death are relative to one another in varying degrees.  Spirituality, science, philosophy, emotion, intellect, nature, music, prayer, birth, death, sexuality...  everything can be quantified and laid out in definitive measurement.  I can't stress it enough: everything is associative in varying, relative degrees.

Keep the complex nature of the inner workings within you.  Allow yourself to feel their totality in every fiber of your being.  Be replenished and fulfilled.  Know what you know; don't know what you don't know, and move on.  Now, in this moment...  let it all go.


“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.”

-- Werner Heisenberg

Bear with me...  I'm sharing something that I feel is important, and so it may help somebody else out with what they are going through, also.

Pain grounds us in humility, reminds us of our humanity and our mortality.  It allows us to feel, to develop a sense of empathy.  It helps us because we feel our soul again, destroying the ego, preparing us for better things.

In the complexity of all things being considered, I have found from now and again, a vital untying of the mind.  It allows for more moments of inspiration, when simplicity is revealed for that which was once beyond our comprehension.  Everything just clicks...  falls into place.  And so, we develop a deepening appreciation for all that is beautiful in this existence, and for that which is to come in the hereafter.

That's all that I have to say for now.  I hope that somebody who needed that small revelation, was helped by it.  It may have saddened you a bit, but you'll understand the significance of things once you are grounded again, capable of putting aside little things in order to grapple with what ails you.  Thank you for your time and consideration.  Best wishes for you and yours.

-- Me

• Comment on my instagram:
  "Beethoven didn't have a clue what he wanted to write."
  
  That makes me as good as Beethoven.
  Here's how that sort of makes sense.
  
  See, once you learn Music Theory, you realize that there are no original ideas.  At least, that is what my college Music Theory professor told me. It took me a long time to understand, and I'm still learning.  Aren't we all ?
  
  You simply plug in values into complex formulas and if something sticks, you work off of it.  Don't get me wrong here:  inspiration and flow state matter and help greatly.  But for the moments when the well of inspiration is dry... it may seem wrong to the average man on the street...  but some of my best works (composing music; writing lyrics, poetry, and prose; painting...) much of my work was started by using methods formulas, and skills.
  
  One of my favorite catalysts is the "Auto-correct and Auto-suggest functions on a smart phone.  Simply plug in letters or a word, see what is suggested for the rest of the word, or what is suggested for the next word.  Eventually, a pattern or a sample of what you are thinking about, whether you're subconscious is doing it or what-have-you, will begin to show.  After that, hopefully...  the flow state will come around and voila...  keep working at it, including editing and re-editing, and hopefully after saving a copy and possibly coming back to it...  in short, creating takes time, patience, determination, persistence...  real work, and it very rarely goes as expected.
  
  For music, it's a bit of the same.  Plug in chords, notes, time signatures, tempo...  then see what comes from the process.  In one sense, the old saying goes...  if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.  One of my favorite tracks came from a process known as the matrix.  Not the movie.  The music started with me plugging in random musical notes, and then randomly selecting variations on that selection.  Now what came out of it wasn't genius, but I worked around with chords and other notes until the variation sounded something like a song.  Add hours spent plugging away on a drum machine, tweaking and fine tuning.
  
  Then come the lyrics and vocals.  Writing harmonies, melodies, and rhythms can be completely planned, but rarely is that the case.  I like to start with writing lyrics, taking an instrumental track that I composed before that point, and then improvising a vocal (singing along, doing spoken word, or a bit of both).  Edit and re-edit until you collapse and poof...  you have a rough draft to edit and re-edit some more at a later date.
  
  The key thing to remember is, change things up as much as possible until you think that you've tried every possible variation.  Then, try something new.  Then you meetup with the band and/or producer, and change it up again.  Time, patience, determination, persistence...  real work, and it very rarely goes as expected.
  
  In fact, this blog came as completely unexpected.  I simply discovered I had more to say about this beautiful mess.  So, I used what I had written, plugged in some variables, and voila...  a rough draft to edit and re-edit some more.
  
  In reality, you're only done when you reach a self-inflicted deadline, or a deadline that was set by somebody else.  Deadline for my weekly blog reached, and I'm done.
  

Yesterday, I spent rummaging through old emails and journal entries.  This piece didn't fit either of those, but it was through the process of revisiting those emails and journal entries that I rediscovered an older piece of writing.  After some redevelopment and reworking, this is the rough framework for a narrative chapter in "Glass Mountain Spirit".


I'm going on with trying to put into words, well… sometimes it intrigues me.  The first thing that comes into my head is my infatuation with keeping a relationship going...  two people who are together, we do everything that we can think of...  working through problems to their resolutions.


I have long been hopelessly dedicated to that cause.  It's been my firm belief that there is always a new way, one more thing...  never stop working.  Relationships can always be improved.  Sure, I had my 20's... years of aimlessly wandering within the confines of random nights, of lost and found souls with similar, brilliantly dark interests.


Still... most of us shared in the notion of a common brotherhood.  Pride, no matter how untrue it may be in practice, gave me a sense of accomplishment and of being wanted.  It's a very dangerous thing, this pride.  Wars are started because of pride.  In the end, there's you holding a rainbow flag in the bitter, freezing breeze.  Your beauty has faded, and the train has left you on the platform: forsaken, forlorn, and finally...  forgotten.


I remember the Asian man who told me that he'd been in a relationship with his partner for 11 years, until his partner passed on.  Even still, when the two of us were done for the night...  he had the uncanny sense to tell me that I shouldn't have sex with every guy who takes an interest in me, and is nice to me.


Sort of like he was nice to me, and took an interest in the backpack that I carried around everywhere that I wandered.  It was my security blanket in a way, filled with notebooks of drawings, poetry, prose, and journal entries…  and out the door it and I went.


In a matter of a few hours, my supposed new brother in arms had lost all interest in me.  So in the regretted end, my tried and true brother wanderlust picked me up and dusted me off.  Then he said, full of confidence:  "whatever happens will be.  Here, I want to show you something."

This is a big deal.

​I can't talk anyone into or away from experimentation with psychedelic substances.  If you've given this a great deal of thought, and still feel that you absolutely need to try walking down that path, please heed these rules.

Stick to the natural kind  .To put a fine point on it, because of our flawed nature, man-made psychedelics are imperfect, have more negative side-effects, and do more damage to our body and mind.

I say this with nearly 100% certainty...  3 reasons:  I am a flawed human being; nothing is statistically absolute; and for the undeniable truth that no two people have exactly the same sort of experience.  To put this another way, our individuality is the keystone.  That is the crux of the matter at hand.

Finally, your experience will affect you immensely, will affect your perception of the nature of consciousness, for the rest of your existence.  I highly recommend that you do this with a close friend whom has experience with natural psychedelics.  That way, he or she can guide you through the experience.  Next, seek out that good friend afterward.  Talk through what happened during your journey.  Recount everything with as great of detail as you can.  Then have he or she recount their journey.  Finally, compare the two journeys in as much depth as is humanly possible.

That is all that I can say, other than do some of your own research before the journey.  That is imperative, so that you don't go into the experience blindly, with your mind completely overwhelmed from being unprepared.  Treat it with a great amount of humility; it deserves your full attention and your upmost respect.  Such is its nature.

 “The Bending of the Light”
– Hobbes Deutsch, Jr.


There’s one certainty that I have.
I know I love you. Never doubt that.
Everything else changes with time.
Thank you, to the bending of the light.

Every day, every sunrise and twilight
colors the blue day and the black night.
Full of perfect, fractured time-space
Inspires cherishing the day and each place
Thank you, to the bending of the light.

Upon each sacred dusk and breaking dawn
The hopes and dreams of our youth are drawn.
With years we change, never winning our fight.
Our rage against the dying of who’s right.
Whether life in good graces, or hiding behind faces
The universe shifts with the bending of the light.

So argue with me about the way the wind blows.
The sweat of mankind toiling in bitter blizzard snows.
Whatever happens will become for each of us
Passing phases of the moon, spreading magic dust.
All praises live on within the bending of the light.

On the other side of midnight, it's a business of the unusual.  Time has passed away, out of my grasp.  There instead lies the problem of what I said and did not do, to claim a moment to reassure myself of my capable health.  Give me strength to carry on within this mystery, before we're gone.

It happens soon enough, nobody's fault... to a portfolio of poor folk we know. A promise or two a year, we fall behind into a clear loss of follow through. Still we pretend our paths do lie in one set direction. Unwavering in an unrelenting tide, we have only died on the inside.

But...  whoever or whatever I'm praying to these days, please help me along the empathetic walk.  I move through a series of loosely articulated lives, no judgment passed on the way.  It will help to distract me for today, for when it gets too insane and hectic to connect it.

I could be dreaming too hard and not working hard enough.  These days my mantra is tied up in three small words:  just do it.  Because when I become lost in all of my dreaming and pondering meaning, there is only one simple truth to choose, and far too little time to lose.

But...  whoever or whatever I'm praying to these days, please help me along the empathetic walk.  I move through a series of loosely articulated lives, no judgment passed on the way.  It will help to distract me for today, for when it gets too insane and hectic to connect it.

I remember you...

I was 19yo when you were 18yo.  As the news started, as they started to tell your story on the 6 o'clock news, I thought to myself...  it could have been me.

I told your story out loud.  No one will forget the man whose life was snuffed out, like a candle with wishes never realized.  I saw that flame, and in seeing his and getting to know him as best as I could, I swore that nobody was going to snuff out mine.

You, Matthew...  I will ring out the honors of you... I won't forget, and nobody I know will pass an anniversary of your death without hearing that bell tolling for you. I'll tell you to the world that I know.

Please, everybody...  look up the boy who was lead out in the truck of two straight boys with promises of sex.  Look up the boy who was tied to a wooden fence, beaten within an inch of his life.  Look up the boy who bled out to the moment almost to death.  Look up the boy who died in a hospital room, never regaining consciousness since the beating ended.

Look up the fucking scumbags who were tried and convicted, not of the murder they committed, but a lesser charge.  Look up the defense of "gay panic".  They lured him out of the gay bar panicking; they panicked driving to the cow pasture with the wooden fence there; and boy were they full of panic, or full of something, in that cow pasture.

I will remember you.  You gave me strength of purpose to rage against the dying of the night, the sense of believing in myself enough to tell your story.  The strength to live, love, and to sing with my soul to tell.  I remember you.

Requiescat en Pace...
mon ami

Waves washing wide, waxing and waning tide,
and the times we tried to make something true.
They were nobodies in the eyes of the giant-sized;
now caught in a typhoon spinning
just off the shoreline, killing.
Uncommon weather led us here,
but away from the eye
where so many go to die.

As this goes, we're happy to play the closed circuits
with electronicity... belting, falling, and rising
again with every melodic muse & harmonic interlude.
We were misguided by promises of good standing.
We composed our music; infused it with meaning,
dreaming of the lights so high and gleaming.
Talented and skilled, in good grace and strong-willed.
Our fortune was set only to rise,
against what we despise.

And the typhoon loomed high within the distance,
so willing to catch them up to the heavens,
propelling them up ever higher.
All the masses shocked by our
decrying, manufacturing, creating a
world for the trapping of minds:
bigger, better, faster, more, now...

Fuck.

This is a sad state of affairs,
when the storm only taunts and dares.
Still so many jump into the waters,
swimming just as fast as they can
to be seen, no doubt by a talent scout.
So many drown without any sound,
in the ravenous, murderous waters.

And so the tempest draws them up,
then casts them out like a styrofoam cup.
Flock to be used and abused, thinking only:
"But what if I make it to the top ?"

"Shocked Open Wide"

If shocked open wide, find solace in time.
Begin to see, and learn from, the connections
intrinsic to all kinds of natural existence.
All persistence in life’s subsistence can be
found there, laid bare in varying degrees
of energy, frequency and vibration.

Search with all six of your senses, then act
to heal the crowded nation within you mind,
atone for the duration of your soul’s time,
perhaps for its salvation, and be patient
while moving for the health of your body.
There’s no promise or point in being sorry.

Experience, decide, and conclude.
It is all that anyone can do.

– Hobbes Deutsch, Jr.

"As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs.

Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else.

When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if...

If we had known who we really were."

-- Julia Cameron

Another injection of an experimental predilection to the ancient heavenly connection through timeless reinvention, by means of intervention.

There exists in life a challenge which we all pose to ourselves:  do we choose to define a sacred space for the eternal presence held ?  It exists maybe constantly, but most are only consciously aware of it now and again, and we are aware of it often as a version inhabiting the consciousness travelling within each of us, a peaceful piece of us.

Another injection of an experimental predilection to the ancient heavenly connection through timeless reinvention, by means of intervention.

A spiritual artist may call that presence God, who bestows all creation as a source for divine inspiration. A studied artist may persist in praising the timeless works as gifts in their personal discipline.  An atheist may consider it found in the scientific process, to be more specific the logical connections intrinsic in space and time.  An introverted writer, self-sealed under lock and key, may believe it to be the cathartic flow state, drawn from an immense explosion within their measured, tethered, and treasured solitude to carry through our lives. 

​All of these are silent means to achieve the impossible dream:  naming that which seems to most times remain unseen.

Another injection of an experimental predilection to the ancient heavenly connection through timeless reinvention, by means of intervention.

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.

"Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand, vanished from my hand,  left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping.  My weariness amazes me.  I'm branded on my feet.  I have no one to meet, and the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

"Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship.  My senses have been stripped, and my hands can't feel to grip, and my toes too numb to step.  Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.  I'm ready to go anywhere.  I'm ready for the fade into my own parade.  Cast your dancing spell my way; I promise to go under it.

"Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, it's not aimed at anyone.  It's just escaping on the run, and but for the sky there are no fences facing.  And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme to your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind.  I wouldn't pay it any mind.  It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing.

"Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted frightened trees, out to the windy beach, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.  Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory of fate driven deep beneath the waves.  Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you."

-- Bob Dylan

“Only Once and Again”
– Hobbes Deutsch, Jr.

This something… this something doesn't need to happen forever and always. This sort of something...  it comes along only once and again. In the grand scheme of things, it's how rare it is, just how fleeting its nature… that quality helps to make it special. In the grand scheme of it all, that's what makes you feel even better than always and forever, because it’s only once and again.

You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
That much is definite, indefinitely.

“Only Once and Again”
– Hobbes Deutsch, Jr.

This something… this something doesn't need to happen for always and forever. This something… this something comes along only once and again. In the grand scheme of things, how rare it is, just how fleeting its nature… that helps to make it special. In the grand scheme of it all, that's what makes you feel even better than always and forever, because it’s only once and again.

You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
You can't possess it; it can't be owned.
That much is definite, indefinitely.

Look down...  You have blood on your hands.

I used to think that I was a fool, and that there was something wrong with me, because I'm not the kind who can look at somebody, know everything about them, and sum them up in a word or two.

I know better now.  Idiots think somebody can be summed up in a five-minute session of mind games and judgement.  Now that I've grown wiser, something which those idiots never did...  never grew up out of their high school phase, I know I'm not missing out.  I'm not the stupid one, and I never want to be like that in my life again.

You see, I've bled too much in my life to forget past sins.  But, at some point though, I learned that to obsess about cruelty only prolongs the pain.  Please remember this:  the world will soon forget all of your grand achievements and the good things that you do.  But...  they will never stop looking for the wrong things you've done, the sins that you've committed.  For that reason, tread lightly when you're dealing with people, and show kindness.  After all, everybody makes mistakes in their life.  It's what we learn from them, what we do with that knowledge, and how we apply it in our everyday life...  that's what matters.

My Aunt Elaine recently passed on to the other side.  While I was growing up, she was always a bright light at family get togethers, just happy and joking around, with an infectious laugh.  She was genuinely kind-hearted and inquisitive about everything in life.

Sadly, said revelations of mine only come to me in retrospect.  I wasn't the kid who shared his inner workings with people.  So, as many have told me over the years, I have been caught up in expressing things dear to me and my passions in this life, in hopes that I may spread understanding and compassion for people whom are LGBTQ.

Knowing this, it probably shoundn't have come to me as a surprise that she would give an outstretched hand and open mind about me, my passions, and my sexuality.  She opened up that dialogue for a better understanding about LGBTQ people through me.  Looking back, it shouldn't have surprised me that she'd do it.  Then again, hindsight is 20/20.

In short, I will genuinely miss her.  She helped me to tear down the wall I put up against my Dad's side of the family.  Others have leant kind words and compassion, but she was the first who showed me.  She proved to me through her actions that she cared.  She'll be missed by all who know her still.  Goodnight, and God bless.

It's in the crisp autumn air, snapping crackles of bonfires, and biting breeze beauty of Halloween. That is where the magic lies. Have a Merry Halloween (All Hallows Eve), a Holy All Saints' Day, and a sacred El Dia de los Muertos.

Why not trust a better, more romantic voodoo for us to connect with solemn blessings ? We could cherish having kissed the spirited. Tears-sparking lips of loved kin, we kindle lava wax and cider, and a bonfire's kindling of cedar.

See, the whole thing is... a time-tattered, torn and tired Victorian home, is cast as a center force of marketed cheap kicks reeling, our humanity lost... meaningless horror and mauling.

But the very truth in this gorgeous Victorian home ? There's truth of a soulful whole, family members passed, visiting with us there. Through our presence, we gather ourselves around sentient crystals and, while smudging sage brush, these permeate. Gathered touch, lost over uncountable years, regained.

So yes, it's in the crisp autumn air, snapping crackles of bonfires, and biting breeze beauty of Halloween. May glory be to a monumental, but always too brief, rejoining of here and hereafter, with our well-loved ones.

For me, is about celebrating the harvest time, and communing with nature and the spirit world. Also, it will always be a time of prayer and reflection for me, and a time of abundant transition between the life of summer and the death of winter. Finally, it's always a time of romanticism and beauty.

So by all means... celebrate it. Just know that, like Christmas, it has a deeply-rooted meaning and tradition for many around the globe, and most people celebrating aren't wearing sexy French maid outfits.

Let the wind guide you, within the beauty in the sad, strange dancing raindrops. Your soulful oddities ? Let them go… immerse themselves within the realm of the dying sun. The nightfall beckons us to cry out in song, praising this Halloween (All Hallows Eve)​, this All Saints' Day​, and El dia de los muertos.

So speak to those whom are unseen and have passed to the other world. Speak to your loved ones departed. Thank them for never going away, and praise this trinity of days, when they are felt most strongly, and most graciously remain in our minds and hearts.

There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, "What next ?"

​-- Buddha


Sometimes, somehow... once you get your soul some solid footing, you realize that it's the moment that starts a world of learning: who are you; where in life do you need to go; what do you need to do to be happy; what terms are you willing / not willing to accept as an individual, and many other questions. Once you answer those questions, you build you sense of dignity, self-worth, and take responsibility for everything that is you and your life.

Took me a long time to realize, and it's different for each of us, in varying degrees. However, it only strengthens my connection to our common humanity as LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and the resolve to work at expanding my consciousness and, just... helping.

I hope that some who are reading this, if you haven't heard it click into place before, that you take a good while to read, let it swim around so your subconscious mind can bat it around, until all the pieces fill in the blanks.  It will click for you when you need it, normally when you least expect it.

I wish only the very best to everybody who reads my posts, because pain is a given for everybody who has found their true heart.  It's also a prerequisite to forge our own path.  It's going to hurt, that I can promise...  you're not doing it right if it doesn't hurt.  But there is beauty to admire,  a world full things for pondering, and wonderment at the complex things that icebergs are, with so much beneath the surface.

with hope,
Hobbes