philosophy

The Cowboy

The cowboy’s life is sometimes a hard one. He stays up night worrying about the days.

And when the light comes over the horizon he promises himself to mend his ways.

And the years roll by like the highway beneath him and he knows he’s been trying to hide.

Hide from the truth that life is mistreating and it’ll beat you down until you cry.

He’s been taught that crying is wrong and he’s been told to lie is a sin.

He believes that there’s someone somewhere who will on day understand just where he’s been.

The cowboy knows that time is sacred and he knows that life is short.

The cowboy feels each heart that’s broken and he cries a tear.

So if your a cowboy that tired of fighting and you feel that life has let you down.

Find a road that leads you somewhere and wait for the good to come back around.

Because life’s not fair for the cowboy but life doesn’t care who you are.

Life goes on for the cowboy, but he never knows just how far.

Search for Truth

Happiness is fleeting and probably overrated. This seems cynical but it is not meant to be. We in the west tend to desperately desire to be happy, all of the time. In Denmark, rated the world’s happiest country for several years in a row, the question was asked: how? How is Denmark so consistently happy?

The answer: lower your expectations. This also seems cynical, but it is not. The truth does not always lead to happiness. It does not always feel good or adhere to your particular ideology. The truth is often in simple statements. The truth is often simple and most often does not meet our personal expectations. It does not always give us what we want. But it is the epitome of human existence, at least that part of human existence that matters.

But what is this truth? What is this concept that matters so much?

True, justified, belief is the short answer. But there is one other possible answer. Consider it.

Truth is the quality of the relationship between an idea of a thing and the thing itself.

The search for truth is an unending process to raise that quality, the quality of our thinking and of our thoughts. We must raise the quality of that relationship. The search for truth leads down dark paths and contemplative nights but the search for truth is our only justified means. It does not rely upon happiness, but it is perhaps the only way of lowering our expectations.

True to Yourself

What should I do?

What should I be?

Where should I go?

These are the questions that children ask their parents and that parents ask themselves. We all want answers. Answers range, but narrowly. “Follow your heart” is a popular but platitudinous answer, dripping in emotion and vague. So what is left?

Truth. But truth comes at a high cost. Not that it is not worth it. It is, but it takes a lifetime. And it takes failure. Truth demands that the “heart” take a backseat. Truth demands questions. And truth changes. It depends upon situations and perspective.

Truth starts simple enough, with a belief. But then things get difficult. We have to justify the truths that we find. Others demand it and we demand it from ourselves. The first lesson is that we must be true to others. The second lesson is that we must be true to ourselves.

Don’t misunderstand. We cannot live for others. We cannot live for our children or our spouses. But we must be truthful with them. Being true to yourself, well…that’s another thing altogether. We may tell the truth to those we care about, but we easily lie to ourselves.

Being true to yourself takes courage and will often lead you to places unknown and surprises not thought about. Anyway, in the end what else is there but truth. It is the only thing that matters.

The Motorcycle

A motorcycle is most at home on back roads, leaning into turns and switchbacks. Not sitting in the garage or chomping miles on a highway. It will do these things but will taunt the rider at every chance. In the garage it will beckon, promising adventure and excitement. On the highway each exit represents a chance to feel alive and test your endurance and moxie.

These things, these motorcycles, are cumbersome when standing still. Like a seal on beach. But give them a road to go through their gears on and they come alive, like a seal in the water. Down gear and give it gas just as the curve comes up and gun it out of the end. Swing your body over to and from to follow the jaunts and snake-like line that the road takes. The motorcycle knows that you are smiling.

Motorcycles are often called death-machines but really they are a chance to live. They take one out of the mundane, out of comfort zones, out of life spent looking at a clock or the world through a windshield. There are roads that speak a language that only motorcyclists can come to understand, and that only motorcycles can decipher. On a motorcycle it is easy to realize that comfort is your enemy.

A motorcycle is a conglomeration of gears and steel and oil and gas. But it is more than a sum of its parts. It becomes a part of one’s body and psyche if enough time is spent on it, if enough patience is given to understanding the machine and its limitations. Experience will open up avenues to adventure and a motorcycle opens adventure up to life.

Poems From a Recent Future #2

As old as the ages, the number does it no justice.  The thread is long and strings its way through the forgotten timbers and rolling dunes, sharp grass and prickly bushes and wandering winds.

There are people in this place, never met, but old friends never die.  I know them somehow and they welcome me.  Generations of them wander through the sandy hills of Raabjerg leading me astray at times and singing me to sleep in the bright sun and the light of the gods.

I’ve never met them and I know them somehow.  This is home and always has been and yet my bed is many miles away.  I come here, though, and they seem to understand, although I never will.

Stories to be told, I close my eyes on the high hill and listen to the gossip of ghosts.  This is my family, though I have never met them.  The blood that courses through my veins is not theirs, but yet we are the same.

There is solace in the thought that time is immortal, and they laugh at my foolish mumbling.  The light in their eyes still burns bright.  They have no need for hope or poets.  Just talk and beer and work.

I dreamt once of this place, no doubt a present, a gift, from the mischievous.  A joke from the jester.  And now I walk the line that is not mine.  Befriended by those never known, they are my friends and my family.

I will stop and drink with them on days walking and will stare up at the stars of the endless and glorious nights.  They never sleep as does not my mind. 

None of this makes sense, but there is comfort nevertheless.  The cold, grey, skies come but there are always the endless days and blowing sand and the sacred silence of secrets.

Poems From a Recent Future #1

The memories of that part of my life lie on the ground from long ago.  Pieces of the puzzle scattered in the sand and in the trees.  I walk around wondering about the empty places in between and what will fill them in times to come.

The well-worn path leads around the home we once had, and the sounds of machines and horns and laughter can still be heard in the wind.  Long ago gone, the white-washed walls stand, a testament of time.  The path continues, stopping after the memories wait, as I take in the pictures of my past.

The remnants of the countless repairs and a darkened doorway, oily and always open, guarded by the steel and tools and machinery, and the sweat, the consternation, and blood, and hope of a working man.  I am drawn towards it (as I always am), stopping over forgotten answers to forgotten questions.  I smile because the smiles never leave.  They linger.

There is too much here, the ghosts too numerous and so onward past to the open maw of the highway that all harvests lead to. The sand blends with the cement, slowly to dust, peaceful with the seclusion and bleating silence, it stares as it has for countless seconds to the rotten remains across the way.

Every crevice has a voice that cries out for my attention and I turn towards the hall of machines, broken and dilapidated, the wood for repairs that will never blossom, leaning against the back waiting still for a day that will never come.  The beams and gables, the supports and trusses broken and bent, giving way to the nature of life, the endless entropy.

There is the tractor before my time, moving in feet not in miles for many years sitting, covered with work, and now dust, and now time, and now stuff, buried deep, the oil in the engine black and the grey paint that was once washed has now been the roof of rain-tattered wood.  The implements, once pulled, now planted.  From iron to rust, to dirt, to dust.  The wind howls and the young memories call, catching my attention for one last time.

What is waste is wonderful.  What is trash is treasure.  The beams creak and I cry a little.  Around the corner, mushrooms.  Down the path the garden of cars, now empty and the stand of trees sway freely, unencumbered by even older memories.  Taken by the hand I am led still farther to the profit that never proliferated.  The promise of the reward that became an empty chest.  It doesn’t matter now, the room of regrets.  It had no meaning then and it has none now.  Just pain and promise and the cost of purpose posed as the beginning which was the end.  There is sadness within those walls and always has been.

The shit-stained yard though, is a paradise of life, the heart of any garden is the brown, not green and the floor of this palace has never seen the light of day.  I remember the waist deep wanderings when the chains broke, and the profanity of necessity, the dismissal of dire cleanliness and the taste of bitter pride as it was swallowed up.  And somehow a smile lifted from those lips as we wiped shit from our faces.  It worked somehow and we never wondered why.

In July of 1990 a turning point, the time I saw the face of a friend high up in the clouds, hammer in hand.  And my own face flush with naivety with the love of my life on my arm and music in my mind.  There are lessons learned there, too many to count.  Out of place it stands as a testament of hard work, not paid off, and the never-ending hope that defined so much, and still does in a way.

Another hallway beckons and the sweet smell of rotting grass and warm noses, of the fog of heat and the whirring pumps.  The place is only alive with animals, but time has long since forgotten the days of Danish Reds and hay and straw.  But I cannot forget because this became my life and is who I am.  The years cannot erase my love of the place and the memories that it holds.  They will never be replaced as long as my eyes can gaze upon this wonderland of spirits.

I know there is death and I know that the memories are meaningless to many, but there will always be new that replaces old, easy life that replaces essential toil once called craft, once called knowledge, once important to life itself.  These ghosts, these memories know as they have seen the passage of time but welcome me back with open arms and heaving breasts.  The blood of the place gone, it still lives as long as there is someone to remember the memories and regrets of a life once lived.

Value

What we value and why can often say a lot about us. Value is not so straight forward as one might think. Value is often measured economically, by money. But, this is really the lowest common denominator. Think about it.

“I value what I can buy.”

But what other ways can value be measured? There are platitudes.

“I love my family”, “I love my kids”, ” love my work”…

These things cannot always be translated into value. They do not necessarily mean “I value…”. Value is a choice. To love one’s family or kids is not a choice. The key word to test value is “why”.

Why do you love to buy things?

Why do you love your family?

Why do you love your kids?

Why do you love your work?

Somewhere in there is value, stuck between the words that we use.

Sometimes we value things that we shouldn’t. We “put a price on…”, we “worry about what others think about…”. So value is something that can change, and perhaps it should. Like most other things in life, value is acquired through experience, through knowledge, through learning. It is not just that we simply have information, we can do something, or we have acquired a skill.

Change yourself by changing what you value.

A Free Ride

I often hear the platitude that everyone needs to carry their own weight, and that there are too many people wanting a free ride. I agree. If only…

If only corporations would pay the taxes that they owe.

If only corporate welfare was ended.

If only Wall Street quit begging for handouts and stockholders quit demanding more and more tax breaks.

If only corporations quit off-shoring jobs to slave-labor countries and calling themselves “American” companies.

If only monopolies quit masquerading as free-market capitalism.

If only Citizens United was overturned and corporations were not given human rights.

If only the rich couldn’t buy the laws of this country.

If only we realized that no one is self-made, that no one “did it on their own”, that everyone owes something to someone else.

If only this country believed in actually educating its citizens.

If only the middle class didn’t have to support the industrial-military complex for the sake of jobs to a few and the endless wars that corporations fuel.

If only these things were addressed then I would have no problem picking up the slack of those few others that might want a free ride.

Some Times

Sometimes in the early morning I’ll wake up. I won’t get up, but just lie there with my eyes open and watch as thoughts pass by the inside of my eyes. Sometimes they float and sometimes they fly. The early morning is a grey time when colors are subdued, they don’t get in the way of the world, they don’t cover up the truth, the reality. They accentuate the world in a way that is blinding. The morning gets its time to live if just a little. It lives and stretches its wings and we lay in our beds or sit in our chairs and think.

Different places have different things to say. Listening takes time and patience. Sometimes I think that some places are shy, they don’t want to interrupt, they don’t want to get in the way and they have to be coerced, coaxed lightly. Be gentle with new places no matter where they are, no matter what they are. They don’t always have a choice. There’s those places that are talkative. They talk about nothing and go on about everything. We all know the type. We all know that they are nervous inside, they are afraid. We just don’t know what. Other places are those quiet places, sometimes out in the open and sometimes in the corners of our eyes as we pass by.

There was an old tree the other day and it had a palm tree growing out of its trunk. A big one. I felt it was lonely, standing in a field. I walked up to it and lay my hand on it. The vines had grown alongside and it had shoots coming up around it. It knew that it was a thing of the past, a thing that had once stood among many. But now it stood and held a palm tree in between its limbs. Sometimes such things just seem normal. There is no explanation. It’s just how things are and there is nothing else to do.

I saw the sadness in her eyes as she left. She wanted something and didn’t know what. She wanted to stay, but she had to go. Sometimes we just have to let time pass and look out the window as the world passes us by. We get what we want just to find out that it is not what we wanted in the first place. Then, we are back to zero. The bags packed we pretended like it was nothing.

But sometimes we know.

The Other Day

The other day I woke up and thought about what I had done with the past year. What had I filled my time with, and what had I taken time to do? One more year had passed and although the endless parade of days will continue, my days are numbered. The days that we take for granted are days wasted. The days that we do not choose are days that are chosen for us. What is so important today that I cannot take the time to do something memorable?

Every day is a chance to change, to experience, to remember that today means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but that today means everything to you and me. It could be that one that I decide to follow a dream, to take a chance, to stop taking what I’ve got for granted or to leave something behind for good. It could be the one that I decide to push my limits, or to read a book. Perhaps it is the day that I pack the bag and head off on an adventure? Whatever today is it will pass and be gone, wasted or not, lived or ignored.

Days are endless and arbitrary. They are meaningless chunks of possibility that we can let pass us by or capture and create meaning if just a moment at a time. “What will I do with today?” can be the most demanding question, the most important question that we ask ourselves. At the very least it deserves a thoughtful answer because he quality of our lives depend upon the answers we give. Because one more year will pass and although the endless parade of days will continue, our days are numbered. The days that we take for granted will be days wasted. The days that we do not choose are days that will be chosen for us and we will be left standing and wondering what we did the other day.