I'm Glad I'm Free to Be Me

Devoted Surrealist

A Little Off Kilter

Okay, here's my big, bad, terrible secret. Well, one secret and it's not that bad. I'm just a little...kind of a nutter.

I'm anxious all the time. I obsess about strange things. I try to hide it when I get angry because my anger is so transient and stupid that I regret it when I express it. I'm not normal. I'm weird and I love being weird.

People tend to make assumptions about what I'm thinking. I'm so usually deep inside my own head in an idea so weird that I dare not say a word about the puppet, glitter, talking fish 🐟 fantasies swimming through my gray matter and I'm not thinking about them. It's taken me a long time to learn to be myself and accept myself. Fortunately, I've always had people in my life that accepted me even when I didn't.

I figure, we are who we decide to be. We can change and we can be changed. We can forget that ever person around us is going through much the same crap but in a completely different way.

Opened My Eyes 👀

One day recently, I went to the library and I looked around. For the first time, I really saw the diversity around me. I guess reading about the divisions in my country made me notice all these different people. I loved that perfect moment.

I was standing in middle of a library with all these ideas and people surrounding me. It was peace ☮ and zen. These were my people. They were checking out books and movies. They were on the computers and working. Everyone was just being. None of these people were like me. They didn't look like me, they probably didn't think like me and we all had our own things going on. It was perfect.

Maybe I'm a Bird Brain

I've been thinking about what people see when they look at me. I used to have these daydreams where everyone around me turned into zoo animals. Mostly different kinds of birds. Ostriches, canaries, chickens, ducks. Not geese. Geese are mean. (Welcome to my mind.) I wonder if their ideas are any more accurate than my daydream.

Not Easy Being

 I've always identified with superheroes. Not because I felt powerful but because I want to be a hero and because I have a secret identity. I know how to put on a normal face to hide a qualities people probably won't accept. I'm not good at it but I know how to hide. I'm a surrealist, chaote, asexual, liberal, woman and many other things.

I've been told that I would grow out of some of my traits. I've been laughed off and ignored.

It's not easy when people regard you as damaged because you're not like them. It's not easy when people think you're going to hell because you don't believe like them. It's not easy being around people when they think these things about you. It's easy when you decide those people can go rot if they don't want to accept you. It's wonderful being around people that take you as you are and love that person.

I'm lucky. I get to be me and whatever that means in that moment. I face judgement and I do hide sometimes.

No one can really grasp how much it means to me to have the peace that comes with knowing who I am and having people accept me. I want everyone to have that happiness. I'll fight to hold onto that happiness and make sure other people get it too because it really kicks ass.

Investigate the Truth (Even when you know it)

Don't Choke on the Click Bait

Fake News is a Real Thing

We've all seen the headlines but we haven't all read the articles. Headlines are a few words and they don't tell the whole story. Some are terribly misleading.

Falsehoods masquerade as truths. Fake news on Facebook. Lies on twitter. Deceptive reporting. CLICK BAIT.

Don't trust the news. Investigate every source. Recognize people are sources of opinions. This is my opinion.

Question what you know. Look for confirmation or refutation at other sources. Don't be afraid to prove yourself wrong. The capacity to admit mistakes is a great virtue.

People Lie

People lie intentionally. People lie unintentionally. People lie because they don't know any better. We lie to ourselves. The one way to learn the truth is through education.

Uneducated?

I complain about uneducated voters. Not voters who lacked the opportunity to go on to higher education but voters who fail themselves by not self-educating through investigation. Everyone starts as an uneducated voter then they change through education but not everyone has experienced that change yet. It's important to start searching and learning. A voter can't become informed overnight. It takes time.

Don't Forget

It's easy to get buried in the news but it's important to not let big, funny controversies overshadow desperate and dire situations. Keep yourself on point. Is there a proposed law you oppose? Then don't worry about the funny thing that happened with the congressman in the motel on the highway and oppose the unjust law.

Reformed Sleepwalker

Confessions of a Woken Somnambulist

The Storm Broke and I awoke

I am a somnambulist. It's been a while since I last sleepwalked. I have woken in the kitchen completely dressed and trying to remember where I was with no chemical agents influencing my memory. Fortunately, I don't sleep soundly so I've never gotten further than the kitchen. I'm told I also talk in my sleep.

I was also a sleepwalker in the figurative sense. I was sleepwalking through life with ideas but not much direction. It was like being on a street with weather worn lines. I didn't really know or want to think about it. I'm not sleepwalking any longer.

The world changed a week ago. It's changed so many times before. Lives have been destroyed, countries shredded (I promise this gets less apocalypty) and I reacted with detachment. Even when it touched my life, I didn't face it because I was afraid.

It didn't feel real to me and that protected me from feeling the hits. I guess maybe it was a coping mechanism. I thought I couldn't change anything then it happened. I was faced with a monster and a situation that I couldn't live with and I knew I couldn't live with myself if I didn't fight. I was ignited.

Then #darkTuesday hit and I have never been so cold in my life. I couldn't stop shaking. I was physically ill, spiritually devastated. The hit hurt.

There is no going back to wandering through life. I'm determined. I know who I am. Surrealist, writer, loud mouth (so I've been told). I know what I value. Freedom, peace, hope. I was someone that I don't respect as much anymore. I won't go back. I will fight.

600-year-old Tree of New Jersey

Living History

A Few Existential Thoughts

Living history objects are strange and their flaws are ignored in favor of romance. This tree lived when Washington was alive and it will be gone soon. Legend has it George Washington picnicked under the tree. A little hard to believe considering another historical marker notes that Washington was in town in January of 1777. Who picnics in January?

I have walked by it a thousand times in my life. It never looked quite alive to me. Metal poles held up branches and the leaves were never impressive. In the 1920s, they filled part of the trunk with cement. All around it are gravestones. Some bear the names of my ancestors and others are broken beyond legibility.

I don't know how I feel about the tree going away because it hasn't happened yet. It has been there since my great-great (I don't know how many) grandfather fought in the Revolution. I know it will hit me when I walk by and see the landscape forever changed by the absence of the symbolic tree.

Proud tree hugger (literally, figuratively, accusatively) that I am, I love the grand presence of nature. Nothing will replace it. The graveyard has sheltered the tree 600 years. Dead soldiers have guarded for 200 years. The absence will remain long after I'm gone.

Other trees remain but none of them hold the same symbolic position in my mind. A set piece from the American Revolution is being torn down because it's dead. I don't like that symbol.

Poem - Omega King's Prize

Omega King’s Prize

Safety in sight but washed beyond reach

I wrecked on the rocks out of habit

It started when he fell for the lie and took me out

I fell for their lives

And lost them

I was hung out to die

And cut myself down

I should be standing

But I’m on the ground

Brought down by a new problem to suffer

I’m a lone piece surrounded by my set

And beset by the opposing king

The victorious villain teeters on the precipice of his ideal ever after

Sick and charming, he was regified by his syndicate

He voices a familiar patter

I wish for a stomach settler

A bromo to stomach his gloat

I am hung by his words

He appreciates the effect

He’s determined to be the end of me

The end of I and the end of the life I love

My opponent is emboldened by the chained invincibles

I am besieged by a man in a mainour crown

He speaks his rotten rhetoric loud and clear

“Everything to you

Your last and your only

Every moment for me

My hand will guide yours

You will not escape my grip again

Hope?

Done.

Lost?

Alone.

The dread hope of living through a war lost

Every light extinguished by me

Just for you

My bit consignment

My crime, knowledge

Let them know, you belong to me

They failed and gave you to me”

His words contaminate the air

They have no free hands to raise

No bodies rush to my defense

They are restrained from action by his plan

Bound to witness an absconding

Imprisoned instantly in mortal hell

He’s as determined as Hades dragging away his sister’s daughter

Their voices protest his will

“You will not win

She is not yours

Subject to no one”

I breath the air and feel it light upon my tongue

Fire pours into me like a swallow of lava

Muscles protest movement

Skeleton denies its presence

My soul pushes harder and forces my body into action

A fight to knock him off his stolen throne before he can sit

End the theft before he wins

I stand to tear him down

With my bare hands to break his crown

I stand and ruin him myself

Destroy his plan

Ground him with my fist

The bit’s attack

The prey’s defense

He never imagined

A crack in his jaw

He’s not the first glass king to break

The moment registers

Shock precedes anger

Anger succumbs to disgust

“Am I not appealing?

Not a thrill to be a tormenter knocked to the ground by a victim’s hands?

Not pleasurable to face the girl down from the ground?

You?

Done.

Me?

Won.

I’ll fight to fall again.

Get this, I will never be your chattel.”

His heart, black with frostbite

Barbecues under my fire

I whelm to the depths

I fight the loss of me

Hopeless and humbled?

I am unafraid of my knees

The victim bears no blame when the monster would sin against her

Just pity for the monster who mistakes the silence for surrender

The dire is done

The set rallies

A king revenged

A victorious girl