flickering thoughts

Flickering thoughts flash like movies not yet documented, whose dramas have played and played out, un-rehearsed, raw, and uncut.  Scenes spark with dialogue you wish you had encountered, lines you would have articulated had you been prepared. 

Attempts and failures plague with haunting delight from a script you work to deny each time it arrives.  Talking to yourself as if you’re actually directing this drama. The production of being discovered all while discovering you has been the extent of this plot.  Plotting to climax at the imax in 3-D the day after avatar.  Turning yourself blue, cuz you haven’t stopped to breath through your motions, the pictures you’ve derived on the slides that continue to race like powerpoint, unneffectively. 

All because you see, you can stop the slideshow and the make believe. The scenes don’t have to haunt you if you don’t want them to.  You can choose the characters and create the context with each dawn of the new day. The past is just that, past….and long gone with all the old re-runs.  No more Saturday afternoon matinees or reality marathons.  Stop running from the guy that always has an ax in that deep dark closet, turn the light on before you tip toe into the empty room, and don’t creepin' in there when you know you are just looking for trouble.  Cuz those of us on the outside, screaming at the big screen, can’t help you when you don’t see it for yourself.  We frustratingly hold our hands out into the air wanting to shake you, but we know in the end that you’ll have to figure it out on your own or else find yourself buried next to the token blond…who of course, already got the ax.

Make a pact, to let it go…the past, and the future.  This isn’t star wars or futurama, another storyline to manifest your dramatic episodes, all because you can’t let go of the heightened fever, your thermometer rising as the plot thickens all before the fist commercial break. 

Awareness before all this ensues will help you to lessen the addiction of constant distraction, predictions of conversations that may or may never even happen.  What could you do with all your time if you weren’t so pressed to stress over all that may never even be?  Could you see with a pair of eyes that actually illustrates clarity?  How bout the inner voice you could hear when you clear the static on the blaring stereo playing in surround sound 24/7?  Would you even recognize the beat, thumping peace within you awaiting your presence and your silence?  

Let go, let go, let go, you are not those movies, you are not this show.  You are a gift awaiting inspiration, growth, maturity, vision, opportunity, but only if you are able to see past the nonsense that surrounds us.  The commercial version of how we should live.  Give your dreams a real glance, because those passions can actually be more than just a hobby. 

Even if you‘re told otherwise, each of us has our own talents, hunger...drive.  It may hurt a little it may even take some strength, but from what I’ve heard, the stinging of regret is far worse than taking the leap and letting yourself fall.  Get back up and fall again, the greatest of our kinds were the best at getting back up to their feet.  Those heroes ate their cheerios or something like it, just like us.  They breathed the same air and basked in the same sun.  Looking down the same barrel of a loaded gun that tempted failure, yet they had the courage to push it aside.  Not for pride or for fame, but for passion, fervor and need.  Heed their power of intention, take up a collection of prophetic prayers and play your cards right.  Your deck, your game, your fight.  I don’t care where you came from or who put you on this planet, we all have a mission to pursue what so few have been brave enough to take on. 

Create on your canvas, stretched out, the skin that covers your amazingly complex system.  In thanks and gratitude for what you’ve been given.  Shifting focus onto yourself, because in reality you’re no good to anybody without moving yourself forward in the direction you’re intended to sail.  Even if you can’t swim… dive in and cool off, from the heat on the streets blazing up from the concrete.  The sweltering air that suffocates in the thickness of the summer, humidity from the sweat that falls from all those sweating their pay check or their pray check. 

To buy what, happiness?  Well there sure isn’t plenty of that to go around, cuz look around, what do you see?  It sure ain’t happiness.  I see frustration and pain, poverty and mass production.  I see a lot of people focused on what they don’t have.  With the miracle of life that is their own embodiment and they see nothing.  Nothing good…no wake up to say thank you, all for a new day.  No thanks to the sun, the stars and the moon for all that they do.  No thanks to the mountains, the oceans, the trees for all their memories and absurdly abundant forgiveness. 

Instead we have stress tests because life is hard and for some, just not worth living.  Giving up their heartbeat for a chance to see if it is actually better on the other side.  Yet heaven could be here on earth, if we unwrap the gift of the present each morning, like Christmas, or Kwanza, or Chanukah or whatever the hell it is you celebrate, like a birthday, each day. 

We all have our haunts, our past, our affliction, but as we’ve learned over the years, there is no boogie man in the closet, it’s just a story that we told ourselves long ago and we choose to keep getting scared.  More frightening would be if we sat back and threw it all away, because of our fears, because of our need to be locked down to the things we’ve been told all our lives… and we believed. 

Crush the old vhs tapes and the sorry dvds, write a fresh screenplay that depicts a land where taking things for granted is impossible.  The characters all take responsibility for their actions and make choices for the greater good.  They could also come with the perception that there is no other time than this, to act, cuz tomorrow may never come. 

Where they could “be all they can be”, without a slogan from the army, because what else is there really?  They could be programmed to understand that it is all up to them and they would in fact take advantage of each breath well breathed.  This isn’t utopia, this is the potential, these choices, in us, are just that powerful.