There, in an alternate universe, I am a giant. I use tree trunks to pick wild game from my teeth. I eat whole herds by the handful that I roast by tossing towards the sun then open my mouth quickly to catch them like I catch peanuts here, in the universe of shrews, bugs, and … Continue reading The Alternative To Growth
In the beginning…there were a lot of AND’s…and there were names of places and of people who we’ve heard of before with names we know from songs and books and movies and sometimes real life. Short phrases from the beginning have become elaborate stories interpreting the evidence of imagination inherent in us all leaving unquestionable … Continue reading And Love
Anguish is the thinking we do that comes when giving into negligence of the heart while disrupting the responsibilities of the mind. If a place in my heart is filled with love and then replaced with sorrow there is going to be more chances for my mind to turn that sorrow into resentment. My mind … Continue reading Intuitive vs. Intrusive Thinking
How do you practice self-care? The “incessant fine line” is torturing yourself with history you have no control over when that history is what you can't accept so you try to cure yourself by getting better at acceptance and the current story is all that’s left.
What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like? My feet hit the floor. My knees to the ground. My fingers clasped tightly. My voice whispers “how.” My legs find their footing. My arms in a sleeve. My breakfast is waiting. My book opened to read. My friends are … Continue reading Back to the Basics
Ptew. Now you are gone. I have spit you out of my head. There are plenty of reasons this will not get read. Number one, I’m sure, is the rude beginning. Number two - I am who I am when pretending to be Eric the Red, Eric the Viking, Eric on the wind or the … Continue reading Step One – Socks
I grew up too fast in the 80’s and 90’s which actually stunted my growth. As a child I was shorter than the horizon, never able to look. As a teenager I put my head in the sand to stay young and boast, to keep my head below the horizon and rarely opened a book. … Continue reading Readers Miss Out
I love to watch college football but I never got to play at that level because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t big or strong enough. In high school I was good enough to play both offense and defense along with special teams but I was only playing both ways because I lived in a … Continue reading Playing Both Offense and Defense
How can something never end? Lying in bed as a child I would often ask myself this question. I would imagine myself drifting in space forever without bumping into anything at all. Just surrounded by complete darkness without a view of planets or even stars. How can space be dark when I am closer to … Continue reading Love for the Abyss
Steady. Steady. Pull. Tearing a bandaid off a tuft of arm hair is supposed to be more tolerable when you have a friend do it. For me it’s not. The moderate pain from ripping the bandaid off will be the same in both scenarios. An element of surprise is better than anticipation when you expect … Continue reading Bandaids Don’t Remove Themselves
Right on. Say it again. Forget about it. Stage banter. Have a good laugh. Don’t be smart. Say stupid things. Look people in the eye. Spit in yer eye. Stomp your foot. Act casual. Still laughing. Don’t whine. If you can’t say it, write it. Have fun or don’t. Love your recorded voice. Pause. Say … Continue reading My Weekly Colloquialisms!
Jesus…I…look out for…need…(indecipherable)…for…forget it...Amen. That is how well I pray inside my head as I breathe out thoughts I know I don’t need to say in order to be heard by any one force that already knows what is inside my head. When I pray for others I come up with the same broken language … Continue reading Caution – this mental health post has religious undertones
My #poetry over time has changed by using words I’ve heard before ever knowing their meaning, and binding those words together to sound similar to each other, telling rhythmically the meaning of what I believe worth finding a cadence and with words I’ve never heard before in that sequence, how to give those words meaning. … Continue reading Tag Words Almost Explained 3
#Mental health is to remain being yourself when everything you know is inside your head trying to get out. It is the most important quality of ourselves perceived before we become more like others. With limited understanding of us people will only ask questions or comment on who we used to be before you changed … Continue reading Tag Words Almost Explained 2
Another interesting part of my journey thirty years ago out of acute care that is worth noting is I was able to help others by simply getting better before their eyes. Not only did I recover but I had a positive impact on other patients because of the composed way in which I transformed madness … Continue reading 9 – The Compassion
The “next step” of my hospital stay began sort of like how my life began. I emerged from darkness into a bright and sterile environment with doctors wiping away my tears and cutting the cord to my sustenance. In the dark I could’ve cried all I wanted and nobody would come to wipe my tears … Continue reading 8 – The Birth
They came to get me but it wasn’t in the middle of the night. I was led from the sanitized sanity of the commissary, down the ever encroaching hallway passed the curious closet towards the damned doorway, which finally swung open with precise timing. I passed through the archway and stepped into a room with … Continue reading 7 – The Ward
So now back to Europe, Switzerland to be exact. It’s Christmas Day and I’ve decided to climb the foothills of a mountain to perch somewhere and reflect on the full year. I packed some bread, wine, and calamari in American sauce, my go to for a growling stomach and bored headspace. The foothills were open … Continue reading Switzerland – The Other Fellow First
I’ve said in the past that my mind twists words around, making them better than what was actually said. It is sounds I need to be more concerned with, not speech. More accurately, it is sounds turned into words that have me worried I am all too human. Most of us are not great at … Continue reading God Is Sound
I told my closest friend the other day that the more I like my own writing it seems the less other people like it. This is far from true since I really absolutely adore my writing and I am the only one who reads it. His response was interesting to me as he stated that … Continue reading Faces of Your Past
You don’t have to tickle their feet to realize a robot is without feelings. No need to laugh at them being worth billions in barrels of oil. Robots have us throttling towards environmental exhaustion though they are designed to make our lives easier. There has never been a robot known to swim before the megaton … Continue reading To Bot or Not to Bot
If what, how, there, and now. This stuff is confusing. I must be trying to lose the few readers I have. It’s nothing new ripping on yourself to let other people know that you know you’re no good. But you are good. And so is the reader because they press on. Press on by seeing … Continue reading The Question Being
My way with words can be twisted, inspired by recurring thoughts and sparked by co-occurring epiphanies, making the process of writing anything hard to do when quick thoughts become redundant. I’m lost within my creations, clambering around thoughts that arise at the same tempo as words put together in a similar sequence to lyrics, relatable … Continue reading A Prolific Thinker
I am sprawled out at the shoreline of this Great Lake looking through blue sky as best I can, making it seem endless, until slow atoms floating across my eyeballs bring me back to focus on what lies beneath my ability to see forever. All I can hear is the lapping of waves and the … Continue reading The Hourglass of Nature
“I can’t think,” is what an elderly lady was saying over and over in the hospital that first time which I like to call the Big Blink. That is where I bit my tongue, literally, for hours before I fell into a state of catatonic slumber for a week, not able to remember a damn … Continue reading The Big Blink
Guilt happens when you have been told your whole life that when you die you will go to heaven but you question if there is a heaven and instead you find yourself trying to explain to friends there is a simulation that makes you immortal across infinite universes but only if you choose to join … Continue reading Infinite Atoms
Why do I always have the feeling to hurry along going nowhere? I suppose the nomad in me has never left. It used to be that I would get the idea to go far away with a destination in mind. To meander with purpose towards an ideal outcome. While on my way there I would … Continue reading Hurried To Go Nowhere
My mind is a mountain. My eyes are the sky. My heart is the sea. My feet are a river. My arms are a tree. How much greater could it be?
Francis Erich McElroy 