Lookout

Virtually any link with humanity brings the sweetness of another point of view. Ageless. A continual climb in delight and anticipation. A pause. Then silence. A moment to allow intensity and passion, precipice and trial, irony and infamy, opportunity to mull conjecture, discard unnecessary opinion, and then release what would not serve growth, self, others. It's to inhale perspective, absorb compassion, step into empathy, and then exhale grace.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Breathless

I am a dandelion of a thousand wishes, scattered by the exhilarating winds of belief and hope: planting seeds, creating yields, living high off the uninhibited oxygen of change.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Storms

I am forever sighing over the disparity between green and gold, lush and parched, bitterness and love, to find that really, such are truly about the everyday, keen, defined, passionate and opinionated elements of personal conviction. It's a stalwart belief system that is juxtaposed against a world so steeped in subversive natural behaviors that it makes me refuse all the more to yield to the dark matter of abysmal influence or broken humanity.

Having said that, though, candid transparency would find myself caught up within an exhale of breath, lost within reflection as to the fickle transience of mortal posturing - personal stasis, marketed rights, collective cries, social positioning or otherwise - and how all of it is simply a ceaseless (and senseless) noise that ultimately masks the authenticity of being. It's self-actualization disdained and well-being denied in favor of short term highs and flimsy excuses.

It's because of this that my thoughts come full circle to the articulation and presence of active integrity and its perfect set-point of cause and effect, truth and consequence. Truth and justice ring, and ring often -- at least in my world (wry smiles). It's as if the contents of a beaker hit a boiling point and finally escape the glass: perfect heat, prime components, and a completion so profound that it must wait upon the punctuation of timing and fruition, granting honor to the process, and steadfastly seeking truth and knowledge over notoriety and pain.

A certain pause.

A confluence of expectation and intent that meets redirection and contemplation to evaluate the results: personal allowance, value, conditions, ideals, outlook, recognition.

Change.

And it's here that my heartbeat increases. Flips. And butterflies flutter throughout my chest and up into my throat until finally it stills and resumes its natural rhythm.

So many times, I feel a warning tremor before a cause roars up within me. Sometimes, I rage against the machine; sometimes, I rage for a machine I would create. And yet, just beyond the edges of emotional hysteria and an unleashed tempest of feeling, tendrils of sensibility whisper along my synapses, bringing me back down and into the fallacy of even my own mortal idiocy. I am then pulled into the vortex of personal soapbox contradictions to find myself in marked introspection and scrupulous dissection, immediately intent upon seeking correction from any uncomfortable interaction, difficulty, or contention.

My husband knows this of me - intimately so, and loves me all the more. For this, I am grateful, humbled, and thankful. I am sensitivity personified - day in, and day out. Literally, I'm unable to shut out light or sound, song or emotion, charged electricity, or physical awareness. Inevitably, we'll be driving along a road to some-odd important destination, and I'll be so transfixed by the scenery that it steals my soul and sends me into mind-bending conjugations of all sorts of things. It's nature so alluring that it enslaves me into a beguiled state of earnest pleasure and oh-so-much introspection. And just when I think I can formulate a thought process that could both exclaim my joy and audibly offer credence to my ruminations, my tentative verbal expression gets cut short as the phrasing in my head meets my lips all at once.

Laughs.

Oh, how I love these drives. Oh, how I love even the mundane jaunts to the grocery store. Perhaps I am carried back to childhood and the first mesmerizing experience of seeing the world whir by from the bucket seat of a 1973 Ford LTD station wagon. Oh, how I love the trees and cars, clouds and earth, deer and flowers, craggy rocks and the speed of sound. These invigorate my spirit and fire up my soul. I am transported to another paradigm, one that breaks the monotony of an ordinary continuum and gifts me with exhilarating reminders of the sweetness of creation.

I am refreshed, energized, and given over to the simple, but wonderful. And just when I'm about to unload my soul in a torrential downpour over some kind of something that has sparked my notice, somehow, my husband already connects and knows. And he smiles with a warmth of love and amusement that mixes with his intimate knowledge of me. He'll glance over at me, and with a slight tease to his voice, remark, "Let me, guess - 'the juxtaposition of.... '" And I'll stop short, caught within exasperation, laughter, and the need to express all the garbled thoughts in my head begging for release.

This man "gets" me, and I feel his heart slide into mine. Oh, how he knows me and my spontaneous silly self! No apologies. No excuses. I am a child who was born and raised upon Errol Flynn, swash-buckling pirate movies in black and white, and every Cary Grant movie known to man. I am a girl who has become woman, but somehow wishes to set up residence at a Warner Bros back-lot set, circa 1947. I am intensely feminine - almost to excess, and yet I'm intent upon honing my skills, positively feed upon intelligence, and voraciously soak up information with an insatiable appetite for more.

I'm in love with everything that is scarred, but vulnerable; intelligent, yet seeking; perceptive, and yet open; and defiant as much as rebellion might be. I am. In totality. And to get me, is to take on much.
　
I wish the world could see through the lenses of simplicity. I wish that the haze of competition and clogged ambition would come out of the blur of contention and smog to see its own wide-angle web-cam of marked irrelevance. In my wildest dreams I would bask in the bliss of miles and miles of acreage that would buffer such confusion and leave me to the glory of wide blue skies, blossoming foliage, acres of terrain and untainted oxygen. What more could a woman want than a Steinway Grand (okay, indulge me!) gracing a modest library, a barnyard filled with several chickens, goats, and other life-serving lovelies, a garden that could produce season, upon season, and horses to ride with the wind at my back.

Mmmmm...

Life untethered and oh, so alive.

And, yes. I would still wear an apron. With ruffles. And, yes, there would still be curls. And yes, I would still wear lipstick. And yes, my blood would continue to pulse with the same intensity as it does now as to the pursuit of life, truth, outlook, and substance. And, yes! My stubborn self would seek over-achieving even until my mortal demise. And, oh...

I am carried away. Again.

I suppose in all of these musings that I wish the world could see passed the proverbial snapchat filters of every kind: behaviors and conditions that would choose to circumvent powerful contentment and the sanctity of self to vie for the precariousness of artificial validation and tenuous positioning. I wish that such insidious constraints could be seen for what they are as to their direct participation in the desecration of selves, relationships, families, ideals, communities. Home.

I wish the world would cease to worship the idolatry of comparison; to recognize it as the disingenuous invitation it surely is - an illness and malignancy of envy that confounds growth in a blindness that would seal its fate into a damning abyss of discontent and subsequent depression. I wish the world could see this. And see it clearly.

And for all of this, I suppose I will always be my own storm. I will always champion joy and love, happiness and faith, and the absolute tenets of self-worth. What I know to be true is that we either live in this world, exhausting ourselves in and out of fear and hardship through an outlook that struggles for validation; or we live our lives having already assumed the sanctity of personal creation, fully giving over to the individually endowed strengths, weakness, and talents we are graced with, to concentrate our precious time alive in the pursuit of building others.

There is money gained and lost from the former while there are dividends and a multiplicity of wealth in a variety of ways gathered from the latter. When we seek ourselves, we are lost; when we lose ourselves, we come alive and step into a powerful realm of being.

Creation is.

And it sings its song through every tempest.

Rise with it.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Bedtime Stories

Releasing ego is to relinquish the need for one-ups-man-ship in any relationship. It is the absolute key to truth, peace, prosperity, love, and even legacy. And, though for a variety of reasons - whether from personal history, hardship, emotions, circumstances - none of us are immune to sometimes unbecoming bouts of ego and/or momentary displays of desperate inadequacy.

Peace is peace; it is gentle and entreating - patiently standing by, waiting for notice. It offers an open-ended invitation to abide within the halls of unconditional love, where vulnerability and meekness can rise above insecurity and weakness.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Wellspring

The important things in life can't be bought: we weren't born to need "experts" to tell us how we feel; we weren't born to seek relationships that would enslave us into requiring approval, change, or acceptance. We weren't born to be deceived into homogenization. We weren't born to need to prove ourselves. We weren't born for this. At all.

We were born to rise.

We were born to revel in love, hope, and an invincible power of being. We were born to thrive within the sanctity of our individual spirits.

Doubt that?!

Oh, think back.

What changed for you? Childlike innocence is the most pure; we were all there at one time - until age, experience, and chronological choices based off of uncertain emotions, sideways ills, and/or other doubts - introduced us to abject negativity.

Forlorn.

Confused.

Uncertain.

And then somewhat condemned.

No, truth is truth. And it always remains. There is no difference between the purity of a newborn babe, and the essence of a hardened soul who has been reminded of his youth in such a way as to weep at his indiscretions, soak up his unworthiness, and then yield to a space of eternal awareness that confounds mortal comprehension. To find himself precious.

It is raw, tentative; a metamorphosis into a realm and temerity of the hopeful, but oh-so-cleansed.

An immersion of renewal and grace.

Frightening, yet invigorating.

And a certain beginning when it really hits home.

We don't lose innate value because we grow up. Our sense of self should not trend as to stock market volatility just for our age and development, choices, and/or inadequacy. And while time and circumstance, focus and trial, sometimes undermine the quiet resonance and wisdom of the sweet purity of toddler perspective, it's actually a growth curve of tender, gracious, and exquisite import. The entire point of this world is to meld the pureness of such cherubic outlook with the wisdom that comes from the harshness of everyday reality; to build up and through, meet and triumph, recognize and deliver - compassion. Yes, compassion. And to finally release the stubbornness of human frailty and its consort ego to receive God's grace and all that He can and will endow.

If we let Him.

Existing on this earth is about free choice. And for all the things our Father in Heaven would want us to know, He wants us to internalize and never let go that, intrinsically, we were born to discover the individual talents He graced us with. He wants us to embrace, expand, and become so fulfilled and joyful within the glory of them - yes, replete within such elation and fruition - that we are singularly and intimately overwhelmed by His unconditional love. It's a fractional awareness that chokes upon the tears of His creation and the knowledge that we were knit within our mothers' wombs out of nothing.

To be something: His.

The world at large would have us vie for popularity, obsessed and consumed by marked effort, while at the same time, promoting objectification and the transience of mortal appreciation. Grand mal evidences of depression, competition, blame, jealousy, and dis(ease) are now so prevalent, they have become as a given. It's a manipulation of esteem upon an epic scale, and aggrandized to the extreme.

Yet, God would not want this. Rather, He would have us recognize our innate value so that we could rise within them and invite others to do the same. He would have us achieve such a state of being, that to fully bask in it, would only come to pass through the encouragement of our fellow men. In all ways. To teach them, show them, and lead them to the truth of their own existence, beauty, acceptance. Claim.

We are all unique - and it's not happenstance. We were born to become ourselves; to heal, nurture, grow, and evolve strictly through an absolute commitment to self-truth. Preserving walls, coping mechanisms, and any other emotional behaviors that might shut-out, shut-down, or lend themselves to mire in doubt and depression, only serve to support the current soul-rot and decay found within the stench of public association, commerce, and the ever mutable appetites of dissension and acclaim.

Tenets of self-actualization are always grounded within an intricate fabric of appreciation. Simplicity is actually authenticity, while the complication of even the most elementary truths are truly a coward's endeavor to smokescreen personal responsibility, and to disavow the ownership of free will.

Many of us are broken - in fact, I would say that we all are; but if we continually allay our own motives under the auspices of assuaging fear, then such - regardless of heartbreak, history, or intensity - embrace a marked stasis of resignation to seek and ensure familiar pain.

Yes, to justify, rather than rectify, is to seek topical medicine over and above a cure. We are either ready for peace, or we're still needing the messy processes of dancing with the devil. 

And so I plead: take a chance; step into living large.  What are you waiting for? 

If not for a revolution of Joy.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Lake View

Thrive. To thrive in love, patience, temperance. To thrive with the spirit, with joy and to refuse doubt -- to keep on, keeping on. To stubbornly, willfully (I like that word - it suits me), unabashedly believe in good. Always.

Discomfort is simply a pause; it is neither clandestine nor the proverbial end of the world. I say: meet every assumed trial with full-throttle intensity and marked resolution. Stare it down, and then smile with the ease of one who has naught to worry, and shift upon the grace of a belief system that meets and exceeds the fruition of dogged determination.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Revelation

I feel humbled. Grateful. Serene. Centered. I marvel at the love, growth, understanding, and acceptance I have found within this new life of mine. I think of happiness and all that it means in terms of commitment, contentment, peace and sweetness; it's the absence of anxiety and an unabashed onset of unadulterated joy. It's the embrace of spirit and a continuity of being that steps into a forthright presence of self and power, firmly standing in a solidarity of equanimity, no matter the varied realities of everyday life.

More simply, it's the breathlessness of an exquisite sunset, the kindness of a stranger, the searing power of eye-contact, and the potent exhilaration of vitality that can't help but spill over when rethinking mortality and moving on into engaging in a life that is hellbent on making every moment count - above and beyond all odds.

I am galvanized.

Intoxicated.

Invigorated.

In love.

I am filled with a kind of euphoria that tempers the fierceness of my spirit, gently restraining my often passionate soul from platforms of opinion to simply beseech lenience and to bask in being. And while my life is certainly not glamorous, and very definitely not the least bit wealthy, it is nonetheless wealthy in love: in family, friends, colleagues, children. In endless wit, humor, and in the conversations that seem to always and forever be consumed by laughter.

Deep sighs.

Pause. Exhale.

Smiles.

Oh, yes! These are the things of life! Nothing ever wrapped in some tidy bow, yet easily loosened and gifted every day. Sated and replete, yet complete while in incompletion. And though my thoughts may run rampant, day in and day out; and while my mind expands and heart pounds under a darkened sea of skies and stars, universe and more - ever still, my soul is somehow always restrained from the helter-skelter, full-throttle intensity of my signature "better, faster, stronger" mentality.

I am grounded.

Settled.

All in.

Present.

And somehow bewildered by the idea, much less the gift, of blanket security.

Today, I give over to every single experience. And while my spirit might sometimes still fear the worthiness of peace - isn't it what we should all embrace and aspire to?! The blessings of fully engaging?! It's expectations that declare that nothing could be more perfect then the now of every moment. It is a power, exuberance, and endless supply of sunrise mornings that tease into anticipation, the promises of sun-drenched afternoons and lilting laughter. It's the beguiling bliss of releasing the transience of life's ills within the marked and rebellious vigor of hair shaken out, shaken down, and giving over to the flirtations of singularly unrepentant breezes.

My heart beats here.

And it beats when the deliciousness of the night air overwhelms my senses and lends such fragrance to simply pause. Feel. Absorb. Yield. And then to soak up total satisfaction and a blanket of peace. It's the reminiscence of scenery and beauty, craggy peaks, and clever, elusive cloud formations. It's to see that shadows and perspective change upon the release of need and the turn of a dime.

To choose Joy.

To choose it. Not fight it. Hate it. Ignore it. Run from it. But to full-out. All out. Step outside of any other place to see it. Naked vulnerability meeting a consummation of stillness, keenness of breathing, and the sentience of purpose.

Perfect light.

Perhaps I was once broken and always climbing; but now, while pebbles will always slip, I am no more lost, bewildered, frightened, or sad.

Imperfection is. As is aging.

Gracefully. It's a serenity that fully accepts this person, this woman, this body, this place.

In time. Now.

All Mine.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl