my philosophical thoughts
ADHd
Creativity is a sudden thing for me. It appears out of thin air. My thoughts come like fickle gusts. My mind is like a sailboat. If I do not catch the creativity in my sails and pike out until I tack – to get myself out of the lull of a writers block – my boat jibes and floats, until I row, or get towed. Either I ride a tangent, making my sails gasp and my hull reverberate as the bow mounts whitecaps and risk being capsized, or scull a stagnant current more still than a half-empty glass and watch my sails pitifully suffocate. If I choose to go with the latter I usually don’t have any paddle to row with and so I have a verbal row with the wind whilst I drift out to sea. Alas!
Nigh, on my starboard, are words that romanticize wind. If I don’t catch this gust I’ll get depressed watching the luff of my sail, talking to myself, stuck in a lull where no wind blows. You are free to disembark into the bathwater if you prefer being tacky to tacking. I, for one, am coming about. Ahoy! Answers are blowing in the wind.
The wind is to the heart as the weather is to life. When the weather is cold and
bitter the wind makes everything worse. Wind stings and makes you colder. You want it to stop the breeze from creeping under your skin. You run, or cover yourself with a blanket, or eat comfort food just so you feel something. When life is cold your heart chills you till you’re numb. On the contrary, when the weather is warm and sunny, a gust of wind is a welcome release. You can smell the flowers as their scent is carried through the air, catch relief from the heat, or listen to it rustle the trees with a sound that makes canopies sing like conch shells. When life is good your heart can bring bliss.
Now that I have caught that breeze my boats tack has changed. It’s better if I spare you this next breeze. You wouldn’t like the course that ol’ Pressure-Gradient-Force has charted.
“Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
The K.I.S.S acronym: a clever play-on-words to imply only “smart” people overthink but overthinking is “dumb.” People purport its concept in all sorts of ways, but I have mixed feelings about it.Overthinking is good when it’s paired with facts; this is just intellectual exploration. It’s the process that’ll make us “smarter,” right?When overthinking lacks the guidance of facts, however, you stray into dangerous waters. Fueling any overthinking with subjective “data” is a well-known recipe for accumulating untethered logic and driving yourself crazy.
When you’re overthinking, your mind is active and eager to connect dots, but connecting the wrong dots will only create an even more puzzling picture. Hastily jumping on what may or may not be true—i.e. misinformation or emotionality—means you’ve devolved from careful intellectual exploration, hiking the summit of knowledge, to bushwhacking your way to a clouded view. Your desire for hitting a goldmine of answers is undoing what should be a slow and steady process of unearthing “artifacts” one piece of hard data at a time.
Like the waves of the ocean, there are so many tidbits of information out there rolling in on a constant basis. Just look to social media, your personal or private conversations, your internal thought patterns, and so on. We can try to figuratively surf each small “wave” just like we can overthink about any piece of information or internal thought and drain our mental energy in the shallow “what-if” waters. Alternatively, we can let any small waves pass by and wait for those big swells we know to be the real deal. The odds of success in this figurative surf session have been increased thanks to a bit of patient behavior and calculated thinking.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I reflected on some irony surrounding this idea.
Our understanding of what's “good” in mental health is shaped by scientists who substantiate much of their own overthinking with theories, case studies, opinions, and so on. They don’t have clear-cut answers for everybody— definitions are shrouded with gray areas.
Understanding mental health is more of an art than a science where experts can only make educated guesses. “Mental Illness” is a loose term with real connotations, but we lack hard data to identify where lines are to be drawn and, more importantly, how or why they should be drawn in a society with expectations clashing against our inherent state-of-being.
Emotions are infamously illogical and difficult to explain. When scientists try to pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship between humans and emotions, we’ve thankfully evolved from being in dangerous waters to in murky waters. But if we’re to claim we can understand the complexities of the human mind, less might be more.
Overthinking in the mental health realm could very well be another word for undue Pathologizing (regarding or treating someone or something as abnormal or unhealthy). And, until we stop pathologizing, a toxic culture will always remain where emotionality is encouraged on the surface but comes with the danger of haphazard labeling.
Even more ironic? I’m overthinking about overthinking, and everything I’ve written here is purely speculative. I’m just as twisted up in the irony as the “experts” (and so are you). I guess—subjectively speaking—we’re both being “stupid.”
Fallacies
"The writer's job is to tell the truth," Ernest Hemingway once said. When he was having difficulty writing he reminded himself of this, as he explained in his memoir, A Moveable Feast. "I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’”
_____________
Society is just a blanket that’s too warm on a hot night.
“Fuel for Thought”
Everyone dreams in their sleep. Some people dream lucidly. Some have nightmares. Many, like me, suck at remembering dreams.
But, in our dreams, we all tell a fictional story. By nature, humans are storytellers who craft narratives, formulate fantasy, and so on.
Sometimes, my “innate” storytelling skillset will spill over and manifest in negative ways. My mind wonders, wanders, and gets lost in its maze.
This can be a good thing, though. I once saw a funny meme: “Anxiety is just creating conspiracy theories about yourself.” Think of how often we tell ourselves stories without even trying to—from anxious uncertainties about the mundane to wackier trains of thought that make us feel out-of-touch with reality. Maybe it’s better to respect those fearful thought patterns and turn them into stories in lieu of worries.
There’s a solution, and it lies within us. As Bob Marley said, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
Last winter, I was reading a book, “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.” I definitely recommend it, but I also want to share an interesting concept from it that revolves around Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
CBT is like taking your unwanted thoughts or feelings and training yourself to receive them differently and sometimes make a positive spin on them. The authors compare it to an “Elephant & Rider.” The elephant wants to go whatever way it’s naturally inclined to; the rider redirects the elephant and reins it in at every “wrong” turn. The elephant is your brain and you’re the rider. Your mind will take you where it wants to go with whatever thoughts it sends your way. Thoughts aren’t preventable, and ignoring them won’t make them go away. But you can correct the direction of each train of thought and handle how you react to ideas that pop into your headspace.
When it comes to writing, inspiration is always ready to strike—even if that inspiration seems like anything but creative energy. You can spin the wonderings and wanderings that riddle the whirled workings of your mind and turn them into works of fiction.
emotions in motion
Happiness, like any emotion, is fleeting.
In the end, we’re chasing fleeting moments—and the best of those moments can stir a range of emotions in us. When we feel more emotions, we feel more alive; when we feel more alive, we can remember those moments better than others.
I guess kind, considerate, and compassionate people try to catch those fleeting moments without costing the happiness of others. To too many, unfortunately, such qualities thus prove to be hindrances in their rat race. But as Morrissey said, “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate. It takes guts to be gentle and kind.”
Non-Narrative transportation
The sky moves. Cassiopeia moves from above us to Greece overnight—faster than a human could get there. It essentially teleports. But to the naked human eye, we cannot witness it moving toward Greece. It simply stays still like an illusion as the Earth spins madly on.
MY POETRY
Time
Seizing the moment;
chasing temperamental time.
…Relinquishing logic…
Only need for rhythm and rhyme.
So elusive, and yet perpetually prevalent;
to me, it seems,
Time is available only to those who live in the moment.
Always wanting more,
never sure what we’re living for,
our stones (once true)
have become legend and lore.
“What is life?” answers Love.
“I asked no question,”
responds the sky above.
“You interrupted my passion,”
the Earth echoed, livid,
but in her anger life has never been more vivid.
Sunset
The symbolic sun: an icon of cycle.
Everything is one. Are we all but disciples?
…Such initial beauty…
Such a bittersweet demise…
Only ending, temporarily, to give another their
Sunrise.
Mold
I am clay to some omnipotent force
Plastered upon a table
Existing in a palpitating conundrum,
Where time can slowly pass and still feel too fast.
respite
I know a girl who whispers to me through the breeze,
Her mumblings whisked to me by the susurrus of trees.
She fills the air with a crescendo that silences my mind,
She numbs my heart with platitudes yet to be undermined by the furrows of time.
Her romance is sweet and yet to be undone by the embitterment of bathos,
A look into her eyes makes me feel complete and champion to her charm—citing reasons of logos, ethos, and pathos.
Snow
Snowflakes tumble,
Downwards,
Slowly,
Surely,
Sinking, Flowing,
To
The
Ground.
The clouds crumble,
shimmering,
as Mother Nature hums these words profound:
“The clouds; corrupted –
the cold;
what a numbing pain –
The air changed and, now, it can no longer rain.
As beautiful as it comes – the flaky, frozen rain –
It is snow.
It is not the same.”
racing thoughts
Your internal monologue is but the pen in your head, your eyes the window to inspiration, and the candor the canvas. But rather than paint, my pen writes. And when my thoughts race, my pen is trying an assortment of inks — trying to find the color that rings true.
seasons
As life goes on,
I can’t help but question my place.
My face gets long,
My thoughts feel raced.
I wonder who I am,
And if I’m made of soot.
I ponder if I’m a lamb,
Or another tree’s root.
Time makes me less dumb,
Yet accustomed to spite.
Rhyme seems to make it all more fun,
Yet never turns the wrongs into rights.
But it helps to know I’m unique;
for all of us have a special way.
It helps to know I’m not concrete;
I’m a soul striving to navigate Earth’s bay.
a middle way?
I ponder the morrow of yesterday,
I let it be; a thing of the past.
I wonder about tomorrow’s today,
I let it go; nothing but seconds which will soon & forever pass.
Things occur, with a cadence of life stubbornly remaining obscure.
I test time, as my brain’s tongue slurs numb juxtapositions into sonic purrs.
Moments are never ours, but we number the minutes so they may turn into hours.
Why are happenings sought, yet rarely bought by browsers?
As the euphoria of life mysteriously ebbs on and on, all a soul can do is try to spin its melody into a sweeter song.
my diagnosis
It’s a sham when thoughts both
Allude and confront you,
But it’s not a shame.
It’s like butter and jam when feelings
Both comfort and betray you,
But this is not enjambment.
If it were, this
Poem
Would
Make
Cents.
Hope
A waddling leg,
An uncomfortable right.
Nothing like a good chegg
To make my night right.
Happiness presides in the simplest minds.
But virtue stems like an easter egg
That stems from unhappy times.
Times are unhappy,
Virtue is true,
Time will get better,
And so will you.
sunkist
A frozen flower
Kempt by the night
In the better hour
Un-withered by sunlight.
Some can’t tolerate real beauty
Stifled by their absence of courage
Capitalizing upon vulnerability
They cower for a love they can’t forage.
Blooming so that it may blossom
It has found a better air
Realizing that life is awesome
This flower has finally found flair.
One of those many
A man without a care
Tramples this peony
Wearing a boot and a lazy glare.
Spoiled in soil yet unrotten
In turmoil at last
Soon it will be forgotten
But far too fast.
iDeemed
A venomous tongue
A crazed cobra
Rattling a tail
That doesn’t exist.
Identifying triggers
threatening fangs..
…Ready to deliver a stupefying glaze…
Snaking along my mystifying mental maze.
Witness to intrepid desire;
i abstain
my finger upon the gas-lever of a Bic
i remain numbed
By
a prevailing, assailing, cold gaze.
Butt I am unbitten.
physical chains bind me down
while
mental games wind me up.
Money isn’t everything; jealousy bites
for these thoughts I am deemed crazed
for this mindset my feelings sway:
sideways.
Inside the Iron Box
I’m drawn to the point,
I beg to see moments.
I’d choose to chase cars,
something Simple.
What if life comes from what we question?
stuporous & unbigoted
(Co-Written by Victoria Sibeleski)
My end goal is to be a sweet soul.
My lonely role exists in defying society's pull.
Was I, in my generation, born wrong?
Or does each era truly sing the same song?
Does my pen wick along?
Does my ink not belong?
Lately, seeing through the lens of intoxication makes me susceptible to self-contemplation rather than self-deprecation.
Is it something vain to consider oneself unique when others see themselves the same?
But if every soul is a raindrop—a snowflake—it’s unkempt by its own Pressure Gradient Forces; bound by the wind.
And in our life so ruled by wealth, is the only commonality death itself? Or is it the breadth of mutual interception?
Does an understanding amplify my moral standing or a lack of morality?
In this world, is gratifying wordplay a sort of form of foreplay?
Is she lustful, or is she trustful? Are those even antonyms?
We look at God
And think slight-of-him to allow things fraud
and violent.
To be lame,
To sound cliché,
We can never put demons away
Without keeping suffering at bay.
So, is misfortune karmic debt, or pessimism we interpret?
A depressive triad,
A caput triangle of hope,
A journey to the Iliad,
With a whole lot of nope.
passages
All those electrons,
They bust about my brain,
Like Jimmy Neutron,
They’ve found their claim.
A thought with a cyst,
They’re empty and many,
A thought with a kiss,
They’re gone but brainy.
Here’s a bump in your step,
Left to follow its own way,
Here’s a lump in your left,
Bereft of its stay.
If i were to think,
A thought past its brink,
Would my thought go?
Or would it know?
Like a wave of yellow,
time refrains without saying hello,
Moments last, tamed & mellow.
And my mind remembers:
jello.
Music is like a beat,
A thump of the heart,
Music isn’t discreet,
Its eyes show tart.
Dime-peace
the sand can never be plenty.
her little rocks make up no whole.
its beach is Butt my benign currency,
a way to strip without a pole.
i’m a nowhere boy,
i sit upon a plane.
i’m a someone somewhere,
otherwise I’m plain.
i have money to give,
but I think none of it.
i have money to spend,
but why not glove it?
the world is only mine,
only for the time being,
my world is wrapped in vine,
with creeps only creepier and creeping.
my ego is not yours,
your ego is mine.
but we’re one in another,
we’ll meet sometime.
sometime time will see;
sometime time will know.
i was meant to see;
life is one big show.
i am a god-send,
i nailed the latest trend.
watching others trying to blend in,
My Followers prove that i win.
i’m
a memorabilia;
a chase
that’ll be lost in time.
a sycophantical trivia;
the view
from my summit
is
sooooo
worth
a
c̶l̶i̶m̶b̶
d̶i̶m̶e̶
rhyme.
Guv's tale
A stymied stirrup slipping by slopes.
Syrup is a hoax.
A plain Piping Plover plays by pain.
Wait, don’t go, a Following line is sane.
Undoing logic with emotional fervor, every controller wants to be your savior.
Creating scandal where calculations could exist, playing on your fears like pork is out on a fiery spit.
The disillusioned, abiding by delusions, vying for a believable illusion.
Pointing fingers and hoping for a “bruisin’”—albeit never aware they’ll be the ones losing.
Facts matter only if you’re lame, but being “lame” is the name of survival’s game.
Out of wack is an easy tale to exclaim, but poetry is never easy to profess nor proclaim.
Swoon < Moon
In time comes my station
Its plume of smoke drowning heather.
It’s cargo as light as a feather,
My horses gallop brazenly unclever.
They’re chasing me
And I’m chasing them
We both flee fallen trees
That were put together by men.
We dive into a current
Hooves and hands alike
One mind in torment
The other in the fight.
Together, we take flight.
Then the stones are found
Those that are never ours
For the world will have gone round
In what took 72 hours.
dreaming
What a dream, what a dream,
To live a life lacking misery.
What a dream.
What a place to find you,
Unable to tell yourself what’s what,
What a matter of untruity,
To lack the insight to judge what is what.
Here I am, listening to my lack of decades.
But here I lie,
crying in the miseries that have superseded me.
Let yourself fly
Like a diamond in the sky.
But let these words ring true,
That me from you was brought from to and too.
dumb luck
Time is fun,
Luck is dumb,
Things tend to happen,
When we want to be young.
Love is real,
Hearts are yours to steal.
It all lasts one night until it’s dawn,
It’s the sort of thing society deems wrong.
Faith can be kind,
But only to a simpler mind.
The truth rings a bell,
And the world seems to think that is hell.
Noble Peace
To the plains I’ll find
Some sort of time.
Moments to lapse
Seconds to fulfill.
Things weigh heavy on my mind
Like drops of rain upon a windowsill
They’ll only ever comfort the foggy view.
People allude,
all the time,
that they themselves may crucify my mind.
Might black prove them wrong?
Might pain make their pleasure long?
Imperceptible Nun-sense
The movement of the moon,
a rude force to the tides.
The pruning of the tune,
a crude undertaking of the tried.
The waning of Her
—the rock—
with us
—Her supervisors—
in tow;
recording its effect on our clocks
but never ours to know.
Steps are larger up there, our lassoes can only travel in thought, inept seems a simple prayer… when a Rocket ship can soon be bought.
Answers we’ve sought,
questions we’ll find,
the cosmos can’t be caught,
time is a construct we’ll never unwind.
Dog of pray
A wolf kills a sheep,
Is The Shephard to blame?
Hunted with a graceful leap,
But a murder all the same.
Blood has stained wool,
Teeth have satiated hunger.
But who is the fool,
A man may only wonder.
Bound to spell
A night matters less
When it’s spell-checked.
Thoughts carry bliss,
Less so when weight-checked.
I have a girl,
Who means me & mine.
When I let poetry unfurl,
She murmurs the sigh of Valentine.
Go with your rhythm,
Rhyme before you whine,
Slowing down isn’t prison,
Quit climbing a lie.
Never know a distance,
Never question a saying,
Never doubt an awning
Of your own laying.
I’ll bring to the fore
The second from above,
But I’ll never wonder
What was a dove.
Bookworm ≤ Impact
Social media can be
A moribund landscape.
Pinkies up with tea;
Highlights caught on tape.
The majority lost, stultifying duties,
Getting trapped in their wishful mind.
Shirking responsibilities
Wishing they could combine
Coconut and Lime
On island time.
Stuck in the shadows of the palm trees,
Behind the phone screen
A silver platter glistens and pleads,
Isn’t my life a dream?
Adroitly,
lousily,
I pick up
On my size.
Treading in the
palpable waves of existentialism
that
exist
in the tides of afterthought…
Like
what’s the point
of working for the judgement of others,
of wasting time haughtily passing judgement on others,
when we’re all simply worm-food in the end?
I’d rather live my own life.
To love
And be loved in return.
eons for echelons
My head oftentimes wicks my heart asunder; emotions feather and flicker out like ashes.
… my soul wants to sail
but only if the wind of my thoughts fill it or the tide seems tidy.
my intentions can be what I want them to
but only if I grip the tiller of my psyche…
Thoughts make stories and stories are a form of gold, letting imagination slip by is like putting your life on hold.
Solicited Advice
Practice humbleness.
Break into the sonder.
Embrace otherworldliness.
Let your soul ponder.
… As your senses suck in the present, allow seconds to seep in like heavy drags. And as you bask in the particularly pleasant, reject the allure of empty brags…
Grab the guise that unveils your blues
by releasing the reins of what’s unpredictable.
Flag those tags that trail flags untrue
by funding the moments that make time atypical.
Glary The Stale
A snail tells a tale
from a mile away
as a Pale shovel goes to hovel
the sandcastle that can no longer stay.
Down in the salty murks,
a Spidercrab weaves a Lie.
Over at the factory works,
a Simple Man asks, "Why?"
The chimney hums to a bubble,
as the mistress sits to behold,
the CEO, meanwhile, befuddled,
simply confounded at how little he will owe.
In this life (or the next)
his Karma procrastinates.
Tomorrow (or the next)
his debt will learn to levitate.
But here am I,
the mere Writer-at-Hand,
swept up by the Current of Time
meant to become understood by
another man
in
a
distant land.
Toeing a Line
A fisherman’s tug,
via the woven crab line,
the tackle lugged
silencing a mind no less cumbersome than mine.
He and I bury each other in our demons
all while sharing our treasure,
our feelings fleeting
and our hearts growing harder to measure.
We blast to our different pasts,
not so foregone from our similar future,
with no sails upon our masts
as we unlearn lessons from barking teachers.
So here we’ll lay,
beach-wrecked upon our very own shores.
And here we may well stay,
if difficult conversations leave us less sober than before.
An Unfinished Jack Daniels
🥃
A white hat,
At a table so cold.
Without Kiki,
Our words can’t run bold.
We keep the wood warm,
With the promise of a fire,
We keep the conversation torn,
Over the plundered pillars of a worn pyre.
Visiting loved ones,
Their hearth remains temporary.
Trivial platitudes,
Their worth feels unnecessary.
An orange palpitates,
Pulpy and sprung,
A memory stores,
What was once young.
