Just be

The weather outside is truly frightening. Last night’s Ball Drop in Times Square was more akin to mercury falling! This is not a day when any of us need to be outside. Still my partner and I found time to do diner and a movie, while sneaking into another movie. Doubt and Slum-dog Millionaire, critically acclaimed to be the best movies of the year, were very good and entertaining. Doubt is fraught with excellent acting. The story was not so compelling though it offered interesting twists and character references. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymore Hoffman are the embodiment of real acting and know how to paint a character onto the silver screen. The young boys mother (i’m sorry but i do not know her name) had her five minutes to shine as well.

Slumdog millionaire was somewhat reminiscent of city of god and in many ways the end result was somewhat predictable, though its unfolding was enough to keep the story interesting. It showcast the inner bowels of india and is an ambassador for that country and for Bollywood ( The movie ended in true bollywood fashion with an outburst of dance through the credits. ) I think i’m spoilt and seeing a foreign film is not a novelty for me. For most, the experience is new and different but unfortunately, there are so many films off the beaten path that are just as good, if not better. This one just happened to make it to the mainstream. Its still a good movie and i highly recommend it

So there we have it..the first day of the year. Though not much has changed in the world, it is a new year and we can all, as Ghandi said, be the change that we want to see in this world (or something like that). There are still senseless wars going on and still an economic crisis. The wheels of our own personal crises still turn. At least an this January first we can all move towards some sort of resolve to have a better year. I have already begun my new years evolution that I spoke of 2 or 3 posts ago.

My co-worker and fellow blogger Arkiem declared today that he thinks he has ADHD. Then Catherine, another co-worker declared that she had ADD.

Are we a nation of hypochondriacs?

Before we knew of these illnesses werent we just HYPER? Just because I can’t sleep some night doesn’t make me an amnesiac. In fact, on other nights I could swear I was narcoleptic. This got me thinking or at least wondering why everything must have some sort of highfalutin LABEL. Aren’t label’s for clothes? Bottles? Why are we so quick to label everything.

Why can’t some things just BE?

Seasons

Amid fickle emotions

I move through the autumn of my life

stop, reflect, carry on.

Echoes of a scorching summer,

Sparkle, then fade to sinister shades of grey

I hang by the thread of serenity

Felt only at springtime

I wrap myself around October breezes

Wear the hours like weathered coats.

The wind kisses my face,

I gather mementos of disappearing colours

With a revelation, pregnant with purpose

I dive upwards and outwards

Black roses scurry through my veins

I prepare for the winter of my life

Beyond scarlet boundaries

I paint myself a pastel world

Loose hues that selfishly intertwine,

Bleeding into angelic whites

Where a newer spring awaits

Edit this entry.

Why wait to exhale?

Posted by: kevincrobinson on: December 28, 2008

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Its Sunday the official beginning of the week. I’m having lunch at the Chinese restaurant and reflecting on my day so far. I got up, grabbed some hot chocolate on my way to the train, read a few pages of the Pulitzer prize winning and all so engrossing “the brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao” on the train while listening to coldplay. In 15 minutes I was at work. My train ride is much too short and I can read all of 10 pages before it’s over ( its no wonder i can never finish these books on time)

Another typical Sunday of tedious operational procedures and watching the clock.

So it’s 5 and alas I’m at the bar at the intercontinental an 49th having a cosmo while I wait for my friend to get off work. We will probably head to another bar and have another drink. (it’s wonderful to be able to drink again) then maybe catch a bite to eat, a movie ( by then it will be too late for a Broadway show)

A typical Sunday catching up with an old friend and doing nothing of any great importance. In a city like New York we all need days like this. Tomorrow will be different but tonight All Is Well With The World. Why wait to exhale?

Night swallows cruel light
I move more comfortably
Beside the moon
above 49th street

I swing into existence
Bound only by the hours
celebrating the space I am in

Dark shadows conceal
What eyes cannot hide

Memories elevate me
Force remembrance
yesterday’s different space
Framed by today’s time

I am present
all is well in the world

Why wait to exhale?

Its Sunday the official beginning of the week. I’m having lunch at the Chinese restaurant and reflecting on my day so far. I got up, grabbed some hot chocolate on my way to the train, read a few pages of the Pulitzer prize winning and all so engrossing “the brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao” on the train while listening to coldplay. In 15 minutes I was at work. My train ride is much too short and I can read all of 10 pages before it’s over ( its no wonder i can never finish these books on time)

Another typical Sunday of tedious operational procedures and watching the clock.

So it’s 5 and alas I’m at the bar at the intercontinental an 49th having a cosmo while I wait for my friend to get off work. We will probably head to another bar and have another drink. (it’s wonderful to be able to drink again) then maybe catch a bite to eat, a movie ( by then it will be too late for a Broadway show)

A typical Sunday catching up with an old friend and doing nothing of any great importance. In a city like New York we all need days like this. Tomorrow will be different but tonight All Is Well With The World. Why wait to exhale?

Night swallows cruel light
I move more comfortably
Beside the moon
above 49th street

I swing into existence
Bound only by the hours
celebrating the space I am in

Dark shadows conceal
What eyes cannot hide

Memories elevate me
Force remembrance
yesterday’s different space
Framed by today’s time

I am present
all is well in the world

New Years E:Volution

While everyone is working on resolutions and reflecting on 2008 with much regret for what they never accomplished I will be celebrating successes and moving forward with my life. I always break my resolutions within a week or two because they are always contrived and unreasonable. Essentially I have never really had realistic new years resolutions but this year I feel as though I am at a turning point in my life so I’m about to embark on new and needful things. I don’t have the basic vices (quit smoking etc) and frankly, resolutions need to be much deeper. They need to involve some sort of paradigm shift.

This year instead of things that I should stop doing I will be making a list of stop start continue and resume. There are things that I need to stop doing, things that I need to start doing and things that I need to continue doing. In the mix are things that I need resume doing.

So for 2009 I will be completing my new years E:volution list.

The lexicon lists evolution as:

A process by which something passes by degrees to a different stage ( especially to a better and more mature state of being. )

Volution: A turn or twist about a center; A rolling or revolving motion.

This definition is quite apt. Evolution is gradual and doesn’t involve overnight successes. Evolution is a process. The end result is growth. It’s not only moving away from things but also moving towards something else. You must move towards. It the midst of this transformation one must always maintain one’s core…one’s center…one’s fundamental state of being. Though things fall apart, the center MUST hold.

Let us hope that we do not spend another year in limbo.

Another Year in Limbo

Remind me, oh sweet weary life,

That you are still worth living

Assure me that the thief of time

Will deliver me from pathos

Disguise me as I marinate in this labyrinthine aura

Ignore me, while I dress in black

And mourn my fading faith

No hope of harvesting flowers from this shallow grave

While twilight engulfs the atmosphere

I cannot discern if night is becoming,

Or morning breaks new ground

My head held low in palms outstretched

My sentence now delivered

Another year to wax melodramatic

The eve of my undoing

I resign myself to chipping along

As the puppet master flickers

Assure me, Oh sweet weary life

This Limbo soon will end

Face Your Fears

So I’m blogging from the waiting room just before they undress me and cut me open. I love my IPhone. It facilitates reality blogging. I hate hospitals but somehow this doesn’t seem like one. Internet Kiosks, Starbucks the Maury Povich show, latest issues of magazines a cute Jamaican receptionist that gives me true Jamaica labrish ( that’s just plain Jamaican talk for those who don’t know). So things really aren’t that bad here.it’s almost like a mini-vacation and since I just came back from Key West I will just file this under the same category

So it’s been 2 hours and the procedure went perfectly well . I have to lay still for 2 hours do here I an reality blogging again. So I faced yet another fear and it wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would’ve been. So here we are with another lesson learned .

Face you fears.

Things are never as bad as we predict them to be. Certainly things can be bad but we are predisposed to make them worse. We just need to accept things for what they are and then deal with them the best way we can. Some things can’t be swept under the carpet…….I mean what if you have parquet floors or tiles?(who does carpet these days anyway?)

Might as well just face the music while you can.

I share with you two poems. Willoughby Lake and Gunstock. These poems represent 2 different vacations. Gunstock is the name of the Ski Resort I went to last Christmas, and Willoughby Lake is the resort in Vermont that I went to this Summer. Two very different locations, two very different experiences.

Gunstock

Sway in

claim your space

white frames white

Glide

Past burrows

Make new trails

in my mind

Angel in snow

Wings outstretched

Do not catch my fall

lift me instead

Outside,

I feel at home

Around corners

Through the brownest eye

You are always

in season

Willoughby Lake

The trails were different

Time paved other paths

I feel

different

Ancient waters creep

Where the hills kiss the sky

I stay frozen in the heat

Streamline my existence

Flow towards some great ocean

I had almost forgotten

What peace there is in silence

Where your breath

Provides the soundtrack

Cascading with my heart’s beat

Floating atop great fathoms

Side by side

Looking left

Turning the right way

Ending where we began

At the gardens of the path of life.

I share these two poems together because they are both based on the same foundation of love. They contrast each other yet are similar. There are a lot of hidden sybolisms here which would take too much time to explain, but it is up to you to interpret the poems as you see fit.

Hello World

LET THINGS GO

This blog is long overdue. In my chaotic, colourful sometimes mellow world, at long and laboured last, here I am and feeling somewhat liberated. Today, on the eve of my “Cerebral Angiogram”I’m finding time to kill. I used to have no time to KILL. a few months ago I was either going to the gym, playing tennis, reading a book from my book club (www.readersdelight.ning.com), writing poetry (whether by myself or with my mentor Sally), watching some obscure independent or foreign film, struggling through the latest (and sometimes difficult) level of a video games, balancing my never-balancing budget, on the phone arguing with my Lawyer or some other seemingly significant task.

Today, I’m blogging …just writing it all down for better or for worse. When I had my stroke back in August, I wasn’t as terrified as I should have been. I learned the lessons that I needed to learn and i have slowed myself down a little ( ok..a lot) but I am no longer missing the flowers on the roadside that I should have stopped to admire. I am happy to still be here.

I’m doing this procedure tomorrow so I can get off the medication that supposedly is preventing me from having another stroke. This medicine (Coumadin) was originally designed as rat poisoning. Leave in to me to see the poetry in all of this- as the Smashing Pumpkins so aptly put it…”despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage”. There’s a poem looming here.

I’ve decided that with every blog entry (as few as I foresee these to be) I will try to publish one of my poems so here goes. Each poem that I have written represents either something going on in my life, or the world at large. They represent pain, love and beauty, hope and despair. They sometimes transcend space and time. They imitate and celebrate life’s beauty and its richness..as well as its pain and explore its meaning or mysteries thereof.

I wrote this over 2 years ago and it is one of my more straight forward poems. It was written right after I cut my dreadlocks off. For those who wondered why I cut my dreads off, the reason’s are buried here…just a little bit deeper than my roots:

Deeper than these roots

This episode runs deeper,

Grows darker,

Is more boundless

Than the edge of the universe,

And the center of these ruins

Light years passed,

Between this rock,

And that ocean

What was there is now here

high tide has come

Will this free me from bondage?

A jailhouse,

And safe haven

I embraced for eons

This mood runs more eerie

Oh what furor!

And what satire!

What role have I played?

Supporting actors missed the cue

I am no longer comfortable

In this God-forsaken skin

Where happiness and balance

Evaporate like ghosts of me

This flowing crown a symbol

Used and marked for deletion

Will this loose me from the wreckage?

In this purgatory

Have I found a way to tip the scale?

This is deeper than my roots.

So there you have it. Trimming my locks was a sort of re-invention and it worked somewhat. There are lessons to be learnt here. I am still the same person that I was with the hair, but, the physical change represented a paradigm shift. I felt and looked like a new person and my attitude towards many things changed. A look in the mirror always reminded me that I needed to be different now and I was in many many ways. So you know what…it worked. I kept my hair in a bag for about a year. That meant that there were things that i needed to let go of but couldn’t quite release. A year later, when I had completed my mini-metamorphosis, I threw it out with that days garbage and never looked back.

My only regret is that I could have fetched a couple hundred dollars on ebay, or I could have donated my hair to chemo victims. This is a simple sorrow but now I know better. I’ve learn that in everything you do, think of a way that you can benefit others. Even a simple act of throwing something ( anything) out that no longer benefits you could make someone else happy (I sometimes think of the little bald headed girl that could be running around with my flowing locks on her head) Of course, as with all things, I had to let it go.

Life becomes so much easier when we learn to “LET THINGS GO“

The Audience is Listening

Success favours an audience but failure simply cannot exist without one.

Everyone is worried about how we will be remembered but the question is how will I remember me?

How am I living up to my expectations?
Am I on my way to becoming a better version of me?

Am I not my biggest audience? My harshest critic?

last night in the gym I was disappointed that I could only lift a fraction of what I lifted 5 months ago. I was bothered by the fact that everyone else was tearing down the gym while I was just coasting along with baby weights.

5 months ago I made it to the final 8 of my tennis league but could not play in the finals. I could have viewed this as a disappointment but instead I saw it as progress. I didn’t win but I was in the finals. Isn’t that a build on last year?

5 months ago I couldn’t even go near a gym or tennis court much less lift weights. I thought to myself isn’t this progress? Isn’t this a success in itself?

Eventually I’ll get to where I was in my weight training and exceed that. This summer I know I’ll make it to the finals so I can focus on contending the trophy.

Everything happens in increments and I am making progress even if I’m the only one who knows it.

I am my audience and the audience is listening.

Yield

Close to midnight

I am revealed

Silver line in a blackening sky

Where I tried to pass for Jupiter

My two friends outstretched

Wait for my hand

Pull me back from quiddity

Make liquid skies bearable

stillpoint

In this dimly lit room

While potential lovers steal moments

Away from her

Spotlights mapmake my mind

Expose a need for help

Footprints In my sands of time

carve untold stories

Seen through other caring eyes

As I fight the salt in mine

and yield

I have been criticized for not being more explanatory with my poetry but I hold on to the belief that poetry is open to interpretation and should not be so definitive. As my mentor Sally said the other day, I could write a poem about a lampshade and someone could swear it’s about their hat.

That to me is the beauty of poetry…your own interpretation. Though some pieces are straightforward there are other pieces that are abstract and are meant to be clandestine and therein lies the beauty of it all.

Take for instance the opening lines of this poem “Close to Midnight, I am revealed” What does this really mean? Is it something that happened near midnight? Does midnight really represent the time, or is it symbolism for a change that is about to happen since midnight represents the start of a new day? or is it the end of something else? I am revealed…is there a secret that is being exposed? A moment of truth forced or otherwise? An expose of something bad or something good?

It is really up to you the reader to make some sense of these words. Perhaps the key to the true meaning lies in the lines that follow. I leave it up to you.

(I really don’t want to be that transparent so that everyone can see right through me). Don’t we all want to appear somewhat mysterious? Can we at least leave some things to the imagination. Isn’t a peek-a-boo bodice more appealing than just a bare chest?