Finally - The Pallor of Death Removed

The sun beats down on my office window.
The cadence of dropping water beating time to my burdened heart.
Too long locked in the icy grips of death,
Too long diminished by surrounding darkness.
Too long the winter of my soul languishes in desperation.

But no, Spring is here - foul weather beside - today the sun is shining merrily on the dappled ice and snow of my fair city and I will wondrously come alive once more to the possibility of life.

And you? Does darkness burden your soul? Do you feel the binds of grayish clouds and mouldering cold? Do you, as this modern age has scientifically neutered language to express, feel SAD?

I remember when first I saw a television advertisement asking, plaintively, do you feel like you are on the outside in a group of people? Do you feel that you have trouble initiating conversation? New people make you nervous? Well, you may be affected with Social Anxiety Disorder and are in need of a complete chemical change of brain chemistry!

(as you can see, SAD means many things to many a sufferer)

No - Dammit - You are shy! This is not an illness to be born in shame! Shy people are necessary to make flirting far more fun! You do not need Xanax! You need a shot of rum and a lame joke up your sleeve to break the ice. Or sit in the background and watch people for God's sake. It is fun!

(Of course I write this while off my own meds - so take it with a grain of salt)

Seasonal Affective Disorder - another moniker adopted to try and de-normalize a normal feeling - is very real... why, when I was growing up we called it shack wacky - which is far more fun to say! All disorders are real, but they are not disorders, they are states of being - this is my point - Social Anxiety is shyness and is normal for most people to feel at some point. Seasonal Affective Disorder is the absolute pain of the soul which has us wake up to another morning of gray darkness and want to pull the covers over our tender frozen limbs.

Why is that not normal though? Do not even those who love to frolic in hell's forgotten ice crystals have mornings where they cannot get out of bed, or one snow storm too many which causes the snow shovel to be inexplicably snapped over the head of a well-meaning neighbour?

But the sun is shining.

I am sure there are those rare few disillusioned souls whose vampiric hatred of all that is good and light would cause them to cast a wearied gaze upon such majesty as our golden heavenly orb provides - but there are not many.

For most this is what life is about - sunshine pushing back darkness to the edge of reality, warmth carving its way through months of rock hard solidified ice, This my friends is the air of hope. It infuses us with the will to survive. It wends its way by snaking tendrils into our despair and awakens dreams.

For soon, we shall swim.

Becoming ME

I am not sure when it happens for most people - probably around five years old we begin to differentiate - to become someone other than an extension of our parents. But then it all slides into societal expectations, status seeking and even employment norms.

I mean, I rebelled, I really did. I was a punk with a pierced ear and a green mohawk. I wore black clothes and a dog collar before EMO even existed. When everyone pierced their ear again, I got two, then three.... and I was unique... Except... Looking back now I realize I was rebelling along a pre-determined track. I was not being original, I was being like my group of friends who were trying to intentionally not fit in because we thought the system was broken. How original. We all dressed alike and listened to the same music, we all ran away from home and experimented with the same drugs. We were SO unique.

As an adult I look at kids and see the same thing happening - them asserting independence by copying. Which is what we all do. We act a certain way to get friends, we answer questions a certain way to get good test scores, we work a certain way to get the money we need to survive... we fit in. Even if it is fitting in the way we actually want to.

If you are lucky, as I am, you tend to gravitate to certain people who see the world from your vantage point. I am a broken person who has dealt with a lot of pain - and I often find myself in the company of those who have loved and lost at most of life. We get each other.

I write and paint and think. That is what I do with my time. So I tend to find myself with other people who are creative thinkers and artists of one sort or another.

But I am closer to death than to birth.

And I still wonder who I am.

Does that ever go away? Do we ever break through the years of conditioning and the years of experience, the peer pressure and hard knocks that have sculpted us? Michelangelo famously described sculpting as releasing the beauty trapped within - and yes I am paraphrasing - so how do do that for ourselves?

Take a long hard look. I know certain truths even if I cannot always explain the psychological processes behind them. For example I love tattoos and piercings. It is just something I am drawn to. I used to only wear Doc Martins and Sandals. I need to go back to that (and Blundstones in the winter) I really love Rum. If I could be any historical person it would be Captain Jack Sparrow. I love to investigate, to see new things, to marvel at the beauty in a starscape. Science Fiction is my creative edge - it makes me think and dream. I always wanted to scuba dive and go to outer space - perhaps for the same sense of exploration. Which is also why I will hop into the car and drive for hours.

I am shy and yet I am outgoing. I am faithful to my friends yet I take unnecessary risks. I love to feel like I am in danger. Almost nothing in the world is black and white to me - and yet when I find something I like I stubbornly cling to it. I really don't care if I make money, I would rather do something new. I just want the money to get the rum, good restaurants, gas for the car, stuff for the ones I love, and trips to Disney.

My thinking has changed and evolved as life goes on - I do not believe there are only two sexual preferences, homo and hetero, I do not believe that love is finite and you can only feel it for one person, I do not believe that someone can or should be just like you.

Now - here is the catch - I do not know if any of that is me - or just the fallout of a lifetime of trying to do what people think I should do, be who people think I should be, live as society expects. You see, even the rebellious stuff might just be me rebelling in the way I think I should, who knows?

But I am trying. Every day I am trying. Trying to find me, trying to let go of others viewpoints, trying to believe that I am this way on purpose and it is a good thing.

I think we all should. Take some time and think about what you like and why. Separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak and be more authentically you. That is who you were intended to be and it is only then that we can find what we have been searching for.  Good Luck!

The Secret History of the Easter Bunny

Nay, nay, nay - say it isn't so! There is a deep dark hidden mysterious allegorical truth behind the Easter Bunny - and it has very little to do with Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail.

NO - the truth is much darker and comes from a time of our past cloaked in mystery and intentional obfuscation. And, (sharply inhaled breath) this cover up was done by the church.

Enter one of the most mysterious and misunderstood religious texts ever - the Smithfield Decretals.

Officially known as the Decretals of Gregory IX, this is a collection of canonical law ordered in the 13th century by Pope Gregory IX. Such collections were fairly common at the time, but what’s bizarre about these decretals is the illustrations that went along with them. 

The Smithfield Decretals were created as an illuminated manuscript which was a style that combined illustrations and flowery calligraphy with the lettering. It was a painstaking and expensive process, because each drawing had to be done by hand. Again, nothing unusual about that; plenty of early religious texts did it. 

But when you dig through the copious illustrations in the Smithfield Decretals, you start finding some very weird things. Scattered throughout the pages are violent scenes of geese lynching a wolf, unicorns and yes, giant rabbits decapitating people.

I believe this is all a forgotten segment of history when our Rabbit Overlords, or Cloverlords as some are want to call them, were creating such havoc due to their hatred of humans in all their subtle guise that the church declared an outright ban on Rabbits in hierarchial authority. This was followed swiftly by the defrocking of the Bishop of Cabbage Patch.

In an attempt to reclaim the hearts and minds of the simple pagan populations the Cloverlords began a campaign of enduring mythology, in which rabbits were not only good, but benevolent - coming through our fields and forest to distribute chocolate and other sugary confections.

After all, if children start to see the giant rabbits as nothing but cheerful characters in spring fashion accessorized vests....they will forget the dark times of conquest.

So be wary, I say! Do not be complicit in this myth that hearkens us back to the brink of subjection! Do not believe in the goodness of rabbits. They are after all nasty feindish creatures with sharp pointy teeth....