Thoughts on Self-Actualization.

Self actualization is like GPS in so far that it tells you where you are, but not how to survive the environment in which you find yourself. 

The focus on outward inequality manifested an internal inequality: the acceptance of self-disposability. It makes it impossible to find moderation due to singular adjustments never considered the “I”. 

I am incomplete and whole. Still, in that moment a painting of what had only been dreamt became the reality never known. A stranger in my old life, strange in my own life and estranged from leaving recognized where I once stood, supposing the silent wish was received to feel free from being currently remembered as the old me.

A Song for SM

People screaming that one should need you while communicating from a distance
Missing love of touch and shared laughter,
caught on the fence of aesthetic

To desire quietly is your existence sent forth
feeding on the unfulfilled nature of fire and ash
Binary messages sent of obligation to show attention
driving away the meaning of blooming existences

It is the normalized addiction of Self that makes ego complicit
where mirrors are windows and rain is the sadness beneath
So to sing a song, not of praise but admonished disdain
is what helps to keep me away from your need for attention

You became a prison for life, where connections are made through glass,
where conjugal friendships are the quo and kisses are distant
So in the spirit of a connection since gone,
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
I love you Maya Angelou for telling the story of the caged bird.

Unentitled

Walking down the bicycle path

With bits of sand blowing by

Thinking about the beautiful setting

And used panties on the sand

Shades of white, blazing orange as

A salty breeze makes me shiver

Like the notifying buzz that told me

More people were shot and that

I shouldn’t trust the clouds

So the end of the trail is in sight

And I realize just then,

I brought a bike.

A Musing, Thoughts by: Skip Eng Kahmas

1. Slamming ones face on piano keys will painfully remind a person that facing the music will often be out of tune.
2. Rapid, fire, pauses with: no break, but eggs so shells can be avoided, if for no other reason than: discomfort with yoke to keep up, the fashion, cart pulling, instructions ignoring beast and just for identifying.
3. Coffee beans, for kick they say, but I doubt it for no other reason than because I see the writing on the tea leaves. They say, “sleep”.
4. There’s a light outside my window, it doesn’t light up the street, instead it lights up my ceiling as I try to sleep. “Wake up!” it cries, coming from over the horizon, so I look at the clock and realize, it’s still three a.m. and I, non-dream err…not fully awake like a purring cat waiting on its prey, or God waiting on their pray.
5. If water were alive, would it drown?
6. I had a bottle of water, now it’s gone. It was on the windowsill, which now the window is down. Stay up and breezy, the sun, my love, is rising.
7. Did we follow instructions?
8. ,
9. It’s funny how something meant to cause a momentary, split-second, pause usually doesn’t. It didn’t fail at the job because we, of utopian ideals, didn’t acknowledge it. We, of believing the worst, invalidated it by gaslighting its function, it’s existence – existing.

Fin.

Victorious Ruins

I want to share a story, so hopefully it doesn’t end up being too long since I know most won’t bother with a long post, but this is one of those moments that deserve a little time.

 

As most of you know, I’m currently working on my Bachelor degree after years of choosing to work and mostly fucking around. In this chase to finally attain my degree, I have found myself in the wonderful situation of being able to study abroad. As I sat in my apartment at UC Irvine contemplating a possible pivot point to expand my life, specifically my college experience, I began to consider studying abroad. I was studying German for the language requirement, but because of my degree in English, an uncertainty of going to Germany to study felt incredibly distant. After much contemplation I boiled down my choices to two locations: Auckland, New Zealand and Berlin, Germany.

 

Both offered vastly different experiences that would give me a deeper and richer sense of being, but I couldn’t decide because New Zealand offered peace and natural serenity and Berlin offered a unique challenge of needing to learn a language faster and an abundance of youthful activities such as clubs and an endless list of festivals. So as is my way when it comes to meaningful and possibly life altering decisions, I flipped a coin. This leads me to the purpose of writing this.

 

On Friday, after completing a second round of an intensive language program, we were finally able to sign up for the language courses that we’ll be taking during the Winter Semester. I stood in front of the board that held our recommendations for which level we should probably take and when I found my name, instead of listing a level, it simply said “Beratung” (or counselling). I was flustered because these levels were supposed be recommendations by our teacher, but that seemed to not be the case. I spoke with my teacher about what he recommended I do, as I assumed they said beratung to imply I should speak with my teacher, and he said he didn’t know. So I followed up with what his assessment of my language skills were and the crux of what he said was that I had a large vocabulary but I didn’t know how to utilize it properly. I sorta chuckled and said, “As it is with life, right?” He didn’t seem as amused as I was.

 

So after this interaction I went to speak with the person behind the registration table and it ended up being the teacher that would be teaching the class I wanted to sign up for. He said he wanted to speak with my teacher as the paper had suggested and so I complied. They spoke very briefly, and as is my way of pretending I know much less German than I actually do, but the heart of the conversation was that my teacher felt it may be too difficult for me because he’s a good teacher and I didn’t get A’s on every test. They both looked at me and my future new teacher looked at me and asked if I knew that it was going to be difficult. I said yes. Then my smarmy current teacher said, “And you’re okay with failing? Because it’s going to be hard and more advanced…” and without skipping a beat I replied, “Yes.” He looked shocked and asked again, this time with an inflection, “You’re okay with failing?” and again I replied with a firm “Yes.” He just said alright and walked away and my new teacher seemed to relax a little and we spoke about the class in a little bit more length, as he told me about a couple of resources I could use to help me in his class.

 

This is where the story ends and an explanation on why I wanted to share this story begins. Failing, despite what most schools and people would lead you to believe, is never an option because it’s always a plausible reality. We can no more control success than we can avoid failure and pain. This, however, provides an experience that is innumerable and empowering. A parallel that I often make to myself is with life and death. We know we will not live forever and so a majority of life is spent on finding various ways to live. If I know that failure is inevitable, then it pushes me to want to learn as much as I can in the process of it. To experience all I can, to learn all I can, and to love the moments that will make up this failure. There is no need to despise a defeat because victories feel better. We only need to love and embrace the understanding that once we are victorious, we move onto the next failure. We move through our own evolution focusing too much on the outcome and minimally bearing witness to our greatness and the exponential experiences. You, my friend, are great. You, my friend, are loved. You, my friend, are a beautiful failure. Now go live.

Answers of Consciousness

Self-awareness is only possible when we recognize the boundless capacity of those outside of our Self. The existential understanding that I am only possible because of the concurrent state of Being that is both am and am not. There is no superiority in this knowledge, only a truth that each individual experience is universal because that is what must be in order to be greater than our own awareness. 

Fax Life

One of the most interesting aspects of life is that no matter what “stage” you’re currently in, you will constantly have to reassess priorities, wants and needs. We wish and desire to put it off, but as we get older, we realize how foolish that is for certain things and so we just sort of…do it without thinking too tough about it.

Subconsciously deciding on such things as (although we hardly ever realize this is what we’re asking): What kind of experience do I want to have? What don’t I want, but more importantly, would I still be okay if it happened? Why and why not? Am I sacrificing or compromising? When we’re young, they get oversimplified to, “What do I want,” but miss the moon behind the pointing finger.

As we venture into the next place, it’s important to ask these things in order to confront the everlasting concern that begins with the questions above. To dive into the depths of what we’re really trying to find out. The existential investigation of “Who am I?”

Dreams (~Perhaps~)

Perhaps I was wrong. I didn’t read it right. I saw what I wanted because even though I’ve done my best to avoid it, I knew deep down that it is where I’d be found.

Perhaps I was misguided. It was just a kind gesture and nothing more. Pushing a pebble but making it a boulder, Sisyphus laughing the entire time.

Perhaps I was blind and didn’t want to know the truth. That I saw it and my doubts were valid, that I was wrong and my confidence was false.

Perhaps, like most days, I am making something out of nothing. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Shouldn’t there be a sign? Something from the divine telling me, “Yes…”?

Like a poster on the wall, these concerns will hang reminding me of a better time.

Perhaps, but none of those things matter much because the enjoyment was never intended to be mine.

Perhaps I’ll happily sit here and perhaps…I’ll smile as I close my eyes.

Impressionist Happiness

It all started in a place usually reserved for one.

Gazing into the blank, glossing over a moment that should have passed by in a blink. To the left was a classic framed by the future and to the right was a cold man standing too close to this sweet land. Shades moving about the light, chasing dreams of days gone, but also preserved for their delight.  Through all the noise of the colorful death, it was none of the hanging memories that covered the blue. No. It was silent introspection that I admired. I suppose that’s the wonder of observation, though. For far too long I’ve stood on the shores watching ships pass by, a candle lit on their bow in search of something with no end in sight. Standing back, being careful because assumptions plague the solace, contentment washing away the gray because some how that journey was not mine to be had.

Sure, I had it once, definitely twice, but ships pass all the time in the deep, dark night. I’ve waited, been impatiently patient to be certain that those conservative guards would see what I saw in this light. Do I speak and forcefully bring that look of peace I know so well? You know, the one that usually escapes me because I am not allowed to simply exist as me. Usually infinite thoughts too tiresome to count cloud my time between seconds, but for the first time in a long time, time is not measured by the iota. It is now time to depart. Head tilts and I feel it too, time to return to the place that I can only see as skewed.

In the beginning I was anxious and worried, perhaps my memory wasn’t real and neither was my impression. Perhaps like most of everything else, it was temporary, but I can’t escape this feeling. I have been seen. Such as the way of things, I look away because it is not meant to be, so I escape before I think things mattered…or so it seemed.

Hello my old friend.

“Hello. I am Happy.”

Falling Up; or Feet in the Clouds

There are days when I sit and I listen to friends, acquaintances and strangers explore the depths of their love, but ultimately say “I guess I just fell out of love.” That has always vexed me. I think, or at least imagine, that what it’s really like is having your world turned upside down, except because they weren’t ready, they felt like they were drowning. Stuck in a horizontal world, linear time and cyclical feeling, I’m sure that it, in fact, does feel like they’ve fallen out of love. They admit that their world was turned upside down, but if that were actually the case, then given the notion that their heads were in the clouds when it turned upside down, and they ended up falling again, then they’d either crash back into the hard earth (which I surmise is what usually happens, because now their life has a hard ceiling/limit) or while their heads were in the upper echelons of the universe, they fell into the ocean.

One of the most fascinating things to know is that our eyes actually transmit the the image of the world upside down, that it’s actually our mind that orientates the world we see and experience. If our world has truly turned upside down, then it’s important to remember that while we were in love, our heads were in the clouds. In this state, our imaginations roam and feelings swirl like the Northern Lights. We are in the sublime. When that ends, and our world turns upside down, we fall up. The loving state, the swoon and rush of emotions becomes our ground. It is what orientates us, allows us to feel like we’re finally standing upright, and we’re able to stand in space-time.

Then…it stops. Our hopes and dreams, expectations and intricacies we’ve become accustomed to, they become the pavement of the industrial and drab world we surfaced from that time ago. It’s cold and suffocating — it became a place we didn’t remember being — as we fly face first into the skyscrapers of sorrow and despair meant to keep us trapped and in control. SLAM! A belly flop into the a place we couldn’t imagine because it was hidden behind the lifeless constructs we build to protect us from a place indifferent. Those clouds, that love, the melting feeling as each hug warmed the stiff existence slowly burning away.