Greed is a bottomless pit...

There is no end to greed; However, I find it interesting that greed and selfishness seem to be infinite in our society, yet those who chase after it with such fervor and disregard for all else, still manage to become bottom-dwellers. How does one lurk upon the bottom of a black hole? Amazingly enough, the egocentric sloths find a way to drain all others around them, and seek satisfaction from a source of infinite emptiness...and yet still find time to ponder why people treat them poorly, omit them from their lives, or why on earth life isn't smiling on them in the fashion which they desire. Must just be bad luck right?


Why do these soul-sucking wastes of space still manage to exist in our lives no matter how much we refuse to accept bullshit from people? Because they're a sneaky breed: part ninja, part vampire, part parasite, this particular creature sneaks beneath the radar with their ninja skills, sucks kindness like a vampire, and then latches on, somehow tricking their host into believing they NEED to be fed.

Thankfully, the genuine people of the race can usually use their own Ninja skills to avoid these filthy, spirit-siphoning leeches; I however, have not always been so lucky.

I've got a well-constructed suit of armor that protects my heart. Keys to surpass it are available, but are not easily obtained. Once you've passed the test, however, you're rarely denied entry. It's one of my biggest flaws. I refuse to take bullshit and I cherish those who have managed to secure a place inside my heart. However, sometimes I misjudge and accept a leech disguised as a decent person; Once I become aware of said misjudgment, I fall upon the same quandary that likely occurred in the first place: everyone fucks up, everyone does things which they later may not be proud of; isn't it my obligation to stick by those whom I call friends, even when they screw up? It's a blurry line between repeatedly screwing up, epitomizing selfishness, and just falling off of the right path and acting like an ass as a result. The former looks a lot like the latter; until it finally goes way too far.I'm trying to sharpen that line. Selfishness is an affliction I'm not willing to deal with. I try my utmost to be a good person and to treat people with respect, kindness, and understanding. I will continue to do so, but in order to alleviate the tension that this attempted soul-sucking creates, I have to sometimes throw it out there in hopes that I'll allow myself to gain a greater understanding of how to combat it sooner.

Bottom line: I will give until I have nothing left; however, the people who deserve it are there to replenish the reserve. For the bottom-dwellers, I only have this: Tread lightly on the backs of those you trample while you try to get to the top; chances are, they'll eventually walk out from underneath you and you'll plummet. Good luck flying.

The Fortune Teller's Tent

You wander into the tent, a little skeptical, a little curious. You may know where you're going, but do you really want to know your final destination? You want to know what will happen with your career, your family, your whirlwind social life? I think that everyone wonders; everyone dreams of a perfect life in which they are able to achieve every goal and desire. Some may even be inherent; i personally think the desire for love is inherent, and that life is about fulfilling it. It's a multi-faceted road through chaos that we're living, but that happens to be a pretty significant facet in the lens through which I view life. So let's take a gander into the crystal ball, shall we?

Giddy infatuation, butterflies, need, desire, passion, insatiability, curiosity…
Constantly thinking about someone, missing them when they’re gone, thinking about someone when you open your eyes in the morning, allowing them to invade your head while you complete menial tasks, not wanting to sleep because a dream will likely fall short.

It’s not love. But it could be; if you’re one of the lucky ones who finds the person for whom you’d risk your heart, because one minute of the feeling in the depth of your soul is absolutely worth that risk. If you’re lucky, you might find it once. If you’re really lucky, you might find it multiple times. And others just might not ever run into what some consider to be the reason to live and breathe. It isn’t about success in a career, about the hobbies you love, about the places you go…all of these things might help to comprise the person who you’ve become or who you long to be, and thus I make no implication that these types of things are unimportant. However, the intangible, the things which you feel so deeply that they remain imprinted long after twinges of emotion may have subsided, the daily interaction with people who make an impression so deep that you think of them long after they’ve disappeared from your life, or continue to think about them with such incredible levels of affection, even after seeing them every day for years…it’s these things that make life worth living.

And then slowly, like a burglar creeping in through the window, or a spider weaving a web in the corner above your front door, life gets in the way. One forgets to kiss the one to whom they came home, fails to ask about the day they’ve had. They forget the times they’ve been hurt, devastated, heart-broken, betrayed; and they begin to lose sight of what it means to love, to care about someone, to think about them and consider their feelings within each action. They crawl into bed at night, a car length-divide between two disconnected bodies; two sets of eyes, staring at opposing walls, listening to the guarded breathing of the one whose back is turned to them in a stilted effort to ignore the sneaking wonder of what went wrong. Love can be everything, but to some people, it’s a state of being which they never seem to grasp; one through which they can never wade because they are too caught up with the only life preserver they have…the one for themselves. People change, evolve, life happens; but actual love is so deeply rooted that when the shit hits the fan, it may waver, it may become shaken and damaged, but it doesn't end. This is where I find issue with marriage, commitment, social interaction in general; too many humans lose sight of how to treat each other and the indescribable value of finding genuine, amazing people with whom you can be yourself.

Love is that moment when in the middle of an angry, disagreement, the object of your affection smiles at you and the anger dissipates. You remember how lucky you are to have found something so pure. You look at the way he smiles, hear the way he says your name, and you remember that life lies within the ability to love and be loved.

The people at Hallmark have been trying to put the most effective words to use for years, to display love in a way that can illuminate the feeling that makes a heart continue to beat. I’m truly not trying to do such. I don’t wish to define love or preach about how it feels or the importance of it. I merely voice my opinion to express how important it is to me.

I fight commitment like an onset of the swine flu. I like to be alone, I need space, room to be who I am without question and criticism; but also room to grow and improve and thrive with people who understand my flaws and love me for them, not just in spite of them. I fight the idea of relationships because I think that there are too few people in the world who truly understand love and view it in the way which I’ve grown to see it. I don’t imply that my way is the only way, or even the right way. However, it is my way. My armor is more reliable than my AmEx card and you can bet your ass, I don’t leave home without it. It’s a tough fucking world and I don’t take kindly to being wounded. However, I don’t wear the armor out of fear, I wear it to fight off the wounds that don’t even deserve to touch the skin; then I have time for those that are worth the pain, because as a wise man once mentioned: everyone is going to hurt you, you just have to figure out which ones are worth the pain. So I make my way through the world, happy with who I am, happy with the life I’ve built for myself and the interactions I’ve been privileged enough to have encountered. There have been some ugly ones and there are quite a few dents and gashes in that suit of armor, but they merely show that I’ve lived and haven’t spent my time afraid to step out onto the battlefield.

Life is about balance; striking a balance between your own needs and the needs of those whom you love; balance between work, family, friends, school, hobbies, errands; balance between the cooking, the cleaning, the sleep and the waking; the driving, the thriving, living and dying. Life is a house of cards, waiting for the slightest breeze to send those which are not properly balanced, tumbling to the ground. I don’t want to be alone forever; I think the need for companionship is inherent. However, I’m happy, I’m not incomplete, and I’d choose to be alone before I’d settle for anything less than actual love. I know it because I’ve felt it. There’s nothing like it in the world. If I don’t find it again, that’s ok. I’m going to live every second like it’s my last and have a damn good time doing it; but I’m ok with a little twinge of a dream that there’s someone amazing out there that can live up to the adventure and never take life or love for granted. Either way, I’m gonna have the time of my life, because you only get one and it’s ending one minute at a time.

The Joust tent

“Perhaps your knight in shining armor is a mere boy in tin foil…”

I hear so many assertions that chivalry is dead, but I don’t buy it. Chivalry didn’t die, it just went on a long vacation from the shallow, bar-traipsing bitches who disease the world with a sense of entitlement merely because they have breasts; they taint the common opinion for the rest of the gender. However, men tend to do the same for their poor species; my male friends constantly complain that there aren’t any genuine, intelligent, worth-while girls to date, yet when they find them, they act like complete idiots.

I’m not necessarily looking for a knight, and I’d certainly like to do without the armor for once. I’m independent, I need an extreme of space, and I certainly don’t need to be rescued. In the inventory of armor, I’ve got plenty for the entire occupancy of the Round Table, it’d be nice to find someone who allowed me to shed it and perhaps let it get a little rusty.

I suppose that level of worthiness is completely dependent upon my own willingness; I hate to shed the armor and have to lift it all back up again when people prove to be ready to merely impale me with their sword, in nowhere near the way that such an innuendo could prove to be positive. No, we’re talking blood, and guts, not a flurry of erotica out of an Elizabethan romance.

So. Long story short, I shed the armor. I lost the joust. The knight walks out of the arena as though he’s won, when really, he overlooked what the prize really was. He spilled blood, yes. Not many have done so, congratulations. But he missed the actual main event.

Someone once told me that I presume too often, while I claim to merely assess the information that I’ve been given, and determine my own opinion based on such. I honestly am still unsure what other choice I have in a world where people cover themselves with armor and refuse to stand in the arena and just fight. If the opponent is kept hidden, I don’t know what I’m up against and I have to form a strategy accordingly. Or die.

I wanted a shield. I wanted my armor. But I took it off, and I got wounded. Now, bleeding, in the middle of the dust, crowd on its feet, I get back up. I stepped into the arena, I fought for what I wanted, and now I'll walk away, head held high because I did so. My opponent thought he won. Unfortunately, he failed to see, we should have been fighting together.