I’ve Learned………

I’ve Learned

by Omer B. Washington

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.
I’ve learned that no matter how much I care,
some people just don’t care back.
I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust
and only seconds to destroy it.
I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your life
but who you have in your life that counts.
I’ve learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes.
After that, you’d better know something.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself
to the best others can do,
but to the best you can do.
I’ve learned that it’s not what happens to people,
It’s what they do about it.
I’ve learned that no matter how thin you slide it,
there are always two sides.
I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words.
It may be the last time you’ll see them.
I’ve learned that you can keep going
long after you think you can’t.

I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done
When it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.
I’ve learned that there are people who love you dearly,
but just don’t know how to show it.
I’ve learned that sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.
I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.
I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to
doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.

I’ve learned that no matter how good a friend is,
they’re going to hurt you every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.
I’ve learned that it isn’t always enough to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.
I’ve learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken,
the world doesn’t stop for your grief.
I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.
I’ve learned that just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
And just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.

I’ve learned that sometimes you have to put the individual
ahead of their actions.
I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.
I’ve learned that no matter the consequences,
those who are honest with themselves go farther in life.
I’ve learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours
by people who don’t even know you.
I’ve learned that even when you think you have no more to give,
when a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help.

I’ve learned that writing,
as well as talking,
can ease emotional pains.
I’ve learned that the people you care most about in life
are taken from you too soon.
I’ve learned that it’s hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice
and not hurting people’s feelings and standing up for what you believe.
I’ve learned to love
and be loved.
I’ve learned…

There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves …..

“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty.

We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.

To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.”

James Kavanaugh.

Bad Days.

This is about all the bad days in the world.

I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. “Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days.” Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too.

Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothin’. They’re your days. Choke ‘em!”

Tom Waits

Dye Dilemma.

(I know I’m not Hale Berry, but we all take inspiration from somewhere!)

Stress. A word we hear every day but have no concept of what it can actually do to the human body.

I have had recent experience of the joys of ‘stress’. One of which was losing a lot of my hair. I have never had amazing hair. My mother had stunning black, curly locks, my father had fine blonde (almost white), resulting in my fine, fluffy dark brown. I think the hair gene had taken a coffee break when I was being conceived! One ex kindly called it ‘your messy hair’.  Some nerve, coming from a guy who is going bald!!

Thankfully it is now returning, but it has completely changed colour. Instead of dark it is returning a sort of silvery white/grey. This was somewhat depressing at first and resulted in much wrangling with a multitude of hair dyes to hide it, never really successfully, a little bit always managed to ‘escape’.

After much thought and many frustrating hours with hair dye, I have decided to ‘go commando’ so to speak. No more fighting with packages promising ‘rich, enhancing colour’. I shall wait and see what nature has decided I shall look like. Brave words coming from someone who has spent a lifetime in the clutches of L’Oreal and other such promisers of wonder.

I’m feeling good about it today. I may change my mind tomorrow, but that’s a woman’s prerogative…..

Love

I love things with a wild passion, extravagantly. I cherish tongs, and scissors; I adore cups, hoops, soup turrents, not to mention of course- the hat. I love all things, not only the grand, but also the infinitely small: the thimble, spurs, dishes, vases.

Oh, my soul, the planet is radiant, teeming with pipes in hand, conductors of smoke; with keys, saltshakers, and well, things crafted by the human hand, everything- the curve of a shoe, fabric, the new bloodless birth of gold, the eyeglasses, nails, brooms, watches, compasses, coins, the silken plushness of chairs. Oh humans have constructed a multitude of pure things: objects of wood, crystal, cord, wondrous tables, ships, staircases.

I love all things, not because they might be warm or fragrant, but rather because- I don’t know why, because this ocean is yours, and mine: the buttons, the wheels, the little forgotten treasures, the fans of feathery love spreading orange blossoms, the cups, the knives, the shears, everything rests in the handle, the contour, the traces of fingers, of a remote hand lost in the most forgotten regions of the ordinary obscured. I pass through houses, streets, elevators, touching things; I glimpse objects and secretly desire something because it chimes, and something else because, because it is as yielding as gentle hips, something else I adore for its deepwater hue, something else for its velvety depths.

Oh irrevocable river of things. People will not say that I only loved fish or plants of the rain forest or meadow, that I only loved things that leap, rise, sigh, and survive. It is not true: many things gave me completeness. They did not only touch me. My hand did not merely touch them, but rather, they befriended my existence in such a way that with me, they indeed existed, and they were for me so full of life, and they lived with me half-alive, and they will die with me half-dead.

Talking to the Moon.

 

Not quite in the way it seems….

Monsters

 

He knew it was finished that night she didn’t return until 4 in the morning, drunk. What disturbed him most though was the truly humbling realization afterwards that despite the months together and the intense intimacy, he really didn’t know her. That there were parts of this woman like those places marked on ancient maps of the sea that said things like MONSTERS LIVE HERE – STAY AWAY!

An Hour

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”

Mark Z. Danielewski,

Rethinking

Let’s thank our mistakes, let’s bless them
for their humanity, their terribly weak chins.
We should offer them our gratitude and admiration
for giving us our clefts and scarring us with
embarrassment, the hot flash of confession.
Thank you, transgressions! for making us so right
in our imperfections. Less flawed, we might have
turned away, feeling too fit, our desires looking
for better directions. Without them, we might have
passed the place where one of us stood, watching
someone else walk away, and followed them,
while our perfect mistake walked straight towards us,
walked right into our cluttered, ordered lives
that could have been closed but were not,
that could have been asleep, but instead
stayed up, all night, forgetting the pill,
the good book, the necessary eight hours,
and lay there – in the middle of the bed –
keeping the heart awake – open and stunned,
stunning. How unhappy perfection must be
over there on the shelf without a crack, without
this critical break – this falling – this sudden, thrilling draft.

– Elaine Sexton, Rethinking Regrets

Days

The days aren’t discarded or collected,
they are bees that burned with sweetness or maddened the sting:
the struggle continues, the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.
Pablo Neruda