Picture taken by my friend on vacation
Memories flitter,
but thoughts never linger
The Unhippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia – A Witzelsucht
Tag Archives: thoughts
How Are You Thinking?
Too often we ask,
How are you doing?
And more often than not we receive a lie.
I’m fine
Good
Okay, how about you?
We can’t help but lie.
Feelings are fleeting fragments of the soul.
But thoughts,
thoughts are continuous.
I believe a better question to ask is,
How are you thinking?
Are your thoughts manic?
Ragefully pondering revenge?
Flighty?
Peaceful as a willow tree in the heat of August?
Logical and rational?
Wishful dreaming?
Obsessing?
Thoughts monitor behavior,
are you thinking rashly or overcationly?
When we are upset we yell,
What were you thinking!?
It’s not the what I’m concerned about,
I wonder how are you thinking.
So how are you thinking?
Pixabay/user:jbmacros67
It Was Written In the Sky
On a long bus ride, I was reading Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 over again. I can tell how good of a book it is by how much it has impacted me. This is going to be my fourth post inspired by it. Few books do that, where you read it and instead of wanting to just devour more of its glorious ink marks on tree pulp that was inspired by life itself, you want to compile the building thoughts from the novel and write about it.
But this time instead of applying a truth learned, I wish to write how I came upon the truth.
So there I was on the ten hour bus ride with 33 high school students who smelled like peanut butter and too much cologne. Did I mention that it was a ten hour bus ride? I think I did, but I’ll say it again, a ten hour bus ride . . .
With a book in my face and head phones (or should I say “Seashells”?) turned up loud playing Beethoven, I tried to block out the rap music and the girly-girl talk.
Across the country we went, mile after mile, page after page, song after song.
I was looking for wisdom and wonder in between the lines of a 63 year old book. Trying to block out the youthful folly around me.
Coming to one of the quotes from other books, I search for the quote on Google. While it loads, I look up.
So focused I had been on the book and on the teenagers that I tried to block out, that I had blocked out what had been transforming around me. Winter dreariness with bald trees and fallow fields, had been transformed to spring animation with blooming trees and sowed fields.
So focused on the inside, I had not looked outside. I had only seen one option, and by my lack of observation, I had deprived myself of choice.
In trying to find wisdom I originally looked to a book, and forgot the world.
What I was trying to find in a book was already written in the sky, all I had to do was look. Wisdom and wonder and life was written in the sky. No ink or graphite or typewriter or digital “little black box” needed. Only eyes or ears or hands or mouth or nose needed, to understand what was written in the sky.
Oh, how precious are books, yet even more precious are the things that inspire them.
After marveling at what had been out my window all those hours and miles and pages and songs, I looked back at my phone, and of course it was still loading.
I looked back out the window and wanted my phone to keep loading so that I would never have to look away.
“‘It’s not books you need, it’s some the things that once were in books . . . No, no it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.'”
-Page 79 in Fahrenheit 451
When I Was Younger
The funny little things I thought when I was younger,
when I was four I thought dating was where every Thursday afternoon
a couple would go sail boating on a lake.
Oh how boring that would get,
my four year old self never wanted to date!
When I was five I thought the world only consisted
of this huge place called Michigan
and this tiny little island called France where 9/11 happened.
Oh how small my scope of the world was,
my five year old self was missing out on so much
and was so protected also!
When I was six I thought subtraction defied all logic,
what were people telling these teachers?!
They are teaching kids these wrong concepts!
Once something is there, it can never be taken away.
Oh how fragile my mind was,
my six year old self was so confident and stubborn!
Now that I am older I understand that I was naïve.
I wonder what I will think when I look back at myself now?
Pixabay/user:stux
Like Lapping, Crashing Ocean Waves: A Villanelle Poem
On this husk I show no qualms
But in my mind, I have confusing thought
Like lapping, crashing ocean waves, the thoughts keep on coming
Destroying my world while lighting my path, I let my soul burn
Peaceful raindrops and bullets firing, I am in the middle of the onslaught
On this husk I show no qualms
In my midnight prayers, “Give me direction,” I yearn
But when direction had come, I’m afraid, I may have fought
Like lapping, crashing ocean waves, the thoughts keep on coming
With all this life and it’s perceptions, will control I learn?
Will past experiences and soothing songs tell me what is to be taught?
On this husk I show no qualms
Not following the recipe, ingredients do churn
Mixing, mixing, mixing which should naught
Like lapping, crashing ocean waves, the thoughts keep on coming
I cannot show my questions and confusion for that would arise concern
So I will float in the space of my mind like an astronaut
On this husk I show no qualms
Like lapping, crashing ocean waves, the thoughts keep on coming
Pixabay/Fotari70DX
This piece is being published in Creative Communications Poetry Contest Winter 2015!
The Constructive Crossword
Oh, how I love you dearly
You set my mind straight
The thoughts begin to untangle as you come together
You are something constructive to do
You challenge me, but not enough to frustration
I love starting out small and stretching to new found areas
in the puzzle, but also in my mind
It seems like my pencil can’t move fast enough to the connects I am making
Just like my thoughts are too rapid to be formed into words
My ideas and contemplation are not liner
The collide and cause havoc
But the enigma sets them in their places
Across and down
Think logically
Each thought and word
in it’s place
One helping the other
Crossing off the clues
in tandem with notions that lead to the next
Oh, how I love you dearly
You set my mind straight
The thoughts begin to untangle as you come together
You are something constructive to do
Oh, how I love crosswords dearly!
Jessica Whittle Photography / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Acting
Why can we
as a human race
not know what others,
people closest to us
are feeling
or thinking?
Is it because
we don’t observe
close enough?
Or maybe
we have become
such good liars
fakers
that no one can?
No one can tell the difference between lies and truths
We’ve got so good at fibbing
not for our own good.
We only show surface level feelings
and not how we are truly doing
On the inside
The insecurities
The fears
The hidden secrets
The things we carry around with us everyday
but mask it
beautifully
with a smile
or a simple lie in a text
with
‘Pretty good’ Smiley face!
It’s so easy
to act okay but not truly be
but it is so not worth it.
Into Thoughts We Dive
Into thoughts we dive
from the boat floating on top
to the water below
The shallow surface water is beautiful
shimmering in the sun’s above glow
graceful, clear, calming
This is the level the birds above can see through
the water- the thoughts
Dive deeper, Dive deeper, Dive deeper
Darker
churnier, restless, unseen
except for the creatures native to the this level
adapted to the darkness
Dive deeper, Dive deeper, Dive deeper
No light, unexplored, unknown
the pressure is crushing
few venture here
few are native
few can bare the darkness
Of the natives their qualities are like no else
unique
Dive deeper, Dive deeper, Dive deeper
No light have ever seeped through the darkness
sinking, sinking, sinking
Hit the bottom
The sand is not soft
No further to go
Must go up
Getting the Bends
From all the pressure
Fighting up to the calming of the surface
The graceful, clear, calming
bearable
Receive Grace 2 Show Grace 