swords and honey

it's profoundly accurate that our memories (or verbal recalls - relaying stories) become a collaboration of what really happened, what should have happened, what we wanted to happen, and what we precieved to happen.

memories, in a profound sense, fuel our misconceptions, our false hopes, even our inacurate apprasal of situations and our actions toward them. if i, therefore, relay an evening, verbally, am i consiously skewing facts to paint a picture of what i wanted to happen? even if i hear myself saying it, thinking i should correct myself with additional information and i don't, is that just the inherint need for me to justify my desire?

i, by telling parts of a story to justify the whole, am there for fueling my own misplaced hopes. the ones that, like clock work, get let down later.

part of this could be my fear of interpersonal confrontation. and the dislike for setting myself up for things i don't want to hear.

but i'm thinking more along the lines of we can prevent, in someways our own heart ache if only we realize that half (potenitaly more) of it is self inflicted. if we declare every situation as raw and as it was. removing the should have and the wanted to we are only left subject to reality and perception. things we know we cannot change anyway.

i think the only way to overcome what we want to happen interfearing with perception is to acknowledge desire and the reality of that desire in the context of our situation.

by owning up to that desire upfront we have eliminated the extent of its subconcious power, because if you think about it, by rationalizing desire you are neutralizing it. because desire is flimsy, like lust, it only exsists in the realm of possibility and hollow security. if brought into the light and defined, by both reality and personal origin, then we are able to combat desire - for the most part- with rational thought and interventions of reality.

so . . if from memory we rely on what happened and what we percieved, in the imediate - the short run (which we all know evolves into the long run) - we have assesed a situation as purely as we can. from what happened and not what we wanted to happen. by removing the temptation of altering memory to justify desire we can spare ourselves mutual diapointment and misconstructed reality.

really, this turns "i want to be with you" back into "i had a great night"
it turns those flowers from devotion back to decoration.

clearly, im grasping at straws to save myself here.

burn's the same

i felt you
strangely unfamiliar
another shade
to my bleeding grays
extracting trust
a syringe, a threadbare lullabye
we're breathng and breaking
absorbed in gravity
so close to me i feel you running
from a barely whispered apology
the aftertaste of infidelity
scars from other strings
pull me closer to enough
for you
touch me again
i'm shivering.

somewhere to fall apart

so .. the bad memories make us human, the hurt makes us who we are. there is no way that intense emotional stress cannot shape you. your views, future actions, and personality. this i have found is, to most, more than common knowledge.

keeping that in mind what does revisiting the plane of identical emotional stress do to us? how does one revisit a past self and feel progressive? do you pose a detriment to all you have learned from a situation if you go back to it. and better yet, if you forgive someone does that forgiveness take the edge off the resentment? does even the slightest amount of curiosity or forgiveness then make you vulnerable to the same situations over and over.

but how can you function in society without forgiveness? eventually you would be alone and bitter, and while this is a stage we all go through, it is nothing permanent because we forgive.

insert the cliche, forgive but don't forget. it's not forgetting that is the issue, it's seeing clearly similar situations but thinking that because it was once forgiven it is now something manageable. that is to say, the same scene - post forgiveness- is different because of how it is viewed by the individual.

once processed and cleaned up, emotions can become dormant, and by the time they resurface it's to late to turn and run. there is no graceful exit once you realize forgiveness and strength are not synonymous.

forgiving hurt, accepting pain does not have to mean the re acceptance to naivety. in fact it's not that at all . . forgive me if i have not expressed that. i do think that, however personally gratifying and necessary the act of forgiving and accepting is, is it not also selfless. think about it, your saying "you know you stuck my heart in a three speed blender on high and i'm ok with it . . here try it again if you like."

and that is never the intent, i know. i know. but how can you help but not feel that way, even just alittle. don't you, by releaving another of their guilt (or hurting you) give a piece of yourself back to them. doesn't that say that you want them to have access to a part of you. even if it is just alittle part? and how is anyone ok enough with that to forgive whole heartedly?

i'd be willing to believe there are varying degrees of sincerity and motivation in each acceptance. but what i can't quite grasp is how one can be so selfless and so trusting to give someone 5, 10 tries to get something right?

so then how can i demand second chances? and how in heavens name can i turn someone away?

how can i be on both sides of the same coin and not trust either of them.
it's not as easy as an apology, and it's sure as hell not as easy as forgiveness.

but if you can't do either how can you move forward?



you can't. can you?