Footprints walking

 

Be careful 

which parts of yourself 

you make digital, 

for they might decide 

to leave home 

and start a new life. 

We are becoming spectators 

to the independent journey  

of our own data trails, 

which are currently running 

a guided tour of our souls, 

led entirely by strangers. 

The form we leave is not a memory, 

but a functional identity 

that is living, and moving, 

without needing permission.

Fear form

Tension is the mother

of the tangible.

Without the dread

of the spill

the cup would never

find its rim.

Our trembling hands

sculpt the very cage

that keeps the shaking

at a distance.

Bracing for impact

is how we find

our spine.

Hurried pause

 

There is a profound difference 

between looking at the map 

and feeling the mud between your toes. 

Most people are content with the sketch, 

fearing the tactile chaos of the actual. 

Yet, the only way to truly know the terrain 

is to allow oneself to be stained by it. 

We should strive to be less like a fortress 

and more like a valley 

open to every breeze, 

every drop of rain, 

and every shadow that passes through. 

Insight is not a prize to be captured; 

it is a state of being 

completely and utterly permeated 

by the present.

 

There is a profound naivety 

in attempting to cage the storm 

after you’ve finished building the lightning rod. 

A breakthrough 

is not a pleasant houseguest 

you can ask to leave 

when the conversation gets awkward; 

it is a permanent resident 

that immediately starts remodeling the house 

without a permit. 

The most volatile substances 

are not kept under lock and key, 

but are loosed into the world 

at the precise moment 

someone declares them "impossible." 

We are less the masters of these new domains, 

and more the reluctant clean-up crew 

of our own inevitable curiosity.

Desire manager

 

Desire is a master of sales 

but a poor project manager. 

It promises a renovation 

and delivers a demolition. 

When the pursuit of a singular heat 

becomes the priority, 

the entire cooling system of a family's history 

is rendered obsolete. 

It is a form of emotional inflation: 

the price of a new beginning 

is the total devaluation 

of everything that came before. 

We find ourselves standing 

in a field of broken shards, 

realizing too late that 

while the fire was bright, 

the light didn't actually help us 

see where we were going.

The Spoiler Alert

Have you ever had someone ruin a movie for you?

They tell you the ending before the popcorn is even salty, and suddenly, the next two hours feel like a chore. The magic dies because the mystery is gone.

Now, imagine what it might be like to be a God of "Infinite Knowledge."

If you are absolute and all-knowing, then everything is a spoiler. You’ve seen every movie, you know every punchline, and you’ve already watched the end of every human life before it even started.

"Perfect knowledge" sounds like a superpower, but it might actually be a prison.

What if the reason we are all here, confused, struggling, and searching for the "meaning", is because the Absolute got tired of knowing everything. What if our existence is God’s way of watching a movie without knowing the ending.

We worry about being "lost," but what if being lost is the whole point? What if we are the "Grand Amnesia" that allows the Infinite to finally feel surprised again?

Maybe the "Divine Plan" isn't for us to find all the answers, but to enjoy the mystery of not having them.

I’m comfortably moored in my ignorance this Friday. I think I’ll just be a beer ripple in the spring field for a couple of days and see if the pixels get any clearer.

Have a great weekend. Try to surprise yourself.

The DNA of the Border

We talk about the border like it's a wall between two different worlds.

But we’re using the wrong labels.

And when you use the wrong labels... you get the wrong answers.

We use the word "Hispanic."

That’s just a fancy way of saying "Spanish-ish."

But look at the faces of the people crossing.

They don't look like they’re from Spain.

They look like the people who were here 10,000 years before a ship ever crossed the Atlantic.

The man waiting at that border isn't just a "statistic."

He is a son of the Maya.

A descendant of the Zapotec.

A carrier of Nahua blood.

We call them "Hispanic" because we've forgotten the names of the empires their families built.

The Conquistadors gave them that name 500 years ago.

And we are still using the "labels of the winners" to ignore the faces of the locals.

The Right uses the word "Illegal."

It’s a legal cloak.

It lets us ignore the human being by focusing on the paperwork.

It’s a way to say "I'm not being biased"...

while we turn away people whose DNA is 90% Native American.

The Left uses the word "Latino."

It’s a cultural cloak.

It hides the fact that these "immigrants" are actually the most "local" people on the continent.

Their ancestors' blood is in the very soil we’re standing on.

We look back at the Trail of Tears with a sense of collective shame.

We wonder how "good people" could have stood by while families were marched off their land in the name of "The Law."

But are we doing it again?

By calling our neighbors "Aliens," we are performing a digital-age Trail of Tears.

We are using the law as a shield to hide our oldest national habit:

Pretending the locals are the strangers.

If we want to "Bridge the Divide," we have to start with the truth:

We aren't seeing an "invasion" of foreigners.

We are seeing a return of the locals.

We’ve spent 200 years pretending they are from another world.

But the "mystic chords of memory" Lincoln spoke of?

Those chords go back way further than 1776.

They go back to the first campfires in this hemisphere.

It’s time we stopped treating our Native Neighbors like they’re from another planet.

It’s hard to call someone an "alien"...

when their DNA says they’ve been home the whole time.