i am not a religious man.

I am not a religious man. Let me correct that, I've never been a religious man. Events which have transpired over the past five years have guided me from the train of thought of an agnostic to that of a believer. Some might even call me a seeker of a higher truth, although for years, the higher I got the longer truth evaded me. I believe there is a god. Luckily I was raised outside the realm of blind belief since rebellion is a gene with which I was bestowed. Blind belief clouds the views of otherwise intelligent people, narrowing their minds to believe in one truth and no other: "Me or them, unless of course, I convert them." .
I am told by my step-father and various books I've read that the first step is to believe, which, apparently, I do. But then the Jesus agenda is dropped in my lap, a need to believe that Jesus is my saviour, that he died for my sins, that he will lead me on a path towards glory, that he displayed miracles to the people of his time, and that he is the son of God. That's quite a spoonful to swallow when I inhabit a world with billions of people who are the sons and daughters of God, all believing what they want to, exhibiting their right to free choice in applicable cases. Too much hypocracy, too many illusions and delusions exist in the minds of pious people with pious agendas that push their views and their path towards heaven onto others.
From time to time I'm inspired by people who view God as not an entity to which we must attone, rather a perpetual destination, an ethereal being of infinite love, a vaccum completely devoid of hatred or ill will, retribution or desperation. Open your eyes and return to a world of tolerance, of understanding, of compassion and of hope, our world, attained through a pure way of being and seeing that the path towards heaven is paved in Gold and the devil left us colorblind.


from Emysubel:
Hate has only one source - the opposite of the Giver of Love - and I would question the person who claims himself a Christian - (meaning Christ-like) and then killing someone for a cause he believes in. One evil deed does not erase another - his murdering of one man for the victims of abortion. It is a good thing that we are not the ultimate Judge - only God Himself can read the heart of this man and judge him accordingly.We - you and I - must choose to love always - it is not our place to punish people for their acts. That is God's business. And at the end of our lives, it is He we will answer to. I choose to have as little to discuss with Him as I possibly, humanly can.

perpetual pondering

moi: I guess it feels a bit different to be complemented on something I produced for the mere desire to allow pent up emotion to escape….words have been my conduit for a long time, written words, expressions, thougths, desires, visions, senses, etcetera, etcetera…….through writing, I was able to express my message without being judged by who I was, rather what I had to "say"……and it’s fun

mdme: Not so sad - a stepping stone in the arena of love which leads to growth in one's life. It is so beautifully written and emotions depicted so clearly - I have to wonder - did this happen to you??? Or maybe someone close to you? I surely hope the attachment to medicine is history now.

moi: I’ll say it’s a little but fact a little bit rock n roll…..i am the sum of all my experiences although I’m hardly a realist….sometimes telling the truth is the sweetest release, regardless of how others react or perceive that which I’ve seen and felt and wondered and known and hoped and longed for….

mdme: I love the words "left of comfortable" - what a picture!

moi: Thank you…...so if 3 words creates a picture and a picture is worth a thousand words, looks as if I came in way under budget!!!!! All too often I surf the thin line between comfortable and akward, trying to expose and explore the extents of that which is accepted as normal or even better "as it always has been."

mdme: And tell me, are you living the "corporate dream"? because personally, I think we are all doing it all quite wrong! This can't be the plan for our lives - daily working our brains to the max as our bodies deteriorate in a chair - feeling the pressure of everyone's needs day after day... and though we may find purpose and contentment in our day jobs - there is little energy or mental capacity left at the end of each day for creativity or relaxation - where then is the "abundant life" in the midst of all that???

moi: The abundant life is internal……….as with any project, I suppose the path is reached through a carefully managed life….or maybe not, it’s a topic I perpetually ponder.

mdme: I believe we should take the "one day" freedom and apply it today - but then there are the debts we created that complicate our freedom and thus, we are thrust into the daily grind of life.

moi: We are thrust into the daily grind of life because we’ve chosen to do so……health care and paid vacation, a dependable income and a happy work environment aren’t all bad when compared to war torn zones, starvation, tsunamis, apartheid, genocide, or any myriad of afflictions that exist in the world today…I suppose those thoughts and the thought that I have a path (as you or any of my friends, family, associates, etc, do) help me endure the tough times.

i said maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me....

learn to embrace the fact that we're all leaves caught in a torrent of information and decision making, Carpeing the Diem, one day a display in a museum........that life is our rapids through which we navigate at sometimes excruciatingly slow progress and yet progress is made, bonds are strengthened, the past will slowly fade, life begets life begets life as strife begets strife......through Lust and Love, through human nature, natural obsession and loss of direction with phallic penetration through the haze of the days in which the end and the beginning are entwined as two asps circling the tree of knowledge, of enlightenment, of Our destiny.

a definition aka a sign of things to come......

revelation

an uncovering, a bringing to light of that which had been previously whollyhidden or only obscurely seen. God has been pleased in various ways and atdifferent times (Heb. 1:1) to make a supernatural revelation of himself and hispurposes and plans, which, under the guidance of his Spirit, has been committedto writing. (See WORD OF GOD.) The Scriptures are not merely the "record" ofrevelation; they are the revelation itself in a written form, in order to theaccurate presevation and propagation of the truth. Revelation and inspirationdiffer. Revelation is the supernatural communication of truth to the mind;inspiration (q.v.) secures to the teacher or writer infallibility incommunicating that truth to others. It renders its subject the spokesman orprophet of God in such a sense that everything he asserts to be true, whetherfact or doctrine or moral principle, is true, infallibly true.

contradiction

from Jay Reeves with the AP

Eric Rudolph:
''What they did was participate in the murder of 50 children a week,'' he said. ''Abortion is murder and because it is murder I believe deadly force is needed to stop it.''
''Children are disposed of at will,'' he said in a long speech against abortion. ''The state is no longer the protector of the innocence.''

Emily Lyons:
One of the victims in the abortion clinic Rudoplh bombed, killing one man and maiming a nurse.

''It really doesn't matter what you say because I will go back to my home and you will go back to jail. The clinics in town will still be open and abortion will still be legal,'' Lyons said.

In a statement distributed after his guilty pleas, Rudolph portrayed himself as a devout Christian and said the bombings were motivated by his hatred of abortion and a federal government that lets it continue. He called the plea bargain ''purely a tactical choice on my part.''

Can anyone refer to themselves as devout Christians and claim to be motivated by hatred? What an absurd thought and a true revelation that he was anything but Christian in his actions and his motivations. Too many people in this world claim themselves to be devout Christians and fail to understand that God is infinite love. A state of being and seeing that is completely devoid of negative emotion is the closest humans can ever come to understanding this, a trait that few in the history of the world have ever come close, at least if one considers the quantity of souls that have passed through this earth.

Mahatma Ghandi was one of those human beings.
"Hatred ever kills, love never dies such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred."

3 is for happiness

Three: Something having three parts, units, or members.
Hapiness: Characterized by good luck; fortunate.

Bells rang as he opened the door and entered the glass storefront as 90 degree air rushed in attempting to subjugate the air conditioned climate. A grainy radio transmitted the Cubs game, an event transpiring mere blocks and alleys North of the Belmont Asian Emporium. He came in search of bamboo. He had killed his last three plants through neglect, through leaving the plant too close to a frigid window for the duration of an arduous, resented Chicago winter. Good luck tokens and trinkets lined the shelves of the dark store. A cooler contained orange and white orchids as well as other beautiful plants of which he have never heard. The happy go-lucky 50 something Chinese man smiled to the previous customer as she completed her $50 purchase. His aura was refreshing, a business owner who was truly concerned with the well-being and satisfaction of his customers.

"I'd like to purchase three of these," he uttered, nervously fumbling for his hard earned cash. On his last visit nearly one year prior, he had learned the value of purchasing not one but three bamboo plants. The shopkeeper smiled as he realized he was going to make another sale of the product with which he was able to support a living.
"You purchase three lucky bamboo plants, you know what the bamboo means in Chinese," the shopkeeper asked as his complacent yet happy wife wrapped the plants in plastic. He had no idea what bamboo meant in Chinese, all he knew was that the time had come to start taking care of another living thing other than himself. He had heard on some movie or some random Discovery Channel show that one of the steps of over coming addiction was to care for a living thing. The shopkeeper reached into his shelf and pulled out a paper his customer had thrown out in carelesss haste. "Rich plus noble, that equals Bamboo." The young man had no delusions that purchasing the bamboo would make him either rich or noble. He informed the man that he had been in a year prior and purchased three plants that had passed along the previous winter after being left too close to a cold ass window for too long as it's owner puffed away his responsibilties, seeking a HIGHER state of being.

"Ahh you see my friend," replied the man, a smile beaming from cheek to cheek, " three bamboo plants bring hapiness. You buy the bamboo last year and kill it, that means you are not happy."
"He doesn't even know the half of it," thought the young man. And yet the simple words of the shopkeeper resonated with more truth than one could perceive on the surface as being able to be gathered from such a "simple" statement. The kid was far from happy as he was trying to raise the plant. He endured a self induced mental hell, catalysed by an incessant love affair with mary-jane as the only beacon of laughter and a good time. No chores were ever accomplished. His place and his mind and his life were a mountain created from a mole's hill worth of vices. "Hapiness," he contemplated, "such a state could be acheived from taking care of the little things?"

The young man thanked the shopkeeper and his wife with a slight bow and a promise that this time he was going to take care of the plant. This time he was going to proove that he was happy, that he could be entrusted with responsibility, that he could see the path and that he understood the travails which lay ahead.

Mere hours from that moment, a task he had long put off was to be finally carried out. He was about the face his fears, to trust in himself as the only savior from a bloodline which tended to fall through the cracks through vice and self destruction. To some such thoughts were madness, simply insane. Why would anyone even think twice about leaving a place of uncomfortable responsibility. Drunken socialite women were throwing themselves at his feet, everyone wanted to be his friend, and everyone complemented him on characteristics he had long resented. But this was what every twenty something man longed for. This was hip and cool and fun and involved hanging out all hours of the night until the darkness blended with the morning light and the memories of a night just passed dissipated and joined with the dreams of the present until he could not discern between fact and fiction.

"If three is for happiness," he thought to himself as he set on a destiny he was setting with each passing moment, " this is going to be much easier than I've always thought."

(not me)

i'm numb really
confused and distracted every second of every day lately...truthfully from the earliest moment of consciousness of which I have little memory...but I know this madness lay in a well deep withing my subconscious, or even my consciousness. Selections and directions to travel, my mind unravelling at an ever increasing rate, subdued by antidepressants yet perpetually pursued by the genes of my relatives, of my bloodine, of a past I am destined to never quite escape.

there is a persistent doubt and fear, a laziness that is prevalent in my mind. Think happy thoughts, harbor your inner Chi, trust in the Lord, every journey begins with the first step, so many phrases to embrace and hold dear in the ever depressing rat race......the thrill of completing a job on time and under budget escapes me, save it for the robots, the ones who can produce and produce day in and day out, work hard, stay focused and hardly pout or wine..they'll make me rich, they'll make me proud when I'm discussing year end results with my partners in crime. Nevermind that millions starve, I tend to think it's their own fault that they're sleeping in gutters, uttering barely audible pleas, covered in filth or saturated in disease. Please nevermind this rant. It is incoherent. From board rooms to brothels...cities of brotherly love smilng and praying and trusting in heaven above. Ahh but therin lies the rub, lies dubbed into the soundtrack of our lives. Try and imagine that this is it...that there is no heaven or hell, that hell is here, that everything is lawful. An awful thought if you'd ask a million of ignorant Americans. I can't stand work. I can't stand the daily doldrums. I hate my boss. I wish I was skinner, maybe I should eat more carbs. I really need an IPOD. Ooohhh his car is so hot, and so is he. I'm so and so of such and such prestigious family, what do you mean you've never heard of me, why yes I went to Harvard, darling you're so fabulous. I can't believe that Brad is breaking up with Jen to be with Angelina, what a ho, and Fat Joe, he's my most favorite singer, I've got Lean Back programmed into my cell phone. There's a war going on right now, could've have fooled me. One doesn't have to look far, wake the fcuk up and see the sea of debauchery....where's the love, where's the trust and the hope....why those stories don't make the front page...if it leads it bleeds, unless of course it's a story of redemption or Miracles, those stories make millions, nevermind they're the same story, different variables....

am I wrong. are they right? Maybe. Probably. Most likely. I'm the one sitting here in my room at 10:37 on a Thursday evening in July whose thoughts are truly much ado about nothing....incoherent, too random to be construed as anything of intellect, most likely the manifestation of mental overload, that violent human urge to create for the sake of creation, of self expression, of letting the world know how you perceive it, trust in yourself and in God's plan and you, my son, can acheive it.

whoisjobe? (not me)

inspirational penses

"What the Bleep Do We Know"

http://whatthebleep.com

Interesting movie which I highly recommend to all who can focus for two hours on a film that is not Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Two Quotes ripped from their web page:

"To see a world in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour."
-William Blake

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.We have guided missiles and misguided men."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"peace with god," Since when do you believe in god?

a small crowd gathered around the site of the crash. a man lay severely injured, crushed under the weight of his motorcylce, bleeding from his right leg and crying for help. it was late in the afternoon, the sun casting long shadows off the trees as a bright orange hue saturated the scene. the man couldn't have been more than 40 years of age.

she was sitting in the seat next to him, her friend bouncing in the back seat, both girls distracted by the Sonoma restaurants which align the busy boulevard in the heart of wine country. He wanted to say something to her but the sight of the accident shocked him with the harsh realization that a man not more than 20 feet to the left was facing death, just like that, in an instant of distraction or carelessness or pure chance, a late summer's afternoon journey turned tragic. As the man reached out for help, gasping for his breath, the light turned green. Cars honked, obviously angry that the red honda with Illinois plates was delaying the inevitable progression of their day, oblivious to the horrific reality upon which his mind was completely focused. And as he sped off, winding through the roads returning to San Franciso, thoughts of ending his young life faded as he pondered the suffering the motorcyle accident had brought that man and his family. Alcohol sampled at various wineries throughout the day had left him in a somber mood, most likely depleting what little reserves of seratonin rushed across the synapses of his burdened mind. She sat next to him, giddy as a schoolgirl, trading stories with her girlfriend in the back seat as he tried to completely block their conversation out. "They don't know what it's like to hurt and to suffer," he thought angrily to himself as he pushed the pedal faster to the floor, feeding off the adrenalin rush harvested from the pounding bass.

Absurd self indulgent woe is me thoughts percolated through his mind throughout the remainder of the two hour trip home. He had been obsessed with depression for so long that the simple moments in which a smile from the one he could have loved only sank his mind deeper into an abyss of tryst. She had weathered two and a half years of his sadness, his madness, his anger and tears, his perpetual whining and worrying, not once listening to her fears. She had called a week earlier in elation, wanting to share with him the fact that she would be there in less than a week and they could spend the entire week together. "Yeah great," he responded with overt sarcasm, "two whole days, what more could I ask for, whatever, sure, sounds good, I'll see you then." She was crushed by such a lackluster response to a short vacation she had long since been expecting. Yet he didn't understand why he should look forward to her visit. It wasn't as if seeing her would "snap him out of it." They could have spent the entire weekend having sex ( one needs love in oneself to consider themselves able to make it), dining at fine restaurants, relaxing and playing in the park, and he still would have dwelled on every could have, would have and should have every second of every hour from the moment she arrived to the moment she left. Hope existed deep within his soul, that much was true, but it was a single gold coin sunk at the bottom of an ocean of despair.

And two and a half years earlier, on a couch in a middle class household in a small Illinois town where everyone knew everyone's name and everyone's business, she lay in his arms, cuddled close, absorbing the heat emmanating from his confused yet admittedly blessed heart. He had searched for her for all those years. He had evaded numerous attempts at girls getting to know him out of fear of being tied into a bond which he'd be incapable of severing should the perfect match come along. Her father and brother, best friend and friend of the family were strewn about the room. The group, minus the father, had just returned from a late night rip to Blockbuster which included a pot stop. He had only just discovered the reality escaping powers of the wonder drug courtesey of her brother and a glass pipe for which a name had not yet been given. They returned with movie in hand and a mad appetite for microwavable buttered popcorn. She cuddled closer to him and in a moment of inspiration he leaned in and whispered in her ear, "you're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time." She acknowledged his words with a slight kiss and pulled back, showing her vulnerability through tears of hapiness which he wiped away by pressing his cheek close to hers. She had found him. He had finally found her. They were destined to be together from that moment until the end of their time.

a thin line between faith and delusion

“Fanaticism isn’t a religion, it’s a frame of mind”
Prime Minister Tony Blair in a speech to reassure Muslims in England that the blame for the horrific bombings lay in the hands of the fanatics.

devoid.

And the day she came North, not as a friend visiting, but as a girl chasing the one for whom she felt an overwhelming burgeoning love, was remembered as one of the saddest days of his life. Life as he knew it could have progressed down two clear paths: one leading towards point at which they might have discovered a love that would have lit thousands of nerve endings in perpetual delight, bringing them 10 steps closer to god and one step closer to an eternal bond built off of trust and hope and the giddy anticipation of discovery.

But as the fog hung thick over a slicked and soaked college town side street, she stepped out of her car and shouted his name in elation, illuminated with a halo born of the soft yellow glow of the streetlights penetrating the lingering myst, creating the illusion that she was an angel, his angel, the light out of the darkness. In a gut wrenching instant of agonizing revelation, he understood that life was going to be even more fuct then he could have imagined. This was mental, he was mental, the whole situation was, well, a literal head-fcuk.

And as life always seems to do at the most inopportune times, the otherpath was chosen for him by a deity one step away from reality and onestep closer to his reality, his disease, his fear, that which he inflicted on her, on them, on everything and everyone everywhere he went until nothingwas left...of their love, of his sanity, of any semblance of a man in control.

food for thought for the bible thumpers and agnostics alike

Many Fourth Church mission trips are referred to as “mission in reverse.” On these trips, participants engage in a ministry of presence and active listening. They travel to experience others’ stories of life and faith and to learn from them.

Over and over on mission trips, our neighbors around the world remind their visitors of Jesus’ lesson about worrying. We Americans find ourselves worrying about material things, and we often horde our possessions and financial resources. Much of our energy focuses on feeding our appetites for food and clothing. We are anxious for a spacious house, a fancy car, and many other possessions because they signify success to our friends and to ourselves. We give away our old clothes and worn-out appliances and save our prized heirlooms.

In Third World cultures, the opposite is often true. People give away their heirlooms (many times to strangers), share their prized possessions with others who are in need, and live quite simply in very small houses with basic amenities. They have learned to trust that God will provide for them.

Our anxiety reflects our hesitancy to trust in God and our lack of a generous spirit. Jesus cautions us to not worry about physical and material needs to the point of letting them dominate our lives. He calls us instead to a higher commitment of loving our neighbors, near and far, and trusting that God will provide the things we need.

Written by Vicki Reynolds, Director of Mission, 4th Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL

but that's too difficult

A life is not a solitary endeavor but one lived in community with a worldview of generosity from our abundance to the least, the lost, the lonely, and the left out.

man-woman polarity.

from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

pg 104

"The man-woman polarity which controlled all human lives could not exist on Mars.....human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search the Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs."

le quatrieme julliet

"J'aime les beaux filles...," I replied in haste to the 30 something overtly gay balding man who attempted to demonstrate his intellectual superiority to the smoke filled room of five acquaintances at 6 in the morning. Only after leaving the room and stepping into the elevator did I realize the ambiguity in my statement. "Of course filles means girls in French, but the adjective beautiful should have been conjugated belles, not beaux, as would have been the case if I were referring to something masculine," I thought to myself, gliding down 20 some floors of overpriced condos in the Gold Coast of Chicago. It had been a long night full of escaping from reality through alcohol and mary-jane, I was bound to make a mistake in trying to recall the French I'd studied years ago when I actually had a head on my shoulders and a future full of promise. And as the sun came up, I realized yet another Saturday night had passed in which I fell back down the rabbit hole and swam in the sea of debauchery with "lost souls" asking for another free shot, finding my way into yet another V.I.P. area of another club full of fabulously shallow people wearing fabulous threads.

The sky's are alight tonight 360 degrees around my third floor balcony. The horizon is hardly visible. A dense haze resides in the spaces just above the tree lines. Golds and whites and greens and reds and blues streaking the night, responding to a lit fuse with a high pitched howl and an explosion, a celebration of our independence from England, from the monarchy, from the reigns of tradition and oppression. Sadly we didn't gain independence from taxes. A snare drum, a high-hat, a sultry sex kitten diva describing how the music makes her feel free....on what tangent am I diverging? Why I finally hooked up the decks, the ones and twos, the turntables, the extensions of my violent urge to create in every way shape and form. "I wanna get you....I wanna get you....I wanna get you....off my mind," whispers the next vocalist as the soundtrack to my night fills the headphones, a mix created as a test yesterday evening.

It's been a hell of a weekend....so much has happened and yet tomorrow might be just another day. I can see a small group of people standing on the rooftop just across from me. A mix of about ten, evenly distributed amongst guys and girls. I can imagine at least one of the couples is dating, the others possibly friends or acquaintances. They're enjoying the 360 degree spectacle as I type away, allowing inattention's demands to guide me through the swamp that is my mind. Three straight days of drinking and sleeping does that to a man. I'm not so much envious of the rooftop residents right now. I could be. I definitely have the resources to concoct some reason or another why they've a better disposition in life, why I got the short end of things, and why it is that I'm always the one that's alone. I could then allow this emotional insanity to overwhelm any residual feeling of calm and happiness left over from a weekend shared with true friends and a loving family. I could allow myself to tear up, to tear up the sheet of paper on which I am writing, to scream loud in anger, "Why me?" I could probably come up with a thousand different explanations for why it is that at this very moment I feel the way I do, blame this moment on one from 10 years ago, on someone other than I, on a poor upbringing or on a father whom I've not known since I was 5. I could, in fact, do any number of things that would set me up for having a poor attitude tomorrow, possible even the next day. I've been known to embrace such madness for months at a time. I could just as easily search deep to the source, to that infinitesimally small point at which such a path comes into fruition and attack, thus avoiding such a disastrous outcome derived from simply looking left and not right. I could because I can, because I have active choice at any given moment...because I have free will and a will to overcome, or else I wouldn't be writing right now, rocking out to my first mix in nearly a year, realizing that I have potential, that I am a sappy story in motion, told eloquently, spontaneously, miracuously recovering from a past I was destined to survive.

Alone and alive.

july 4th 2005.
10:26 PM
Chicago, Illinois.
planet earth.

if everybody had a notion, across the USA

I’ve always been a fan of the Beach Boys. Even at seven years of age, I'd wander the record store in hopes of securing yet another record I could toss on my antiquated, hand me down three in one (record, cassette, radio) "stereo", and "rock out" to. My first two vinyl purchases were the soundtrack to Stand by Me and the boss' Born in the USA. Late one summer evening with my step dad, I purchased my third and most cherished four vinyl set, the Best of the Beach Boys, a record that began my musical odyssey, my incessant search for new music to blast while driving 70 mph or chilling amongst friends. I wanted not to be a rockstar, but a music aficionado. Through music I could depart from the depressing backdrop of lower middle class families struggling to survive in the repetitious concrete and brick jungle of apartment megaplexes, "homes" where one was subject to the affairs and afflictions of neighbors at any hour of the day. An abusive father, an amorous couple, a Korean family with an affection for the repugnant stench of spiced cabbage, also known as Kim Chi. Music was my departure, my one way ticket into Josh's world, one part reality, two parts fantasy, three parts passion.

At 7 in the morning on Saturdays, I’d throw on a pair of shades, open the curtains and bathe the piles of unfolded clothes in sunlight. I'd pull the record two from the sleeve, gently lead the needle to the groove, jump on the antique whitewashed chest, and disappear to the beaches of California. I'd be surfing in the USA strumming my favorite Gibson air guitar, pretending I was driving in LA in my 409, picking up chicks, high on life, passing through the days in careless ways with the sweet rays of summer sunlight bathing me in a bliss of happiness.


I had such visceral dreams for a child learning the ways of the world in an 8x9 apartment bedroom. I was lost in a complex of thousands, so far away from the hopes and aspirations, the dreams and delusions of yesterday, today and tomorrow. I was young, inspired, and not yet afflicted with a misperceptions of reality. The world was a playground not a hamster's wheel.

And as I sat frustrated in my car this morning, some 18 years past that spiky blonde haired neo-hippie faux surfer delusional dreamer, my mind drifted back to the carefree days in the summer of '87, listening to the Beach Boys and drifting away from the doldrums. From selling lemonade for 25cents a cup to engineering 100's of acres in boo-foo Illinois in 18 short years.

from Pet Sounds....the timeless

God Only Knows.

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt itI’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you

If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you