This project's goal is to give each family member and myself just 10 minutes of unconditional positive regard every day. All attention is focused on the other person for those 10 minutes and only positive comments or thoughts are allowed. Just 10 minutes often becomes much more. Try it and see. You'll find the Just 10 guidelines on the right side of this blog.







Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Fireworks of Panic


Please note:  I've got a confession.  Lately I feel especially ridiculous when it comes to writing this blog.  I find typos, grammatical errors.  I need to be a much better editor than I am.  Worse yet, is the vulnerability I seem to shamelessly expose.  All that isn't stopping me. In an attack of insecurity,  I embarrassed myself by fishing for a compliment the other day.  I didn't get the desired result and yet. . .

Despite all this, I've decided that it's good practice to just keep going.  Part of me wants to fill pages with words.  Sometimes the quality sucks.  Once in a while, it does not.  So I'll persevere,  like the crazy old fool I'm probably turning into for no other reason that I want to write.  Why not?  What do I have to lose?  Read at your own risk.  I won't promise to be good.  I will promise to enjoy the process.

In my head, the fireworks of panic begin.  I try and run for cover but some days there is no place to hide.  A shower of sparks rain down on me.  The sky explodes.  I throw back my head and open my arms. 
"Come and get me!"  I shout.

Fighting only makes it worse.  This is my destiny.   The smell of sulphur fills the air.  If I'm in hell, than hell has one heck of a fire show.  Sinking into the burning grass, I look up and watch.  My mind opens and I find a way out.  Suddenly, I'm on a soft, grassy knoll and the fireworks are in the distance.  I look at the sky and witness a fatal beauty. 
"No one is getting out alive," I say. 
There is no one to hear.  The moment swallows me whole.  I sit in the belly of time.  I am a stone it can not digest.  Life casts me back in the game in a violent act of purgation.

"It could be so much worse," I say to the exploding sky.
The sky answers, "You take yourself much too seriously."
This makes me laugh.  The sky is right.  I can tell it wasn't listening to my words.  The sky is smart that way.

Again, I look up.  A cacophony of pure color punches holes in the night.  The sparks fade and disappear only to be replaced by a new display of fire and color.  The world smells like a battlefield.  The line between light and dark or war and peace is a very thin one.  I dance my name across it in big bold stokes.



No Kilroy.  No tagger with spray-paint fingers.  Just me.  I ride the loops and arches.  I can live with this, this life of fatal beauty, this horribly, wonderful life.  Under fire and darkness, the smell of smoke everywhere, life goes on for a while longer. 
"No one is getting out alive."  I whisper.  The whisper becomes a shout.
"I'm not going to take you too seriously, you, demon angels of fire.  You're going to remember that I was here.  The game's not over yet," but I'm talking to myself, again.  The sky isn't paying attention.  The sky is smart that way.

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