Empty

She lifts her skirt up to her knees,
walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing.
I never learned to count my blessings,
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters.
I walk on down the hill,
through grass, grown tall and brown
and still its hard somehow to let go of my pain.
On past the busted back of that old and rusted Cadillac
that sinks into this field, collecting rain.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

And of these cut-throat busted sunsets,
these cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary.
If through my cracked and dusted dime-store lips
I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?
Lay your blouse across the chair,
let fall the flowers from from your hair
and kiss me with that country mouth, so plain.
Outside, the rain is tapping on the leaves,
to me it sounds like they're applauding us the the quiet love we've made.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

Well I looked my demons in the eyes,
laid bare my chest, said "Do your best, destroy me.
You see, I've been to hell and back so many times,
I must admit you kind of bore me."
There's a lot of things that can kill a man,
there's a lot of ways to die,
listen, some already did that walked beside me.
There's a lot of things I don't understand,
why so many people lie.
Its the hurt I hide that fuels the fire inside me.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

-Ray Lamontagne

Day by Day

Thank you for the days,

Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.

I'm thinking of the days,

I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,

I bless the light that shines on you believe me.

And though you're gone,

You're with me every single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,

Days when you can't see wrong from right.

You took my life,

But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,

But it's all right,

Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.

I wish today could be tomorrow,

The night is dark,

It just brings sorrow, let it wait.

Thank you for the days,

Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.

I'm thinking of the days,

I won't forget a single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,

Days when you can't see wrong from right.

You took my life,

But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,

But it's all right,

Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.

Days.

Thank you for the days,

Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.

I'm thinking of the days,

I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,

I bless the light that shines on you believe me.

And though you're gone,

You're with me every single day, believe me.

Days.

Mama

"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, whispering words of wisdom, let it be."

-McCartney/Lennon

My Little Black Book

Has been quite an awesome companion lately.

I sort of figured

My friend Shams showed me this song called 'Do You Realize' - I heard it on his phone and I was pretty lost. I heard it on the radio like a week or two later and downloaded it right away through my music app. Yesterday when Shams and I were trading music before James left, I asked him if he'd ever heard this song - completely sincerely and entirely forgetting it was him that turned me onto it. It all seems very reasonable in light of his departure. I love it...so much.

-----

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - Oh - Oh - Oh
Do You Realize - that everyone you know
Someday will die -

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

-Flaming Lips

I know it looks like I'm moving

Every so often I come back around. Last night one of my best friends I have ever made in my young life so far, moved away. We spent the better part of our last hours together listening to each others songs, plugging in one another's iPod's as we saw the time dwindle towards departure.

I told Shams about how nearly a decade ago I can remember weeping to this song....and then subsequently at various points thereafter when I would come back around to putting this song into rotation. Last night however, my tears were softer as we shared listening to this song, I came back around to a place I like being emotionally and spiritually.

I want you, unsuspecting internet passer-by (should you have read this self indulgent stranger thus far) to take few minutes to stop, about ten if you read me and then listen to this song. Sharing our experience is so important. When someone leaves, what is leaving is the ability to share together in the ways you do - even though those ways grow you to share together in different ways. It's all transient, so what makes the sweet sting of departure a loss? Alas, I am but Socrates without a student here, I will postulate no true answer alone it seems...

Every time, after the week began taxing me, my meetings with Shams would bring me to a reality. I would find my own skin and realize it was better than I even knew! Shams lives forever, and though my sweet brother James has moved, Shams will live on when we speak on the reg and visit one another. A brother so close that I swear he was cut out of the same womb that formed me; of course, that is par for the course with Shams.

Different cries and different times. It's that reality of my life that all coming will pass - though I suspect at sometime a few will remain - or at least we can safely say appear to stay, since time is always "running away". Luckily, I don't feel like my soul has turned to steel anymore. It is an interesting apathy that sets in. Us reasonable adults are very, very funny creatures.

I could write forever today, bleed in emotions and thought as they wrestle in loving embrace. I guess I just still want to share experiences with some people, even if I know that we have completely separate lives. The way Shams leaves, leaves hope and appreciation and makes parting more than just bitter, but bittersweet - it is always thusly right?

Amen for Shams living on in my brother Tim; our trinity was marvelous, and I cried again after James left because it became clear how well God (call it circumstance and chance if you wish) takes care of me. I, an only child, was surrounded with such loving brothers as only great poetry can hint towards; then again, awed at how James & Tim came into my life, Shams told me to burst open like this

I hope you will laugh with me loudly, because you see my writing in circles. It's time to be alone again.

Love you Shams, show Philly what brotherly love means, we will see you soon.

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don’t see why I should even care
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paree
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

70

Bob Dylan turned 70 yesterday.

Here are 70 pictures of him.

If you like him, you'll love these.

Click on these words

A Keyhole's View

1)My Sandbox.

2)"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us" - Kafka

3)"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads" - Thoreau

Happy Birthday Bob

Thank you for the inspiration to sing songs and learn the guitar towards that end when I was younger. Thanks for sucking the air out of the room of singer-songwriters. Thanks for having such a large body of work, that covers of covers of your originals still ring true and loud. Thanks for showing us how a troubadour follows his life and lives his lies till they become some kind of truth. Thanks for your influence on the Beatles. Thanks for showing what it meant to try and love and thanks for showing that you are human in your many personal idiosyncrasies - pulling at your hair, lying about who you worked with, stealing melodies and picking patterns (in fact the song that made me fall in love with, what you are in your work - you stole!). You brought me a long way Bob, I am sure to love your work till time ticks away entirely for my corporal being. Thank you for reminding me always that it isn't dark yet, but that it's getting there. Or that she'll take just like a woman and make love just like a woman, but break like a little girl; that I should bow down to her on Sunday and salute her when her birthday comes; that they'll go there way and I'll go mine; that always, the times are a' changin'; for telling me about the lonesome death of Hattie Carol, or what it feels like on Maggies Farm; for teaching me about the Hurricane, or keeping me aware that a hard rain's a' gonna fall. Thank you for giving me a peek into how wonderful it is when they lay across a big brass bed, and what happened along the watchtower, and for putting so well what it feels like on Desolation Row. Thanks Bob for telling me there's an answer blowing in the wind and what it's like to live life like a rolling stone. I don't know you, Bob, but who your work is - him I love with my deepest heart, for he - in part - exposed and taught me something about my deepest heart

I hope it's all worked out well for you. Thanks again,

Sincerely,

Another person you impacted.

I've forgotten who I am - and 'The Pursuit of Dreams'

I wrote this about a year and a half ago.

The album version has strings and trumpets and feels much fuller in it's expression. I cried in the last two lines of this song while recording it. Something hit me. Before we started recording it, a dove flew into the chimney, and after quite some time, it wouldn't leave - with three adults behind it - when I was done singing and opened the door to get air for the tears in my eyes, the dove flew out.

I had a few hours to spend how I wished on Saturday so I recorded this song since it's been a while I've recorded a song. It's long and so I cut it down to the end, plus it's a teaser which lacks the trumpets and horns and strings that really bring the song to life closer to the way it was intended.

These online videos and blogs and social network sites are little windows - keyholes - to reference 'She Belongs to Me' by Bob Dylan (which is what I learned to play before recording this song). Digital keyholes, tiny peeks into what another's space and life seems to look like - giving some indication while simultaneously being wholly something subjective and myopic. Little keyholes.

Hope you enjoy your peek, click through the video and get a free download if you'd like (you'll be redirected to Facebook in the description).

She Belongs To Me

She's got everything she needs

She's an artist, she don't look back
She's got everything she needs
She's an artist, she don't look back
She can take the dark out of nighttime
And paint the daytime black.

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.

She never stumbles
She's got no place to fall
She never stumbles
She's got no place to fall
She's nobody's child
The Law can't touch her at all.

She wears an Egyptian red ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian red ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She's a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique.

Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween buy her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum.

- Bob Dylan

Click on the image.

That would be a nice reaction

Tilling the soil

Philosophical contemplation: Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1653

"Just as a piece of land has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the mind of the pupil has to be prepared in its habits if it is to enjoy and dislike the right things"

- Aristotle

Book X: Pleasure and the life of happiness

The Nicomachean Ethics

I really just want to write quickly.

I have been reading a lot of ancient Greek philosophy - and equally as important, the context and string of growth behind that philosophy.

Socrates was the turn inward - the turn from psychical nature, to the human -- but not directly. It started out with persons like Anaxagoras turning to explain the nature of the cosmos away from the 'Gods' - this was hated back then and stifled -- seriously, same problems over and over, us a human race has got to figure this out. This combined with Protagoras (and his individualism) lead to a trembling of the foundations upon which ancient Greece stood (specifically Athens - the villages of Attica accepted this easier).

Anyways, without showing my still very unlearned view, the pendulum swinging led away from the physical sciences and an interest in human experience; specifically the interest in senses and the mind. The philosophers associated here are gone from my mind this early afternoon - but you can trace the thread very easily by reading Will Durant's books on Ancient cultures (Part II specifically on the rise and fall of Greece).

Anyhow, the way Socrates is different from these aforementioned thinkers is numerous; here specifically I am highlighting the turn further inward from the senses - he, Socrates, became interested most in human intention and character.

I found the seeds of his philosophical push thrusting from the soil of my young and still actively tilled intellectualism. I see and experience life finding my most interesting stimulus in the backdrops of human interaction and processing. This is to say that I am interested in how we respond as people and individuals to stimuli, but also why we do, and what factors potentially led us to.

Let all I've written so far rest comfortably a few inches from settling in the back of your mind before I finish my overall point following -

I also like video games and read about them. Even in that I see human experience as I've described above, the why and what and how, etc. Today I stumbled upon a little article about fixed mindsets and malleable mindsets and how certain video game habits can indicate both and how video games can be used slightly to modify one or the other.

Finally, one point away from my conclusion - I am still tracing the dance of positive processing. It is amazing. Using the word 'difficult' is far too easy and childish, and the word 'challenging' is trite and obvious - the precarious ways in which we must "vigilantly guard our good moods!" is quite a sensation. As I've previously described it, it's almost as if I can feel the new pathways growing while the old die - as if I can sense my brain's shape altering - so Amazing is the most accurate and comfortable word to use.

In conclusion then, Socrates turned inward to see the human character and suggested that we 'know ourselves' - the move of positivity can alter the mind and improve ones character and also give a good reflection of the base which someone starts out with - and video games, are another remarkable modern tool which allow us to embark on this wise, age old endeavor if used in the right manner. (which in writing it out, brings my thinking full circle to the way Socrates describes what 'good' is --- which is something being used in a good purpose).

Read the video game article here

I think this blog was about philosophy, spiritual growth thereafter, and video games as another vessel that we comtemporaries mostly have access to which our forefathers of thought did not. So I guess I'm saying even video games can be included in our personal growth?

That seems interesting.

you should tell me if you feel like you've wasted your time...because my 'old neurons' are telling me that I think I just did...though my new ones are laughing and saying 'way to write about what you want, constant writing will make you a better writer, thinker and person as it will give you a written log of your personality at the time - thus charting your growth and giving you the tools needed to chart direction and plot destination...and maybe it will also entertain them...whoever they are'

love karan