I sat in the dark and thought: There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.

I’ve stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You’d think that would make me feel brave and invincible. It doesn’t.

When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.

You’re a Hell’s Angel then? What chapter are you from?

The speed of the brain

I’ll see you later on down the road. -Southern Slang

The heavens squirrel above us but our eyes are still cast to the ground.

Become yourself.

Let’s just say we did.

I love fairy tales.

We’re gonna have a come to Jesus meeting. – Southern Slang

Got nothing to lose.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

i am aristocratic, smooth with ladies.

What makes us the most normal is knowing that we’re not normal. Little Ishy never knew her mother but she felt the loss more so from her father’s mood swings than for her own feelings. Her father was enough for her. She loved who she was in no small part to her father’s adoration of what she was and what she was becoming. By all accounts, Ishy’s mother was the loveliest lady a man could pray for. And now she was stuck in her time. Ishy thought of a story about her mother her father had told her. It was at a debutante ball, the first time my father laid eyes on her, he was stuck or in love, whatever your preference. She shined with piety but fierce independence. He asked her to dance, and by the third dance he knew he was in love along with every other eligible man there. The courtship would come to blows with other suitors but in the end he had won the fight to wake the sleeping princess. The daughter of a local plantation owner, Ishy’s mother had more grit than ten men. She loved riding her horse and was more Southern gentlewoman than Southern lady. Her loss after the birth of Isabelle left a foreboding around the place that lasted many years after she was gone clear out to the time of the War of Yankee Aggression. Which thankfully was a ways off from this idyllic antebellisim.

Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse. The woods were dark and green. The canvas for all of her father’s stories of pirates and sultans and knights. It was little Ishy’s playground. She could be herself there with a shadow cast down upon her, encircling her like a flaming locust. She could whisper to God or shout out loud. It was just a patch of woods not far from the manor house. She could still hear the dinner bell. Somehow, her little corner of the universe showed her how much of life is a personal journey.

It is more than their land that you take away from the people. It is their past as well, their roots and their identity. If you take away the things that they have been used to seeing, and will be expecting to see, you may, in a way, as well take their eyes. Isabelle grew up with her eyes open. Her father was a very clever businessman and led a very ordered existence starting with himself to his plantation. She took after her father and was very independent from the earliest of ages. Feigning and improvisation became two of her more prominent subtexts and she used them with the skill of a wunderkind.

A man’s center of gravity, the substance of his being, consists in what he has executed and performed in his life. The young man was the master of vast acres of sugarcane fields. He had married his childhood love. They grew up together and knew each others deepest secrets and most angelic prayers. As she lay dying, her last request to her young husband was to raise their daughter to be a Southern Lady. He whispered, “I promise.”

Although the ache lay deep in his heart, his reserve lay in his little girl. He gave her the name Isabelle Louise, the name he and his wife had decided on. He did love little Ishy. He showered her with the best of everything. She worshiped him. He hoped that by treating her like a Southern Lady, it would be his best effort to keep his promise to his wife. Ishy matured quickly likely because her father spoke to her like she was an equal. She had the beauty of her mother and the vigor of her father.

Life and death are like two locked caskets, each of which contains the key to the other. In the time between the birth of his daughter and the resulting death of his beloved wife, the young man had doted on his beautiful little girl but in his gut he felt the resentment.

People work much in order to secure the future; however, the man, perched on his horse, gave his mind much work and trouble, trying to secure the past.

But with the bright sun overhead and the song of cicadas, such annihilation seemed far distant to the young man surveying his plantation.

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

The universe has other plans for him. Happy birthday.🔥☠️🔥

Mother Earth, you’re my life support system.
As a soldier I must drink your blue water,
live inside your red clay and eat your green skin.

Help me to balance myself.
As you hold in balance, the Earth, the sea, and the space environments.
Help me to open my heart, knowing that the Universe will feed me.

I pray my boots will always kiss your face, and my footsteps match your heartbeat.
Carry my body through space and time.
You’re my connection to the Universe and all that comes after.

I’m yours and you are mine.

Juxtaposition➡️Energy➡️Next⬆️

The medium is the message.

The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.

The faintest ink is better than the best memory.

Seize what’s been handed you. Make smart decisions. Make decisions because life is a temporary situation.

The ego lusts for satisfaction. It has a prideful ferocious appetite for its version of “truth”. It is the most challenging aspect to conquer; the cause for most spiritual turmoil.

A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.

You know what, there’s a way out of this room we don’t know about.

Never say die!

I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.

Consider God’s handiwork; who can straighten what he hath made crooked?