bodhichitta

they watched true crime

not because they liked suffering

they watched to awaken the compassion

toward all who suffer

#katyamills

see.blue

what can i tell you when i feel discouraged and you feel discouraged, too? all i can tell you is look, we all get down and see blue. all i see in you is you are real with that feeling, you are holding, exuding the pain. this is making you more of who you are. someone i can love. you are real to me. i can see your struggle in your eyes and hear it in your words. the depth of your blues mirrors my own, and you touch me where before i was alone.

Journal # 06.08.16

The kids were at play across the way and I wondered how to set myself loose like that, again, is my only forum in my head anymore? Summer strikes up a breeze from the delta and I know the blues and oughta sing. You keep that inside and you risk intimidating your blood. I have quarantined myself off the frolicking ocean of internet, maybe as much for you as for me. I wonder do you still have nothing to do but play with your phone all day. Is there anyone holds you anymore? I hope you have someone who loves you, sometimes I still wish it could be me. Today like most days I am trying real hard to simply love the life I have been given. There was a time I didn't have to try, I sure was a lucky kid. I have my moments but it's a lot harder to reach the beach. Please don't ever forget that I love you, maybe not as clearly or definitively like when we were in each other's arms, okay, but the memory of us warms my heart and I won't forget the terror of it all. Cause being honest keeps it real.

the blue corner

i trick myself into believing my special brand of suffering should be cast out for all to nibble on, and then i pull the hook into your lip so you bleed into the ocean like i do. not that misery loves company any more or less than joyfulness. all our feelings love companions. when walking into a coffeehouse sad after some dreadful news, you must be miles away when you greet me with smiles. unlikely i will stop and talk to you, for the convincing would be hard.  i would rather sit at that table in the corner beside the recently widowed. we can emanate blue from there.

you could be compromised

I knew I could be compromised and I am, I am compromised, I would be a fool to think otherwise. My system. My physiology. My psychology. Compromised all the time. I do not mean the kind of arrangement like when I allow my neighbor's pomegranate tree to grow into my yard in return for being allowed to harvest the pomegranates. This is a choice. I am talking about events beyond our control. Solar flares from the sun creating electromagnetic chaos in our atmosphere. Medications which we must take for our medical conditions, which may compromise our systems which have to process them. Our livers have been crossed one too many times, perhaps our kidneys are overtaxed. We are compromised. I cannot just stop breathing the air, yet this morning when I step outside my apartment I can smell and taste the woodsmoke from one of two fires burning multiple thousands of acres just north of where I live. There are thousands of people north of here whose homes and very lives may be altered. We may all be forced into migratory patterns. Compromised. This is why I care.  Because what happens right here, or way over there in a faraway land, may be comparable, systemically, to a solar flare. We all feel it somehow. Maybe not now, maybe later. Do not ever think yourself too exceptional to be compromised, you could be compromised. If you look closely, you may realize - you already are.

Journal # 03.29.15

Do not give up! Do not even think about it! In this world this madness, fast changing, leaving us with only memories and sadness, aging like we are, wondering who will be there to care anymore or remember our struggle and our little miraculous survival? Wondering what the great god has for us next.

Do not give up! Please!
No matter how tore up you are. The world needs you. We need you.
Precisely because you have been up against those odds, we need you to get even.
Come back to us. Talk to us. Help us go on another day!

Love always
Vitamin K

Journal # 03.15.15

Aquamarine is the color for today. I found it in a meeting room in Sacramento just this morning. You can call it forgiveness. Don't let these resentments burn you up inside, please! You can do something about it. Sometimes it starts with remembering a time when you did something and felt unforgiven. You wished desperately for some way to forgive yourself, and even when you found a way, you still felt unforgiven -  the one you had harmed never spoke to you again. This has happened to everyone, somewhere along the line. From this memory of your own undoing, you have a chance! The chance is aquamarine. I think it is. Something warm and cool at the same time. I talked to someone I had been scared of for a long time now. Then I talked to someone who I had felt resentment toward, for a short time. In both cases, I made myself stay in the other person's presence just long enough to relax a little. Talk to them. Respect them this way. The feeling was aquamarine. The moment was forgiveness.

dawn of a smile

She had this expression

I will never forget

A smile is not
the dawn of pleasure
when you smile
through pain

may
be the birth of true love

do you remember
the adrenaline rush
of a one night
stand?

do you remember
how he got dressed
and left without looking you
in the eye without
speaking?

defeated in
a

rocking chair
dishevelled hair
nobody care

oh
the lonely day
after 

humming the bars
of secession from
self

you wash your
warm cottons

get faded

search for a friend
to come and listen
and love you a little
braid your hair

an upper
level flat
got raided

when no one was home

hard lives made harder
spare moments

collective belief systems
ran through us like
a syndicate

sunrise palm springs

punishing us

she had this expression
i will never forget
cause it saved
me

the smile through pain
when i told her
my troubles

i saw my pain
in her eyes!
in her face!
on her lips!

through her braids
in my hair