Sometimes our bodies betray us and work against our nature, but for many sorrow is an addiction.

Like happiness, it fills a void. Feeling empty is the opposite of sorrow and happiness. Passion takes on many forms, and a passionate woman full of sorrow is everything but an empty space.

Thus, depression sometimes is a form of self-defense, but, insidious that it is, it is more an abusive lover who is the only one to pay attention. It’s like alcoholism: feeling drunk is better than not feeling anything at all.

There are many ways into addiction, and half as many ways getting out. Sadness may be better than the bottomless pit, but the mountain of life is there for a reason.

Climb it or sit around at the bottom looking at the clouds. Happiness is not a choice or an obligation.

Happiness is an addiction, and the end result of looking up at the top, rather looking into the abyss.

It’s that simple.

In order to gain focus, one must often lose focus.

A person at any given time is in a state defined both by who she is and who she wants to be.

This definition is everything. We can either let other people and actions or even the actions that we cause that we do not wish, define us. In order to move to where we want to be, we must let go of the things that currently define us that are negative in nature.

Losing focus is one way to do this. Growing up, the wise told us  to not let others define us. The hard slog, however, is to recognize when our definition of who and what we are is the wrong one. We often focus on the wrong things. Perhaps this thing consumes us because it is painful and needs attention. Perhaps it is unavoidable. Perhaps it is a habit.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t deserve focus. It may need attention, sometimes lots of attention, but it’s not who we are.

We are not pain.

We are not heartache.

We are not loneliness.

We have felt all these things. Sometimes we can’t let them go, but we can turn from them. Adversity is either a cup to hold the raindrop or the raindrop that falls into the lake. Focus is our choice.

Choose wisely.

There are men who simply never leave.

It never occurs to them. They stand in the eye of the storm for so long they become the eye. They will always be there, it is a quantum certainty, their resolve woven directly in their reality.

A friend disappears. Sometimes another. They leave on clouds of bleak or simply fade away. It does not matter, though, as a man reaches out his hand and plunges it into the maelstrom. Grab on, friend. Grab on.

Sometimes a hand claps his. It is usually a feminine hand.

The man pulls. Sometimes the hand lets go in fear of the eye, but he never will. Sometimes he pulls and draws the person into his calm existence.

“I’m sorry I went away,” her eyes will say.

The man will smile, for the wind apologizing to the rock for blowing is amusing to him.

Sometimes, her eyes are bittersweet.

The man will still smile.

Here, in the center, there is the now, never the past, only the future. Regrets are for the wind.

As the year ends, this has been an amazing journey for me as a writer. I’ve learned so much. I pulled up my very first novel and looked at it. It was as if another person wrote it. On drugs. With one hand. Upside down. There may have even been drool. Electronic drool. If my laptop could speak its mind, I think the words about that first book would have been “durp drup durp.”

There are things about me that I keep close to my heart. I’ve hinted here and there, and while I don’t keep secrets, I’ve also pointed out that sometimes knowledge is a burden. That wasn’t a hint to back off. It was an attempt not to contaminate you.

Yet, this year, that heart is heavy for many writers. In some ways, my empathy comes full circle. I know first hand that some journeys are steps where your own shadow is your only company. I’ve learned since joining the interweb tubes club that it’s best to simply offer a kind word. No one wants to hear that sorrows are relative even if that is the universal truth that lends perspective and change. These are things that simply don’t convey because I am not sitting across the table looking into your eyes and sharing your burdens.

So what does that have to do with writing?

Ah, you see my friends, writing is a skill for honing, practicing and developing. Writing from the depths of your core, however, requires something altogether different. This year, I not so much grew my writing talent as I’ve grown as a person. I’ve come to terms with some of my own little slices of bleak.

Sometimes, understanding is a block.

Don’t come to grips with whatever.

Write it out.

Don’t delve deep into the mind of your own psyche.

Write it out.

Don’t reach out for empathy and a sympathetic ear.

Write it out.

Write it out. Write it out. Write it out. This is what flows in our blood. This is who we are. The blank page deserves honesty. If, at the end of the last page of the last chapter, you’ve bled and cried, then so be it.

Sometimes the only connection is the literary connection. The void, sometimes, can only be filled with words.

The house smells so wonderful.

My penchant for Scrooge-like feelings during the holiday season has slowly been replaced by warm memories of my children’s joy for the season. For young boys, yes, Christmas is a lot about presents. If you are a good parent, if you could overcome the bombastic rampant commercialism, there is an underlying simplicity about the season that can pull at the heart like no other time.

This morning Thing Two came in while I was getting dressed, wanting to know if we could go get Thing One’s Christmas present tonight. How cute is that? I’ll tell you how cute it is, it is a bit of the ultra-cuteness.

Yes there are the presents. But then there is the smell of the tree. The gingerbread house. The decorating. The Christmas cookies. The story of Christmas. Grandpa and Nanna. Daddy’s Christmas Day roast. Santa. The music. The warm fireplace and the happy dog.

Long after those presents are gone, the memories of our close family during this time will linger on. One day my sons will be walking in one of the great national forests around here, and after the morning rain, smell the fresh scent of grand firs. And it will smell like Christmas.

And that will be magical, always magical, even in the dead of summer, it will be Christmas magic.

(repost from 2008)

Rarely one sees it in a couple, two people sitting together, maybe at dinner, maybe at a coffee shop. They are holding hands across the table, fingers intertwined as if letting go one would spin away forever and be lost unto the endless void.

There is a certain fierceness in the type of love this couple shares, one not experienced by lessor mortals. Look into their eyes and behind those windows to the soul lies an honesty both terrible and beautiful to behold. These two people have experienced pain and lost and heartache. Grief seeps from their pores like sweat and their shadows’ name is loneliness.

Sometimes a soul is so dark it can only be seen by another of its like. For those, it is a beacon like no other, a pulsar that flashes to the heartbeat of life. This brightness attracts others who understand. When they meet it is beyond a kindred spirit. Each knows what the other is feeling, always. They swim in the same current, wondering why the churning waters never quite pull them completely under.

They will always hold hands. Always. He traded his stick-shift sports car for an automatic so he could clasp her hand when he drives. In the bedroom, when they make love, always with at least one sweaty hand clasped with another.

Never let me go is unsaid, because those words are akin to a desire to breathe. Like a heartbeat, it happens no matter what, and when it fails, they die.

The last page.

The panic, the emptiness, the loss of control feeling as a novel goes from me to we. These feelings continue. They go on and on.

Why?

The root of this anxiety is not fear.

The root is not the possibility of rejection.

The root is not swimming in fate’s sea of circumstance .

These feelings come from ownership.

The work is yours alone. Everything that happens after the last page is yours alone. Everything that comes next is by will and by permission.

The novel is the ultimate rebellion against collectivism, even if it rallies for that.

Such a rebellion comes at a price.

Own it.

Dignity is not about self-confidence, nor is it composure and certainly not how one behaves in public.

Dignity is choice, and not the choices we make, but simply our ability to do so.

To remove choice from an individual is to belittle them and demean them. This is immoral. It strips them of their dignity. An undignified act is an act born in the lost of freedom.

When one carries themselves with dignity, one is holding true that the answer to the choice presented may have been right or it may have been wrong, but it was, at the core, made without direct or subversive force.

To strip a person of their dignity is an act of force. To strip it from a group of people is tyranny. Both are dishonorable, and the righteous oppose both with equal measure.

Spirit and Dignity by Mitch Cat

(repost from 2008)

The house smells so wonderful.

My penchant for Scrooge-like feelings during the holiday season has slowly been replaced by warm memories of my children’s joy for the season. For young boys, yes, Christmas is a lot about presents. If you are a good parent, if you could overcome the bombastic rampant commercialism, there is an underlying simplicity about the season that can pull at the heart like no other time.

This morning Thing Two came in while I was getting dressed, wanting to know if we could go get Thing One’s Christmas present tonight. How cute is that? I’ll tell you how cute it is, it is a bit of the ultra-cuteness.

Yes there are the presents. But then there is the smell of the tree. The gingerbread house. The decorating. The Christmas cookies. The story of Christmas. Grandpa and Nanna. Daddy’s Christmas Day roast. Santa. The music. The warm fireplace and the happy dog.

Long after those presents are gone, the memories of our close family during this time will linger on. One day my sons will be walking in one of the great national forests around here, and after the morning rain, smell the fresh scent of grand firs. And it will smell like Christmas.

And that will be magical, always magical, even in the dead of summer, it will be Christmas magic.

The human condition is to socially relate to others, yet we recognize that in order to master socialization, one must find the center to self and live there without fear.

This duality of the human nature is a war. It is a war for independence against the war for socialization. This is true balance, the yin and the yang. Honor and integrity are internal concepts, while justice and righteousness are external. All must exist on equal footing.

In any true conflict, there are winners and there are losers, but sometimes victory comes from the unexpected and defeat is all too predictable. Just as one must find the center and dwell within, the path to that place is not a singular journey.

The path to true independence, then, comes from choice. Not the choices we make on our own, but whom we welcome on our journey, and those we recognize as subversive influences.

It is always choice, and without it we may achieve socialization, but only to avoid self-progress. The wrong choices are merely strays off the path.

The absence of choice is a loss and a war with self.