On a Season’s End

A distant call in the wayward throes

Of winds in blight by winter snows

For night resounds the chill and cry

The white that soars without respite

 

As crystal droplets fall in line

I gaze unto a lighted sky

A hollow field in distant view

Adorned in color of Orion’s hue

 

Pastoral lined with hollyhock

Groomed pastures and a forest mock

a danger’s fire set alight

In here a room, where troubles write

 

Although my cry is true and free

Within ordered life an ignominy

I, bound with shackle, often wrought

A desperate roar for winter shock

 

So to scenes of winter’s care

I take my pen and so despair

To tint the white of an empty note

with words ablaze as heaven wrote

 

The cry I hear among distant wind

Responding to my own within

As hollow memories to me flock

I detail them as to me they walk

 

Once ended I take down my pen

And look upon the lighted den

Of a meadow I sought in distant view

Now empty, tired, void of hue

 

For my winter time has come to end

And snow melts fire, a lonely friend

Consumed in me and ever sure

That life has come and gone once more

                                                                                                                               -j.m.

 

On Hope

Showered with a renewed sense of hope this evening after reading one of my favorite novels, I feel it pertinent to comment on the phenomenon.  To hope is defined as wishing for something with expectation of its fulfillment; it serves a beacon of light for most, and fires passion and motivation in all.  To have hope is to understand the possibility of improvement, the refinement of a sullied experience, a reprieve for the unbending will of fate’s catastrophes.  I can recognize the feeling in my own being as a splash of positivity and inextricable excitement, when worries get washed away and troubles find no seed for harvest.  It may linger on for a few minutes to even days, and daily existence carries on in its usual form but with a distinct beam of innate knowledge that something good is near fruition. 

 

Hope can be as natural to man as any other feeling; it is almost a reflex to expect good fortune and joyous moments amongst everyday sorrows.  But I sometimes ask myself: is it possible to ever be without hope, either for immediate fulfillment of joy or long-term expectations of improvement?  Could it be possible for one to be so brow-beaten by events and occurrences in a life that it could be fully instilled in their consciousness the certain knowledge that nothing will ever get better? 

 

I would first look to people in the most dire of situations; poverty, hunger, illness, etc.  It is easier to acknowledge the state of hopelessness for those who live in unstable situations that harbor danger and disorder on a daily basis.  To live in constant tragedy would most definitely produce some sort of expectation of things going always awry.  There is no expectation of fulfillment because there is no expectation.  There may be slivers of hope, but only in the immediate happinesses of transient things, like good weather, a day of less fighting, a little extra food for a daily meal.  However, the overall situation of someone living in such a state could afford little hope in a grand measure: one to ease their life completely and rid the immediate danger of its daily trials.  I can speak little more for such situations because I have not lived them, and I would not want to underestimate the power of the world’s goodwill to alleviate the burden of those that battle such life-threatening trials. 

 

I will instead question the existence of hopelessness in those who do not live in precarious environments, but are plagued with failed fulfillment of the emotional kind.  Could there exist a numbing of this reflex of optimism, caused by constant despair of mind?  When one’s own greatest desire can be fully dampened by life experiences, it is easy to ensnare oneself in a cage with no key.  The prospect of possibility may seem a distant glow in a field of constant failure with no means of mowing those barriers that have planted their roots so firmly on one’s own concept of expected fulfillment. 

To live such a life would be terrible indeed, and to find no means of alleviating the void of optimism would not extenuate an overbearing hopelessness.  I have faith in others as I do in myself that, in our darkest hours, a little pocket of strength outside ideals of hope will be found to rip those weeds of their root and allow us to plow forward.

 

 

On Presentiment: Fortune-telling or a plain ol’ gut feeling?

I’ve always questioned the matter of human prescience, the sensation in our souls which we at times deem an immutable foreboding of our own joy or tragedy.  Is this foreknowledge to be considered commonplace, or can we ascribe to it something a bit more out of the ordinary and beyond our human means of comprehension?  When we act upon an imminent desire, and have a sudden realization that it could go horribly wrong, or feel that its completed act will bring about a positive end, with what certainty do we act upon such a revelation? 

 

It is a matter of questioning the source of these innate forebodings.  Innate, as they are, means they have come from some level of consciousness in our understanding of the present situation.  If we act upon our will, it is the conscience behind that will that will irrevocably augment that little voice inside of us to say ‘yes, this is good, your action will bring about an end in your favor’ or on the other end, ‘this is wrong, you have erred and will soon face some unpleasant moment.’  Many will recognize this presentiment as just that: our own gut feeling of an event’s consequence in the form of the little voice reflecting back as an expression of the human conscience.

 

However, there are those who will choose to mystify such revelations and find them anything but commonplace.  I would look to situations where one does not act in any way to promote their will, but feel presentiments all the same.  If a mother is suddenly showered with sensations of tragic foreboding for her son or daughter, and soon comes across the fact that the said son or daughter has suffered some misfortune, she will look to the heavens and say ‘I knew it in my heart that he/she was in danger’ and be more likely to attribute such presentiment to a higher power.  Is it God that strategically places these sensations in people at the right times, hoping they would act upon such a preternatural presentiment and prevent some future misfortune?  Or can one ascribe these feelings of sudden revelation to the other ordinary emotions solely produced by our own penchant to worry and logically infer?

 

To argue against faith for logic and vice versa would not be a conducive means to analyze such subjects.  It takes more than faith and more than logic to comprehend with a lay man’s perspective the revelations of presentiments.  I would argue that faith in higher powers and mystified vagueities complement and at times are products of the innate development of our psyche that makes it possible to produce specific forethoughts.  It is the love of a mother that will yield such presentiments for her children.   It is the gut feeling produced by our conscience that will dictate the presentiment towards the outcome of our actions. 

 

Looking to the actual outcomes of the objects of our presentiments can also provide a telling picture.  Were we correct in believing that our actions produced the forethought result?  More often than not, we are not correct; we have little control over the complex character of our external environments.  But for those presentiments that proved right, we can safely pat ourselves on the back and acknowledge a keen intuition on our part to predict (most often by experience) what future joys and tragedies will befall us. 

 

 

 

 

On Dissatisfaction: Transient Happiness

To be a recipient of dissatisfaction is a most trifling affair when one’s own balance of joy and emotional morbidity can be easily swayed.   I say recipient because, yes, dissatisfaction is a punishment received, given to us by none other than the unconscious entity of our own hidden hopes for the happinesses that drive a life.  Can we, with certainty, understand our desires and the means of achieving them?  For some, this may be a simple acknowledgment, but for others, it involves an intricate pattern of highs and lows that define a present feeling.  Is it a feeling? It is more of a state of a being by which a man or a woman can live with ease when it comes to dealing with the minutiae of daily living, but serves as a looming cloud over moments of inactivity, moments of reflection and tired persistence when one’s guard is let down and one can think of nothing but the bigger picture.  It is this bigger picture that usually causes the nebulous backdrop to how we can clearly ascertain what causes dissatisfaction and what abates it.

 

If a man desires to be rich, he will clearly be dissatisfied if he is poor.  If a woman desires to be coupled, she will undoubtedly be saddened if she finds herself alone on a cold night.  These realizations of dissatisfactions come at moments when one would normally thrive in the throes of satisfied living but then unfortunately find themselves living in the mental embodiment of a dissatisfied desire. 

 

On defining dissatisfaction, one must keep in mind the level of effort it takes different people to recognize such a state.  Understanding our desires can be almost impossible for many whose happinesses are heavily influenced by the myriad of small things that may cause their fleeting moments of happiness, a climax defined only by a transient state of being undoubtedly a cause of external factors.  If sunshine makes one smile, stepping out onto a sunny day will be a source of pleasure.  If a daily source of satisfaction occurs by chance, such as the train coming on time, or the cancellation of a school exam, then one can definitely bask in these fleeting moments.  These occurrences are by far welcome, but they define nothing nor do they better the self-understanding of the source that could bring about an overall satisfaction in life, the type that looms over daily activities and will be recognized in moments of self-meditation.  Happiness is not defined by the train coming on time every day, or the perpetual cancellation of trying tasks.  It is defined by the realization of what we desire most for ourselves and the discovery of the means to attain it. 

 

Welcome to Gold Quill

I have created this blog for the purposes of divulging my own thoughts on certain aspects in life that may prove troublesome for many, including myself.  It’s a release for myself to just go on and on and on about things I think about. 

 

- jose