Secondhand Thrift Stores

If you have a limited world you become content with mediocre often times worthless things.

Life was like an ocean and she was a wave I was just getting tossed in.

Damn the stars that shine. Damn the lies that were mine. Damn the lover’s love.

thinking about how orpheus turning to look back at eurydice isn’t a sign of mortal frailness but a sign of love

You are not a finished product. And no you will never be. You have to remember you often sow seeds you'll never see.

Seek after unconditional love and it's definition, all other things will follow.

The man on the left is Me and the man to the right is My Father. And if speaking honestly I have never given that man enough credit. Most of the best things I am, I inherited from him. He takes up most of me. Literally half, and figuratively far more than that. He has been a constant pressure in my life, and first It's like what, that doesn't sound great but then you remember that's what turns carbon to diamonds. And yeah there's has been a lot tension and friction in our relationships past, but nothing has ever been polished or shined without those exact things. My Father has always loved me without any modifier. He has been of a sturdier stock than I, and his firm guidance has always been to a better path than the one he had to walk. Once I remember my youth pastor compared my Father to how fountain square (Our home) used to be, and I am like how Fountain Square is now. And I don't think there could have been a better metaphor because while we are two different people where share the same base, and we may present ourselves differently but our love is just the same. My Father, I call him "old man", because I know I will always be able to depend on him in any age or time. My Father, if my life were a house he would be the frame. My Father, once with reluctance but now with reverence I carry his name. My Father, I have never given that man enough credit, and starting now Id like that to change.

The Poet E.E. Cummings once described the moon as "the Lily of the Heavens". Our word Lily comes from the Greek word Lilium which could mean "Pure", the Greeks called the flower Leirion meaning "True". The painter, Claude Monet very famously painted a collection of over two hundred and fifty impressionist art pieces of water lilies, that specific genus is called Nymphaea, which has the root of the Greek word Nymph, meaning bride. Some now use that word in relation to beauty. A large portion of Monet's paintings were created after the death of his wife, during and/or post-world-war-two. And some of these paintings as well were composed while he had cataracts. The products of the clouded vision of his eyes. I have been lucky enough to witness some of the paintings myself, some here in Indy, while we had them on exhibit during Newfield's "Monet and Friends", or on their permeant exhibit in Chicago, or in Cleveland or where have you. I think it's something so beautiful that we get to interact with art on these levels where our human experience is so contextual and subjective. Just so particular to us as singular individuals. Like you probably will view George Hitchcock's Calypso in a totally different light than I will. I will see it as a piece of art depicting a woman, mourning and grieving the loss of her lover Odysseus. Longing, Pining, Loving. You might just see it as a painting of a sea nymph, a "water lily" one might say now that you know some other words. But art is also objective, and out-of-context sometimes too. Monet states in his own observation and intention of his works “it would produce the illusion of an endless whole, of water with no horizon and no shore”. That is to say like the reach of their intention is finite, but our interaction and interpretation of it is in-finite. It is not definite. An “Endless Whole”. You might know that I, as an individual, I don't view grief/love, joy/sorrow as separate things. They are the same coin, and they buy into this great experience called life. And in contradiction to that, they are probably not too dissimilar as well to “water with no horizon or shore”. Monet probably painted these painting and thought of his wife, Monet probably painted and thought of the war going on around him. E.E. Cummings probably wrote his poems at about or around the same time Monet was painting his collection. While also(!) George Hitchcock was painting "Calypso". Isn’t that beautiful? The Rendering of Associations. I'd like to call it. If we use some entomologic arguments here based off of what I’ve told you in this ‘dissertation’ (jokingly, basically), one might be able build off what Cummings wrote as "the Moon, the true pure beauty of the Heavens.”. Like what have I spent the last five-hundred-some-odd words writing about here. Painters and Paintings? Poetry? Love? Loss? Have I been writing this to the Moon, or is it to you maybe? Or this to one particular special person right now that I think about in my reflections of the moon, or flowers or water? These ‘Illusions’ as Monet might describe or in my case here an allusion of a seamless image. “The Rendering of Associations of The Endless Whole of Life.”

So I am gonna define a word here. Philosophy. Which meaning is regularly used as " A particular system of philosophical thought". I'm going to challenge that definition and modify it to this. "A particular system of thinking, feeling, or believing.". Now I'm going to explain why.

A philosophy, I believe, is the internalized intention. It is your thought processes, your reasonings, your logics, your feelings. These are not apparent, visible or measurable by any metric, rubric, or standard. After a certain age they become the basis for most of your meaningful actions, or at least for some of us.

Now your actions are separate from your thoughts and likewise vice versa. I am sure you have had an argument where you have you been "Oooh I could just throttle you right now.". But you don't, or won't. Another example you have probably have told yourself to get out of bed, or goto the gym. But your body for whatever reason didn't. Or at least I have that problem. I can think of one example of where my father in a moment of frustration slammed his fist into a pinball machine that he was repairing, breaking it more. His intention was to fix the problem. His actions complicated it further. (He later fixed the problem he caused, and the original issue as well)

Actions are Separate from Thoughts. They are, however, also something important, they are the externalized expression. These things are physical, they can be seen, felt, or heard. They are measurable. They are at times distinct and at other times subtle.

There is this age old question, "Who are you? Your thoughts? Or your actions?". I say to you, both. These things together, your philosophies AND your actions are who you are. If you made a Venn Diagram of these two things, that space where the two overlap is what I'm going to call "Thee Identity". These two things are symbiotic. They work off each other, they benefit from each other, they evolve and become more complex together. Or they should at least.

The integrity of who you are is based on how much those two things overlap. Think of Integrity like its a boat. If you puncture the side of that boat, you have now compromised it's integrity. It is now sinking. That's an exaggeration for dramatic effect, but if who you are becomes compromised. It's comparable to that.

Now to summarize. Your Identity, who you are, is a beautiful mixture of two contradictions. How you think, and how you act. The immeasurable and the measurable. Integrity is how much those two things overlap. It No matter what you believe, your experiences or your biases, your identity if formed by those two things. It is your DUTY as a living person to think about your actions and to act by thinking.