Snarl!

My hackles are up
My fangs are bared
I need to run
I need to hunt
I need to fight
I need to fuck

Tonight my howl is stuck in my throat
Growls are all that come out
My nose is to the wind
But all I smell is sour
I want to lick my chops and taste blood
And let the crimson stain my muzzle
As a reminder
As a warning!

Loosening The Knot

Saturday night, I did some laid-back, fun, old-school good time drinking with a friend I've known almost 20 years. The current crappy state of our sad economy and a well-crafted lie from another employee desperate to save their own skin had left him briefly jobless -a scary prospect in today's slim job market- but he is pretty sure he's found what could prove to be very gainful employment and so, was sharing his joy with me, via the consumption of good beer and my old friend (and also old nemesis) Mr. Jack Daniels. As we sat there and drank and talked of many things, I think something in me, some great knot I carry around all to often and don't always realize it, began to loosen and unravel a bit. We joked and laughed at current things. We enjoyed the sights of many beautiful young ladies who were moving to and fro, enjoying the teeming nightlife around us. We strolled a bit down our almost two-decades-long memory lane of youthful misdeeds and adult realizations. And when we were done, we settled within my house to chill out the remainder of our evening. He passed out happily while enjoying a movie via the awesome miracle of Netflix, and I got a call about then from a certain young lady with whom I have been cultivating a romantic relationship from afar. Thank you, Mr. Graham-Bell for your lovely invention, which allows us to bridge the states-wide gap between us in and instant and enjoy the pleasure of one-another's company vocally, if not in person.
I must say here, that I am normally a very guarded person. I can express emotions very clearly and much more easily in writing. But, when inter-acting with people I tend to be one to erect walls, play my cards close to my chest as they say, and choose my words very carefully. Alcohol, however, can suddenly become a huge wrecking ball that smashes right through those carefully crafted constructs, redering them inert and tossing inhibitions to the wind.
So...when this call came, that is when the wrecking ball hit and the knot loosened a little. And with that loosening came a loosening of my tongue, as they say and many things I'd kept happily locked away, and things I had been thinking on and analyzing (Probably over-analyzing, knowing me), came pouring fourth.
To my great and joyful surprise, she was quite receptive of all of this and excepting. She was basically just like "OK, this is how it is and I know when you're sober much of this will again get locked away, and that's OK. You'll come to it when you're ready." This made me feel great, and no doubt was a big part of the reason I felt so good Sunday. I don't have "I Feel Awesome!" type days very often, so my thanks to her. She knows who she is. She is among my small readership of the ramblings on this blog, so perhaps she will read this, and within it catch another small glimpse of what she glimpsed that evening...

I Feel Like A Number

I've been thinking. A dangerous past-time, I know... But, I have. I have been thinking about emotions. How they work, how some are easier to understand than others, how some seem more, for lack of a better term, comfortable on some people than others. And chief amid all this quandry is the following question. Can we quantify emotions? Can we separate them out like portions of sugar for a baking recipe and figure out the 'level' of an emotion we feel? Is it possible to measure an emotion on a 0-10 scale like doctors ask us to do for pain? Some say we can. I'm not so sure. At least, not with certain emotions anyway. Pain has always been pretty easy for me to measure on that scale. If I'm in pain (Good or Bad) and you ask me, I can give you an approximate number right off. But emotions are a completely different animal. Hell, it's a zoo full of completely different animals. They are much more ethereal than pain. Harder to grasp and pin down and say "This is exactly what I'm feeling and this is why and here,tify easier because I'm more familiar with them. Anger being the main one. Sad as that is. And Sadness I can probably rate pretty quick if called to do it. But things like Love and Joy are harder for me. By a long shot. And believe me, I'm not an Emo, boo-hoo, the world hates me kinda guy. Seriously. Even though that statement about the emotions I have harder time with may make it sound that way. I'm just trying to figure some things out that have been bouncing around in my noggin and so, here I express them as a part of that sometimes awesome, sometimes sucky process. In fact, not only am I doing that but I invite and challenge any of my readers to post their take on this subject, either through comments or, better yet, though full posts, similar to how Doll recently had several of us do about Humility on her blog.
So, in short, the jury is still out for me on whether or not one can accurately measure emotions by a number or some such thing, though I am leaning towards No. What do you think? Can it be done?

It's hard to be humble...

(For those of you who read my friend Doll's blog "Well, God Damn", this will be a re-post)

I would like to preface this post by apologizing to Doll, who asked me 3 months ago if I would contribute to this topic and give my opinion on Humility. It should have been here sooner, but life intervened. My apologies also to my much more punctual fellow posters on this thread. But now, at last and without any further ado...
What is humility? That's no so easy a question to answer as one might think. If you ask one thousand people this question, I have no doubt you would get nearly as many answers. The reason for this is simple. Well...OK, it's actually NOT so simple. It is actually rather complex. Because we, as humans, are complex. I mean, sure, you can look to Webster or Oxford or even Dictionary.com for a definition, but that is just a scratch on the surface. All you will learn from any of those sources is simply what the WORD humility means. Defining words is easy. It's when you get down to what the concept of what the humility really IS that things get interesting; because it is so, so much more than just a word.

Humility and whether one does or does not have it, are shaped by so many different factors. Spirituality, up-bringing, environment, and the vast gamut of personal experiences, joys and traumas we all expeience as individuals throughout our lives. Which, for example, is why you: the reader, get all these fascinating little essays, rants and perspectives on Humility. Each on different from the next due to all of the factors listed above and more, but none wrong. And who knows, along the way you may discover or re-define what it actually means to you, and the role it - or it's absence - plays in your own life.

And so, all of that being said, humility to me is acceptance of yourself and your place in things with pride, while striving to be the best you you can become. And the real trick in this is to not cross that sometimes hair-thin line from pride into arrogance, which then blows humility all to shit until something happens to again teach you humility. It is, I think an on-going lesson to some degree in everyone's lives. In the legends of my faith and also in those of many other cultures, even the Gods themselves are not immune to the lessons of humility and arrogance. When looked at from that perspective, one realizes how truly powerful a force humility is. It is a place we must all tread with care, lest we fall and suffer the worst fate of all... Becoming self-important pompous douche bags!