Waxing poetic and feeling blue in unanswered questions

"What do I gotta do to make you love empty place"............

Is this necessary? Possible? Obsolete?

Do I need to love like that? Do I need to be loved in that fashion? Is romantic love a right or a privilege? Does the perceived "empty spot" at my side need to be filled? Can I go the length and breadth of my life without that kind of connection? Can I settle for "less" as it is seen by our popular culture? Do I become "less than" or remain "less than" if I have no close romantic partner to share with? As I become conceivably "better" by making wise and fulfilling choices, do I become "more intimidating" and "less accessible" by those around me? Is it possible to be getting better only to have myself "less achievable" because those whom I would like to share time with are unable to meet me minus fear and insecurity? Can the clouds of longing part without the arrival of someone who is supposed to want me for me? Do I know how to be alone for the whole of the rest of my days and not feel dominated by feelings of emptiness and longing? Will I never write a song for someone special who makes me better than I am? Can I just know a love of all and not have to focus on one? Is there ever an end to wanting to be with someone else and just stand whole alone and be simply that? Can it be this way? A simple single existence filled with happiness and comfort?

All the popualr singers, writers, painters all make their influence felt via spoken word, sung word, written word, painted experience centered on love. A notion of belonging and how, if it goes unfulfilled then he who is without is somehow minus some amount of humanity. Truly though, what it is is a personal experience set to paper, canvass, music and we all know it all too well and feel it is about us and our own selves. I am not the man they portray. I cannot be. It is foolish to remain trapped in the ideas of someone else that says that I am less than without their version of life and love. It is their story, their idea of what life has to look like in order for it to be fulfilling, whether it is a set amount of money, perfect love, rich career path, etc. I see it all the time and I, too, become swept away in the story. But is it true? My youth has gone, as the story goes, and am I somehow worse off because I am no longer that svelte boy cavorting on the nude beach in San Diego, 1992? In that time of my life I felt worthless anyway, so what I had I didn't value and I let it slip away. I do not have insurance, a car, own a house, have much that I can call my own. The Great American Story is the dream of having "...all that this country has to offer", but what is that? I truly believe that it is simply freedom from "The Stories" of prosperity, wealth, money, love and all that goes along with it. The having of any and all of these things is not a person's downfall if said person has an appropriate, positive relationship with it all. Poor is not the person with no money, but rather the person who believes in and lives from the perspective of "poverty" of "not enough". I have next to nothing, by the standards that America has set up as a of set cultural necessities. I to have around me what I need to provide me with the pleasures of a life well-lived because it is how I see it. Nothing is anything without the story of value that inflates it and makes it "alive" for me. This includes the story of love and how neccessary or not it is in my life.

It is easy to lose moderation in reality(which is incredibly flexible) and become swept up in the view of "not having" or "not enough" and the real poverty in my world is the belief that it is so. If I do not view it as an empty chasm waiting to be filled by someone else then how can it be an empty chasm waiting to be filled by someone else?

One can stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and see a dry canyon. Someone else, based on his own experiences in life can stand on the same edge and see a deep riverbed. It is both, is it not? The only personal difference is the story that each tells, based on their own life experiences.

Rain to one person is a damned shame as "I wanted to go to the beach today" and for another is "I love the fact that the garden is getting watered today". Both are truths that are sound for the individual and personal. I do not want to see the lack of love in my life as a dry canyon or a missed opportunity to enjoy the beach. Poverty of spirit comes from belief of the negative.

Even the most poverty-stricken, outward-focused times of my life were periodically filled with great joy at the piece of bread that I didn't "need" to go with my bowl of soup, or that the soup had "extra" meat in it so it felt more sustaining. A new pair of shoes on my feet when I had been walking around with holes in the ones I wore for 2 years. For that moment those new shoes made me as rich, mentally, as Donald Trump and all I needed to do was notice the blessing they were to me. These were the times of not focusing on what "was not" but living in "what is".

All there is is this moment and not being "in love" with someone, not having that singular experience and telling myself how empty my life is puts great poverty into play in all aspects of my life. Right this very instant I am greatful for the couch under me, the music playing on my play list, the greenhouse and garden out back, my good health, sobriety to know this value as it is occurring right now. To think on the nebulous, ethereal stories of love, riches, other people's good fortunes(perception, darling) is to not "show up" and "be present" for what is right in front of me.

How much less fortunate a self-created life is there? I do not have a reason to believe in an absence of something, except where I go into the "stories" in my head, collected along the way, that are eternally used by the sub-conscious ego to define the life I live in. There is such richness in the music I play right now, such joy where it hits me inside, knowing nothing about a personal poverty, an emptiness of sorts, just a quiet listyening to the reality of the house around me, with great joy welling up from the depths of me, seeking and knowing the Divinity of The Within that is whole. To believe otherwise is to tell the story of need from something outside one's self......