"If we're gonna fly, we fly like eagles...arms out wide.
If we're gonna fear, we fear no evil...we will rise"
My name is strength...
I feel the need to clear up a few misconceptions people have about me. To start, people think that I cannot cry. Oh I can and I do, I just don't let the tears cloud my vision. People think I do not feel pain. I feel every blow received. I've just been hit so many times it's turned into lessons on pain management. People think I have no doubts. I do, but I have learned to answer them quickly enough to never let them slow me down. Yet the biggest misconception about me that people have is the worst one yet. People think I cannot fail. I will tell you the secret of my success. For the most part, I can only succeed after I have learned the trappings of failure. Why? This allows me on subsequent tries to identify and avoid those trappings altogether...demanding I stay clear and resolute. So you see, without failure, I cannot ever truly reach my full potential. Ever growing in the cyclical "rise and fall" until the "rising" takes hold.
Oh and one more thing. I am often confused with stubbornness. Don't buy into that. Pride is the
engine of stubbornness. I am at my best when I am vulnerable. Humility is the engine of vulnerability. Without it...my hosts will never truly come to "the end of themselves". The place
where course correction is finally realized towards the road to success...
"Summer carries Apollo home into a beaten down hotel room. The bed creaks as he sits to contemplate the night's fate. He take off his shirt as he gets up to open the window. The fan oscillating only hot air. The only source of light; a dim lamp and the clear moon coming through the window. Dry sweat on his skin as a hot breeze pushes forward the sheer curtains ever so slightly. His music is hypnotic. His groove is lucid...he's hungry and she wants to see him. It's gonna be a long night..."
Experience is the worn out reel and the well chewed meal. It's the night's nursed drink and exstacy's brink. Fixated and focused on the seconds that drip like hot wax on skin. Like slow deliberate raindrops fillin up a set of cups hand forged out of old pieces of tin...
There is nothing more tempting than "secret knowledge". To "know" what one does not know.
"How do you know?"
"They told me"...
"Then how is it a secret?"...
"I got one for you that you might not have heard yet"
There is a wizard behind a red curtain that stands hidden before the masses. Oh...he's something special and mysterious but seldom seen or known. It's eye opening to finally discover his existence but did you know? That behind him? There is another curtain...scarlet in hue, velvet in texture. Those behind this particular curtain have no "title" and are hardly ever seen. Born with names like "they" and "them"...they control the wizard. It's quite dangerous to find them so most would rather not. As this tale often goes, one would think to end here but alas...no. There is, in fact as yet...another curtain. This one is black, moldy and covered with ash. Inside that room...is something dark. A thing that carries ancient names, disguised as anything you want OR need it to be. Sly...slick and wise. In fact...wise enough to fool "them" and "they" into thinking that A) they can control it and B) that it has no match simply because behind it...there is no curtain. Oh...but there is "something". A thick rear wall littered with pinprick sized holes just behind it. Pinprick sized holes that allowed a blinding light to intermittently flash into that darkness...weakening it every time. A fact strategically kept obfuscated to anyone but itself and whomever the light that's shining behind that wall was emanating from. A light that shines by way of a universally constitutionalized law coming from the other side.
"Oh...you knew this already!!"
"Please excuse me..."
"Secrets!!...right!!"
"I'm not quite done..."
One day some in the masses revealed the wizard and he laughed at them...as another simply took his place. On another day, some in the masses revealed the "they" & "them" behind the scarlet curtain only to have "they" & "them" laugh at the masses because over time...they too would eventually be replaced. It took a season for a few in the masses to discover the "it"...and oh..."it" laughed in mockery. Why would it laugh? One would think it would thrive "unknown" so what such laughter? It knew that once the masses came to discover it...it could become whatever the people wanted or needed it to be. Basking in the total control it desired more than anything else...able to spin its yarn in any way, shape or form required. How so? Because by the time the masses went through all the mental and spiritual gymnastics to get to "it"...they would have been conditioned to believe anything. Directed and defined by an existential crisis in all the twisted realities that have infected their minds up to that point. No longer knowing who or what they are...strung along by some complex fix called..."secret knowledge". Slaves under bit and bridle by shock and surprise. Thinking the more they "know"...the greater in command they are. When just the opposite is true. Neat trick huh? Yeah...I thought so too...
As to the blinding light that shines through the pinprick sized holes? Well...that is the secret of all secrets. VERY few can stand the truth of it so it has remained hidden save for but a few. Yet how could something so powerful remain hidden? Well, you see...it's not behind a curtain & you've more than likely have been carrying it with you all your life. It's just too simple to find interesting & it's beauty is too common to stand out. Nurturing it...is unimpressive. I liken it best to a piece of coal you've carried in your pocket. Something simple you inherited at "birth"...deemed "renewal", "discovery" and "growth unto power" by those that know it's true value. Yet sadly, most pay no mind to it. They're usually too busy...out looking for diamonds...
