It’s a big mad, crazy word that means so much and means so little, all at once. If you see it as a weapon-like thing then it’s scary as fuck but if you see it as a sharing thing, then it’s benign and almost cozy But regardless how you see it or what you think of it, no one can give it to you nor can they take it away…because…

…basically it doesn’t exist.

Power is an illusion promoted by society to set you up to struggle with other people. It’s through that struggle that you then start comparing yourself to your enemy or friend or celebrity or whomever. And it’s by that comparison that you see yourself coming up short, you see your lack of (insert something that can be purchased), your unsuitability to (insert a role in life)…ultimately, your failure. And it’s those failures where…
… society has something to sell you.

But what is not an illusion is the fact that you were born with all the tools and knowledge necessary to live a happy, fulfilled life. What is not an illusion is that you were born able to love and able to be loved by others. You need no “power” in order to do these things.

What you do need is to love and accept yourself the way you are, understanding that you are not, nor will you ever be , perfect. And that you have the ability to change those things about yourself that YOU want to change, not necessarily what society wants. Basically, you do not need to struggle with anyone…over anything…in order to validate yourself, to yourself.

And you’ll save a fuck ton of money too

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

where are the words
that replace
the empty spot
beside you, that
fill the hole
growing deeper
as you lie awake
at night

where is the comfort
of a noise
so often heard
the rustle of linen
a heartbeat
losing its echoes
as you sleep
at night

where is the touch
that is so lost
and disappearing
so missing that
it hurts
to remember
now it’s never there
at night

words of comfort and touch
found inside where they began
a notion silently sweeping
away the emptiness at hand
They are all you.

where is the ending
of solid sordid weeping
where happy
is an adverb
attached to a life
your leading
all the while thinking
at night

here is the option
to decide to keep living
a moment lost
to thinking
while others get
the giving
of what you’ve lost
at night

where is the brightness
of morning love
the missing sequence
felt removed
and altered
turned inward and burning
tossing and turning
at night

words of option and brightness
found inside where they began
a notion silently sweeping
away the emptiness at hand

They are all you.

They are all you

They are all you.

I see your
light
I love you/I don’t know you,
I am
enthralled by the idea
of you, by the
essence of who I think
you are
I see you because
I am looking at you, thinking,
believing
what might be, what
can be, what will happen
when you look back
at me
I feel you thinking; wispy and
slight
the weight of a dream, sitting
on shoulders, on empty desks
where emotions
do their business…
day after day
I want you like I want air
water land…to walk toward
an ending imagined
and hoped for
I love you/I don’t know you
yet you are something
shining within me, a glow
that shadows my
dreams, a vague sparkle
like firefly’s
circling in the deep well
I call
me…and
in that darkness;
the corners, lost
edges
they wait for
your
light…so
I can see myself
clearly
again.

I will wait forever to hear “yes”…

…but I want to hear “no” as soon as possible.

I know a lot of people make fun of all my gazillion First Date’s, (well, the people who give a shit) but very few actually ask about the Second or Third Date. In fact, you and they may imagine that I don’t actually do anything but have First Dates. And you would be wrong…

…I do.

Lots of them…but I don’t write about them for the simple fact that I don’t want to invade the privacy of the girl I’m going out with. I can write about the First Date because I don’t know her yet, I never mention her by name and I never really go into any kind of detail about the date other than the occasional diatribe when the date has gone horribly wrong. Those I actually enjoy writing, in fact. But…

…back to Yes versus No.

We all invest our time in various things daily…in our job, in our friends, our hobbies…and as crass as it sounds we do so with the hopes that there is a return on that investment…or ROI. We hope that the time we spend on our job rewards us (gives us an ROI) with money and a sense of self-worth. We hope the time we spend with our friends is more geared toward an ROI of a sense of acceptance and the love we feel…it’s a psychic reward. The ROI on our hobbies is that hopefully we relax and enjoy this “life” thing. But in all cases, the ROI is based on the amount of time we are willing to invest versus what we expect to happen…(and he’s the important bit)…WHEN we expect it to happen.

Imagine that you’re thinking of changing careers so you research what it takes to become Corporate Lawyer. With the additional schooling, the bar exams and the experience you will need to get there, it is likely a 10 year (at least) plan…and you’re more than qualified in all intellectual respects…but you want to be a Corporate Lawyer NEXT WEEK. That is when you want to see the ROI for all the work that will go into becoming a Corporate Lawyer. Well…

…do I really need to say anything?

All investments we make, regardless for what, have a time component attached that is as important as any other requirement. It’s no good if you finally get what you want but its usefulness is zero because too much time had passed. No one invests their time expecting nothing back and they definitely don’t set an open ended time for when they expect to be rewarded.
No one.

So let’s talk about the investment of time for First Dates. While I don’t have an exhaustive laundry list of requirements for the woman I want to fall in love with and spend the rest of my life…and that is the point of dating, by the way…I do have a general understanding of the person I am looking for. And more important than that who I am NOT looking for. I will go on Second and Third and Fourth (on and on) dates with someone whom I believe ultimately has the qualities I feel are best for a relationship…but I want to know IMMEDIATELY if they do not. The more immediate the better. The middle of the date is good 😉

Now I am always kind and sincere and explain my feeling and say that I just didn’t feel the chemistry, or that “click” and that I wish her all the best of luck yadda yadda yadda but I cut the cord as early as possible if I don’t feel “it” for that person. Like I said;

I will wait forever to hear “yes”…

…but I want to hear “no” as soon as possible.

So, yep, I go on a lot…and I mean A LOT…of first dates but that is really the only way—that works for me, my life, my schedule, etc.—to efficiently find the person I want to fall in love with and be with. But I also go on additional dates and have relationships you don’t hear about because, well…

…it’s none of your goddamn business!

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men do
When all the things that bother us
Are all things that’re true

I’ve walked into many, many bars in hundreds of places
Saw hundreds of stories on hundreds of faces
Saw nothing was truer than the story that is told
By the look in their eyes from the ideas that they hold

If they hate and internally burn toward some ideal
From what someone said and made them feel
If they grind, grind away at that razor sharp rock
Then pain is near and will never ever stop

If they look to the outside to judge what’s within
Seeing nothing but anger all wrapped up in sin
Then what they will find is nothing but pain
Defined by someone else and always called shame

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men do
When all the things that bother us
Are all things that’re true

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men think
When the things we want to float on
Are the things that make us sink

I’ve passed thousands of people in the last couple years
Each holding up a sign listing all of their fears
And almost all had listed on that bright neon sign
Hey, everything’s all right…everything’s just fine

So I guess that it is…but we all know that it’s not
It’s just people being people before they are caught
People hiding feelings, pleasures and pain
Thinking that it is the only path to stay sane

When wise men know that there is no single way
That burying what we feel will make us all pay
That the price is the loss of who we once were
When we were without the judgment incurred

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men do
When all the things that bother us
Are all things that’re true

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men think
When the things we want to float on
Are the things that make us sink

And if we were wise men
Then what do wise men do
When all the things that bother us
Are all things that’re true

Years
the war raged, the sky grew
dark, our…
minds grew darker
success
failures, a back
and forth dance of…
–I can’t say it–
but
the battle ended a few
hours ago, there
wasn’t much to say, not
a lot of noise…the doctors walked
away
the nurses put away medical things,
straightened the bed sheets
plumped her
pillow
her tears were dry
eyes closed
where there was stress lining
her brow
it was gone, she
was gone…but
not…gone
in every mind, in every
memory
that was lucky, that was
joyously and
fucking privileged
to have been witness, to have
been a party to her
life
there she was, there
there
there
there
and
there
she is…
I was lucky, no I AM
goddamn lucky
that
there
she is.

The media gets paid by advertisers.

Advertisers make products and services they sell to the public.

The public consumes these products and services based almost wholly on the advertisers singular message; you are not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough…you are not…

…enough.

And this happens millions and millions of times a second all around the earth. This is the media’s business model and it is lucrative and hugely successful. The media truly believes in, and depends upon the adage “you are what you eat” so they feed us things that provides their clients the most bang for the buck.

Women are fed an impossible standard of health and beauty and encouraged to hate their own image because of it. Women are fed the lie, in thousands of different ways, that they are less than other women, that they need a man to validate them to be happy and, of course, they are fed the idea that they cannot possibly be happy without the products and services that their advertisers sell.

Men are fed an impossible standard of capability and encouraged to hate their own accomplishments because they can’t live up to the standard. Men are fed the lie that they can only be happy if they drive the right car, drink the right beer and have the right job…all externally supplied. They are fed the lie that emotion and feelings make them weak and unlovable.

And always, always, always there are mega corporations—the advertisers the media depends on—raining down products and services to “solve” these existential problems.

The media depends on us loathing ourselves and willingly making ourselves the psychic slaves of celebrities, movie and sport stars and really anyone they can exploit and manipulate in order to convince us that we suck, that we’re just pieces of shit and that–without their help–we deserve and will get nothing valuable and certainly never receive love from other humans.

All of this is complete and utter bullshit and the media is deathly afraid you’re going to find that out one day.

Today’s a good day.

Believe, Go. Do.
~TrevorZen

You can look in the mirror
and see nothing but…
see the things you’re told, the
ideas to have, the motions
to make…you can listen
to your own
words
and never recognize
your voice…but
you cannot ignore the facts
well, you can, but
the facts cannot ignore
you;
reality is unaware of what
you believe,
doesn’t care
it is quite happy to disregard
your every desire
your
every fear
it is content to never
acknowledge
you at all…but
reality knows that you are
enough
exactly the right proportion to be
you
with the tools and knowledge
to love
be loved
and it takes nothing of you
to listen
believe
to turn down the incessant
droning
buzzing
deafening
hum of others, of mouths, of
humanity
with their ideas
motions to make
when the singular motion you need
is living
from here
to
there.

So this is the message I received from a woman I had written to on an online dating site:

“You seem interesting especially the art thing. My main prerequisite is that the person I’m involved with is a vegan. That’s my religion.”

My actual reply, done just now;

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Once I hear that someone is a vegan I have a rush of sorrow that they are missing so much of the world and ostracizing themselves so unnecessarily thinking that they are actually making a difference or somehow making the universe a less vicious place. You’re not, by the way. You may think that 7 billion humans would hold sway on the state of the nature of the universe but, again, you’d be wrong…we are vastly outnumbered—on the order of trillions—by creatures great and small who obtain protein by eating other creatures.

Last time I saw, it was called “nature”…you might’ve heard of it.

Anyway, you seem amazing; intelligent and of course quite stunningly beautiful but your ideas of what you eat having such a huge and overshadowing effect on your ideology are simply and sorrowfully wrong. I don’t feel bad telling you this, someone should have years ago, but I do feel bad that you will take it as a spiteful and misogynistic message versus the helpful little note it’s meant as.

It’s not that vegan’s, on the whole, are literal pains in the ass and pontificating bores, they are, it’s because you’re so evidentially wrong that it’s amazing that you have the elemental basis for intellectual life. How do you make actual daily decisions if the one you tout as bordering on the religious is so demonstrably in error yet you keep prodding forward as if it is etched in stone?

I could go on and on about this but knowing how firmly entrenched you are in your religion I’ll choose better and more productive uses of my time…that said, however (and I’ll borrow for a moment the great tool of vegans; pedantic and ceaseless droning), I will end this little diatribe with some less harsh (?) words…the next time you introduce yourself to a possible companion or even a new friend, try something like “Hi, my name is (insert your own name of course); I like a healthy lifestyle, playing with puppies and long walks on the beach…what’s your name?”

The accusations of knowledgeably murdering other living creatures can wait to the second date, yes?”

Today is a success…so far.

We have problems
from where we sit
in expensive (at least)
sounding places,
in comfort (we’re
not dead or dying) and holding
the best cards…but
is that enough to mean anything;
what do we do, for
instance
when, without being threatened
not from the TV
the grocery store
our friends…
but thousands of miles away
places never visited, never
heard smelled touched;
where other people
innocents
kids
are murdered gassed destroyed
for no reason other than
political
religious
muscle flexing
what is our response?
do we care
do we notice
do we
change the channel
to something a little more uplifting
safe
sane
is it not our fight
not
us…
is it madness bullying hegemony
the reactionary, the
distraction
to reply that it’s not right, it’s not
human
to kill so many so many so many
but then
then
then
what do we do?