Author: Joel

Acceptance

January 15, 2014

I wonder what the world would be like if we did not work so hard to avoid everything. So much in our lives exists to help deaden our senses: not only drugs and drink, but electronics and countless other diversions. If we really felt everything there is to feel, I wonder if we would fall apart. The world seems like it would drastically change if we just accepted and encountered the pain of our circumstances head on, as it is. But we do not. We anesthetize in order to avoid feeling too much.

If we allowed ourselves to feel the pain in the world, I believe we may move on to better things. We would have to change things. We would not be able to bear things the way they are.

Mutual Benefit – Golden Wake

December 7, 2013

and in the water i could see / a piece of what you broke in me / i took a walk my usual way / i called to quit my job today / and in these holy, empty hours / when my quiet thoughts get louder / son, you’re born to be this way / you were made to be afraid

sometimes my heart and brain conspire / to set everything on fire / just to stop the tyranny / of that livid hand on me / we woke for golden morning hours / just to soak in all the power / we weren’t made to be this way / we weren’t ...  Keep reading

There Is Enough

November 23, 2013

So much of our stress must come from this mentality of scarcity, which is borne of the belief that there is not enough. There is never enough time, money, energy, love, so we hunker down and protect what we do have. We have this irritability that springs from the belief that if we do not fiercely guard our space, time, energy and money, someone will come and take them from us. It’s true: people will take what you give them, and there is also this ...  Keep reading

Work/Rest

November 9, 2013

Remember that there is a natural rhythm to life. You must work and you must rest. Too much of either of those is not a good thing. If you are constantly working and not resting, you will run yourself into the ground. And if you rest too much, you will actually make yourself more tired. Instead, it is wise to heed the adage: “work hard, play hard.” When you are working, you should give yourself to it fully, not constantly wishing for rest while you do it. And when you are resting, you ...  Keep reading

Mutual Benefit

November 2, 2013

This is what has been rolling through my ears the last couple days:

Check em out on Bandcamp. They have a bunch of name-your-price albums!

I Am Valuable, I Am Nothing

October 30, 2013

The paradox of being human is that you are nothing and very valuable all at the same time. It’s a little hard to understand, but if you look around, you will see that you are a very small part of a very big universe careening through time – just one very small speck in a very large nebula of actions and reactions. It’s easy to think that what you do doesn’t really matter. It’s true, it doesn’t; and yet, you are also very important. You have probably also had ...  Keep reading

Sketching

September 28, 2013

I heard a friend say once that “works of art are never finished, only abandoned.” My art teacher in high school taught me to develop a composition moving around and across the entire image at once, sketching in parts of the whole a little at a time, rather than  finishing one part in detail and then moving onto another (which may be our tendency). Life is kind of like that, too. You don’t ever really finish it. It’s just that one day you die. You might not have everything ...  Keep reading