July 31 2023

I sing because I am a man with a song, and I do not fully trust in a man who has no song. I dance to help the sun rise in the morning — that’s a good grandiosity. I weep because I live with the full and vast spectrum of desire, and I weep in front of my boys and with my boys so that they will not forfeit their ability and quickness to weep that they were born with. I will not stand by with cowardice as the world around them tells them to stop weeping. It’s not the earth that says that, but rather it’s the fear of men. I sit in silence so that I am practiced in listening, in waiting, in being slow to everything that requires slowness. I sit in silence in the morning before my boys awake so that when my anger is stirred by them I do not unleash on them what is not theirs to bear. I fill our home with the incense of the earth so that our senses are filled with florals and cedar and tobacco and not drywall and paint and plastic. I admit that I am powerless and I open my hands to let go, to do my best to welcome everything. I show my boys the scars on my body and the scars on my heart, telling them the stories so that they know from birth that there is no success and there is no failure — there is only being and loving and compassion.

May I believe what I say and may my boys believe what they see.