Abstractiencillogically

Part Two; Introduction

Little Loves,

This next set of pieces come from my early adolescence through young adulthood, and to my knowledge it's the oldest surviving compilation that I have. So-many poor trees I'd written all over, fallen-soldier victims to the trash- or other various modes of destruction -through this journey so far. Lost in another dimension of time. Although, if I'm being honest; I'd sacrificed a lot of writing to the fire through the years, just to let go of the negativity I was feeding into those memories of growing up as a nomadic and destitute self-proclaimed outcast. It's hard to describe, and even attempts to explain the changes within myself, to myself; in juxtaposition with my general life experience eludes me about ninety percent of the time. Imagine that, a person that never shuts the fuck up, is at a loss for words.

I haven't included everything because a very big part of being human, at least for me, is the acceptance that we are all capable of being wrong about a few things as we grow throughout life. It takes a certain degree of intellect to develop sound wisdom, sure, but the true mark of wisdom is not intellect alone. It's hard to even say what wisdom even is, let alone its many marks, when its expression is one's ability to describe and discern. Wisdom has not made itself known to me as an ideal or concept, rather, it's been something that's suffered through. And it comes at an existential cost. Be it time, or pain, or both; in the end, we pay for her in full. 

I believe the younger we are, the more wrong we are. Because we haven't had the time to pay for the cost of honest wisdom - we just haven't been around long enough by then for us to claim otherwise. Being smart doesn't make a person wise, or more right. I believe this from my relationship with my own life, not from what I've read of others lives. The younger a reader is, the more they might oppose this idea; for those of us with a few extra decades, though, time is what continued to shape our views. Therefore, where I presently discerned that I was wrong in my past writing, even if it was a simple lack of empathy and sympathy, I left it out. Sometimes, the omission is because I've invested so much more time into studying the things I was talking about then, that I sounded- obviously -ignorant. 

Don't think of this as manipulation by omission. Make no mistake; I was not an easy child for my parents to raise, and I was even harder on my siblings. The eventual disintegration of the relationships I had through my adolescence were my own un-doing, and were the result of mismanaging the mental and emotional pain I was going through during those times; ultimately taking it out on others. A form of self-destruction that traps the aggressor in their own victim-mindset, making it impossible for them to be there for others, and even harder for others to be there for them. So when I express that I was- more often than not -wrong, it's because it was little more than the child-me lashing out and blaming others for circumstances that I created out of how life presented itself to me. 

To write poetry, even your lies must be one-hundred percent honest, because the souls that follow your words will know how to discern the truth from the reality - and will separate the fiction that lies between. And for those souls, I would never wish to impart a dishonest impression. What I wish to share of my life, more than anything, is how each of us is empowered to be who we choose to be and constantly evolve,  regardless of our hardships and circumstances. We don't have to let our circumstances dominate our moods, attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs. And sharing anything I've written from the toxic and strained belief that I was being victimized during those life-phases doesn't serve that highest purpose. So, without further-a-due, I'm honored to share with you these juvenile insights, and just a bit of all that raging and hormonal, prepubescent love and adolescent pain. Thanks for joining me, on this little scroll through a forest of shaded screen-lit inter-web pages, if you start to tire; take heart! Sit beside me for awhile and rest your legs, so I can tell you  how I grew up with a lightbulb on, in an empty cardboard box.

-Chris Q