Creating a Vision - Someday You Will See That It All Has Finally Come Together

It did. It all finally came together. I found what I was looking for. Peace with myself. This article was written on July 7^th, 2011 and I wanted to publish it with as little editing as possible to show how things looked four months ago. I had to edit more than I planned but I believe it still shows the original angst and struggle I went through and the happy ending.

With gratitude I dedicate this article to all my friends on HP who had to witness my agony and who showed me unwavering support, who, in fact, were part of the process. Without you, it might have taken me another … (pick your) number of months or years. I am finally happy to be where I am NOW.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. ~Honore de Balzac

I have been bleeding my whole life. My whole life I have been trying to escape. What? Who knows? Pain? Maybe. I have been searching for myself. The answer has always been there, but I was blind. Blind or blinded.

“Vocations which we wanted to pursue…”

My bleeding is internal which is the worst kind, people die from it. It’s harder to notice and harder to treat than external bleeding. I don’t know what my dreams are. I may have forgotten.

“Motivated forgetting” is a phenomenon when our own brains protect us from pain. Everything that goes beyond the threshold of pain gets locked in the memory. We don’t remember. But it is still there. We never forget anything. We cannot retrieve it unless we consciously open our wounds…

I have been running away from my pain and then I’ve made a U-turn. I’ve turned towards the ugly face of my suffering and all my burdens… By inflicting pain I am trying to make myself able to remember. Don’t ask me how it feels. It hurts like hell. It is hell.

I am running around looking for myself and I write stories that amuse me. The last one was about making money. I don’t know how to make money or rather I cannot figure out what career to pursue so this bleeding will stop once and for all.

Writing is… only a tool. Writing is my scalpel, sharp and merciless.

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

The article “Creating a Vision – 42 Ways to Make Money out of Nothing” ended with a conclusion that one should follow his passion not the buck.

That was not my intention, it was a detour, but quite normal for me - one of my passions is music and while I was putting the article together I was listening to one song “Corazon de Piedra” (“The Heart of Stone”).

The song is in Spanish and I only knew how to translate a few lines.

Call me tonight,

call me tomorrow,

call me whenever you like,

but call me,

tell me that you love me...

or you don’t love me

but call me…

I was writing about how to make money and singing about love. I was singing and I was happy creating my Art. What kind of income can I generate if I live in a fantasy? Everything I do is “with love and free of charge”.

But I had some income on that article. I received the whole Bank of Hearts, a poem written by Maja Dezulovic. The poem was inspired by me and dedicated to me. That was as unexpected as it was touching.

I was singing a love song in Spanish (ok, I was singing only a few lines I could repeat), but I did not have any men in mind, I was asking the Universe to call me. Accept me or reject me, but tell me, don’t keep me waiting.

Háblame esta noche, hablame mañana,

habla cuando quieras pero háblame

Dime que me quieres o que no me quieres,

dime lo que quieras pero háblame

The article itself was a photo gallery, a lot of pictures with little text. For “Corazon de Piedra” I found an image that struck my imagination.

Unlike all conventional images, it was a stone wall with an entrance into “A CAVE OF WONDERS” and the entrance was shaped as a heart. The heart was empty. Void. It is a very Buddhist concept which I like. You can fill your void with anything you like and there is nothing better to fill this void with than love.

So, the entrance led me to… into… where?

Where? My soul? Maybe.

It led me into the cave of wonders that is my soul and the first thing that I met was my PAIN.

The heart-shaped opening gave me an idea to write an article about

Reflections/Mirrors/Illusions.

Allusions/Delusions/Hallucinations.

I thought the idea was brilliant. So brilliant in fact that I could not pull it off.

There is something about your style which leads my mind in all different directions, but this one is just somehow different.

You are constantly surprising and entertaining with inverted comments and logic, and I can almost feel myself being dragged along in one direction, and suddenly I don’t meet a brick wall; I meet a little door down low in a wall like the door in Alice in Wonderland. And I enter and there is a multifaceted kaleidoscope to entertain me.

~Twilight Lawns

from the comments under “Creating a Vision – It’s Right There… Where? There Where your Dreams are…”

I created “The House of Mirrors” – a labyrinth of dead-ends and blind alleys, with nothing but brick walls covered with glass. All this sparkling glass was maddeningly blinding. I am glad that Ian could see that door because I did not. But the door was there… covered with glass…

I was lost in my own reflections. I had head-on collisions, smashing the glass and bleeding all over it. I needed to escape from my own “museum of wonderfulness”, but it was too little too late. I was trapped. I was barking at myself and became completely and utterly mad. Mental case?

Ninety percent of the game is half mental. ~Yogi Berra

I was writing an article without knowing what it was about. I kept shifting focus and changing title. But it all revolved around creativity, writing and myself. I kept coming to a conclusion that I was a writer. The moment I finished one half-decent draft stating loudly “I am a writer” with more or less “God Damn it!” flavour to it, I realized I was no such thing. Not even close. After spending a few days in agony, I decided to call it quits. Quit being a writer and writing this idiotic article.

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. ~Vincent Van Gogh

I just could not quit writing the article. It was something stronger than me. My obsession was overpowering and I had nothing else to do but surrender. I became obsessed with the article.

It did not want to happen.

The article HAD to happen. Perfect, not perfect, it did not matter.

My friend asked me “Can you accept that?” I thought that he kept repeating it to the point that it became his signature question.

Then I realized that maybe it was I who kept repeating his question so many times that the repetition really came from my own mind. Another misleading reflection.

“Can I accept?” What?

The truth is that I cannot accept. I keep resisting. I keep resisting the obvious. I don’t recognize myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see anything.

Maybe I keep resisting what should be accepted and keep accepting what should be resisted.

If I am a writer, writing this article or any other should not be such an excruciating pain. If I am not a writer, all the better, I can quit tormenting myself and move on with my life.

I could not accept either. I could not accept that I was a writer for obvious reasons. This article should not take ten days. It is absurd. Absurdly ridiculous or ridiculously absurd?

But I could not stop writing it. I must finish. I must be able to produce some decent piece.

Why? For whom?

For myself. It is not about writing, it is about my life, it is about me. Selfish? No, not at all. If I am not at peace with myself, I cannot be at peace with everything else in my life.

NOW is the time to figure it out.

Things happen in a strange way.

Exhausted and frustrated beyond description, I went out for fresh air. I had to take Daniel with me. We went to a playground and he took a wheeled shopping cart with him. It’s quite normal – he always takes half of what we have at home to go outside. But this time, the content was a secret. When we came there, he asked me to stand among all children and their parents and close my eyes. I assume it was quite a sight. While Daniel was taking his time preparing to reveal his surprise, there was a boy running and shouting “I surrender!”

It struck me “I surrender!”

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. ~Toni Morrison

“[Someday] you will see that it all has finally come together.

What you have always wished for has finally come to be.

You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself "How did I get through all of that?"

Just never let go of hope. Just never quit dreaming. And never let love depart from your life.”

It was a status update of my friend on Facebook. It was July 1^st, 2011, Canada Day. My six months on HubPages to the day.

I did not put everything together immediately. In order to see, we need vision, but our vision is flawed. We don’t have vision; we have perception – a mechanism that transforms reality into thoughts.

I have a set of discs “Spanish Café” and one of them “Elation” features Kevin Laliberte, a Canadian musician and guitarist.

“Surrender to the charm of a Spanish Café, where passionate guitarists serenade guests with romantic melodies.”

One of the pieces “Someday” is something I have no defense against. It made me cry in 2008, it made me cry this year. I was trying to pour out my pain on paper writing some ugly revelations that are called “Emotional Nakedness”. I don’t see much nakedness in it – I cannot get past my pain at all. Everything is veiled and shrouded. I see nothing.

But “music is what feelings sound like”. “Someday” is how my feelings sound sometimes. It sounded like pain and hope that “someday”…

Funny enough, in 2008 listening to “Someday” I thought it was called “Elation” and I was wondering why “Elation” happens to bring nothing but tears.

I like this music. Even the names were suggestive. First came a dream (“Moroccan Dream”), then “Elation”, then “Someday”. It ends with “Then and Now” and “Into the Sun”. Sounds like my journey all along.

You can listen to a sample of “Someday”, but it is only 42 seconds long.

The piece that I am offering is “El Ritmo del Amor” it is similar, but it does not have the same effect.

My feelings are often sound like guitar or instrumentals. I surrender without any reservations … I simply surrender.

To write a story about myself I must know myself, but if I write a story first and thus create an identity, it means that the story comes first and identity second.

I write “myself” without knowing myself. Well, this is the whole point - to figure out who the hell I am. That is why it is so difficult. I don’t envy people who “know” who they are. Most of the time they don’t. They only think they do.

My trouble with this story is that I mistaken the images other people have of me for my own. Looking at myself in the mirror (my reflections in others) is painful. I keep crying, yet looking. I persevere.

On July 12^th I have my first tango lesson. I went to a Salsa party to escape the madness of soul-searching and my friend asked me

- Are you excited to start your tango lessons?

- Tango? I have almost forgotten about it. I am preoccupied with… No, I am not excited at all. I cannot enjoy anything before I finish writing.

Note: Here I have to make a brief explanation. This article was left precisely like this. After all I have said above about being in pain, crying, being out of my mind and ending with “No, I cannot be excited before… unless”, here comes the next part without any transition or explanation whatsoever. The date on the article reads July 7^th, 2011, but I don’t know how many times the draft was worked on. So, the end reads:

No, I cannot be excited about anything before I finish writing.

I am happy now.

Yes, the time is NOW.

“Doing what you like is happiness, liking what you do is freedom.”

or vice versa?

“Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness.”

Yes, sounds better.

Words. They don’t matter either. Feelings do.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. ~Oscar Wilde

The time is NOW. Someday has finally come. NOW is the time for being myself.

I am myself, I have always been, there is no other way. Whether I am happy or not, I am myself and the truth that I have found does not help me at all.

Being myself – writing an article that cannot be written, drowning in words, ideas –

Yes. Just say yes to life.

Can you accept that?

Yes, I can. Even if I continue bleeding for the rest of my life.

The day the transformation happened? I don’t think there was such a day. I knew the truth all along but I could not accept it.

But there was the day of realization, the day when I finally opened my eyes (Abre los Ojos!) and saw for the first time that the transformation is complete. I have reached my point, Point Zero, the Point of No Return.

The day? November 7^th, 2011 – four months since the article was written. It took me four months. Well, it is not too bad compared with my forty two years of blindness.

What happened on November 7^th, 2011? I received a chain letter and I responded talking about acceptance and transformation. It is pretentious therefore should be rewritten. I also consider it to be my last letter of the first 42 years of life.

I decided to publish this article on November 11^th, 2011. In Canada, it is Remembrance Day. This year it is a magical date – 11/11/11. I had a lot of fun with “1s” and people’s preoccupation with numbers when my creativity sparkled out of control.

I said a lot of things, but among those … I made a fence out of “1s”. When you make fences, you limit your vision. When you make D-Fences, you limit your vision. Even if we stand together and put our hands together in a row showing the F-amous F-inger F-igure (FFF) – it becomes a fence. Resistance, anger, willingness to conquer by force does not give us much in the end.

People suffer at the thought of being without parents,

Without food, or without worth.

Yet this is the very way

That kings and lords once described themselves.

For one gains by losing, and loses by gaining.

(from The Tao Te Ching, Verse 42)

Demolish fences.

Lower your defenses.

Surrender.

Transform your weakness into POWER.

I did. You can do it, too.

Written with love as always

On October 42^nd, year 42. November 11^th, 2011. 11/11/11.

You see? Magic. The chain letters work. Or was it simply October Magic?

Where is that street?

Where is that house?

Where is that girl?

Why am I in love?

There is that street

There is that house

There is that girl

Why am I in love?

And there is a blue ball (the world) that spins (above, why above?) his head and he is ready to give it (everything he does not even have) to her (them).

Happy End.

So I thought:

Where am I?

Here I am.

And the whole white world.

Together in love and harmony they lived happily ever after.