Listening without Armer

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Listening Without Armor”

He spoke as though the air were glass.
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Each word a tremor I let pass.
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I watched the pulse behind his jaw.
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The trembling logic of his flaw.
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He launched his truths like sharpened stone.
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I answered softly, still, alone.
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“Perhaps,” I said, “we both are wrong.”
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He paused—then asked if right was strong.
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The irony made silence speak.
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No scoreboard stood, no need to seek.
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I noticed how his voice grew still.
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The storm obeyed a gentler will.
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He said, “You never seem to fight.”
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I said, “I try to see the light.”
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“The one inside your words,” I smiled.
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“It flickers fierce, then turns to mild.”
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He looked at me, confused, yet bare.
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“That’s not how most would answer there.”
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I shrugged—a leaf accepts the gust.
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“Defenses fade when met with trust.”
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We sat while meaning rearranged.
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His thoughts untied, his tone estranged.
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The room grew wide, like mind unbound.
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Two fragile egos lost their ground.
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He laughed, unsure of what to feel.
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I laughed as well; it made us real.
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Humor cooled the war of need.
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Each wound became a tender seed.
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In learning not to fix or win,
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We heard the peace that starts within.
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He said, “You listen like a prayer.”
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I said, “I’m just not fighting air.”
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And something in his stance took rest.
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The tension smiled; it knew what’s best.
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He finally said, “You really see.”
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I said, “That’s all that’s asked of me.”

Epilogue — “Listening Without Armor”

It’s strange how quickly languagea battlefield. One moment, we speak to be understood; the next, we speak to defend the boundaries of self. When people’s shadows take the microphone, communication stops being about truth—it becomes about territory. Yet the observer, present in the moment, isn’t pulled into that gravity. They see how fear disguises itself as certainty, how pain often hides behind sharp diction or misplaced logic.

A conversation held without armor doesn’t mean silence or surrender. It means choosing not to be flammable when the other burns. It means responding rather than reacting; watching tone soften when no one feeds the fire. Humor helps—because laughter rearranges the emotional landscape, making the absurd visible without shame. It’s not mockery; it’s mercy.

In the end, the goal isn’t to win the argument, but to stay human inside it. True communication requires the willingness to let another’s storm pass through you without letting it take shape inside you. When that happens, something alchemical unfolds: two people find that neither needed to be right to be connected—they only needed to be real.

…

DCG

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I built a chapel out of could have been 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I kept my vigil where your shadow bled.
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I named the silence after what we were.
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I fed my hope on every word you said.
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You walked away, your answers never sure.
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I dressed my longing in a borrowed light.
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I traced your absence on my open palm.
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I called it love, this self‑inflicted fight.
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You called it nothing, then you walked on calm.
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I learned the shape of “no” in every glance.
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I wore refusal like a second skin.
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I mistook pain for some ordained romance.
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You never owed me what I burned within.
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I built a chapel out of could‑have‑been.
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I prayed to futures that would not arrive.
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I dragged my heart through every might‑have‑sin.
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You stayed untouched, while I stayed half‑alive.
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I worshiped echoes that would not respond.
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I tried to bargain with a vacant throne.
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I called it fate, this unilateral bond.
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You called it kind to let me grieve alone.
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I read old theories on the ways hearts cling.
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I named my patterns like a taxon chart.
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I saw a child inside my suffering.
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You were the stage, but I supplied the heart.
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I learned that love is not a debt to claim.
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I learned that hunger is not proof of bread.
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I let the fire die down without your name.
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You stayed the ghost I no longer was fed.
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I turned my gaze from what would not return.
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I placed my faith in what my hands could give.
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I let compassion be the way I burn.
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You were the lesson; I remained to live.
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I met a softness that did not withdraw.
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I found a soul that stayed when curtains fell.
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I saw devotion without sharpened claw.
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You’d call it simple; I’d call it a spell.
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I learned that loving is a chosen art.
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I tend this garden like a sacred vow.
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I give without a ledger in my heart.
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You were the wound; this given love is now.
.

…

DCG

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Exit stage left

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

FADE IN:

Scene 1 – “Letters Never Sent”

INT. D’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

A candle burns beside a small wooden cross. Rain glides down the window like ghostly fingers. A journal sits open on D’s desk.

INSERT – D’s JOURNAL (voiceover begins):

“Her silence sounds like God hiding behind thunder. Every unanswered message feels like a small crucifixion of the heart. But I keep believing love can survive the absence.”

D, clothed in quiet anguish, kneels beside his bed. His whisper trembles into prayer.

D:
Lord… she says she needs space. I keep mistaking that space for hell.

He holds the photo of R. His reflection shivers across it.

Scene 2 – “Detachments”

EXT. PARK CAFE – EVENING

A gray sky hangs heavy over empty tables. R sits, elegant but distant. D approaches, hesitant, brave.

R (dryly):
You never stop reaching, do you?

D:
How could I? You vanish every time I blink.

R:
Then close your eyes.

A beat. She stares into her untouched drink. D studies her profile — beautiful, remote, like marble daring to remain cold.

R (VOICEOVER from her journal):

“He looks at me as if proximity will save him. I feel his yearning like a storm pressing on the windows. But touch feels like theft when you’ve never been safe in someone’s arms.”

D:
I prayed you’d come back.

R:
You pray far too much when you should let go.

D:
Maybe prayer is the only place where you still exist for me.

Her eyes flicker with guilt but retreat into silence. Cars hum distantly, like a world moving on without them.

Scene 3 – “Faith & Defenses”

INT. CHAPEL – TWILIGHT

Light filters through stained glass, painting the pews in colors of confession. D sits alone, rosary in hand.

D (VOICEOVER):

“She confuses retreat with strength. I confuse endurance with love. We orbit each other like desperate planets, each praying to collide, yet afraid of the destruction.”

R’s voice echoes faintly from memory.

R (V.O.):
You’re too much, D. Everything is too loud, too emotional. I just need quiet.

D (aloud, to the crucifix):
Then why does her quiet sound like death, Lord?

He presses his forehead to folded hands, tears glimmering on his knuckles.

Scene 4 – “Over the Edge”

EXT. CLIFFSIDE COAST – DUSK

The horizon is a bleeding wound of orange and violet. Waves beat the cliffs with cathedral violence. R stands near the railing; D approaches slowly.

R:
You shouldn’t have come.

D:
You said you needed to talk.

R:
I said I needed space. You keep misunderstanding boundaries for invitations.

D (fighting tears):
And you mistake abandonment for strength.

Wind whips around them. For a moment, the storm mirrors their internal war.

R (VOICEOVER from her journal):

“I hate how tender he is. His love feels like sunlight on broken glass — beautiful, unbearable, blinding. I’ve spent years learning to need nothing. But he makes nothingness feel cruel.”

D:
You think stepping back will make you safe, but you’re just alone in prettier silence.

R:
And you, D — you build altars in the ruins. That’s your curse.

Lightning crackles offshore. R turns away. D remains, trembling, rain collecting at his feet.

Scene 5 – “Grace and Goodbye”

INT. D’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

Thunder outside. The candle struggling to live. A new message notification glows on his phone.

CLOSE ON SCREEN: “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. –R”

He stares, paralyzed. The message feels carved into him.

D (VOICEOVER, journaling):

“There are no villains between an anxious heart and an avoidant soul — only children afraid of echoes. She runs. I wait. Our ghosts shake hands where neither of us stand.”

He kneels by the candle again.

D (praying):
Lord, bless the one who flees from love. Let Your mercy chase her where I cannot.

Wind rattles the window. He closes his eyes.

MONTAGE:

  • R driving alone in rain, windscreen wipers marking time.
  • D burning the last photograph of them.
  • Their two silhouettes facing opposite directions across the same beach.

Scene 6 – “The Unreachable Shore”

EXT. COASTLINE – DAWN

Mist veils the ocean. The tide hums low and sorrowful. D stands alone, holding his journal — now soaked, pages curling.

D:

“R, I release you.
You feared to be seen, and I feared to be unseen.
May grace reach you before regret does.”

He places the journal into the tide. Waves swallow it slowly, ink dissolving like faint, blue prayers.

R (VOICEOVER – final journal entry):

“He prayed for me more than he loved himself. And maybe that was the problem — we both mistook rescue for romance. If he finds peace, let him know I was listening — just too far away to answer.”

Camera rises as morning light floods the surf. The empty horizon feels enormous, eternal.

D (whispering):
Amen.

FADE OUT.

EPILOGUE – “Two Secrets in the Tide”

A single candle flickers out as the rosary falls into shadow.

SUPERIMPOSE:

“Where one heart avoids, another breaks. Grace alone teaches them how to meet again.” — DC Gunnersen (inspired tone)

Feed out 

RSP

…

DCG

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A philosopher begs the question 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Philosophy of mind has traced a path from wonder at the cosmos to wonder at ourselves, shifting the main question from “What is the universe?” to “What kind of being can know a universe at all?” Early Greeks moved from myth to critical inquiry, separating religious dogma from natural explanation and laying the foundations of science. Over time philosophers distinguished body and soul, rational thought and sensation, arguing over whether knowledge springs from innate ideas or from experience, and whether mind is something supernatural or an aspect of the physical world. Medieval thinkers tried to fuse faith and reason, then later figures like Descartes, Spinoza, and others pulled them apart again, making consciousness itself the central riddle. The story ends with psychology emerging from philosophy and biology together, as humans are seen as embodied knowers whose minds are both limited by physiology and yet capable of abstraction, self-reflection, and scientific understanding.


A child of sparks that never had a map.
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No claw, no tusk, no feathered fleeing wrap.
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We woke in skin, in nerves that twitch and ache.
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No ancient script to tell us what to make.
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The beasts were born already knowing how.
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We only had the question, starting now.
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The Greeks looked up and named the moving sky.
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We looked within and asked, “What knows, and why?”
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From water, air, and atoms in the void.
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They carved a world where gods were unemployed.
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They split a soul in breath and thought and flame.
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And found a fragile pattern in our name.
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They learned that truth could argue with itself.
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That dogma turns to dust on reason’s shelf.
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They called it psyche, nous, and hidden drive.
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A restless code that keeps the body live.
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Then Plato’s forms stood shining, cold, and clear.
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He doubted flesh and trusted only idea’s sphere.
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He split our life in chariot and horse.
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A mind that strains to steer a dragging force.
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Aristotle tied our knowing to the eye.
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He mapped the flow of sense from earth to sky.
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He made the soul the structure of our clay.
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One woven thing that feels and moves and prays.
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The ages knelt and turned their gaze above.
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They searched the soul for God, and called it love.
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Yet in that search they traced the nerves of fear.
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And felt how thoughts can bend when death is near.
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Ockham cut the web of sacred forms.
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He gave our hands the weight of stones and storms.
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He said: begin with what the senses show.
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Then watch the mind make universals grow.
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Descartes sat down alone with doubt and pain.
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He found one flame: “I think,” a bare refrain.
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He split the ghost of thought from meat and bone.
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And left us arguing how they are one.
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Then others tied the mind back into brain.
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They made our choices part of nature’s chain.
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They saw each feeling, memory, and plan.
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As currents passing through a mortal span.
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So here we stand: a network in the dark.
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A storm of cells that learns to leave a mark.
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No script engraved in instinct’s rigid stone.
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We guess, we fail, we suffer, then we hone.
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We notice rhythm in the falling rain.
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We read the seasons written in our pain.
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We see a pattern in another’s face.
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And call it love, and call it safe, and grace.
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We string sensations into threads of law.
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We turn a shiver in the gut to awe.
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We teach each other names for what we feel.
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And slowly make the phantom language real.
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We learn that every color in the day.
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Is filtered by the nerves that light our way.
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That every “fact” we hold as hard and bright.
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Is shaped by bodies straining toward the light.
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We whisper “mind” and mean an ancient fight.
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Between the pulse of flesh and truth’s thin height.
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We talk of “soul” and feel a tugging thread.
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That will not fit in theories of the dead.
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We stare at quanta dancing out of reach.
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We swear our thoughts can bend the worlds they teach.
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We feel the odds, then act as if we know.
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And watch our choices tilt the dice we throw.
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We do not own the hawk’s unthinking dive.
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We own the ache of asking how to live.
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We own the dread that nothing answers back.
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We own the courage to step in that lack.
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We carry myths of heaven in our chest.
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And still we test those myths against the test.
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We pray, then doubt, then measure, then despair.
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Yet in that loop we learn how much we care.
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For every search that fails to draw a line.
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Between the dust we are, and the divine.
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Shows how our patterns hunger to transcend.
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The simple fact that every life must end.
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So call us neurons, orbiting a scream.
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Call us a fragile, self-correcting dream.
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A creature built of limits, fear, and fire.
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That turns confinement into fresh desire.
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For in our partial, flickering, mortal sight.
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We still compose a duty to the light.
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To know we shape the world we claim to see.
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And choose, with open eyes, who we will be.

…

DCG

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Life hack #9 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Be the reason

Someone has a better day

— unknown —

…

DCG

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Life hack #8

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The strength of your faith

And the error of your convictions will entangle

— unknown

…

DCG

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The prophets and the quantum lens

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The prophets dreamed in thunderclouds and flame.
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We name it quantum now, but the miracle’s the same.
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Ancient eyes saw into the dust of time.
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We call it remote viewing and claim it’s sublime.
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They whispered warnings through deserts of stone.
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We use headsets and frequencies to feel less alone.
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They saw kingdoms rise like sparks in the night.
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We see algorithms bloom beneath electric light.
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Their message was faith, but the logic was dense.
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Now we model belief through quantum pretense.
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Empires once bent truth to a celestial decree.
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Now reason bends language till it breaks into three.
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Kant said the pure mind cannot truly see all.
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Yet we market enlightenment in videos small.
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He built critique from the bones of the brain.
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We build content and call it spiritual gain.
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Ludwig whispered: “your words make your world.”
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Now hashtags are prayers that endlessly twirl.
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The prophet had visions, the thinker had doubt.
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The mystic saw inward, the lab mapped it out.
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We still seek meaning through the mirrors of thought.
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Yet every reflection forgets what it sought.
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Epistemic threads weave both book and machine.
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Each claims the unseen through the seen.
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Imperial minds once conquered the map.
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Now rational minds colonize the gap.
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Between knowing and naming lies the soul’s refrain.
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Between mystic and metric breathes the same pain.
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The oracle trembled, the physicist dreams.
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Both wrestle the void that unravels their schemes.
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The language of faith becomes syntax of fact.
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But both are translating the same abstract act.
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From prophecy’s scroll to quantum equation’s glow,
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We’re retelling one truth we still don’t know.
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Every “I know” trembles before the sky.
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Every “I am” whispers—so tell me, why?
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And the thunder answers, as it always has…
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Not in words—but in silence that surpasses.

…

DCG

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I bargain with my borrowed breath 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I bargain with my borrowed breath,
to buy back hours I’ve already burned.
I pledge reform, then scroll to death,
still shocked at how the lesson’s spurned.


I quote old saints like traffic signs,
then jaywalk through the very creed.


I praise the stoics, draw no lines,
and flinch at every passing need.


I swear off idols every night,
then worship glowing screens at dawn.


I talk of Logos, seek the light,
yet trip on every word I spawn.


I toast to wisdom, clink my glass,
with sages carved in borrowed stone.


I quote the Buddha, rush to pass,
still cutting others, fearing own.


I wear a cross to hide my shame,
a silent joke the angels note.


I say “Thy will,” then sign my name,
on every bargain I promote.


I preach of “quiet desperation,”
then shout my brand of holy lack.


I sell restraint as liberation,
while hauling yet another stack.


I call for love of enemy,
and then unfollow, block, delete.


I chant of universal plea,
then price compassion by the tweet.


I laud the blues for speaking true,
those field-worn hymns of scar and chain.


I hum their ghosts in tailored shoes,
forgetting songs were forged from pain.


I praise the mind that won’t submit,
to chains of brass and borrowed debt.


Then sign for trinkets, bit by bit,
and call my bondage “safety net.”


I lift the texts of stoic kings,
who ruled themselves when all was lost.


I fear a harsh email that stings,
and call it “existential cost.”


I quote Confucius, seek within,
then crowdsource every trembling choice.


I name detachment as a win,
while craving any passing voice.


I speak of souls as sparks of fire,
then ask the market what I’m worth.


I frame my angst as pure desire,
and medicate the ancient dearth.


I cite the call to “dare to live,”
yet bargain dreams for cheaper fears.


I hoard the gifts I meant to give,
and marvel at these empty years.


I treat tradition as a stage,
to quote, not practice, what it knows.


I tag the prophets, call it “sage,”
then skip the path their teaching shows.


I mock the world for shallow aims,
while praying for a softer yoke.


I blame the systems, curse their games,
yet bow each time the rules are spoke.


I laugh at self with gentle dread,
a cosmic clown in mortal skin.


I trip on thoughts that sages said,
and rise, still bargaining to begin

…

DCG

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Taboo reality 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

He drills his voice into the walls. .

The house obeys, the little boy just stalls. .

Danish vowels heavy on his tongue. .

Each word a hammer, every silence slung. .

He came home from the Navy like a storm. .

Sea-salt rage packed into a human form. .

Dyslexic shame knotted in his fists. .

Letters mocking him in swirling mists. .

He cannot read the love in his son’s eyes. .

Only defiance that he must chastise. .

Power is the only script he knows. .

So tenderness is just a pose for fools and “those.” .

He lines his children up like troops at dawn. .

Inspects their faces till the hope is gone. .

A crooked grin, then thunder in his tone. .

He breaks them just to feel less overthrown. .

He learned as a boy to swallow every plea. .

Now he feeds that hunger to his family. .

His father’s belt still echoes in his head. .

So he swings with words and glares at them instead. .

The child studies terror like a creed. .

Learning how to earn a glance, a crumb, a feed. .

John Bowlby waits in pages years away. .

But tonight the boy just fears the end of day. .

He clings to any warmth like burning coal. .

Anxious hands around a vanishing soul. .

“Don’t leave, don’t leave,” his heartbeat prays. .

To men who only know command and haze. .

The father’s chest is armored with a sneer. .

Inferior to everyone, so he rules by fear. .

He mocks the boy’s soft tremble as a sin. .

“Stand up straight, you sissy, don’t give in.” .

Humiliation drips down kitchen tiles. .

The child’s red cheeks replace the adults’ trials. .

Modification comes in tiny cuts. .

He edits out his needs, his voice, his guts. .

He learns to scan a room like hostile seas. .

Predicting waves of temper, small reprisals, pleas. .

Every slammed door brands another scar. .

Each quiet night a distant, unreachable star. .

Years later, in a therapist’s dim light. .

He names the pattern that has stalked his nights. .

“Anxious attachment,” written in his file. .

A diagnosis for a long-denied exile. .

He loves like a child sprinting through a fire. .

Chasing absent fathers in each new desire. .

Clinging to the ones who push away. .

Reenacting judgments of that Navy day. .

He sees his father shrinking in his chair. .

Old and brittle, drowning in stale air. .

Power now a threadbare, faded coat. .

Still no “I’m sorry” rising in his throat. .

The son decides to cut the ancient chain. .

Not by forgetting, but by naming pain. .

He will not pass this script to those he loves. .

He builds new hands, not fists, from tattered gloves. .

Yet some nights, shadows march along the floor. .

He hears that Danish rage behind the door. .

The boy inside still flinches at the sound. .

But now a gentler voice stands its ground. .

“I was a child, not your broken proof.” .

He whispers to the ghosts that haunt the roof. .

“This reality is taboo no more.” .

He lights a candle where his father swore. .

He holds his younger self in steady sight. .

And walks him, shaking, out into the night. .

…

DCG

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The echo of your retreat 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I wake inside the echo of your retreat.
My pulse shakes loose against your silence.
Each word you withhold feels bittersweet.
I build my hope inside your distance.

My body remembers before my mind.
The hunger for warmth, the fear of loss.
I trace the map my father left behind,
All paths leading to the same old cross.

I study the ache, name it like science.
“Anxious attachment,” the doctors say.
But naming won’t cleanse this defiance—
The boy in me still pleads you to stay.

You vanish behind your practiced calm.
I chase the ghost of something kind.
Your quiet feels like an open palm,
And I mistake it for the love I can’t find.

I bargain with the wind for one last sign.
A text, a glance, a crack in your wall.
Yet every gesture I claim as mine
Falls like rain in an empty hall.

My logic knows where this road bends.
It loops back to the father’s stare—
The eyes that never warmed, the love that ends,
The lesson that healing is loving with care.

So I turn the lens onto myself.
I become my own experiment and prayer.
I dust the cobwebs off the shelf
Where I left forgiveness, waiting there.

You, too, are tangled in your flight.
We orbit hurt, unwilling to land.
Our tenderness survives the night,
Though we touch through trembling hands.

I will not run from what is raw.
Nor drown this need in endless chase.
Love is not repair—it is what I saw,
When I held my wounds and gave them grace.

So I reach, still, but now within.
My pulse steadies with honest will.
The cycle breaks where I begin—
Forgiving what I cannot heal.

RSP

…

DCG

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