WORKING DREAMS

Moods prevent some and moats prevent others from transforming themselves.

Dreamers labor when failure follows. They battle because they are determined to succeed. In doing so, they create the conditions that nurture their dreams. Characteristically, they use luck when it falls and fear when it stalls and discourages. During these times, moreover, they celebrate themselves for enduring because they know just how easily failure discourages.

THE BLOCK

Rappers blame "the block" excessively. Everything fierce happens here. Girls get pregnant and guys get murdered for being on the wrong corner wearing the wrong colors. Metaphorically, the phrase conveys the miseries of poverty and the pursuit of fleeting gains. Other artists exploit "the hood" instead, stoking its streets with beats that embellish its quality.

LIVING PROOF

Living proof is harder than finding it. Hence, its rarity. Even so, some people are living proof despite the pressures that discourage. When they emerge they discipline our urge to deny our duty to embody.

DEBT AND DESTINY

Wishing is risky when destiny is listening.

Destiny demands what debtors don't, and isn't as willing to settle our account. In fact it sours when ignored and sabotages when denied. Though sympathetic, it rejects substitutes and insists on itself. Only by yielding do we appease it. Until then interest accrues and penalties punish us, though superficially our pursuits please us. In this regard, not even success soothes as we assert unless it serves destiny's ends.

OUR DEPICTIONS

Desire depicts what we invent for ourselves.

Desire dwells above demands that betray its aims. It yields occasionally yet maintains its distance until it accomplishes its intentions, enduring whatever denies its passion, accomplishing with patience what others abandon.

ON FEARLESSNESS

A certain fear reinforces fearlessness. It may not be apparent but it is important to know. Otherwise we'll attribute a purity to bravery that nurtures cowardice.

EVERY STORY

Grit grows in dirt.

Every story strikes once it's told. In fact all of us could amaze if we could emerge from ourselves. In this regard, no success is one of a kind, but simply one of many possibilities. After all, J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), could have very easily quit when trouble crushed.

ON BEING STERN

We must be stern when things obstruct. In yielding to opposition we exalt luck, courting rather than contending courageously. Meanwhile failure feeds its myth; yet winners confound it.

SERENDIPITY AND DESTINY

Luck and logic are indeterminate.

“Things happen for no reason.” That’s what we say until destiny seizes. Only then do we perceive its pattern. Then we no longer believe in luck, bad especially because we believe in serendipity and destiny. By these we encounter what we should and accomplish what we must. We leave to others the belief in luck.

TODAY

Love limits our complaints. Gratitude censors them.

Today is almost over and I'm here looking out the window on a lonely Sunday evening. Debra's on her way home and should be here in about twenty minutes. I made her dinner, spaghetti and salad. I also mopped the floor and made the bed. In between, I did what I always do. This time, though, I wasn't as hard on myself. Instead I accepted my state and resolved to wait for life to favor my cause.