Tag: David Martin

I love windows.

I love their beauty, their simplicity, and their view. They provide protection from the cold. Their light pierces the dark. They give hope to the confined. Windows symbolize so many things to me, and they help make me whole. How I remember these windows is how I remember my past. How I feel about these windows is how I feel about my future.

 

For many, life is a bleak, passionless existence. I see lives of boredom all around me. Barriers of all kinds, real and imagined, keep people from participating in active, productive lives. Blank stares, uncreative minds, and empty hearts reflect this lack of direction and purpose.

 

Windows are miracles of glass, silica and heat.

They protect us and provide decoration in our world. They allow us to dream in safety. A window is frames what we see and limits our vision. They outline our view of the world.

 

Windows show character and variety as an individual’s personality does. Windows come in many shapes and sizes. Their diversity reflects their uniqueness. A simple, four-pained window symbolizes a simple life. Beveled glass window allow the sun to reflect through prisms creating rainbows on the floor and walls. Elements from nature produce visual kaleidoscopes.

Stained Glass Windows 

Stained-glass windows do not allow people inside a room to look outside, but they let the sunlight teach stories by reflecting images from the glass. These beautiful spectacles of art, nature, and philosophy provide inspiration hundreds of years after their construction.

 

A room with windows is a room that breathes. Windows become metaphors for transmitting images of hope, vision, and energy. They allow us to examine all aspects of our lives by focusing our attention on specific developments.

 

When windows are cloudy, dirty, or clear, they imitate confused people, unpolished individuals, or those with nothing to hide. Shaded windows prevent others from viewing inside, and people in the same way shade themselves by remaining closed to others, inhibited, and not seeing the light.

 

Where windows are placed in a building affects their appearance. Windows placed on the north side of a home receive less punishment from Mother Nature in this region. Southern windows are tortured by the sun’s rays and the strong winds from the southwest. While the north windows remain smooth and clear, the sun’s radiation on the south side forces the glass to expand and damages them.

 

Mirrors are windows coated on one side. They reflect backward what they see. Certain people are like mirrors. They reflect backward and use none of their energy to perceive the visions in front of them.

Metaphors 

If windows are metaphors for our lives, they come in all shapes and sizes: tall ones, skinny ones, short ones, some stronger than others, ones easily broken, old ones, and new ones with many different levels of tolerance.

 

Like the masks we wear during the day to conceal our feelings, window shades allow different amounts of sunlight to enter our rooms. When we are depressed, we pull down our shades. When we feel happy, our shades let in more sun.

 

If the eyes are the windows of the soul, a person’s view can be influenced by the thoughts and feelings allowed to penetrate those windows. A glass of waster may be either half full or half empty depending on a person’s point of view. Positive windows may simply be clean ones. Negative windows reflect life’s dirty smudges.

 

Windows hold anything a person’s mind imagines. “If dreams were for sale, what would you buy today?” Unlimited possibilities present themselves to some; others whose creativity is poverty-stricken limit themselves to the common. Windows for some only hold items of the past; some see only the present; a selected few reach into the future. Seeing from inside one’s heart and outward into the world is how some use their windows.

 

Writing is a window for many. It allows people to see what they feel after writing words on paper that best illustrate their specific emotions.

 

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion” (Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher, 1770-1831). A wonderful quotation like this one becomes a window of wisdom that travels the ages. What a wonderful window we look through when we learn to read.

 

In an Eskimo language, the word “to make poetry” is the word “breathe.” Poetry is one of the windows important to me, and poetry allows me to breathe fresh air and see farther into my world.

 

Like pages of glimpsed clarity, a panoply of window panes, they make me aware of sunshine, the clouds, and the unlimited possibilities available in life. In my home, I built a sunroom and am surrounded by windows. I see the birds in the sky, the stars at night, and a rainbow of colors during each day.

 

Each window fine tunes my day. Each pane of glass adds increased focus to my life. An occasional cracked glass or a little dirt in the corners affects the vision I achieve out of each respective one. Each window becomes a frame of mind, a frame of hope, a window of my dreams.

 

Handshakes, books, connecting the “1,000 points of light,” five fingers turned into a fist, nets made from single strand are all windows of meaning. These images provide different cultural lenses, blazing insights through which we teach ourselves from our own life experiences. These windows of perception show the way to the other side.

 

As dogs are said to resemble their masters in looks and temperament, windows in homes reflect the personalities of the owners. A window’s appearance shows the owner’s concern, attitude, and imagination. Owner’s who take the time to keep their windows clean enhance their ability to see clearly more of the world around them.

 

One of the largest windows of my life is my work. Out of the day’s chaos, this window brings order. In an educational forest, I build a path. Confronted daily with despair, I create purpose. Surrounded by youth, I search for maturity. Enveloped by barriers, I imagine transcendence. Given yarn, I knit a sweater. Given colors, I draw a picture. To escape a death of spirit, I breathe a new beginning. Trapped by four ordinary walls, I build a picture window. As I continue to grow, the view from these windows becomes more focused.

– David Martin

It is now 3 a.m. Lightning and thunder pound my head. I am tired and can not sleep.

An awful dragon chased me 

Our battle sounded like the thunder and looked like the lightning of my dreams. I heard my sword crash against the fire breathing monster’s neck, and I awoke to hear real monsters clash with Zeus’ bolts of fire in the sky.

The monster of my dreams aroused the emotional “donder and blitzen” that took place yesterday at our monthly Dragon Slayer’s meeting. Those flashes of insight and the sound of truth now stir in me to write once again.

Outside, Mother Nature’s rain falls softly. The natural thunder and lightning keep calling my attention to life’s rebirth, baptismal cleansing, and regeneration.

 

It’s never too late to start over.

Our discussion went from patience to parking lots, nuclear holocaust to Nikki Giovanni, a search for passion to paternalism, native desires to Nietzsche, individual courage to Camus, a creative swim to Schopenhauer, and a quest for real education to erudition. My mind became tired and excited as a result of our four-hour sharing. I feel there is much electricity in this group of writers. It is no wonder that Donder and Blitzen are now more to me than just two of Santa’s reindeer.

If Giovanni said there are no conversations, just intersecting monologues, what would she say about Sunday afternoon? Our sharing and discussion prove that good exposition and feedback occur when writers commit to their tasks.

No one really knows the mind and soul of another. Friend, husband, wife, child, do we really know who other people are? Probably not, but yesterday’s attempt was a huge beginning. Let the flow of written words never stop, as we follow our quest to write ourselves into our destiny.

“I can feel again . . . there but for the grace . . . it is the moments I like . . . memories last longer than experiences . . . suffer in order to create . . . passion and pride. . . courage to be . . . over the edge . . . eye of the tiger . . . it is a question of vision . . . a search for truth . . . be the rebel . . . personal battlegrounds . . . celebrate our 26 letters . . . a struggle to be authentic . . . .”

These glimpses of everyone’s participation are sparks for much contemplation and great composition. Don’t be satisfied to talk about them. Write them down. Develop them before they vanish. We must challenge our dragons before they disappear.

I try not to worry about the past.

What is done is done. Just let me learn from my mistakes and move on. I pray I don’t repeat the same errors. I hope to move to a higher ground. Then, if I make more mistakes, at least, they will be new ones.

I use to spend so much time worrying about the “boo-boos” I made, people I hurt, and opportunities I lost, that I only made myself depressed. When I learned that my unhappiness was only sublimated anger at myself, I decided I was not progressing by hurting myself, so I stopped it. I am only human. Yes, I made mistakes. I will make more, I am sure, but I don’t want to dwell on them. I choose to think of the future, to emphasize that aspect of my life, to accentuate the positive things I can influence. The little things I know will be affected by my attention.

Living is endless “being,” a continuous growth. There is no finish line; just life in a marathon and small victories tacked onto each other. An ending is a new beginning. I try to keep my eyes on the road and relax behind the wheel. Instead of going around and around in circles repeating the same mistakes of the past, if I can slowly, continuously, move to a higher level, my circles will become spirals. That is enough for me.

The only responsibility a river has is to flow to the sea. I don’t have to be anything else but the river I was created to be. My mission is to simply live what I am. If I am the Missouri, I don’t have to be the Amazon. If I don’t do what the Missouri is supposed to do, that is my only mistake.

Rivers don’t go upstream. I don’t have to push the current. The current will flow by itself. The river’s job is simply to be patient, take the curves and bends as they come, and ride, ride, ride to the sea.

The Greeks said happiness was attaining perfect balance and moderation in all things. When I am not happy, I find that parts of my life are more emphasized than others. Often, I notice my unhappiness comes about when I am thinking only of myself. When I want something so badly that I crave nothing else, when I am obsessed by possessing something, when I am greedy, then my displeasure with life is at its highest point.

When I quit worrying about the getting, when I begin thinking about the giving, my happiness returns. When I am aware of serving others or something larger than myself, when I volunteer my time, when I let good things pass through me to someone else, my happiness returns. It is not the taking that is important; it is the touching. It is not the getting that counts; it is the giving.

If someone asked me, “What are the Dragon Slayers all about?”

I would say they are about all of the above and more. Individuals have their own personal dragons to overcome, and according to Joseph Campbell, we may have more than one. The dragons can be many things: possessions, fears, ideas, jobs, school, teachers, wives, husbands, children, and egos. The monsters are concerns in life that prevent us from being ourselves and pursuing those things that let us become happy.

Campbell used the idea of following one’s bliss to find rapture and defeat one’s dragons. The barriers in our lives block our pathways and prevent us from going down the yellow-brick-road to Oz where we will surely be able to find ourselves a brain, a heart, and the courage we need to be successful.

Dragon Slayers travel the road of life searching for its truth through writing. Once the truth, as we see it, is found, the next step requires action. Knowledge is the knowing, but wisdom is knowledge in motion. We want to do more than just find the dragons. Going past those monsters to a better emotional and physical world creates the thunder and lightning that I hear. Let’s confront those dragons. Let’s keep our faith! Let’s write on!

– David Martin