la poursuite de la puissance de la liberté

Who is the most powerful person that you know?

I'm fascinated recently.. by humans with subtle, seductive, elusive power - a power that is simple, a power that is unbreakable, a power that is complete.
Complete power; That is an attractive statement..

Have you ever been given something by someone you didn't even know? A total stranger. There was no reason for them to offer you anything.. and yet they did. Maybe they gave you a compliment, maybe they gave you a smile, maybe they bought your meal, maybe they gave you a reason to live, maybe they gave you your day back. Whatever the situation.. it made you stop and think.
We are a society that operates on reciprocal levels of kindness. It is almost unheard of to receive something without an agenda attached. For the most part we act kindly in order to elicit a like response - we operate under the fascia of kindness: I am kind, because I want something from you.
When we recieve something for no reason... without an agenda.. it leaves us in bewilderment.
It is powerful to give... it implies you have something someone else doesn't.

I'm fascinated by the power of people that live completely free. to the point that they have very little.. and they are still content, still happy, still giving. Giving away honest compliments, giving away money, giving away their songs and words and thoughts.... What is that power? Physically or financially they have nothing, and yet instead of trying to "acquire" - they keep giving away? I'm left with awe and confusion. That goes against the rules of power that I have been playing by. Maybe there are different rules... maybe there is a deeper, wilder power.
When a person gives to me, when they fill a chasm in my mind with positive energy, when they speak genuinely to my soul, or when I see someone lose their agenda and simply share their untamed spirit - suddenly I am interested completely. I want whatever it is that they possess.. whatever it is that lets them live that freely. The fearlessness. The beauty of self. In my mind they become the edge that cuts through my delicate reason and shatters my glass walls. I am suddenly aware that they have something that I don't.. beyond material, beyond ego, they have a power that I have not yet touched - the power of freedom. The power to honestly give anything, even everything - freedom flows through their hot veins and they are not timid to move like water across the planet - never wrapping their fingers too tightly around the days. Absolute freedom. The ability to find happiness in the arms of comfort, or in the cold of destitution.. the power to be beyond need, beyond ownership, beyond persuasion. That seems to me to be powerful.

What am I free enough to do? Am I free enough to be hungry? Am I free enough to speak kindness? Am I free enough to forget the heaviness of paper? Am I free to forget myself and become myself? I wish to be that powerful.


(Andrew Tipton)

curiousity

Wandering, I go nowhere. Nowhere is everything I desire. This center of the universe - ever shifting: my shadows and dreams become the origin of all life.
In the lines of eternity who is to say what is done or undone; does eternity know beginning? Does it hasten for completion?
Today, beside a stone lagoon - my thoughts grow like blackberries and drip like wild honey - delicious meandering of my mind. Dolphins played games beneath my knees as I took the shape of a child - looking with unbroken curiosity, staring at the vastness of green. The sway of grass, the veins of leaves, I am in awe of the complexity of a single delicate color.. where does green start and end? Where do I start and end? There are so many colors. Life takes away my breathe sometimes.
I sleep in tree houses.. dream in the bodies of animals.. swim with Spanish shawls.. it is so much to be amazed by only a color? When I think of you I think of the deepest crimson red. Like the blood in my own veins, you remind me that this song is mine; that the lyrics of this day are in my own writing. I am green.

(Andrew Tipton)

Children of Roam

I think we have always been dangerous; born that way from our mothers wombs. Our first screams - tiny roars. Our small hearts, already aching for the touch of sunlight and the seduction of color.
The animals at the zoo don't look like they fit.. their coats of fur dull, the fierceness in their eyes faded.. stare and look and remember what cages do. Remember how they strip us of our beauty, of our courage, of our strength. We live behind glass walls - always staring into the cage next to us. Believe that we are still brave. Believe that glass walls can crack.


What cage is more powerful than our own minds? More potent and confusing? I don't know of a greater. Daily I try and stay naked for as long as possible - naked from the weight of cages and their oppression to my existence. Who I must be. What I must say. The way I must move. The rules, the worry, the doubt. Cages.
And yet, there is the choice at every moment to climb trees, the choice at every moment to clutch happiness between our fingers, the choice to be fearless, the choice to live and to die.. every choice is ours - when we know we make them.


I asked you if you believe in yourself? And, do you want to be what it is you said you did? Your answer was the greatest of all answers.
Own it. Own those beautiful words yourself. Own that reason yourself and these reasons themselves. You have always been the greatest of all creations - own that knowledge and the world is yours; choice is yours; freedom is entirely yours. The freedom to do anything you want... to say anything you want.. to move any way you want. What is it you want?
I admit humility in the presence of my own greatness.
I am both sick and strong, in the fullness of my own greatness.
I live and breathe in the expression of my own greatness.
I fade from this body in the completion of my own greatness.
Always I am great; In everything I am awesome.
We are the suns and daughters of energy.. the eternal motion of this wild planet.
The sovereignty of the color blue consumes our days.
Do what pleasures your soul.





(Andrew Tipton)

αστροφεγγιά

My god. I cannot breathe under the weight of a billion glorious beings. Stretched across a wild canvas of black.. celestial bodies consorting in a rhythm that I cannot fathom. The motion of millenia, the motion of timeless revolutions that have looked down upon cleverness for all of time.
You fill my eyes and I am no longer clever. Tangled words, tangled heart in my chest.. tangled thoughts, tangled lips. I feel sometimes the distant child of braver things.. I am so far from elegance. Awestruck by my own irreverence and my calloused prayers; I do not deserve this moment. I do not deserve the sweetness of pleasure, I do not deserve the glory of suffering - what would the unborn trade to behold you... even for an instant. All is beyond me.
Freedom gently lifts my face toward hers. She presses her lips against my dirty cheek and kisses me; unyielding. αστροφεγγιά drips into my blurry eyes - I see you as you were years ago.. my god. You were so beautiful.
I'm yours completely. Lost. Completely. Found. Completely.
Never lose me. Never lose my persuasion and my curiosity - my fierceness, my roar, my thirst.




(Andrew Tipton)

THE STATUS SYMBOL

It moves from deep inside of my stomach; finds the smooth edges of my mouth, lifts my tongue - flowing into the corners of my eyes, into my cheeks and down my chest, through my skin, through my bones.. I sway as it gently fills the deepest scars of my heart; the motion of happiness.

Take any motivation I have ever had, far enough... and you will find one solitary pursuit: the search, maintenance and creation of happiness. Consciously, subconsciously.. in my prayers, in my tears, my thoughts, words, possessions, selfless acts of goodness, my perversions, my crimes, my sleep, my sufferings, my sex. I want happiness.
Walking towards it.. always moving towards it; chasing it, running after - the perpetual blood trail.
Status symbols. Sold and bought.
They should actually be called: "Status of Happiness Symbols".
Reasons to show the world why I should be happy. Reasons only; the illusion of contentment.

There is a notion that happiness is bound to objects.. hidden in the folds of $500 jeans, locked away in the closets of expensive houses, an additive in the glossy-silver paint that covers the sweeping curves of illustrious automobiles.
Status: My place in this fading place.
Imaginary symbols of happiness.. are we tired of that lie yet? Are we tired of the sedation, of the scent of pine trees.. coming from a pine tree shaped air-freshener? What is it we crave, what is it the inside of our souls lusts for!??
I want the source. I want happiness from the inside out.

The ultimate Status (of happiness) Symbol: the pure motion of a beautiful, content smile.

What is greater than happiness - all acts point to it; everything is a reflection of it. All of life is about finding it.. holding it.. slaving for it. Why can't we just have IT? Is it true, that we must own anything to be happy? Or become something in order to become happy.. Is there truly any more happiness outside of what I am able to create in my own mind? I act as if happiness is scattered across the face of earth... and I am on a never-ending mission to uncover its whereabouts.
Enough.
Perhaps the place that we all seek.. exists in our minds. Already.
We have the most desired, most extravagant status symbol of all.. the ability to smile.. purely, honestly, contently, at any moment of our choosing.
Happiness is exactly what we make it, where we make it, how we make it.
We make it.




(Andrew Tipton}



(Andrew Tipton)

Waiting

Hands crossed, eyes closed, forgetting everything about everything - finding the now.
Wondering how the silence of an afternoon feels - it comes like sunshine through rain. Autumn is coming, even as I wait - without my help, beyond my reach. The edges of every leaf outside this nest are outlined in the slightest yellow. I wait for autumn even as it.. is ... already here.
Perhaps waiting is not so much about anticipation of what will be enjoyed, and is so much more the action of enjoying now anticipations, expectations, dreams, and just being still for a time.
Dare I roam and move across the spaces of my own reason? Shadows and the impossibility of love - all is fading in the fading place. Children kick in the inside of their mothers' wombs, ready for alive - now; waiting is only a moment.
Will you jump,
or will you fly?
will you wander...
will you be direct?
Will the wait be like sunrise - the imperceptible break into darkness without start.
Or will it be sudden - love like the pow of the gun, the firecracker, the scream that has an exact starting place.
Will you wait long?
Will you wait hardly at all?
Many things I have missed in this life, have not felt as fully, as deeply, have not tasted as richly, have not heard completely... I did not know it until later that that wonderful or significant thing was what I was waiting for...
wait well... heart of mine...
expect to find as you wait.
Now.