Amazing Grace - the El Nino Legend Part I

 Amazing Grace –

The El Niño Legend

Part I

 

It began on a misty low lying foggy hazy day again, the inland vapor clouds had moved inwards towards the empty shore where the remotely located pier was taken a pounding of the El Niño created waves creating a violent backlash of foamy water splashing and trashing its hurricane force waves against the aging and rotted wooden pillars of it long-stretched out structure. 

In the distance, you can see the dimming sunlight set slowly on the western horizon of the Pacific Ocean where it touches the sands of these California shore lines that are usually overcrowded and for an unexplainable reason, abandoned and bare today as the waves began to crash into the shore more violent than before.

The arrival of El Niño was so untimely as Carl knew he had so much more to do before the drenching of the tropical rains settled in and create a soggy water logged landscape out of the grassland and mountains that have been starving for rain for over ten years now and dried out to its lifetime drought conditions that would welcome the precipitation but not without creating havoc and flooding in most of the low lying areas.

The weather forecasters have been over analytical of this upcoming storm, they predicted earthquakes, power outages, loss of lives and mass property damage. They said the streets would be filled with ten foot waters as people and animals float down the highways as carcasses without any life left in them.

A predicted apocalyptic event, El Niño was destined to become the zombie maker of the times as the waters were rising every moment reaching epic proportions in areas where water had been a stranger for decades up to now.

Who would have calculated the risks of such a storm? Who would have guessed the waters would rise so high, even the two story houses would be consumed and the rushing waters would cause massive mudslides all over the valley.

On this cloudy day, the world as we knew it was about to change. California, Baja Mexico and even parts of Arizona would soon be under water as the never ending flow of water coming out of the sky began to consume what was once arid deserts into lakes of earthly passions so long desiring rain and begging for such water-logged pleasures.

Nigh time on this day turned into a lifetime of sorrow. Judging by the rainfall this night was going to be more than an overcast event as the waterfalls nearby crashed their cascading water into solid retaining walls constructed to hold the muddy soils from reaching the streets and highways as boulders roll down the hills, tumbling and destroying everything it touches.

Whatever method those highway engineers used to solve the mud sliding and mudslinging problem was not working. The rains overwhelmed the cold stone concrete walls and broke them up in smaller pieces adding to the boulders rolling down with thunderous momentum of dangers.

Carl has sensed this disaster if it ever started raining in Southern California and had prepared himself and his family for such a calamity by building a bunker of steel and concrete deep inside one of the highest hills around his house as he chose to be prepared for the perfect storms lined up on the western horizon.

A natural disaster was simmering on the heated ocean waves and seeking landfall with a tsunami like generated chaos. Unreal naturally displaced forces created on the ocean floors were pushing up waves of tremors shaking the volumes of large intensely created seawaters up to the surface by underwater currents assisted by underwater volcanic activities making their arrival a Mother Nature’s disaster nobody could have properly prepared for in our time.

In the distance, the FEMA emergency sirens were wailing out a message that were ignored by so many masses before when the emergency broadcasts were tested on our television sets and nobody paid attention. Carl knew it was time for hell to come visit us all and the means to survive would be tested forever as greatly for the apocalyptic event predicted had begun.

Evacuating his house, he tried to notify his family and friends of the coming storm until his cell phone had no power or signal. The storms were destructive and tearing down cell towers all around the valley like match sticks falling creating a blackout of communications for some and darkness for many others.

The bunker had no windows except a peep hole made out of reinforced steel and bulletproof glass. A single view of the world outside him, Carl knew a disaster when he saw one and figured to draw his last breath inside this bunker so strong, secluded and hidden out of the view of many creating his own island of bare comforts while waiting out this storm.

Hours passed by as he kept busy with sporadic sudden pacing of the bunker looking for wear and tear on the walls of the bunker. This constantly checking and paranoid mode of operando was reaching nervous proportions as this walking and thinking was wearing him out. Peeking out of the bulletproof glass window, he saw the rains falling down like a surging and tumbling waterfall out of the sky.

The bunker was a large underground cave, carved and divided into five square rooms and all connected with reinforced lighted tunnels running off a huge emergency generator that had dual power sources available.

Carl had ingeniously designed a method of power for longevity in surviving any disaster or war, in both a traditional old fossil fuel gasoline method of feeding the power creating monster or by an array of solar panels, hard wired from the ground up above but hidden from plain view so those flying above the bunker could not see the power source and tracking it back to the sanctuary haven created to hide from the storm or those enemies who mentioned out oud they had voiced a wicked desire to take our country by force or nuclear power.

One of the rooms carved out of the cave was his relaxation room. A room where he could think and drink while he pondered his next move and deal with his adversity under this natural disaster made situation.

One would think Carl wasted his time creating relaxation room that he turned into his solitary sanctuary to allow him to relax and meditate with soft smooth jazz like music piped in the walls with a surround sound system that if pushed to its fullest, shake the walls with music that rocked the entire cave with a switch of a button.

Herein his sanctuary room, he created a pipeline of sophisticated antennas to the surface that allowed his cellphone to reach a signal if the carrier was still active and spreading the airwaves to accommodate users in the area for such service. In addition, he had hard-wired a digital television disc that received satellite programs from all parts of the world and space to accommodate his need for news and pleasures.

This bunker was better equipped than any fancy hotel could be. The sheets on his beds were crispy freshly laundered. The pillows and comforter bragging Oakland Raiders logos were soft like the clouds. His overindulgent spending for more than comfortable living had paid off for him over the years.

His room was breathable and relaxing just like he wanted it to be under confining and duress as well as anxious conditions on the outside of his other world, now under attack and where survival was his utmost concern.

Carl went over to the bar and poured himself a rarely thirst for a drink. Preferring the rum and coke combination, he softly swallowed a potion that gave him a chance to relax. As he looked up to see the large flat television screen he switched the input channels and watched the terrain surrounding his bunker as he had set up surveillance closed circuit cameras all around his cave, to see if there was anyone else out there looking for help or shelter.

As he turned to the different camera locations, he zoomed and panned each one to see if he could find some signs of life out there. The cave was well hidden with shrubbery and man laid stones to cover up any signs of construction. The roof was a natural mountainside carved from the inside out.

Suddenly as he panned one of his cameras he heard a woman’s voice shouting. Zooming in and looking intensely into the flat screen that was over 72 inches wide, he saw a face of a woman holding a child in her arms and looking frightfully lonely.

Maintaining his vigilance of this young woman with child in hand, he listened to her shouting. “Where are you Neil, stop hiding from me!!” she shouted. It was obvious she was looking for someone else who had strayed from the city streets and dwelled in the landscape where there were man-made mountains.

Unrestful eyes kept searching for life outside the bunker. Knowing there were at least three people outside his cave, made his wonder if he should breach the walls and doors and allow them to enter and share his sanctuary until the storms were over.

He knew his soundproof house could not be detected from the outside and hide his presence from the stranded woman outside with child in hand. His conscious was telling him to open his bunker like house to strangers but common sense told him of the dangers lurking outside with looks being deceiving as man, when desperate, can turn on you and take your life or property without blinking.

Irritated, Carl drew himself into a frustration fit and hit his clenched fist into the stone like walls. Feeling the instant pain, he looked at his red-knuckled fists as the blood slowly soothed out with a warmness he could feel as he stood there thinking about his next move about that woman being outside his bunker.

She didn’t hear him yelling out with pain, she was oblivious of his presence as she stood there, outside the walls still yelling and shouting for someone called Neil, and who disappeared from her sight and missing. He turned off the sound to the camera and sat there thinking.

What would the consequences be if he let her into his cave? How would he deal with this stranger and her companions? Would he feel like he owed them something or was he mistaken? The dilemma was too much for him to bear. He started drinking and decided to let time take its course and hopefully she would walk away from his mountain cave and find whoever she was looking for.

The rain kept falling down. The darkness was again falling. It had been a long day for Carl and he was thinking that perhaps all that he prepared for was an overkill and that the world was not ending and the woman he saw was part of a surviving group that had fled the city to find somewhere else to be as a darkened city without light can be dangerous to life itself and cause people to panic and start killing or robbing others under the cover of the blacked out skyline and street lights.

A sense of guilt had overcome him as every minute ticked off the clock. He kept seeing this vision of that woman with child in hand and thought about how sacred his conscious was and how scared she must be out there all alone and in the darkness. He could stand thinking about that woman. He didn’t want to hear her so he muted the sound and turned on his music instead but in his head, he could still hear her shouting.

Minute after minute, almost an hour passed when he decided to pan his cameras one more time and see if the woman had left his man made mountain. The music ended, the mind was focused on the sounds outside as he panned the cameras wide and looked for the strangers.

Although minutes seemed like hours, the drenching rain was still coming and the woman was spotted sitting under a tree that gave her and her child temporary shelter from the pouring rain. Again, his conscious was knocking on his mentally unimpaired mind – should he let her and the child in or should he ignore her.

Panning, zooming and taking up some close ups of the woman he could see how she was shivering from the coldness. Her skin had turned white like hypothermia was setting in and the child was crying. Now he could even hear them both crying as they sat there quietly outside his cave.

Her clothes were soaking wet, she had no overcoat and her skin was clinging to her body like a woman who had just competed in a wet tee shirt contest. He could see what nature revealed to be a most beautiful woman right outside his door.

For a sudden moment his mind wandered. Thinking back on those days when he was the wildest of a group of friends coming out of the Army, he thought about the last wet tee shirt contest he saw in a dark lit bar on the beach.

Surrounded by what appeared to be lingerie models dressed in white tee shirts and alluring transparent bikinis, he soaked up the rays of his younger days with the pleasures of tropical sands and women how had proven assets to be as some of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen when spending his days at the beach.

A flashback had occurred and suddenly, Carl was back to reality. Harshly punishing himself for the moment of lust and passion driven by the thoughts and desires of the past, he glanced once more time through the lens of the camera that revealed a woman in a sopping wet garment that did little to cover her stunning figure as she shivered from the coldness of the mountain air and holding child in hand.

Stiffening with rage at himself, he decided to let her into his domesticated cave and give her warmth and shelter. He knew she could be a carrier of the plague of people who are consumed by the dead out there but looking at her eyes and watching her closely, he could tell, she had not been bitten and was not displaying any traits of the zombies that roamed the streets and highways, looking for someone to be eaten.

She showed compassion, a will to live, giving her child the comforts of her own body heat that zombies don’t have or possess in traits or manner. She reached out to her child and showed her love for him to the highest point a human being can display.

Surely there was no doubt this woman was human and not one of the undead but caution in the wind, Carl had to be certain before opening the entrance to his cave to strangers. He had witnessed a few radical and extreme acts of the undead in the war when he was overseas. His memory was vividly alive as he witnessed death and destruction by those animal turned once humans who roamed the isolated deserts and torn down war damaged cities with vengeance and lust for blood of those still living.

His eyes filled with tears. He could see her suffering and as he choked a little on his own emotions, he reached for his raincoat and boots to go to find her and bring her into his sanctuary where she could recover and dry up until the morning sun comes back out and give them all a new life and a chance to ponder over how to solve this problem that had found Carl’s cave without a single word spoken.

Making Friends out of possible enemies

Making friends out of possible enemies?

 

If you have been following my blogs and posts you will see how I have mocked and criticized the simple simplicity of violent and religiously directed ideologies in our world today. None of it was meant to be a personal attack on any Muslim living within the means of a peaceful religion and practices what they preach.  It was simply a brutal assault on radical Muslims who use the name of their religion to conquer the minds and souls of innocent people and do things that are horrific and atrocious in nature as they demonstrate a will of genocide against all of those sects who do not agree or approve of their Islam ideology.

 

I mocked it, I deviled it and I denounced it. There is no love, compassion or kindness or even a slight justification upheld within such barbaric behaviors. It defies our morality and does not follow the golden rule we have been taught since we were young. My goal is peace – soothing, calming, and glowing peace. Although realistically improbable, I won’t give up on these visions of harmony and reconciliation of our universally prompted differences that creates unity for the right reasons.

 

Every person wants love; every child deserves to be loved. People should be able to enjoy life with a light-hearted sense of humor and pleasantries that promote good will. Therefore, until the world sees what the evil side of the ISIL or other terror groups of the world’s terror looks like, I will continue to mock it, defile it and denounce it until it is defeated or my peace has been attained.

 

I will join hands and make friends with those who are not the enemy of our way of life. I will shake the hand of the man or woman and hug a child, who believes in a good God and equality for all. Life is not a bowl of cherries or a box of chocolate and even the powerful scent of the incense plumes used to masquerade the hate in the room, will not deter me to keep writing about the concerns of the world and our own country’s survival.

 

Sometimes I will refine my words while other times, I will straightforwardly state my case of concerns. I will and shall extend my hand of friendship to all I meet, including Muslims who move into the light and true directions of peace and harmony. There has to be an understanding between friend and foe.

 

There has to be less emotion present to detect a motive or reason hidden beneath the surface to gain an upper hand in the social or spiritual status in our world. Remaining logical and reasonable is better than being paranoid and extremely apprehensive of all who worship other religions or live their lives in a different fashion.

 

The codes we live by must have harmony and relative stabilization in words and tone. We must communicate with honesty. Beyond the terrorists are a great number of good people but at first hand and day’s light, we must see for ourselves who they are and why they do what they do in their culture that is so different than ours. If a common temple of spiritual bliss exists, why can’t we be friends? I suggest moderation and caution is the best way to achieve this bliss.

 

The world has got the Muslims’ plight of ‘fight or flight’ in their cross hairs or in their compassionate revelations. Their pain and sorrow has attracted or drawn much attention. The deep color of racism should not interfere with charity and good will but the face of terrorism must be found early so that deceit cannot destroy our hearts and minds.

 

There are those who tell the truth and there are those who are lying. Some just say what the people want them to say. Awareness and scrutiny is key to deceptive practices and before we reach out to shake a hand, we must know for sure, they are willing to be the same and uninitiated and uncorrupt in their games.

 

Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and many other religions in our universe are like the stars above us in our heavens. There are many, too many to count and see. Like the stars up above, the good people can reflect their light towards others. We can love them, respect them and treat this as an act of good nature and sincerity with an open mind and making good choices.

 

The same can be said for all who practice their own faith or beliefs and even the atheists that live among us can be included in this cosmos of creating trust and understandings. They can be the light of joy and love or the darkness of hate and anger. Basically speaking, mankind were meant to love and be loved. No amount of guns, veils, masks or violence can change that for all – however, there will be those who will fight and defend what they believe in and that by itself may start the conflict or wars all over again. We have a choice of love or hate and realize whatever choice we make, there are consequences for making such decisions.

 

Love is a reflection of the light; hate is the reflection of the darkness. We talk about peer pressure, social stigmas and stereotyping people because we ourselves are possessed with our own individual biases, prejudices or partial feelings.  How we open up our minds, educate ourselves and think with reason rather than emotion, will make the difference of a lifetime. We must maintain a distance from hatred. We must erase the bigotry from our ancestral mothers and fathers and teach hope. Finally, we must measure and calculate the distance between love and understanding each other’s culture and customs to allow our hearts and minds to break open the possibilities of becoming friends and partners in life.

 

So as we break into the chasms of our minds to share these feelings with strangers, it is my desire to become your friend and not your foe. I realize the primordial simplicity is difficult to attain to open our eyes and trust our senses but that’s the first step for gaining a satisfaction to mend the hearts and put the pieces back together.

 

Life is full of change and chances. The truth be told, everyone deserved a chance to change. I feel there is much hope to find a common thread of love and compassion between all of us if we reach out and talk about the love and step back from the hate and suspicion that surrounds us. How we do this has to come with a relative feeling of being safe, we don’t want to risk dropping our guard and letting the pain inside. In recognition of this needed security we ask you do the same and put your mind at ease that we can be friend over a prolonged period of time.

 

So in order to make my enemy my friend, I must exchange our mutual disappointments. We must remind each other of the best way to bond as friends have done in childhood and set the negative sentiments aside. I want to suggest we connect as friends while we remain vigilant and cautiously defend ourselves from any extremely rooted hidden motives on the inside.

An American Judas brings us misguided Muslim charity

An American Judas Brings us Misguided Muslim Charity

 

The concept of separating church and state is disappearing slowly around us, and under the cloak of darkness as select powerful American politicians are strategically planning a Muslim invasion of our country; a phenomenon that has already happened in European countries such as England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and other smaller countries who opened up their borders to Middle East refugees.

 

One can only surmise that under the mask of being a Good Samaritan, the real goal is to allow a flood of immigrants fill the spaces of our nation. Attacking Islam or Muslim people is not the purpose of this article. Bringing critical awareness to cultural changes is the priority concept for people to become better informed on the latest decisions made by our government in Washington D.C. what had begun as an act of kindness and compassion has turned into a political and theological nightmare. Asking questions and writing letters to inquire of intent and purpose is now immediately necessary to stop this trend of thinking and planning.

 

Various national and international police authorities are now faced with an irreversible trend and threat that could destroy our basic way of life in many different ways if not managed accordingly. What has happened in Europe cannot happen in the USA. Before any mass immigration movement is allowed, the government owes it to the people to establish an accountability system to track who comes into our country under their state-sponsored programs.

 

Today, police, federal authorities and other agencies involved in the transition of refugees from Europe, the Middle East and war-torn countries cannot track refugees under the current conditions. Since there continues to be a world level threat of terrorism in our world, we should not give up on conducting background checks and registering them on a national registry to allow a minimum level of tracking of all those refugees proposed to be allowed into our country under a newly developed refugee relief plan.

 

Failure to do a thorough and effective registration process will result in various degrading of systems situations. There are many risks associated with such a transfer of cultures and religious customs and practices.

 

The first and foremost formal internal system that will fall is our individual local, state and eventually federal regulatory system. Laws will change under pressure to accommodate Muslim customs, religion, educational and statutory requirements under the infamous Sharia laws. This could lead to an abolition of our Bill of Rights as they stand today if they are attacked and converted or changed by the courts.

 

We cannot simply surrender our rights to give way to the Muslim way of life and Islam. There are rare cases where Christians and Muslims live in harmony without creating a theological conflict amongst themselves resulting in civil disobedience, violence and pressure to change the laws and societal customs.

 

In fact, this is a de facto abolition of law that we cannot survive if the numbers increase in the crowds and pressure our lawmakers to submit to their demands. Therefore, I fear, Christian charity, compassion and kindness will in fact be the tool used to accommodate Muslim growth and expansion in the world and change the way we live, eat, pray and educate our children.

 

The government has a responsibility to formulate and control the immigration process before the masses are allowed to enter and live in the USA. My fear is the presence of Judas kind of politician who have infiltrated our government to support such a change in policy, laws and practices.

 

The deliberate destruction of our heritage stands to be lost if Americans do nothing to stop this proliferation of Islam under the banner of “charity and compassion” for refugees and lose control of the entire scenario of establishing law and order under the current systems in place that has been founded to be the best in the free world today.

 

Charity is a fine quality and should be exercised but done so with caution. We cannot allow our willingness to take the high road to allow the paths of our traditional journeys to be destroyed by a lesser moral absolute – the destruction of our Constitution. Charity does not apply to rape, murder and decapitation or other justified retributions per Sharia laws and gross perversion of a morality code inconsistent with our constitutional amendments as equal rights protection laws.

 

Charity cannot facilitate violence towards Christians or other groups that include the lesbian communities, homosexual or domestic partnerships and other moral contradictions given to American due to the law providing these Muslim refugees equal protection under the law. Ironically, this same equal protection clause can be used by Muslims to change the laws in their favor as well if they obtain a moral majority and influence law making or court decisions.

 

Time to wake up America, the future of our country is at our doorstep and you are asleep at the wheel. Pay attention to your elected leaders and find the Judas in your community, your district and your government and vote them out of office so that we can preserve what we have fought for since our Independence Day creating the best country in the world.

A black mirror - eye to eye confrontation

A black mirror for an ey

e to eye confrontation

 

In my journey of life, I have faced the black mirror more than once, as I have always had trouble looking at my pale reflections and dark secrets deep within me. For almost seven decades long, I have walked down the various highways of life and struggled in the shifting sands of some of the world’s most remote beaches with no full moon above and left unleashed and free, completely in the darkness. Yet although free I cannot find myself or the place where my heart can see me eye to eye in the darkened mirror.

Yesterday, I awakened from another nightmare, drenching in my sweat, my conscious struggling to forever forget, the sins I carried with me. Stealthily and silently stuffed in my backpack of worries and what some would call pettiness false pretenses, that haunt my mind when asleep or awake stirring my soul deeply inside. For some reasons unknown, the backpack has gotten heavier and not a word is spoken.

I can’t even watch my own reflection, my shadows have stayed behind me as the sun goes up and down, and no mirror is bright enough to capture the light, as the black mirror leaves me standing there, looking for something in the light and nothing I find, tells me my life is right

I know my time is coming; I can sense the dawning of my spirit within the darkness that is falling. No security camera can catch me, no video of my reflection exists as I dwell deep in the chambers of silence and fear, where words have lost their meaning and my eyes are surely blind knowing that my time is near.

Without a looking glass, a preferred dark black mirror, my eyes can’t see myself in the eye. I tried a lighter mirror but it cast no reflection. A black mirror can see me well, or so I have been told and the truth the mirror can surely tell, discloses my trials and tribulations as I struggle to see myself in the black black mirror.

My face is pale and my mind is dark and sometimes blank just like the mirror. The blackness of the mirror knows no reflection, it captures no light. Trying so hard to see if it would cast my soul or pride, or show the vagueness of my thickened hide, as the sweat rolls off my brow and not a word is spoken.

I chose not to be vain or filled with false vanity looks, but instead it speaks the names of those I have forgotten and speaks of dreams that have been broken. My spirits seeks and never finds the message in a bottle. It seems nobody cares about the curse that someone cast on me when I was young, a curse that has never been broken and the names of those who dwell inside, their names have never been spoken.

My Heritage - Family Ties Part III

My Heritage – Family Ties

Living on the Edge of my Teenage Life

Part III

 

Building their hopes on positive social projections and possible tangible and beneficial rewards in the future, my parents ensured we attended school as much as possible. Although neither engaged in helping us with our homework, they did encourage us to do it on a regular basis and cut our time in front of the television set for a significant amount if stretch between the hours of 5 pm and 7 pm.

Our television free time spanned from after school to 5 pm and from 7 pm to 8 pm. Then it was bed time and an early rise and shine in the next morning. Excitedly, Saturday mornings were our free time and we could watch as much as we wanted unless we went outside to play.

The neighborhood we lived in was mixed black and white and often referred to as the poor side of town or slums to put it bluntly. On some days, the mood was the darkest as it went without saying that there were always spill overs on the streets of the abomination of a hideous and hidden hate in our hearts and minds. Some would say it was a silly thing to say but to ignore the street justice and discriminatory practices on the outside of the house would be disingenuous to myself or others as it was a reality we all dealt with in a not so kind manner.

School was our sanctuary. The fact that virtually all the good times in my childhood came from those times spent in school, it didn’t matter much what happened outside of school or in the middle of the night for that matter. In the eyes of my mother and father, school was the most important thing.  We had to work hard not to disappoint them in their expectations.

My mother had a college education and spoke four languages fluently. Her well versed skill to speak Dutch, German, French and English was amazing. One has to remember that her native tongue was Malaysian dominantly spoken in the house so we kids could not know what they were talking about.

My father was employed as a warehouse worker. He worked hard and brought home a decent paycheck for those days but nevertheless, we were poor. My mother, forced to go to work due to finances and other desires she wanted, found an opportunity to put her cooking skills to work as a specialty chef for the Sheraton Hotel downtown Columbus where she was hired to make exclusive Indonesian cuisine and cultural delicatessens. This arrangement left us alone much of the time from sunrise to sunset and offered us an opportunity to socialize a little bit more than before. In fact, it gave us too much freedom.

Since we lived in a poor neighborhood, the expectations, projections of wealth or success and our destined futures was limited by the mere design of our society. We had no status as we never reached the middle class on income or the fanciness of our house. It was, after all, a shell of wooden panels covered with a dilapidated shoddily asphalt tiled covered roof on it that kept us adequately safe and warm in the winter and not so cool in the summertime.

However, since both were employed, the food on the table was plentiful and the clothes were becoming a little bit new than before. Still, no matter how hard my parents worked, we were socially still and yet, a step lower.

One of the things I remember most was my father saying that we were comfortable and had what we needed to be contented but this was unsatisfactory to my mother. She obviously wanted more as she was used to the finer things in her earlier part of her childhood with parents who were wealthier than most that lived around her.

Since my father was a soldier before the war, during the war and after the war, his occupational skills were limited immensely. Working in a warehouse as a common laborer didn’t bother him as much as it did my mother who looked down on this with her nose in the air.

 In the eyes of myself, I saw this as her seeing my father as a failure and not achieving any personal or social success working there like a common slave in captivity to the company that hired him. I know she talked behind my father’s back. I know she was disappointed in him and took it out on him with frequent fights about money and other things. After all was said, my mother was very materialistic in nature and that wasn’t going to change overnight. It was a constant struggle for my father to please her.

I remember when our baby sister was born, she was upset about the loss of income because she couldn’t work or make money from her efforts to cook, sew and do odd embroidery work for others. Whenever she was discontent, she took it out on the three of us. It was her way of dealing with her own stress and frustrations. There was rarely a gentle moment when she was stressed or filled with unknown anxiety. She ranted and raved and even threw things in the air to express her anger or feelings.

Once she was able to go back to work, she assigned my older sister, Natasha, to watch her and take care of her whenever she wasn’t home. This was not only unfair to Natasha but created a bond between my older sister and my baby sister that would later come back to haunt my mother’s will to discipline the baby girl who was a breath of fresh air for most of us except my mother. It seemed the unexpected pregnancy and the mood around it created animosity and more stress between her and my father who was overjoyed with his new baby girl.

Ohio was unkind to us in many ways. First it was the social status we were surrounded by and the poor employment opportunities for immigrants looking for a job. Secondly, because of the language barriers at first, we suffered in communicating and making friends socially but as we gained the upper hand on the language, we also realized that if we were to be poor in money and educational skills, we would be trapped in this disastrous cultural pit we found ourselves in at times. 

Even our parents realized this and pushed us hard to learn as much as we could in school and then find a job as soon as possible to earn our keep in the household. It was about to become a tradition and we never saw it coming. Even looking back at our limited opportunities and wealth, we had higher projections afterwards and saw these harsh and difficult times as a ladder of social and economic breaks to become better at what we needed to be in order to survive. I believe we got this from our parents but more so from our father.

So even though our lives were dark, very dark, and maybe even black, we struggled to meet life head on and became stronger at this test of wills to survive. It became obvious to us that if we remained inside these darkest times too long we too would become dark as blacks and live in the back of society’s tenement rows so often the place where the poorest end up at best.

We lived, we laughed and struggled but we persevered to see the end come sooner than expected. Times were changing and we did succeed a little bit at a time to move on up in the better neighborhood of this town. I must have been sixteen and there was this one girl with whom I don’t even remember not liking from the moment I saw her. A redneck girl, dressed in blue jeans and tight tops and long auburn hair that always had a white bow in the crease somewhere to keep her bangs out of her eyes.

She was white. A white girl with hillbilly manners. Tough and tomboyish at her best behavior, she was not only attractive, she was just plain sexy. I was immediately attracted to her magnetism and showed it with a constant flirtatious smile that tried to win her over.

She left me speechless at times and even without talking to her, she made me nervous. Whether it was a pure sexual attraction or just puppy love kind of thing, it drove me crazy not seeing her as often as I could. I understood I had to work and help the family but my mother seemed obsessive in her ways to make me work more hours than I wanted to since I still had school work to deal with between sleep and going to work.

I recall many struggles with my mother who had a premonition that this girl was a slut and not good for me to hang around or get involved with. Call it a mother’s intuition, I looked at it as a means to cut me off from my own happiness and how this girl, Kathy, invaded my space and time away from going to work. Perhaps, my mother was unacceptable of this girl because she knew I really liked her well enough to play hooky from school and cut back my hours to work so I could spent more time with her.

My mother’s jealousy made me vomit. It was sickening how she acted whenever I brought her to the house and spent some quiet time with her. She would burst in unannounced or rudely talking to us as we were talking and did everything she could to cause us to feel uncomfortable and leave the house so we could find some solace someplace else.

It also seemed my mother was hung up on a social status thing with her. She was white but considered white trash because she also came from a poor snowy colored family. There was something rubbing her the wrong way about Kathy and she was trying to be coy about it.

Even my brother and sisters noticed the brush off she got whenever she came over. I didn’t understand too much of it all because I seemed to be blinded by the lust and emotions overwhelming me. Perhaps it was my carnal desires to have this girl and take her all for myself as the actions of her parents and my mother drove us closer together.

Seems no matter how nice Kathy was to my mother, she was looked down and never good enough to be seen with me. In my head, I was trying to figure out what insanity drove my mother’s obsession with this girl. It must have had something to do with her own childhood because for all the wrong reasons, she hated that girl. This was certainly something I remember vividly, everybody looked down on everyone. Since we were from a foreign country, it was understandable but even those who were raised and born here in this very same neighborhood were targets of hate and wrath that was unexplainable and not for the lack of trying.

I was outraged by the manner my mother mistreated Kathy and it drove me away from the house more often than I care to remember. Even on those days when everyone sat home and spent the time talking as a family, I found excuses to leave the house and find the time to work on my real relationship with Kathy as that mattered the most to me at the time.

So it seemed that the time with Kathy was squandered as my mother so eloquently put it, she was “wasting my time” and only wanted me because I had a job and money to spent on her. For the lack of making me angry, the silence between us drove us farther apart. Regardless of what the truth was or how things appear to be bearing on the reality, the times squandered was well worth the sexual awakening and the thrill of adolescence as this girl woke up something inside of me that would take a very long time to dissipate or diminish inside me. It sounded like love, it felt like love and for the thrill of it all, it was a very sexual love.

Working on this relationship drained my energies to go to work and often left me wondering why I had become so fanatical with spending so much time with her. This addiction to her was driving me crazy. Between going to school and working, I kept finding shortcuts in my schedule to make time for her. Always sooner than later was my effort to be with her. Time and time again, I found myself clamoring, lusting, and filled with sexual sensations that drove me crazy. It sounded and began to look like a cabaret or a sound of music, but in all reality, this was a real thing.

This relationship didn’t just happen. She didn’t suddenly appear in my life as I saw her often but in the end, she disappeared from my life quicker than the eye could see. Approximately eighteen months of bliss turned into a nightmare when she stepped out with my best friend and engaged in promiscuous behaviors that ended up with her being pregnant and moving away to Florida to hide the shame she had brought upon herself. I was petrified and stunned. On the other hand, my mother was in the best moods ever as she couldn’t hide it any better than singing around the house and telling everybody, “I told you so.”

 

Yes, that is how it ended. A love affair that tore my heart apart. In my mind, I kept saying to myself “That did not just happen.” Her sudden departure created a sudden inferiority about myself. I thought it was something I had done to let somebody else steal her affection. I tossed and turned at night trying to recall all the words said and actions done to make it end like this. Suddenly, almost overnight, the realization overcame my senses and I realize it had been destined that I taste the flavor of love but not keep it ever lasting.

 

In the meantime, my family was recovering from illness and bad health. There were all kinds of things wrong with my mother’s head and heart. She was falling apart. I noticed she had found several cousins who lived in the USA. She found one she grew up with and invited her to stay with us for a very long time. She had a son who was a little bit older than us and was cool to us as he had all the right clothes and music we liked. He was about twenty years old and just returned from doing a stint in the army. A fresh cousin, someone who could relate to my brothers and sisters frustration, he was a breath of fresh air in our household.

 

It was through his stories to tell us about the older days. He repeated stories told by his mother and gave us a glimpse of the past as he told stories of the islands where we all lived at one time and of course his livelihood spells in Holland were he found his interest in the underground teenage clubs most exciting. He told us of the camps they lived in; how his mother and my mother worked feverishly for the underground relaying encrypted messages from town to town riding their bikes unapproached and unrestrained past the occupying Japanese troops guarding the streets and fields around the cities.

 

From him we learned more about my mother’s family members. It seemed from the stories told, they were the Dutch mafia engaged in illicit trades and behaviors that would have made them lawless and criminals in many ways but never arrested or challenged by the police as they were successfully bribing these agents with funds that gave them a pass to continue the trading and selling of black market groups while gathering the riches. Ironically, in one of those towns, my grandfather was the chief of police and I found it hard to believe he didn’t know of these dealings as the knowledge appeared to be more common than it was surreptitious in nature and hush hush around the children.

 

He too talked about his voyage on a ship. He said he was less than ten years old when he and his mother came out. It was described as chaos as they and their father were separated and later found to be living in Singapore where he fell in love with another woman and left them behind. I asked him if he had plans to search for his father and he nodded his head and said that he had no such plans but that he was going to stay close to his mother and help her any way he could until she died.

 

A novel concept indeed. I wish I had such strong feelings for my mother but I didn’t. When we moved from Holland to the USA she changed. It seemed that when she left her wealthy parents behind, she became bitter and envious of others coveting what they possessed and what they wore. Perhaps her projections and desired destinies were driven by the wrong factors or so it seemed as she never seemed happy enough to smile like she used to.

 

A tragedy was happening I feared. I saw a relationship crumble. My father worked hard and nothing he did was unnoticed by us but totally ignored by my mother. She talked to him like he was a servant. He talked to her like she was a princess, a queen or even the royalty she pretended to be. It was a bizarre relationship; something I never could quite understand.

 

She showed us many mixing patterns of moods and behaviors. Her heart was broken and her blood pressure had climbed so high she had to be put on medication. She became stressed at work and took time off causing us to fall behind on the bills and my father worked overtime to make ends meet but it never met her level of pleasure. Seeing this made me very very angry. I saw what she was doing to my father.

 

Staying home, she developed a sense of entitlement. It seemed that everything in life was harder to get and throwing fits with emotions uncontrolled and violent behaviors becoming more common by the day, we tried to hide and stay awake but the disaster only got worse as she turned angrier and meaner as time went by. I was beginning to see the creation of a monster, a very evil-minded monster.

 

I didn’t know if it was jealousy, a lack of social status, envy or just plain nastiness. It was then when I nicknamed her “Hitler” for a reason. Her treacherous mannerism were betraying all signs of goodness inside her. I was beginning to doubt her mere existence as my mother was flawed and deceptively wicked in nature. This mixing of moods and behavior patterns was throwing me into a lapse of confusion. I began to wonder what evil spirit possessed my mother’s body and mind that caused her to be so despicable to my father and others.

 

Certainly, her behavior of the past, present and the future was most unsettling. I had a very hard time correlating the personalities involved and evolved over time that made my mother so unapproachable and unwanted around us. Her mere presence caused bad vibes or feelings and it was best to stay away from her to avoid her wrath that she threw around like hot coals tossed from a blazing furnace made in hell, spewing hate-like sentiments with likewise burning sensations.

 

It was like dealing with the unexpected. My siblings grew weary of the trouble and strife around us and the moods at night caused the silence to be even stronger. There were no nice comments, just soft sighs and frequent whispers. Some watched television, some talked on the telephone and some read books. We all found an escape from the reality around us.

 

This silence was deafening as it took its toll on all of us. My cousin had stayed with us for a couple of years and the secrets he had divulged were enough to make us shutter and wonder who our mother had become. The chores in the household were limited but well regulated by my father as we all took turns into doing what needed to be done to keep the house clean.

 

Certainly, our house had become a different story – it was nothing at all like it was once in the past. A hell-hole, a place of hatred and sorrow, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there because of the uncomfortable spirits around me. Looking forward to getting out of the house only made matters worse for me as time stood still and my life was dominated with school, work and nothing that included any sense of pleasure.

 

Fortunately because our cousin had a set of wheels we had a means to escape the drama. His contribution to our eventually sanity was provided by the freedom given by having the means to go where we wanted to go and do the things we wanted to do unless we had chores to finish or get started.

 

His car was a brand new Chevrolet convertible hat was our vehicle of pleasure. Uninhibited, somewhat out of control and prompted by the pure desire of finding exciting things to do, we often left early on weekend mornings and dabble and drag out the day finding places to go where we had never been before. We saw more of Ohio landscapes with Olaf than anyone else who offered to give us rides of unbridled freedoms.

 

Freedoms of what were unaccustomed to being with our parents. Two people who managed to raise us well but for some reason, didn’t have the ability or time to understand us as we grew up. Parents, swallowed by the hustle of working hard and steady unattached or connected to their children who deserve the proper attention but who bucked every effort to be loved or wanted due to the uneasy and tension in the environment that caused them much pain and sorrow with unexplained mood swings that later came back to serve us notice that we were just as dysfunctional as all the other families and maybe even more so because of the cultural, societal and personal strains of relationships and a lack of understanding.

 

Nothing here was implying we weren’t normal. Nothing was present that created a malicious drift or stormy emotional distress cluster of waves pounding against the walls or surfaces of the environment we lived in. moving through adolescence was difficult for all of us, including our parents. The turmoil never did subside and go away – in fact it kept growing each and every day.

 

Personally, I became a high risk for aggressive or delinquent behavior with my clearly in the open not misunderstood explosive personality disorder. I would hit walls, break object out of frustration and smart off to others including strangers over various times at different places where my mood swings with regards to happiness, anger, sorry or anxiety were never subtle and defeated but rather loud and obnoxious in manner.

 

Turbulence seemed to follow me. Volatility, unpredictability and the unrestrained and unstable moods caused hardships in gaining friends and social partners. This alienated me from many who didn’t understand my ways and opted to stay away from me, rather than deal with my tirades and out of control emotions. It seemed my coping abilities were being tested; my mental faculties never buckled under the stress and my perseverance opted to remain at my side as I slowly climbed the ladder out of this social cesspool, the environment had created and intensely offered resistance to any future improvements and success.

 

My cognitive abilities were strained and often at the rope’s end to solve many of my emotionally related problems. I was sure my emotional development was impaired to some degree and making it hard for me to cope and function like many other teenagers around me. I compensated for anger and frustration with my participation in sports especially football.

 

Beyond the fact that I got to hit people, it gave me a release that would allow me to escape the inevitable challenge to butt heads with authority figures or other maladjusted people just like me. Slowly, this allowed me a method of adaptation I still use to this day.

 

Biologically, I developed into a strong young man – I had a great deal of strength and athletic abilities that prompted me to participate is contact sports and other challenging activities.

Certain, the fact that I had experienced bad love and breakups contributed to my anger and vengeance but in all reality, the entire problem of my behavior was internalized and as I struggled to get a better handle on my ability to control my passions, deal with my conflicts and generally learn to become more adaptive in ways to deal with my personality and mood swings.

 

I have to confess and concussed my own injuries because of my immaturity and inability to remain calm under stressful circumstances. Denying any mental illnesses, I was aware of my explosive personality disorder and with the exception of an occasional rage or vent, I found my behavior in line with others the same age or similar circumstances as an adolescent growing up fast in a rapid moving society.

 

I found out some things about myself during these turbulent years, I found more calmness by working hard and long as much as I could or time would give me. I found the rewards of independence were based on financial abilities and earning power giving me time to prepare for better things in life.

 

Although scary for a young person to deal with such emotional and intellectual growth, it made ends meet and settle an uneasy and potentially scary situation into a calm induced mood that was manageable and more pleasant to be around as stabilization came around with the patience and time permitted.

 

I had learned the best approach was patience. The best tactic was calmness. Practicing these two principles ended up giving me more calmness and calmness was the driving factor of my decline of mood variability more than anything else. Whether or not I experienced severe or mild mood swings depended on my ability to contain my emotions and self-control. I learned from positive experiences, which was the way I was going to dodge any negativity in life and for the first time in my life, I found time for myself and lessened my worries that all things would work out fine.

 

Sadly, my parents never gave me the attention I needed or deserved to help me find this calmness. If I was calm, composed and patient around anyone it was because I worked hard to be that way and found interacting with other moody people an opportunity to test my own tolerances and beat someone else at self-control, showing positive consequences for such efforts and not having to feel remorseful later on as I reduced my fear of offending and fighting everybody with time and caution giving me successful traits and social development opportunities.

 

 

 

 

Bad Moon Rising - An apocalyptic Mood

Bad Moon Rising

Taking the time to look up into the sky, I sense a bad moon rising – a bad omen. The world is spinning rapidly off its center with an associated hustling sprint to tip it left or right on its axis.  There are wars and famine all around us and instead of working to stop these atrocities, we are fueling the fires. A close-up reveals turmoil, hate and dissention out of control and hinging on the brink of another world war.

Looking deep into the souls of these men who rule the various régimes with military power, corruptive financial and natural resource linked wealth and influence, I see deep, dark and brooding dust and ashes forming. This debris will eventually be released into our atmosphere as clouds of hate and division by design and desire spewed by word of mouth and lack of morality.

If you look closely, you can see bright red or crimson ridges of glowing magna flowing and glowing inside the darkness. As this lava like substance leaks from the hearts of evil-minded men, it becomes a part of a much larger flow of magna that has been hidden deep inside our Earth’s crust for centuries. One could blame the devil, but the burden of injustice falls on the shoulders of mortal men.

Taking an estimate of its growth, reality makes it swell into the billions of mankind making the smaller hearts one large heart of hate. Hence the complexity to stop the swelling is to search for the soothing of the soul, the calming of the mind and the steadiness of the hands.

Letting the long arm of racism to dwell in the house of pain and sorrow creates a hardness that is hard to contain as there is no harness designed to stop such an evolution of feelings. Gone are the touches of kindness and compassion, dwindled has the sense of justice towards the poor and as we estimate the distance to increase exponentially daily, we will soon be out of reach of the peace we had all sought so many years ago.

Thus as a human race, we have triggered a star formation – a dark star of death and fate of doom from what we cannot hide. This dense-dark-star is formed by those reddish crimson colored clouds and formed by nature itself into a sculptured figurine of hate and blasphemy that will eventually engulf our souls and kill our spirits to follow the golden rule as we have been taught to do over the years.

Soon, we shall endure intense winds of hatred; we shall be exposed to chemical and nuclear radiation of the massive world powers gathered all in one place on Earth. This hell bound journey is forming. It’s history repeating itself all over again as the apocalypse is forming and Armageddon is coming soon.