In the beginning things are always fairly out of sorts…

However, if nothing else is gained by all this and there aren’t any more humans left to begrudge their lot in life, once this iteration of life is over,
I hope the Earth recalls the peace…

I hope Gaia remembers the fountainhead of silence arising just before the first cries of a newborn child, our laughter, and ingenuity.

Let us hope the stars align and we find ourselves prepared in our individual capacity, arms outstretched to offer that precious piece of what we have been farming to a grateful universe,
That every near-death experience, birth, and death (and every cacophonous event in between) be tempered by our collective understanding and vision of what it means to be still.

That said, I have found peace in chaos…

Apparently, when this whole universe ordeal began and sent our species tumbling about the world, with a newly formed recognition of what would later cause us to have purpose, chaos was the backdrop upon which we landed.

There is peace in the acceptance of what is, and as that tumbles about like a stone being polished, what is becomes the infinite palette of chaos by which we have been invited to paint our stories.

You see, I have been kidnapped by the throbbing silence at the concussion of a rocket propelled grenade in a place without peace, and found peace entrenched there in the eyes of a child,
I have found it in the doing of things deemed impossible by a mind that would rob me of it, if only to replace it with the temporal anointing of the false gods of comfort and complacency.

And I have climbed the wuthering heights of a synthetic human experience and ramshackle material excesses, only to forget where peace resides.
There is a Latin proverb stating: “Ne Te Quaesiveris Extra” which roughly translates to the fact that there is nothing to search for outside of self, for you are everything,
And into that wisdom, which grants its parishioner the confessional of truth by which all things must be measured to the accrual of life’s wonders, I commit my soul.

In my life I have gleaned peace from everything with the exception of calm environs and found that peace is an ember best kept burning in the heart of the conscious observer, lest it become a light guiding me off the path of my discovery.

Peace from this stalwart vantage point is found in every instant wherein lies the possibility that chaos provides,
It is in the triumphant moment and the silent moment abutting it,
My peace is in the knowing…

Hey Heru,
I write this for you as a tribute. When I am aware that my vision is acute and I can see the tapestry of this life outstretched like so many unpacked fibers lied upon the loom of my future, you are with me. When I stride forward without consideration for the would’ves and could’ves… when I see the traumas as skinned knees and the deaths as milestones, I am with you.
This is a letter to my future self that is now, this is prayer to the falconer of my soul. I am moving steadily from that small space where we were a hurt thing that hurt things, reciting the satanic verses of self-limitation under muffled breath. I am the kid that settled for a GED, and atoned with a JD, for the sake of what could be.
This is a letter for the one who saw far. When we were a meek scrappy thing in Mosul, and then in Fallujah, you gazed above the event horizon of all the violence to the place where we are now. You tilled the fields and turned them over with no promise of what the new season would yield. I was the stone that builder refused, and you were the level and the mortar by which each of our hurts could be affixed, brick by brick to a zenith befitting your vision.
This is a letter for one that now sits astride his wisdom, surrounded by beautiful progeny that he can send back to his daughters as grandfathers do, whenever he sees fit. This is for the etched lines around those eyes, and the deep marks around the mouth, emblematic of the smiling done long after the work had been done. This is written to you in tribute…
I used to see you in the mirror when I was scrawny enough to see my own heartbeat through my ribcage, muscular and tall. I only hoped I would be able to be you, and that hope did turn round (as hope does) and beckon to me through the pain and struggle until I realized in stalwart fashion that I had no choice…I am you. I look back from where you are even now and I see what must be done to be where you are, and I am grateful.
I thank you for being the one that looks at my scars and smiles at the memory of how they got there. I thank you for lording over me when I though about quitting, screaming frothy mouthed obscenities at me when I laid down to die. I thank you for letting me feel the sun on my face whenever I survived something that brought me close to death…my future self.
This letter really wasn’t as epiphanel as I had supposed it would be, and I am glad that you are there in the arc where the light hits the land. I am glad that I see further each day and disregard the things in my direct footfall, it assures me that I will be you some day…Heru.

Eternally you,
B