Dear Self,
A man in his life has only one goal he need accomplish before his time is up - to touch the truth (even if just once). My experience has shown me that liars await for us around every corner. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Peddling deceit, twisting truth, and dodging what truth demands - to be heard. These people cling to ego's shadow, hiding under layer upon layer of lies, self-righteousness, and SELF-PERPETUATED EXPERTISE. Though they appear to be praying for light, the cast their shadows upon us to keep us in the dark. The liar jeopardizes our art's integrity by creating an unrealistic reality. The liar jeopardizes our dignity by befalling our character, attempting to rub out our goodness, and ultimately trying to destroy what we have built. A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. There are not enough hours in the day, days in a week, weeeks in a year to have a season for every purpose. The old philosophers were wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do. If possible, I wish I could fit the entire spectrum of truth into one work of art. It seems as though that has been the challenge of the ages artistically. Many have tried, but I cannot think of one who ahs achieved this task.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
My honesty artistically, aside from my ridiculously self-important, self-perpetuated, Ja-Rule pain-is-love shirt doffing, is what I hope sets me apart. A man in his life only has so much time to do what he has been put here to do. My self-destructive, self-sabatoging tendancies are largely what have defined me as a person. I will continue to, as long as my pen permits me, to take these recycled, reduced, and reused ideas, and try to breath fresh life into them. I once read somewhere that "there is nothing new under the sun." Vanity is like drinking salt-water to cure hydration.
Attempting to convince the world that somehow these thoughts I write down are totally organic and original would not only be vain, but also an utter and complete lie. These thoughts I write down voice not only my personal frustration, pain, joy, love, ect., but also the pain and suffering of a group of people who because of how they look, dress, talk, where they live, go to school, work, and how they relate to the world, are too often forgotten about or disregarded.
Like alot of us, Anthony Shears is a cat with the odds stacked against him. But unlike a lot us, Anthony Shears has the balls to not only talk about it, but to do something about it. The voice of the Have-nots. When asked about a fellow politician he did not care too much for, Abraham Lincoln responded, "I do not like that man. I must get to know him better."
A man in his life only has so much time to do what he has been put here to do. A man in his life has only one goal he need accomplish before his time is up - to touch the truth (even if just once). I write to right - that is what makes me Writeous.
