Occasionally I would be asked, growing up, if I used "big words to impress people." This was usually asked by someone who felt that, say, "corrugated" was a "big" word. I would answer them that I liked using a large vocabulary because I always want to be able to express exactly what I'm thinking. And...I guess I can. I am rarely reaching for a way to phrase something.

But see, there's something about that, right there. Now it's true that I feel joy in the use of language, and see nothing pathological about that. Few things are entirely "bad," to my way of thinking, and as a writer artist type person, it's completely reasonable, and even desirable that this would be true for me. But the urge to "express exactly what I'm feeling," while also a yearning for Truth, is a motive (I've come to believe) not entirely beyond question. It reeks of the bulldozer, a construction crew in the playground of the Self. And it leans toward a paradigm of thought, society, and human behavior that I am examining lately, and abandoning, slowly. And I am finding that while language is very important to me, it is also important that I do not let my tools become my cage. It seems to be one of those paradoxical truths...like what I call the Paradoxes of Greed and Love. If you try to hoard resources or love, you lose them. The more wealth you snatch, the more Things you worry about, keep close, gather, obsess about, worry about giving/loanding/lending...the less free you become, the less wealthy you feel. The paradox also lies in that if you give these things away, practice giving them away more and more you somehow feel more secure, not less. You gain more, you don't lose. This is a piece of why I changed my mind about copyright, use of my art, etc, lately. These things feel very scary at first. But so does walking, for a child who is just trying it out.

It may be a creative connection, but I can see the tie between a well-wielded bent toward Expressing Exactly What You Feel and the Glorious Consequences of the Conqueror. It is control. Control does not make us free. It only reminds us of limits and loss. And recognizing this part of myself, this implanted or developed desire to corral and completely define and control, I begin to tag it; to name it; to see it; to call it out, to paint it blue so I can step away from it and into the green.

I never saw this before. But there has been a groundshaking restart, unseen in my (relatively) recent past. A sun rising underground, an old, hate-frosted hive breaking open, spilling stingers to the ground. I don't know what did it, exactly, and doubt any one thing did. But there is now a wildfire that catches, and spreads, and I am the one fanning the flames. I watch many aspects of an old self burn to ash—spirit rainbow gasoline vapor rising from a bed of precious trash. I dance in the soot. paint angels in the black, on my face, scrawl a sun on my heart, mix my saliva with the ashes, tears with the ashes, dawn sunlight streams through my hair, and warms my empty hands.

This change, these changes, began a while ago. In fact, nothing is unconnected. These changes began when I did. I am these changes. I am only following my true self, we traipse through burnt, zigzagging shadows behind forgotten mountains, through dank, secret, sulphurous waters, but I will not be shaken off. I can never fall back into that Forgetting; I will not attach myself to a shadow that flees fear.

Part of this change was when I talked about my giving up the urge to convince everyone of everything, or even to tell of all the things I have done in the first five minutes of a new conversation. (And society thanks me!) It's true that I have too often been pitifully motivated by a need to convince, or win over, or prove something. And sometimes that ugly urge comes back, and I always feel shamed for giving in, or for...forgetting. But those moments are less and less, I like to think.

I don't know why such insecurity has dogged me, even in the face of well-earned confidence. I'm sure there have been a few reasons. I think I know a few. But I used to be uncomfortable when talking to people if they didn't know I had done A, B, or C. Or that I could do A, B, or C. It bothered the hell out of me when they would think I was eight years younger than I was (a regular thing and especially when everyone around you and the growth charts your doctors are using are for big Caucasoid frames), or my name was said differently, or if they didn't know how goddamn talented (I felt) I was. I was consumed with this image others had in their mind. I felt so insignificant until it was clear that I was unique. But once, in conversation, they found out that I had done X, Y, or Z, I could relax. It wasn't like I had to go on and on and on about myself. I could let it drop once they knew that I was Iron Man.

I was also the kid who, before he had many abilities or experiences to speak of and draw from, would make up amazing lies to tell everyone, and I did. My teachers, friends, anyone. Fantastic lies like I was a spy, or bionic, or had been holding an umbrella in a rainstorm and lightning struck it but I let it drop before it reached my hand. Yeah! Faster than lightning. I remember coming into school and telling my teacher that. Years would pass, and I would meet people who I used to hang out with, and they would blow up my spot about what a lunatic liar I had been in the past.

What happened? Well, the fantastic lies now pay, and are called "writing." And the First Five Minutes of conversación?

I simply began to have more experiences in life. More and more. I began to stack up more stories. I became able to do more. I became less talk (just a bit) and more action. Perhaps I grew a little wiser through all of my doings. But whatever it was, perhaps the accumulation of life experience or just the passing of time, it became unfeasible to cram any good portion of my stories in the First Five Minutes of conversation. And so—because it was not possible to lay it all out there in a time window that would Let Them Know Who I Was Before We Got On With Things—I just...relaxed! Oddly enough, I just let go of the entire impulse. I hadn't known before that it would ever be an option. And it is such a massive weight off of my chest that words don't do it justice. Escaping summer stagnance deep in the Holland Tunnel to inhale an ocean of fog-cooled pine.

Nowadays a long time can go on with someone knowing me before they find out that I lived in A, B, or C, or worked with so and so, or lived in Such a Way. And one day it will come out in conversation, and they will be like "wow, really?" Almost as if now I can get that reaction I so needed when I was younger. Perhaps because I don't need it quite as much anymore. There is really only a very tiny (if any at all) part of myself devoted, on a constant basis, to proving myself to everyone. It's a whole different thing. A whole different way of being. It's so much better. Much more relaxed.

Looking at it typed out like this, I think to myself "you were always a storyteller waiting to be able to tell of your stories." It's a kind perspective, and I think I'll keep it for now. But another truth may be...I was confused about who I was. And because I wasn't sure...I think I felt others could easily be unsure. And if we both were unsure, well... I don't know. I'm guessing now.

I feel I have traveled so far to gain each and every piece of my growth. None has come easy, and none were default. The only default way of being I remember having as a child that has lasted is my sense of getting lost in images, colors, the poetry of a thawing river's quiet flight from ice, the unexpected inner universe that opens when thirty seconds of a sunbeam play across my cheek, the way a song can break me down to absolute tears even when I can't understand the words...I've always been a dreamer, always been a gazer, a person who has had much more of an easy time stopping to smell the roses than gathering, stickering, and selling them; a person in love with colors and shapes and textures and sensations and notes of music and playing pretend, dressup, or maybe just the feel of the wood bouncing up under my palms when I beat out a rhythm on a junked school desk.

I often think that before I had any aptitude at language I was freer. Children and animals are worth watching, once you are an adult. Because I feel, once you are an "adult," you have (by necessity) put some very important things away. You have embraced some toxic thoughts and begun a destruction of some of the sensors that we all need to guide us. It's not really a person's "fault." It's probably even what parents and the world teaches us. It may help, sometimes, to know where something came from. So that you can better move it to the side. But in practical terms, it doesn't matter how we got the way we did. What matters is finding a way to get back in touch with our strengths, our truth, our grounding, our connection to what is big and real to us. Not a billion words of obfuscation; not tools that help us bury our own understanding or carve the world into a small shape that is no longer bewildering.

An adult goes on and on and on and as a child you say "how boring" or "there's not much there" or "What they really want is to hurt someone." You may not be able to call everything what grownsups call it. But you have no doubt. Because a man who may give you ten arguments you know are false but that you cannot argue may manage to string along his own disbelief. But you remain unconvinced. Maybe you haven't read the books he's read, or learned the language set he has. Yet, hearing him justify the killing of women and children, you realize without doubt that he is absolutely insane and cannot see it. The knowing of this is no less true or real without vocabulary or volume. Believe in it. Own it. Reclaim it. America hates intuition, or non-measurable, non-Western strengths. But I am not "America." And dare I say, neither are you. You are a person born with intuition, among other very important tools. And if Bush can use his "gut" to approve the killing of hundreds of thousands of people he doesn't understand one bit, we can use ours to state that he is a lunatic and a danger to mankind.

As an adult we develop a million reasons to act as if nonsense is sense. We get caught up in talky-talky and before you know it, we are acting as if Ideas are Things, and saying something is being something. And now we look out at what is happening in the world and see that perhaps that even with so many weapons, chemicals, and rising oceans, it is those tiny words—those brooms set in motion heedlessly—which prove to be the most dangerous of all. This is one of those ways in which i do strive to be like a child, or like to use the "child" in my mind (just as when you write to a lover, you keep them in your mind, they become your judge of tone, word and intent, or rather the imagination or device of "them"). Because this mechanism in the human, this "built in forgetter" as some call it, is always waiting. I use this eye when I speak to children, so that I don't slip into Stupid Adult Talking to Himself Mode. As i've repeated often when I talk about such things, I knew as a child what adults were being condescending, bullshitty, or anything else to me. I would take note constantly. And was amazed at how few adults were actually "real" or "honest" to me. I didn't use these words. I don't know that I used any. I just formed an understanding from each incident that grew larger and more broad. Now, I can name it. And this process that began so young is what began my original disdain that can pop up from time to time when looking out my window. it's not for People. It's for our so very Civilized nature. Practiced, educated, empty charm. Seed of irrefutable and logical harm.

I swore as a child I would never become one of those adults. I made a few vows to myself growing up. I think all of them had to do with my awareness that something happens to people, almost inevitably, as they age. There seems to be a point where they compromise truth for comfort and it breaks them. Ever after this, they are conflicted. They know that they have given up, faced with the Hard Test. And it causes wear in important parts of the heart. It corrupts them, and they become very difficult to speak to honestly about Matters. Because each new rationalization must be built on the last one, and all must justify each other. Of course, none of us are immune. I feel this ignorance we fall into (oh so encouraged by our culture) is like an ocean at my toes, or perhaps next to my path. Always waiting to swallow me, always ready to fill my face with bloated fake acceptance and Rationale. And almost always, the fringes of my sleeves dripping with it. Sometimes I frantically wave my arms around to dry them. Sometimes I strip down to nothing.

I do not want to be ready with Exact words anymore. I do not want to be so prepared and protected anymore. I simply want to feel the wind caress me, love me and hold me in her silvery, silent embrace. It feels like flying. Sometimes terrifying, but oh, so very energizing.

Like being free.

The entire Skin of My Soul series. Part 6 will be next.