Wednesday, August 27, 2008

New & Exciting Updates

Brand new and further improved iDiscuss Forums @ http://hok-international.net/smf/index.php?board=28.0 And the story continues onward with additions of new entries @ www.political-sylum08.blogspot.com & www.bike-journeys.blogspot.com

And that is only the beginning the objective is to do a complete redesign of the site and explore the possiblities beyond that moment, any suggestions?

Monday, August 25, 2008

Come Check out Twitter @ http://twitter.com/knatchwa or add me as a friend @ http://writeit.hok-international.net/ or share your views @ http://forums.hok-international.net/

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Love Is Complex - An Enigma

You know when I think about it, this love, this enigma, I try to understand it ... to experience it and to understand while it should be unconditional it is sometimes not even close. I cared for a girl once, and I thought she cared for me but apparently not enough. As what may of been expected to go well, to have reached the logical climax, in the sense that the love lasts through the trials and errors inevitable in our existence today. A love that holds strong through the early years of a mutual relationship. To continue and to survive even through those tough times. It is in those times the truth may often come out ... to reach the point of an engagement, the first step in the direction of a life time commitment that is marriage. Yet I think about it, this girl I once knew, all seemed well except when you looked more closely removed the blinders often put up, to see if this person could truly be that one. The one you want to have kids with, you want to love and care for till late in the years. The vows say "Til Death Do You Part" meaning through all the challenges to love so much as to remain at that persons side. To not leave at the slightest inclination of frustration, whether it is monetary or otherwise. It is the understanding that regardless of the challenges we each face, within reason, that love is eternal. Love is expected to last for as many years as we are all so fortunate to be upon this earth. With time flying so fast, I wonder sometimes what do we each do with our time? With this minute amount of time as a part of this earth, will we leave the one there is claim to love because we do not get our way? Because we want something and it cannot be provided at that time. Is it in that there is reason to no longer love. To no longer love and to leave, because there is a challenge we face. One which we all need to get through.

When you consider love, and you try and expand the view on it, you find there are many sides to such a simple thing. There are many aspects, it is not just that you say 'I love you' it is what is behind the words. It is what either of the two truly hold beyond just those three words. On that point a thought came to my mind as I pondered the possibilities to a point where I decided to step away from this blog and move it to a new one:

On Lessons Learned Through Love

Perhaps new, another chapter of my experience, this one will survive in memory and in the future things will be brighter.

Monday, June 30, 2008

SOHH Site Hacked - Prejudice? Love Lost?

What kind of stupidity gives a person a reason to return to the prejudices once thought lost and gone, prejudice today it seems even if thought to have been emancipated still exists. It is a sad Story to say the least, there is much growth we as a society must do to insure awareness of the diversity of our civilization. To explore prejudice as it stands today.

Read More ...

And offer your feed back in the comments.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Sanity, What is it?



Essays: Sanity - Essays - Helium - by Ray Marr

You ever take the time to think what is sanity, what it entails, what it means to each person? The attached essay is one view what is yours?

Ray



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Friday, April 25, 2008

What might the story be - Where has it gone?

You ever wonder about the frustration that can accompany a love you thought was so deep and solid that nothing could uproot it? Or the fact, when things seem to be not going well when you thought that same love with stay through the good and bad times ... that instead it falters or disappears? Or appears to disappear? What goes through your mind when you care for someone so much, that you would do anything for them, even if it takes to long ... is that reason to just quit on something that was so solid before?

Love is a strange thing sometimes, it goes in cycles or seems to ... even if you have been with someone nearing two years, things just do not seem to be occurring , things seem to be out of sync. Where you cannot be sure if the love is there or if it ever was. Is it during these times you doubt it, or do you stand strong believing that in even this there is growth potential if it is grasped? If you remember that love should be without condition, and patience should be a constant. Instead of setting up impatient stances or basically fading out of their life in the only way you can. Perhaps it is a love you thought you found online ... or a love that just was a thought, a fantasy, in an ideal world where everything ends just as you want it too.

Reality is it without a sense of humor ... it seems to me that though love that should be eternal for life not just fleeting moments, only at that time in your life, through that part of your journey . To love someone is to not expect only money when both are struggling through financial circumstance, and if you do not get the money as soon as you would hope, you should still love that person ... and be patient. Is that so difficult, if your own financial circumstance is difficult. Really if you think about the potential and the possibilities, because you do not get money as soon as you wanted too, that reason enough to just ignore someone you have been together with for so long. To stop all communication thinking that will solve the situation, that will make the money just appear out of mid air. Is a lack of financial support, when you work yourself, enough reason to just disconnect from the person you cared so much for.

Would that just mean you were a gold digger from the start? Would it mean, that all the words, of love and the time spent together was only an act to get money, nothing real, not concrete. I guess in that sense if that is your point of view in life, then at the moment you stop getting what you want you then just move on, to the next sucker. The next fool who seeing you as kind and gentle and genuinely caring, playing off the act one more time. To get more money out of him till there is nothing left, and then the cycle repeats. Is that really the answer, is that really an existence you can be proud of?

To be a con artist, a player, who lives off the kindness of others, like a vampire sucking the blood as you speak the warm words of someone who is in love. You play off your same little act, the same little ploy. A method to get money from every fool you come in contact with. Like a pest who destroys and acts at the same moment.

Does love truly last, or is it only a ploy, an act to get what you want? Maybe that is not everybody I don't mean to classify everyone as one type of person, or in my case one type of girl. I try to keep my mind open to the possibilities, offer up faith on your part, believing that love will last forever. As I look at my earlier posts I realize, that perhaps I was misled the whole time. Each time I made an effort to love a person I always seemed to be hurt in the end or just played off as a fool and then the girl marries someone else, gives her heart to someone else and passes me off as old news. As just one more fool in a long deliberate set of acts, to get as much money as you can. I don't know I try not to judge, to assume to much. Experience can tell a different story, so don't you think it is better to be safe then sorry?

I have had to many experiences sometimes to be trusting, and yet still I trust in what I believe to be love, yet every time it seems, that I end up being the fool, and lose the most. There has been at least a few girls, that have passed through my life. Sorry to say most of them so far have ended up married or with kids from someone else. Which makes me wonder what it is that is happening in my love life. I try and do great things and I do, but it is often with a price tag, to setup a secure future it requires the work to build something now that will grow to a point where it will be the primary income stream in my family to be. If it can be understood, that I put forth such levels of dedication because I want my family to be, financially secure. To build something now that can produce income for life. A job will not do that, as I am sure each of you are aware. Even if that is the expected result, of a traditional thinker, to go ahead get educated, get a career, get married, have kids and die. I look beyond that, I always have because I realize that I would rather establish a future that will offer up great opportunities for my kids and for my family. I don't follow the traditional thinking because I already know where it goes, I have seen the end result, the sadness at the end of a life not really lived but just followed. Following the traditional thought process, to educate, work, marry, have kids, retire and die. What is left behind, how much of life is forgotten, never experienced because to much time was spent making someone else money, instead of yourself. Instead of your family, to offer up your abilities for another person to capitalize on, and pay you whatever little bit they choose. To have the ability to tell you when you wake up, when you work, when you can take a break and the list goes on. To control your life how they see fit, instead of you controlling your own life. To just go ahead and accept what they offer you, because it is following that same traditional thought process.

What kind of existence is that exactly, is it living or just watching as life passes you on by, month after month year after year. To realize when you are so far along in your own life, that really you have not done anything worthy of a view, so many years have passed and you have not got past, where you were years ago. Simply because you reached the top of the pile, or by someones standard, have reached the top, really if you look at it and realize the fact that the top was only a table, where you cannot go up you can only go back down. You really accomplished nothing. The point being, though it may be difficult now to put forth your best effort on a better future, sometimes it must be understood that commitment of going beyond where people have ever been takes setting a solid foundation, on which the structure of the better future can be built, solidly, insuring continued security in your life and your families. It takes such levels of dedication when you start something new, when you put that first stone down on which to build the home. That one stone will not do it, but it is the first step in the right direction.

To return to the story, three girls in my life have married someone else, had birthed another fathers children, when early on in what was loosely categorized as our relationship, it was thought we would be forever. Nothing would change it, no future event would make a difference because our love was thought to be that deep. To be that deeply sounded, thought to be one stone in a lifetime foundation. We followed that illusion for awhile until things got difficult, distance was a factor or personalities clashed, it could be many things. The end result it never worked out, things changed, circumstances changed so many variables. Some were at my fault while others were on the part of the other half of the supposed stone. The first girl, I worked with for awhile and we started going out, things seemed to be going well, though we were both working for a temporary agency. Which if you do not know, is not often that constant a work, depending on the job and the location, and how expendable you were. When you are giving time for money you only as useful as the next person who applies at the job, meaning you cannot ever be really sure. We were together for a while, spent many hours together, come my birthday after we had been together nearly a year, she decided we should go hike out in Big Sur, seemed like a good idea, to go and find the hot springs that lay within something like 20 miles off the main road. Started packing the bags, and I packed mine like I always have, considering she had a very strong personality, and figured she knew everything there was to know about hiking, begin to unpack my bag, telling me it was not packed right. Also considering I ride a bike exclusively, I have often packed that same bag, on a previous tour I took out to Big Sur, worked just fine so far as I could tell. Thinking we each had the better idea, more experience on light weight packing, then the other, we argued. Quickly the argument grew out of control, we each were yelling at about the top of our lungs. She had walked away and was crying a bit off to the side. I decided I had enough and jumped on my bike with my pack as it was and rode home. What a birthday, don't you think? Eventually we did take a hike out there, and had a good time, I cannot say what happened with her, whether it was the fact that she sold a truck I could of easily taken over payments of and calling it my own, and the seemingly constant arguments, my last night with her I just slept in the truck, after that I just left, never did return. Last I heard she got married and has a child of her own now, we have not talked in a long time and I don't think we ever will anytime real soon.

That was just one experience, another one that comes to mind that seems to follow the same thought process, was with a girl I had been together with for what seemed like ten years or so, not constant but on and off. We had been through our bouts in the ring, still I went and saw her one last time, about two years ago now, when I traveled out to Cincinnati, Ohio where she lives now, and stayed with her for like a month or two, she is the one who even though we were "together" had two children from two different fathers in the time I thought she was my girl, she tells me she thought about me when she became pregnant, don't know if that is lies or truths, my visit to Cincinnati, apparently was the last I would see her before she got married, to an individual she met on myspace no less, I will admit I also met her online at a time in my life where my views on things were a bit skewed, so really that relationship started online and grew from there. Apparently it was not enough though, to have her remember she was my girl, and as such save herself for me. When I went there I guess I figured it would be the last visit, because in the time I had not talked to her, I had started talking with a girl from Philippines. We had great conversations, and things seemed to be going well that I will go into next. So on my visit to Ohio, initially at least, I was determined to make it my home, I was going to get myself a job and work and make some money and just call it home. And when I jumped the flight leaving from Monterey, where my bike was stolen, I had every intention to do all I could to make Ohio home. That of course was before I experienced living with her for a bit, certainly it became clear that was not going to happen, we had so many arguments, I often took walks outside in the snow as it was early in the Year 2007, just to take a breather. I just did not want to lose control, which could happen when I became really annoyed, so instead I went out and took a break, she was difficult to keep in order. Really, it just became clearer in experience that it was not going to happen. Considering she has two children by two different fathers, and really, I took care of her son and daughter as mine while I was there and even that was difficult. I handled it as a father to be should, but it just did not seem like it was going to happen. I had to get my social security card besides and that became a reason to come back to California, besides after I had made the choice, and started talking with the girl in Philippines more and more, I realized she seemed to be a better fit. The wonders of ideology huh?

The other girl I alluded to earlier, probably be the third in the series, was the girl from Philippines, Cebu City no less, we had been talking for quite sometime, and I had learned she expected to travel to the states come March of that year, 2007, at the time I was in Ohio still, ended up being the mistake that cost me this one, maybe. The choice had been made, things were not working out in Ohio, and they did not seem to be showing signs of any change in the near future. I was ready to go back to California for her, for this girl from Cebu. Maybe I was just a fool, who knows where it could of gone. The point is I ended up leaving Ohio in the worst possible mode of transport via the bus, and she was expected to show up in Los Angeles, early in March, I figured I would have enough time to catch her. The problem was I did not have exact dates as to when she would travel or when she would arrive, which made it far more difficult to coordinate times and dates. That may of just been a sign, a reason not to proceed, perhaps Ohio could of worked out, the ticket was bought and the time of departure from Ohio was set, via bus, which you can never really count on to get anywhere on time. Reliant on traffic and how long the stopovers were to be. Even with all these indicators, as I look back and realize that it may of been easier to stay with what I can see and experience then to chase a fantasy if you will of a girl who may or may not be there, who could be the one or not. To make such effort because I had fallen into such a situation where I felt it would be better. Though I had a girl that I had been staying with for awhile, though it seemed to be falling apart, could of been a better choice? What do you think?



Friday, April 18, 2008

Things Change - Or Do They?

Does love change, is it lost and not found again? Or is love an ongoing story? You know as I was thinking about things just the other night, I started wondering, thinking about where things are in comparison to where they have been. Life is certainly full of ups and downs don't you agree?

Well the point being, as I was thinking about the possibilities I found myself thinking of my babe ko. Wondering though what is going on what has happened with her as I have not heard from her in a bit.

Whether it is just the busyness of life, or something else without communications you can never know. You ever been in that situation in your life? If so what did you to improve it. Or did you just roll with the punches and not take action and see where it will go?

As I thought about her I realized that I cared for her, and as such the effort seems worthwhile to get things done, You agree?

Whether you do or don't it's okay with me, I just like to see some feedback, some activity to make things more interesting then they stand now. Life is most certainly full of challenges it is what you do with them that could make or break the situation. The choice is one which I need to make to exist fully in life and in this moment in time.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

To Love and Let Go ... How difficult it can be.

17:41 3/11/2008


Sometimes it is difficult to let go of someone you care so much for. Someone that in times previous you figured was the one. When I think about it though, How can you truly know. Love is not so ideal as the fairy tales have it. Love is difficult, an involved set of emotions pulled together that results and a true caring for a person. And if things do not work out. Perhaps they find someone else and marry them then what? Is there anything to do or do you just move on. Is it so difficult to overcome the memory and move forward? Sometimes it truly seems that way. I still care for her but must reside in the present and leave the past in the past. How difficult something so simple can be.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

What is Love?

The infamous question asked for ages previous, the answer never really cut and dry. There is to much, compiled together and being called love to really explain it. Most would say it is only a feeling , that as such it can not really be explained. That is the easy answer, the complexities of a response to such a question could make up a book thousands of pages long. Or could it?

You ever wonder if you took the time to write it down and try and explain it level by level. If you chose to ever take the time to research it fully. What you would find? If you would accept the explanation or depending on the person it varies wildly. I often ponder such possibilities, to try and comprehend this reality. I may fail, sometimes but I always grow from it.

To define love, well lets try this one out ...
  • Love is unconditional - caring for a person no matter the challenges you may face.
  • Love is Mutual - Love though not as apparent as you might hope. It is usually between two sentient beings who care for each other deeply.
  • Love is ongoing - suffice to say love is not easy, it comes with its challenges and the choice is up to you what to do with it.
  • Love is improved over time, through the good and bad times. To stay by the other no matter the challenge you may face.
  • Love is Complex - Best known as a deep felt feeling, of caring for someone unequivocally, not judging and not trying to change, instead accepting for who they are.
  • Love can be a give and take process ... one for the other under constant variance.
Certainly not an exhaustive list but a true one ... though you may be asking ... well ok, how does that explain what "love" is. Well perhaps I should refer you back to the beginning love is a complex experience, full of challenges and times of growth. For each person love is different. For each group there is different variations. The list though short, does hold true. And if you have any comments please take the time to leave me one. We shall see how this grows or not.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Another Story

And so it continues, a new year long past, Valentines flying by just as all time does. What did you do for valentines? Did you subscribe to the commercial hype or remember what the day is truly about. The history of valentines may be quite different then you have heard of before.



You know I was talking with my girl today ... well actually the 14th. And she asked me "Where is my Valentine Gift?" I thought about it for a moment, and my response ... "the best gift I can give you is within your heart, in the knowledge that I care for you so much and love even over an ocean. My valentines gift to you my girl is in the deeply rooted love I have for you and to the excitement of our future. That my dear is the best gift I can offer you." A moment of silence passed and all she could say was "Thank You." To realize how much an effect that had on her ... helped me to remember that though Valentines Day has become commercialized the underlying celebration of love that presents still resides and will until the end of times.



The power of love my friend is an amazing thing, Valentines Day is about those you care deeply for ... that you offer your heart unconditionally. And for that I am thankful as I hope you are also.



Thanks for taking the time to Read ... And no matter how much Valentines is commercialized never lose sight of truly what it is about ...