Growth

We come into this world, complex yet unformed. As we experience life through the years, it shapes us and changes us. Throughout this process, there is a desire to control how we are affected by life's forces. We are all engaged in the same process of trying to make sense of our existence and our surrounding environment. Our biological, emotional, and intellectual needs drive us into the company of others, where we share our experiences, insights, wonderment, and the bewilderment of our lives. We are story tellers. We share our stories in so many ways: through art, songs, poems, prose, stories, and speeches. We strive to condense powerful emotional experiences into a kernel of beauty and intensity that we hope will act as a catalyst to change people close to us, and then ripple outwards into our communities, and ultimately the world. We should tell our stories...we must tell our stories. Our fragile world depends on us to protect it from the ravages of damaged beings that have acquired sufficient power to threaten our very existence, and unknowingly, theirs as well. We must create and build our culture from ourselves, moulding it through music, sculpture, paintings, poetry, novels, and video lest we succumb to the dominant consumptive culture imposed from above. We must create. Creative work does not burst forth fully formed but, like ourselves, starts newborn and develops slowly, gaining power and influence until it can speak to the powerful, the corrupt, the angry, and the hurt. Creations can speak loudly and softly. They can sooth a troubled elder and delight a wide eyed child. If we are not creative beings, who are we?We are nothing without creativity. The more we leave our core humanity and extend ourselves into a world of rich creation, the more we separate from those who are also extending themselves from the same human beginnings to follow their creative needs. In an expanding universe, galaxies of creative endeavour are moving further and further apart. We must connect. We need a unified field of ideas and expression to reconnect us in some other dimension. We need to be in our own space and in the space of other's as well. We need a quantum connection with each other. This is a collection of poems arranged in approximate chronological order to illustrate the moulding of one's personality, attitudes and motivations from internal and external events, as one grows through the various phases of life.