Passion

 In all that is... there is only one answer to the riddle of the meaning of life. The pursuit of happiness in all it's profound truth... Happiness begins with with one word and that word is passion. Beyond all worldly measures there is only what you really want.

  There is little choice in true happiness.

 We all do what we need to do to survive. Work, eat, sleep and endure... Emotionally, we are dependant apon the static measurements of recognized success, we do all that we can to impress our peers. But in this pursuit there is an empty feeling when all our life goals are suddenly met. Few live beyond the completion of material goals. We either set higher goals or die. What drives people to live beyond survival is a compelling need to do more... to be more. Sometimes this is going beyond the limits of caution. Success here is either inspiring or ever more compelling.

  Life is art.

  The beauty of anything worth seeing twice can be described as living art. Art is not a static symble of life, Art has it's own life force beyond words... Music, paintings, sunsets or volcanic explosions are all examples of profound beauty that somehow take away our sense of control. Somethings are not easy for others to see, these are what we each need, to feel complete.

Personal desire is good.

  "Desire is the root of all suffering..." So says the Buddha, want not...waste not?   This is true only if your desires are earthly in depth. Imagine anything that truely inspires you and then make it possible. Imagine a world of beauty and feel it grow within you. When you find it's expresive pulse, tap into it and you will live beyond survival...

Respectfully  Submitted

 Salvador  F. Ramirez

USMC         US ARMY

The Cinderella story is where the optimum perfection is realized in any and every woman's mind.  The idea of a perfect match made in some sort of female heaven is drawn from the fact that all Cinderella had to do was wait long enough and all would be good. Oh yeah...So in the years spanning from fantasy to reality we men have had to endure the effects of a good story as the rule unto which we are all measured. So we must ask...What is the truth in this good story?

  Woman, our real flesh and blood soul mates have had some equally super stupendous, standards to live up to. The perfect woman in every man’s mind has the wonderful delights of a porn princess... the dimensions of unreal voluminous curves, is wanton wild cats in our bedrooms and have the souls of angels. Which are not compatible in the light of any day. While we can have one... it is very clear that to do so we must sacrifice the other...

 While we do sincerely love our better halves, we sometimes forget the nature of being human. That is, in this world mistakes are the norm... getting old, tired and sometimes even grumpy area solid parts of this real world. Perfection as an ancient Greek once wrote is only achieved in the land of the Gods. Being mere humans we are never perfect and often riddled with either obvious faults and short comings or do a great job in hiding them.  

 Romeo and Juliette are often used as the standard of perfection, and while being sincere in their devotion to one another, they would be only children by today's standards. Thirteen and fifteen are not even old enough to vote let alone accept any of life's most serious burdens, such as the duties of marriage and/or responsibility of a household. The real reason that the entire escapade has endured this long is again the well sharpened quill of the master storyteller, William Shakespeare.

 Words of love have always made all of us seem less than optimal but the truth is... those words so perfect in form are the product of a heart in longing for love. In this frame of mind there is an almost mystic form of passion, of want, of desire and need that would promise the world or more for a bittersweet kiss... An unearthly glimpse at happiness.

 While absence makes the heart grow fonder,  The absence of returned affection will drive any true love to insanity, thus we have our impossible benchmarks... Unmoving and deliberately  unachievable. Perfection is the goal of any honest pursuit, in literature any word can be upgraded to a better word. Any idea or frame of indulgence may be perfected to please the eye and ear or even the heart. But what matters is that life dose not always give us the power or even the basic tools to do what longing hearts contrive. Many good souls have been lost to the abbis of gray lines and lacking attributes.
 
 Love what is...

 I am... what I am.  No more has ever been more true than this. Decide what you can live with, not because you think you can't do better but because you love what you do know to be . Love what is there not what you think can be...someday.
 
Respectfully                    Submitted

            Salvador F. Ramirez

USMC            US ARMY RANGERS
 

 As a very young boy, I can remember the exact instant, if not date and time that my mother told me I would someday die... Like every other child, I was stricken with grief as I pondered the hopelessness of it all. I, would someday be no more! I was in dispare for all of that afternoon, but as I soon realized that I wasn't going to die just yet, and at any rate there was much to be done. Funny how that dread did not last very long. The resilience of youth, tender yet unbreakable.

 Death is our greatest fear. Not a one, man, woman or otherwise incarnate has ever walked this earth without the realization of mortality. Fear itself being an offspring of Death's shadow. So it is that we find need of God. Not that God is not who he says he is, but that this is why we are so disposed to make offerings of prayer and good deeds to pacify his anger at our disobiediance and outright pride. Pride, being the solidification of self admiration. Sin in the eyes of one who has publicly declaired himself a jealous God!

 So it is that "God", or our "Self" also known as Ego is at the center of our lives and inner universe which is every bit as big and deep and wide as the outer universe is. Truth. But what is God, who is it that answers the painful wails of Jews or the battle cries of Vikings? God is simply an untangeble. Our relationship with him is personal, as some churches teach. I agree with this, and yet I have to question, beyond simple explanation... "Who is God?"

 Ask almost anyone who God is and they will have an answer, the truth is no one actually knows. The last time we had a credited representative of God we were quick to crucify him, in an attempt to test his authenticity. Does this make any sense? Even if he was not God made incarnate what right have we to question what we have no answer for? If God, or anyone else in the universe showed up in the roman senate, at the white house or hollywood for that matter, who would recognize and greet him as a loyal follower... No one!

 Our ties with the Holy origin of man have all been broken, time and again we have killed each other in hopes of pleasing our own choosen idol, our God, or a presentable likeness. It is with this intent that we have founded churches, temples and mosques. As a better avenue to control the people that trust Holy men of some god or other...

  Cortez in Mexico, told his men that God would have them as Spaniards and Christians conquor the evil Mexicans and Azetcs who sacrificed and ate thier helpless victims. The Aztec priests, even after acknowledging Cortez and his Tueles as Gods defied them with thier own Brand of Sacralige and told thier followers that their own, Aztec gods demanded the hearts of All Spaniards! Who is it that history records as the rightous? Mexico's vast wealth in Gold and lands went to the followers of a Spanish, Christian church. A church that still preaches love and forgiveness and the power of prayer. A Kingdom that had only just expelled it's own invaders, the Moors from Africa after eight hundred years of bloody war, who in turn claimed that their version of God had ordered them to take over the entire world in his name!  

 Truth will not bend knee to any King or President or even Religous Leader that claims exclusive rights to God's purpose. God takes no side. He is, always has been on ALL sides. When God comes to gather his flock, be sure to know that he will question the rightousness of the wolves who have preyed so heavily on the faithful of every religion that recognizes him not as a power of hate, and consuming greed but of one of love. The armies and war machines that are built to pacify the world will not stand up to a rightous God, Who ever he is, I predict that all the lies of the unjust will not sway his holy wrath.

 We are not instruments of God's hate. God does not hate, we are only here to learn, love and maybe even pray some. The wrath of God needs no assistance, no army or class will have any victory over him. Let love grow in your heart if it is God you wish to please. Hate is what man feels away from God's purpose. War is ultimately an expresion of greed rather than devotion, and it is the Leaders of  this world that will prosper at wars end...

 Be still in this knowledge, my God is watching!

RESPECTFULLY       SUBMITTED

            Salvador F. Ramirez

USMC                          US ARMY

 A fish stuck in a bowl has little to do besides contemplate its reality. In the state of constant thinking this small, seemingly mindless Aqua Fauna has until the end of his short life to do nothing and thus has all the time in the world to travel within the reality that he himself dictates as such.

 Not being subject to any outside influences, the fish in the bowl has nothing to limit what he thinks or to question his discoveries. Limits being nothing more than the agreed upon borders of what we collectively consider as real. So it is that one entity cannot have any limits, only by trial and error will he then determine the outcome of each individual experiment, though this, by no means limits any future experiments and the possibility of differing outcomes...CHANGE.

 Since there is a lack of formal training, the metaphysical and mundane realities having no separation until so determined by conflicting ideas which are absent in a one dimensional world... What is...simply is. There is no change. There is no conflict. THE FISH IN THE BOWL IS GOD!

 War is absent where every thought is unimpaired; strife and greed are not present as well with no one to disagree with. HE, the fish in the bowl is always right, this is the constant. Bliss in day to day wonder at the simple beauty of life. The passage of time is all that escapes the fish in his bowl, he need not measure it's passing when there is absolutely nothing for him to achieve. Mortality is not within the mental capacity of one who has never witnessed death...

 The simple world of the fish in the bowl changes, suddenly, irreversibly and dramatically with the addition of just one other fish...suddenly there is conflict. All the discoveries of the fish in the bowl are suddenly put under the scrutiny of another's reality. Perfection is lost, divinity is lost all of everything is in question. Insanity takes the place of pure, scientific research and eventually there will be conflict, strife and ultimately war...

  Paradise is lost!

 Respectfully     Submitted

     Salvador F. Ramirez 

 USMC             US ARMY

When I was a boy my inconceivably Catholic mother used to tell me, "Offer your pain to God. Give Him your suffering as a gift of love and proof of your devotion. It seems funny to me now that I seem to equate love with suffering.

"War is hell!" Ulysses S. Grant. Most people think war is cruel and unusual. It is. More so for those that must fight it. We have always had war, win lose or draw, war must be fought. Those that will not fight will always lose, take for instance our own indigenous Americans. Native Americans who were fooled by the seemingly friendly white folks that came from across the oceans. In hind sight, if they would have fought off all newcomers, they would have won and kept their sacred lands.

It is not a matter of should we fight or not. Weakness will be rewarded by terror, and defeat. While the democratic Greeks pondered and argued whether or not they should fight the Romans, the Romans took them as slaves. We are not so civilized that we will not pick up sword or gun to defend ourselves. Our land has not been completely ravished only because we did fight back.

I'm not saying to sign up and fight. What I am saying is respect the pain and suffering that other Americans will endure for you. Realize that to some people in this world the option to say that they don't agree with a war is grounds for beheading and even worse, the killing of their entire family. Know that for your rights and your pursuit of happiness, others will suffer and die.

War is hell.

Salvador F. Ramirez
USMC US Army

Looking between black and white lines, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish what is and what is not. Imagine that you are one or the other and you see that which you are not... So clearly, all is as it should be, or there would be no distinguishing of positive from the negative matter and we would all be nevermore, never been and never to be...

Balance is essential. The yin and the yang, black and white, good and evil... All things are relevant and essential to the greater good...existence. We tend to take sides, put our trust and destinies in one extreme or the other. We are taught at a young age that we are the side of the unerringly good, when in fact we are being led by mere mortals who are as prone to mistakes as any other...

Behold the perfect man, or woman and you behold someone you know very little about. We are all clowns lacking self awareness. We tend to believe what others say and think of us when in fact we already know that they don't really know us. Is this reality? Can we trust anyone to read us right?

Realize that you are unreadable, and a mystery to all and everyone. This is true reality. This is what you are supposed to be. Your true friends are those that accept your mystery and still enjoy what you bring to their lives.

Imperfection is the cost of living in a real world. Expect delays and you will always be on time...

R.S. 25 Sept 2006
Salvador Ramirez
USMC US ARMY