Choices - Jerry Merrill's MySpace Blog |

Choices - Jerry Merrill's MySpace Blog |

Shared via AddThis

Kanye vs. Jerry vs. GF (TMI Alert) - Jerry Merrill's MySpace Blog |

Kanye vs. Jerry vs. GF (TMI Alert) - Jerry Merrill's MySpace Blog |

Shared via AddThis

Kings of Leon

I awoke
by Jerry Merrill

You didn't know, but I awoke
in the dark heat, bathed in a gentle glow
the music, the flowing shape of your back
the light of the sheet around your waist
my breath was gone, and in its place,
Love, Desire, Deep Passion for the life I now lead
with you.

You didn't know, but I awoke
And in the dense honey air filling the space between us
Our skins glistened, rejecting the heat
Set my eyes aglow inside
I traced your curves with my thoughts and my gaze followed
Until only the heat of you remained in my mind

You didn't know, but I awoke
And then drifted off again
My sleep felt you near and hot
My heart counted the beats between your breaths
As I held one foot in this world, and one in the next
And wondered what life was before this time, before this moment
If it was living at all

You didn't know, but I awoke
When loving you in my sleep was not enough
I opened my eyes to gaze upon you
Until that too was not enough
I returned to sleep

To walk and speak with you
As in the day before
Hold your hand and kiss
As in the day before
Hear your voice and feel your gaze upon me
Again

You didn't know, but I awoke
And lived the day and the night again.

rare earth

home slice



I miss inchworms & jackrabbits in the yard. I miss deer in the park across the street. I miss the moonlight reflecting on my brother's face in the middle of the night when he would stare at me inches from my face and whisper fervently "yo, chris, chris, you awake?"

I miss stairs and basements where my grandmother would have parties for her friends and after many "highballs" they'd watch us kids get out on the floor and dance. "Awwww, git it now!". "Wooo! Aw, shucks, go on girl!". And the "ol' folks" would laugh in a cloud of smoke and bourbon.

I miss running through the forest coming home late from school feeling foolish but scared anyway. Our fireplace, the field where I had my first kiss with boy my mother said I wouldn't give the time of day if he were black because he was nothing but poor white trash.

I miss perhaps everything and unquestionably nothing since I moved away when i was 18 & I've haven't lived there since.

But I miss it.

she & him

i know what sweetness means
the moment before a ring finger presses an ivory key
the quick caress in preparation for love
its delicacy on the tip of my tongue
delectable, discriminate, indelible
but ephemeral and known only to me
its elusive grace granted like a child's whim
i've known sweetness
i've felt it, i've called out its name

and you call me sweetness

i know what sunshine means
her face - despair tripping across her mouth
another early morning - dark, gray
still i feel warm
it's this sun around which i revolve
what winter has laid in my soul yesterday, that day
or a passing hour
her voice, his smile, your touch
defrosted my spirit
i've known sunshine
i've felt it, i've called out its name

and you call me sunshine

you bring to me what i gave to them
you love me as i have loved
touch as i have touched
glow as i glow

i see what my love looked like
i feel what it feels like

how could anyone live up to it?

method man

Grate Expectations [purposeful mispelling] by Jerry Merrill

I understand WHY we have expectations.

They're actually an outcropping of the most basic learning skill. Pavlov referred to it as 'conditioned response.' It's the basic concept that you know causality, and expect the same outcome for the same causality. Pretty basic stuff.

But there are other, far more complex sets of expectations that seem to come from somewhere else- like when the mind and it's logical interpretation of cause and effect in the physical world is injected with a little LSD from our hopes and dreams.

Lately I've been stung a few times by these kinds of expectations. They can simultaneously be the source of great endurance against adversity, and a far too rigid task master that warns of imminent danger where none existed. By expecting too much positive, or by being too gentle in pursuing expectations, we can fight on through a series of events that most in their objective viewpoints would've excised from their lives, until a deep wound is cut. By expecting too much negative, or forming too rigid a set of expectations without flexibility we often discard the very treasures we seek the most.

[companies]
I watched as a group of investors, reeling from the reality of the economic downturn, let an asset worth 60 million dollars erode into a 6 million dollar fire sale. They felt they needed to cut their losses. Their expectations were not met, and as a result they were willing to wash their hands and walk away. I can't tell you how the story ends, but there is technology involved that is cutting edge and years ahead of it's time. It's now changed hands for a fraction of what it cost to create. Someone lost a lot of money. Someone else gained a lot of money. Expectations.

[relationships]
I am being granted an education regarding my own intuition, and how expectations can really screw up relationships that would otherwise be golden. Since this is a 2-part statement, let's talk about one part at a time.

When we meet someone in a general social setting, get to know them, and start dating, it's difficult to form expectations. We see, we feel, we contact, we go. I met someone, and then something got in the way. Years went by with distant contact, and while we were obviously two peas in a pod in many ways, when the time came to try-out the bond we had developed and see how it did on the racetrack, there was a wreck. Why? How could two people so in tune get hung up? There were a few causalities involved, but the biggest one by far was rigid expectations.

Images had developed in both of our minds - images that did not accurately show either of us. I knew this was happening, and had a premonition. I wrote a song about it. Posted a blog about it (November of last year - http://jerrymerrill.blogspot.com/2008/11/pedestal.html) And so what to do when the inevitable time came to re-establish an in-person relationship?

"The deeper in the sand you bury your feet, the easier it is to break you off at the knees." -origin unknown

Of course, there were disappointments - things that I wanted to be true that simply weren't. But the key in all such things is letting go. And when I did, when I could simply admire her for who she was, and not try to fit her into my mold of what I thought she should be, something happened. I began to focus upon amazing qualities about her that I had never thought to include in my expectations. I came away with a wonder for the complexities and beauty of a unique individual that I had already loved from afar - rather than a checklist of ways in which she failed to measure up, which is where I would've been if I had not let go of my expectations.

Sadly, I'm not certain that my fall from her pedestal was quite as gently attenuated. I think my statue lies in broken bits upon the floor. But there is nothing I can do about that. Like false expectations, it's just one more thing to let go.

Expect nothing, and all is a gift.

everclear

emptiness Becomes openness

i just returned from a barrio fair with my daughter. it was everything it shouldn't have been - small, rickety, dirty, cheap and sparse. it's mother's day and my daughter's birthday weekend and this is how it ended.

i didn't know how the weekend would go because right now, i'm tapped. it's nothing new. in fact, it doesn't even really concern me. only in the sense that i know it won't stay this way and i'm employed and i'm a firm believer in the circular nature of money. it comes and it goes. and when it goes, it will certainly come again. still that philosophy was hard won. and it's not particularly popular or even explainable to a 15 year old.

so, there would be no celebrations; no presents exchanged; no dinners or brunches. it was going to be a long haul till the next paycheck and there was no way around it. and to add insult to injury, i was selling cds at ameoba just to get some groceries for the week. it casts a pall over the weekend.

i know i shouldn't feel guilty. i know i should be strong. i know there is more to life then presents and money and whatever else there is that has a price tag. blah, blah, blah. can i step outside myself to find it? i couldn't. not today, not yesterday and certainly not friday (another miserable work day with miserable people who want to make you feel as miserable as they do).

and then i told someone. i told one person who has more vision and more instinct than anyone i've ever known. one person that for some unfathomable reason does not want to see me fall - and manages to steer me clear of the banana peel before i get to it. he knows that money can't buy happiness and there is more to life than... blah, blah, blah.

today he did something that had nothing to do with money. he wired money. a mother's day gift that is coincidentally a birthday gift because i had j on mother's day back in 1994.

neither one of us (j or me) felt anything about getting money at 6:30 pm on a Sunday. the weekend was over. we had already made do with what we had.

it is what it was.

still we picked the money up at ralph's. while we were there, j got her favorite snack - gold fish, i got cat food and gummy bears - tomorrow, gas. next stop - blockbuster.

and that's when we saw it. the fair. a barely visible, dimly-lit, old fair in North Hollywood park. j wanted to stop. i didn't want to, but i did.

it was chilly. the rides made me dizzy. and j definitely cheated on the slide race. we spent about $22 not counting the jamba juices. i told the jamba juice banana that i had the best kid in the world. and j agreed with him when he said she had a great mom. we were only there for an hour. and it was amazing.

it's mother's day and my daughter's birthday weekend and this is how it ended: sipping overpriced Jamba juices while walking back to our 15 yr-old car from a barrio fair laughing our brains out.

today, my friend gave me a chance to feel what life is really about not just know what it's about. that was the best gift i've gotten in years.

dave matthews band

crush me
me
i've known misery
we met in 1965, in utero
i felt an imperceptable ridge
left in my mother's womb
where my father's fist
found my brother in his sac
and left a shiner

crush me
me
not her
my heart was born in pieces
drawn and quartered
each time my brother
took his rage out on
me

my heart can be bored
and rebound

but i have seen her smile
it's depth
millimeters smaller now

i was confronted by her eyes
tinted by loss and betrayal
it's happened again

crush me

i am not a faerie
i was never an angel
i never dreamed of happy endings
i accepted my slow death

crush me, because to watch her is too painful

swing out sister

No big deal
No big fucking deal, you say
Right
Of course not

It doesn't matter
Nothing matters

My life doesn't work
They're all almost dead

Hyperventilation aside
I can't seem to die anyway
so what the HELL

Nevertheless

This is big

THIS is risky

This is ME

letting go
of me
Of she, of her

Is this who I've been
Trying to kill all along?