The great faux people of Utah are no strangers when it comes to masks.  We're quite used to it.  Religion has been a fantastic mask for people for years.  Throwing a physical mask on your face shouldn't be hard to do.  There has always been a sense of sweeping things under the rug.  I think that is why Utah in a sense is always a "butt" of the joke.  Our culture has become cancerous are religion has become cancerous and the passive aggressive way we treat people have become cancerous.

I am still one to not get the mask wearing although I have chosen a career to pull out emotions and other "masks" if you will.  It is quite the conundrum to live with.  Especially when I'm dealing with Paranoia or cluster A as I have so recently discovered.   Basically it's the inability to accept this current reality.  I have struggled with this for a while and the dark depression that has accompanied it.  I would catch myself and times... many times wondering "what is wrong with me".   I get caught up in situations where I blatantly feel someone views me as conceited or stuck up but yet I am screaming from the inside that I don't know how to further this conversation like I used to.

  I consider myself a self proclaimed "sociologist".  I think we all are to some extent.  I have been fascinated with religion and the behaviors other people do because of it.  I have also been fascinated by people that choose not to be religious and their behaviors because of that.  It is all just quite fascinating.  Coming from a deep religious background in the Utah faith, there was this tug, this "small voice" if you will.  It has been an interesting exploration of life to discover "I wonder how people would talk to me or treat me if I did this..."  And mostly from the close family ties of relationship I have discovered the difference between people acting through conditional love and unconditional love.  I have come to find out that there are many who are scared, sad and unknowing just like the rest of the world but this cognitive dissonance that is at the forefront of any strong belief-person is always so present, yet ignored.  When a faith or religion is so tightly knit with everyday life but not a physical part of everyday life it creates this un-seen tension as it did in my life.  I didn't really know what true peace was until I had to cut ties.  And then when you do that, there is a sense of ostracization.  This interesting journey of seeing how people act by things you do or say and not necessarily the fact that you exist.   I feel religion itself is a cancer in society.  Beliefs are not.  There is a big difference between the two.  Religion is how an organized group functions.  A belief system is how an individual functions.  I have found that it just doesn't matter why you should think it so important how other's think.   It is not your responsibility to make sure that someone else follows the lines, checks the tasks off the list, says so many prayers.  It is not your responsibility.  I think that is why I am personally having such an eye opening experience and struggle at the same time, having been somewhat well versed in all the scriptural accounts and religious doctrines to see where we are at today.  It seems that according to scripture when speaking to the Romans, Paul said "who shall separate from the love of Christ?  shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"

Now, I have gone and still going through my faith crisis.  Not that I have completely written off this belief that I have grown up with but the need to question it always is ever present.  I have never seen people so cold to each other before than this time.  I am not talking about a fantastical way of looking at Jesus (if there ever was such person, and it's ok to ask that.  Stop making people feel like they are just absolute scum of the earth for honestly questioning that.)

This whole "mask-charade" does not line up with the doctrines and "love" that is taught and expressed so much, for years before this.  I feel that we are in that time of "run here, run there"  "here is your Savoir, there is your Savior".  People actually believe that masks will save people from death.  Move over Jesus, there is a new Savior in town.

As a kid I was always the "worry wart" or the nervous wreck.  I was always terrified, scared, fearful.  It wasn't until I had to embrace that fear of the unknown that it strengthened me.  When it comes to paranoia, there are so many times that leads to isolating periods because my "mental workspace" just runs rampant with people I've met and I'll believe this "imaginary" plot of what this person thinks of me so much so that I know it fucks with me when we are actually talking in person.   It is a struggle I deal with constantly.  So many through social media tout "Don't worry about what other people think or say about you."  Well, that is a tough situation to deal with when you brain is constantly firing against you and using people you've met as arsenal.

Anyway that's a struggle in life that throws me for too many loops.  If I see you out there.  Let's talk about it.

First, I hope to be understood when I say the public school system is a giant fault line.  I know of many great people who are educators and teachers and wish to not mean this as a concerted attack on anyone of them.  The main reason is to seek a discussion when it comes to the fabrics of our society.  The public school system is a large seam in our tapestry of society.  Education is a key in life, not the key to life.  And it is even said that "don't let your education get in the way of your learning."  My own personal experience with the public school system is "everything I've needed to know in my adult life is what I learned in kindergarten."  I understand the social learning that is important in a young person's life.  I don't however, see the overall benefit of a child being thrown into a machine where they eventually only learn that they need to be a cog in the great machine of society.

On my tombstone or even if it is a last final breath from me, I will always say "there is always a better or different way."  The public school system has been a means of so much tragedy and harm in our society.  For years now, there is so much claim to certain innovative leaders and CEO's or even past Einstein's that "well, they never went to college.  They never went to school.  They dropped out!"  Yet, we deem a public school system so importantly in people's lives that we somehow do not see the disconnect in those statements.   I also tend to feel that is why there are so many depressed and deflated adults today.   They (including myself) have gone through this system from such an early age.  It was simply what was told we "needed" to do in order to have a fulfilling adulthood.  Well, many of us are into this ever fleeting "adulthood" and so many feel robbed.

Never has there been a time where the internet has been such a force in our society as it is today.  This means that as a society had to adapt from horse to motorized carts.  We have to adapt from the horse and carriage of a public school system to the ever changing technological advances of today.  There is a continual bombarding from political sleaders that are always touting the "betterment of our future"  "for our children".    Their actions are always a step in a different selfish direction over what they claim to say.

Want to increase a better future for our children?  Why not, allow children to be children first and foremost.  Stop expecting so much from them.  The false expectations we have on ourselves as adults seeps over to them.  I hope the public school system fails or at very least reformed.  It is only in a future's best interest for the school system to fail.  That is how things progress and grow.  We are in a time right now where we see [many] school boards and teachers only fighting for what is in the best interest of their pockets rather than what is actually good for our children.

I feel that there should be more school funding directed to the homes of the children.  Let the kids learn from their parents.  And the parent's receive some compensation for bills [if] it interferes with their work hours.  Or, better yet.  Have companies receive a tax write-off for allowing their workers to stay home with their kids to teach.  The parents don't have to be rushed off to make a living only to find that years from now, their deepest regrets are not being home more with their children.   Maybe public schools should be viewed more as a public social structure in which children can go if they want, for social connecting.  Teachers are not needed to be there 80% of their day.  I feel a problem why our public school system has failed ethically is because a salary has been attached.  Most teachers I would argue just see it as a job.  They are not closely connected to the children's better future possibilities but rather "they are just 30 objects sitting in their class and can't wait for summer to arrive."

The public school system fails to teach how to utilize the internet effectively.  Even the very people at the tops of social media echelons are still trying to figure out the internet's possibilities.  The internet is something that is just a reward system, go to school, do your homework then you can fiddle around on tik-tok and the internet.  Both, in that light can be very damaging to a young person's identity.  Maybe that is the whole sinister point of the public school system.   To not churn out the best and brightest but to churn out more dull and darker human beings that need to thrive off the work/reward system already in place.  Time is a precious and valuable thing.  That is not taught in principle at schools, the only time they value is follow this schedule and you will receive this award that you finished.  Congratulations!  Now, we have an ever increasing number of adults who feel they have done the right thing by societies standards and feel entirely left out of the system that they were told to endure.

Again, I hope to understand a better way at this public school system.  I for one feel it is broken, nearing the point of collapse, which would be a good thing if it does. 

Anyway... just some thoughts for a time.

The constant moment that seems to never end and to wish it never does.

In love's most pure desire, it is the rock that you are that holds me together.  Yet, you are the rock that can dash me to pieces.

A woman can be the calm before and after the storm and the absolute devastating hurricane.

The water that quenches my thirst and the gushing waters that drowns me.

You are the breath I can share in oneness, completeness and you are the choke hold that sends me to despair.

What is this?

I don't know what to make of you most of the time yet, I want to make the most of my time with you.

I am a stranger constantly stuck in the shifting of the time of technology.

Birds do not have to sing for all to hear to make beautiful songs.

If a constant state of living is to be striving for why the need to share our thoughts so compeletly with others?

Why must our emotions be so completely tied with technology?  Are we making our deal with the devil by doing so?

To the ever evading, elusive constant moment:  May we all find that life to be lived, so that love can swallow the fear that resides in each of us.  Once that fear is taken away, it seems that our human minds need to create our own fears to live.  We cannot afford to live in fear or we will fear to live and to live is the ultimate path to love.

May our most purest desires be known from within.

To really know ourselves cannot come from vindication of another.  For another cannot find that vindication from you for them.

What has this desolate place become in which we wander know through past dreams and desires in this wretched place of fear and condemning?  

Love is a slippery slope and maybe that is the point of it all.  Are we ever meant to truly have it?

Is all that we see around us and seem to know the reality of someone's past dream or future thought?

Is our ability to choose based on a thought we dreamed long ago?

What is the meaning of thoughts if we cannot really choose for ourselves.  What is that small voice within that leads us to make certain decisions?  Are we our own slave masters?

Expectations die when we make a choice.  So make better choices than believe in faulty expectations.

To love is to live forever.  To fear is to die.

It is possible that what is going on is NOT about Socialism.

It is possible that what is going on is NOT about Staying inside.

It is possible that what is going on is NOT about Corona Virus.

It is possible that what is going on is NOT about destroying an economy.

It is possible that what is going is a deep rooted system that is corrupt and it going through an upheaval process.

That everything we have ever been taught to accept, think or believe is going through a massive uprooting process?

We see it.  All around us.  Friends are becoming enemies.  Enemies are being friends.  Masses are joining together in the confusion that surrounds them through unity, love and hope.  Lies are being brought light and the "light"  and glamour are being forced into the shadows and darkness.

It is all quite possible everyone, that the things you thought you hate are actually working for you and the things you thought you love are actually working against you.

It is all quite possible my friends.  It is all just quite possible.

We hear these words all too often.  Some feel them all to closely.  When one is looking off the edge of the psychological cliff into the massive vastness where truths are lies and lies are truths and the daunting blackness of pure unknown, it is a journey and a feeling that one can only describe within themselves.  I am no stranger to my own personal darkness.  I've hid it quite well.  Smiles can lie for miles.


Over the past couple of years I have been off and on with a film that can describe my depression.  I needed to work on something that could see me through it.  That's what I have found in my life.  Art can heal, art can show the way out of depression, grief, anger and even superficial happiness.  Depression has many looks and affects many different people in many ways.  

For instance:  There was one time when I was heavily weighted with the ambition of my own imaginations, so heavy that I lay on the bathroom floor wanting to cease from existence.  I do not know how long I was there, until my dear friend walks in, thinking I am overdosed on something.  The weight was so heavy that I did not want to speak even to her anymore, I didn't care about a dog around me, I didn't even care about having my kids around me.  I wanted to cease.  Then, a couple hours later... I would make a performance in front of a large crowd as if I wasn't lying on the bathroom floor hours earlier ready to imagine myself extinct. 

It's amazing that feelings of loneliness and isolation can be healed in places of loneliness and isolation.   There are many walks in the southern Utah desert I have taken that has fulfilled my questions, grudging wounds and sadness that any organized religion, doctrine or teachings ever can.  At one moment I was standing  at the base of mountain, I looked up and said "This is limitless and ageless.   Buildings are limited and blocked off."  This film is a dark spiritual journey of mine with a sonnet that I wrote.  The sonnet came due to my depression from a car accident and then a subsequent scam that left me with a heavy debt that could barely be fathomed of paying back.  This is my depression.  I don't own it anymore because I have continually had to let it go.

If we are to walk through our own valley of darkness, no phone communication, no internet.  Don't worry, be of good cheer and above all learn to be still.

This film is based upon my depression, sleep paralysis and weird nightmares/dreams I've had.