…and isn’t it ironic how you find the growth in yourself that you felt would always be hidden.  And that growth is like a ticking time bomb just waiting to be triggered by fate.  For me that explosion usually happens after a mistake or situations of being at the wrong place at the right time.  Times that I feel like a character perfectly scripted by a screenwriter to be the plot point to transcend the ongoing action of my own existence.  Some say ‘shit happens’ as an excuse to give up on what was meant, but not I.  No I embrace all the shit happening as my chance to find that growth that plays hide and seek with my self-definition.  Without the shit happening at the right times I wouldn’t be the main character in my own sequel.  I would just be the observant silhouette watching my own life rolling with the ending credits of wasted time.

And isn’t it ironic how your thought process changes as that same shit happens.  I didn’t think I would be a fucking poet writing and writing to the masses who decipher my expression into the many interpretations of a man complicated by chance.  Everything I thought wouldn’t happen to me have happened too early but perhaps at the right time.  I wouldn’t have made connections if it wasn’t for loss and I wouldn’t have made many transgressions if it wasn’t for fear.

Yes…fear

Because there were times, and still are times I want to fun from the clarity that will continue my growth of further exposure.  To befriend poetry and leadership in the midst of an alternative lifestyle where childhood fears because I was the quiet one and the unseen one.  And now I stand in the eye of observers inhaling with anticipation my awakened silence.   So it’s pure irony to me that I have shifted into every reason I hid behind silence.

Many of those reasons being sculptured by success.

But why fear success and exposure?  Because then you have no choice but to live when irony checks for a pulse.

Life peeks at me just to make sure I’m living

© 2009

There are no experts in the world of expression.

We all read and interpret for different reasons.  As observers we challenge with opinion and gain knowledge by offering knowledge but we can’t critique someone’s heart even if the emotions are misspelled.  I once found myself endlessly free writing in my freshman year writing class.  My TA was a woman in your mid twenties, a very enthusiastic scholar type who gave us the exercise about writing about a moment in time.  She offered us to take ten minutes to write whatever came to mind however we wanted to write it so I took my mind on a mental voyage to a summer barbeque in the back yard in a neighborhood I once lived.  I was able to capture the atmosphere as though I was actually there from the buzzing of the bees to the charcoal aroma of hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling on an eighty-five degree day.  For those ten minutes I was a young teenager again sitting around watching the grown folks play spades and sing along to Al Green.  But my vision inside this time capsule was the presence of the older man who sat alone across the street watching us.  My free write became more about my observance of him and how our day of joy was viewed through his eyes.  He began to take control of my pen and when that enthusiastic TA said “Time is up”; I realized I ended with a different journey than I began.  I honestly thought I wrote a piece of crap.

When we live the moment, we are our own worse critics.

The next class a few days later, our TA instructed us to take that free write and write from another perspective.  I wasn’t too fond of what was written but it gave me the opportunity to put my mind inside the mind of that older man watching us.  He became my voice and I captured his loneliness in watching his surroundings.  Through his eyes was a vision of change.  Things were different than when he was young.  He remembered a time when the sounds of fireworks were actually sounds of delight and not the sound of gunshots.  He remembered when there was a respect for elders; a respect he recognized again in watching the young boy who was me.  Again, I didn’t think I wrote anything great until the TA called me into her office one afternoon with a smile ear to ear.  She wanted to ask my permission to use my piece for her dissertation.  Her vision of the story was that I was connecting generations by becoming this man and what he was actually watching was his history as in my original piece I was looking into my future.  Towards the end of the story I had the young boy crossing the street to ask the older man to join them.  She evaluated this as a merging of generations.  She found genius in something someone else may have read as just a story about a barbecue.  What impressed me more was she took the time to understand and appreciate the emotion and never once tried to correct my heart.

Critique is the journey of interpretation not its destination.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

Public Journal

An open window

halfway shut keeps me optimistic that everything around me will make sense…eventually.  The air escapes inside and the sweat on my fingertips shiver with heated anticipation.  And I write to find truth; to find the answers of hidden questions within my own mind.  I write in Bold to express tears of laughter that cover up a pain that have bullied me for years.  But now I’m fighting back with underlined run-on sentences of a built up strength only paused by a comma (,).  Traffic noise argues with my thoughts…temporarily.  And I write again.  There’s a lot of bullshit in this world, it’s usually the bullshit I misspell…on purpose.  Lies challenging every moment I think is honest; exclamation points (!) non-expressive to the heart.

I search for truth in strange places.

A trash can…

sitting empty in the corner of my room is filled with cluttered confusion.  A stench lingers out and blends with the oxygen I need to think.  Time can be waste and so can life when we fail to understand the little things that we are quick to throw away.  Like a half written stanza on a torn piece of paper.  It deserved to grow but now it makes it home in that trash can of incompleteness.  And I write.  To unravel thoughts into something more clear but the only clarity is within the chaotic streaming of consciousness in what we believe to be truth.

I find truth in strange places.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

I have an appetite for success.

And I will feed starving thoughts.

I do a lot of thinking without opening the mouth of my ambition and making the moves necessary to fatten everything I can be.  There is a hesitation to put myself out there and instead there are times I stand in the soup lines waiting for someone to feel my bowl with what I need.  But I realized that too much sodium of dependence would have me waiting forever and it was up to me to create my own gravy.  Life isn’t meant to be a plate of fluffy smashed potatoes but it sure tastes good when you know you have given your all to succeeding.  I still hear the rumbles, I still have the hunger pains but without them I wouldn’t be living and achieving and have that determination to go even further.

A hungry mind is an accomplished passion to achieve.

© 2010

Tarringo T. Vaughan

Public Journal

When we experience growth we sometimes become unrecognizable to ourselves.

            The music thumped as hesitant shadows scraped the dance floor with stiffened movements and wild attire.  Black lights spotlighted the lint of many minds loose and intoxicated.  I stood with a drink half filled with ice leaning against a crowded bar where frustrated patrons waved aimlessly for the attention of a bartender who thought he was the hottest attraction in the bar.  He had much competition because many were already dancing with their own reflections in a steamed filled distorted mirror.  And I remember having my own confidence as I saw an image of who I use to be just years before.  Back then I would’ve been standing there with a different purpose.  I would’ve had my arms folded and judged everyone around me not because I thought I was better but because I was catapulted into a new world; a world I hid for so long not to be a part of.

There were many aspects of the gay world I didn’t understand because I simply didn’t want to understand them.  I saw a lifestyle that was different than what I was exposed to and a lifestyle that didn’t fit the aspirations stenciled into my ambition.  I was living as a photograph airbrushed and distorted to fit the vision of what those around me wanted me to be.  But looking back at those self portraits I was not smiling because something within me felt incomplete and with that incompleteness came a lot of insecurity.  And if I wasn’t secure with who I was how could I stand proudly behind a definition I had yet to explore?

It was during that time that I met many guys who misjudged me or didn’t have the patience for me to find that confidence I needed to stand with pride in the gay community.  So I shut myself off, kept quiet and judged those I saw around me.  I was a portrait of a man not willing to open up and accept his own sexuality.  And there was no acceptance until I allowed my heart to lead the way.  So as I stood there with the music thumping and blowing the dust of this memory of who I was, I begin to bob my head and appreciate my surroundings.  I stood there with a confidence and a new openness that made those same guys who shied away from me walk up and want to get to know me for it was my growth within myself that made me more than just a part of the gay community.  It made me one of the definitions of a community that just years ago I didn’t understand.

Life is the exploration of our hearts.