Melody of Self

Melody of Self

Mar 23, 2023 | Spoken Poetry

Melody of Self

by Robert Levey

I’m not sure
there is anything more beautiful
than feeling the feeling
of someone sharing their feelings
through a gentle touch,
a tear,
a glance,
a gesture,
a word,
a silence,
a smile,
a cry,
a laugh,
a hug.

All my life,
I imagined the song of myself
wafting through various pastures,
past sunsets and sunrises,
through mountains and rivers
and streams,
these dreams
carried me to a sense of self I thought belonged to me.

What am I really?
Am I dancing alone?
Are my experiences of myself
more real than those experienced by others?

When I am held by another,
I feel my self in ways
I cannot experience alone.

I still dream I might
discover a new melody
in the song that is myself,
but I no longer necessarily think
it must be me who sings it.

Chronicle of Dreaming Man

Chronicle of Dreaming Man

Feb 17, 2023 | Spoken Poetry

Chronicle of Dreaming Man

by Robert Levey

Every morning,
he would row his boat
gently down the stream,
merrily,
thinking life is but a dream.

He was not concerned with how things worked,
but rather how they seem
inside his often broken heart,
and he would dream
and allow his thoughts
and tears
to carry him
past fears,
the troubled years
and the moments that played out like Cheers.

He would dream of love
so heavy and pure
that he was sure
it must exist,
he could not resist,
the feeling would persist,
insist,
his boat began to list
to one side,
and so he leaped
with his heart
and soul,
no end in sight,
no goal,
and he would dream.

The stars would twinkle,
the moon would dance
and the world felt quiet,
pregnant with hope,
dazzling landscapes in his mind,
spaceships bound for worlds unknown
and a love he could hold in his hand
as an old man
on a summer afternoon,
a fan
gently moving the breeze past his face,
nearly every trace
of childhood erased,
and he would dream
of the first time
he was not alone in that boat
on that stream
and how it felt to not have to dream.

Running To Love

Running To Love

Jan 22, 2023 | Love

Yesterday, I was on a run near a river and actively pondering the experience of love when I had a profound realization about myself that I think is relevant for others. All my life, love has been an experience for me that has felt so utterly massive, so real, that I have run from it.
I went out on my run yesterday with the intent to explore why this is the case, and I unexpectedly ran into an answer.

The feeling of love is so beautiful to me, and yet it hurts my soul, which is the first part of the realization I had yesterday. It hurts me so deeply—and as I said this statement and felt the idea in my heart, I began to cry. I embraced in that moment my vulnerability and did not run from it in my heart. Unexpectedly, I then realized why it hurts me so bad.

When I feel deep love, I cease to exist. Everything ceases to exist. What she said, I did, she did, we did, I believe, I want, I need, my pain, her pain—all of that disappears and nothing else exists in the fullest expression and experience of love. I find that so scary, because my very identity hinges on my beliefs, my needs, her needs, or what I can and cannot do, right?

Well, that depends. Am I just an American? Am I just a white man? Am I Robert or Rob? When I feel love and embrace it authentically, I cease to exist, and love becomes everything in the universe. I have felt this potential in my heart all my life, and I have run from it because it has hurt me and scared me.

I am delicate—and yet in that delicacy there exists a way of life and love with unlimited potential, and this potential is not in me, but in the field around me. I had a conversation this week with someone, and she invited me to embrace the field and move past ‘this’ or ‘that.’ I embraced her suggestion, and I feel (even if I cannot adequately convey in words) differently about everything.

As I put my hands on my knees yesterday and cried with ferocity, I ceased to exist—and for the first time in my life, I was not afraid. I feel afraid right now, because parts of me still hold on to what I love, how I love, and why I love. This is a process, however, and not a destination.

The last part of my realization is that my current heartache is my friend. I would not be here in this space without this friend. I’m scared of this friend, but I recognize the need to embrace the heartache. There is still a ‘but’ in my thinking and feeling, and so my focus is on this area of my heart that resists this path.

I believe in absolute true love, and to live and express this is my life’s mission. I am not a writer, marketer, business person, professor, or anything else. I am a single strand of love that is woven in the tapestry of life, and I am being spun.

If true love is a place, then yesterday I saw the bus go by that can take me to it. I have never seen this bus before. The next time I see this bus go by, I will be ready. I am going to move to love forever—and if I cannot catch this bus, then I will run to love.

Sure, the cost is steep. I must let go of myself to embrace the love. For the first time in my existence, however, I do not feel scared of love, because I realize I am already in it…

What is Love?

What is Love?

Dec 21, 2022 | Love

Sure, I know love. It is a feeling, right? Is it an action, too? Or is it a sequence of actions? Is it formulaic? When I read my last post on love, I am forcibly reminded that perhaps I do not know what love is it all.

Written by Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now is a song whose lyrics have always haunted me, this stanza in particular:

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

As I try and unpack the above sentiment in my heart now that I am clearly past childhood (or am I?), I have a feeling that the way I have experienced love throughout my entire life has been remarkably selfish in some ways. I reduce love to (non)actions. I can do this, but I cannot do that, etc.

What does that really mean? I do not know except in hypothetical scenarios that, well, are hypotheses on what I ‘might’ or ‘might not’ do in a given circumstance. Perhaps, however, I limit my life and those of others when I imagine what I either can or cannot do.

Heinz von Foerster developed an ethical imperative, which states: Act always so as to increase the total number of choices. I find this statement profound in many ways. When I look at the sum of my life and various specifics, I do not see I have embodied this principle very well, if at all.

Recent events in my life actually call into question the extent to which this imperative currently serves as a guiding beacon in my relationships with others. I am obtuse. I am aloof, and I have discovered long-cycle patterns of behavior that take years to unfold. My discovery of these long-cycle patterns provide fuller context into my assertion that I am broken as a man.

What is love? Unlike some in this world who cling to ‘absolute’ truth, I cannot definitively say one way or another. What I do feel, though, is that the quest to love others deeply has intrinsic value in ways that affect past, present, and future. Whose past? Whose present? Whose future?

Nothing should ever be taken for granted.

The Validation

The Validation

Nov 2, 2021 | Social Media

There is something deeply disturbing about the validation required by many today.

Did we eat the right food, say the right thing, buy the right product, look good doing it?

While not completely worthless–it is very rare when something can be designated in such a manner–social media is pretty close. Do we really need to say things to an audience of people that we for the most part do not know or honestly even care about?

Do you really care about Roger Jones, that dude you never talked to in 4th through 12th grade, but now 20 years later like each other’s posts about grilled cheese and babies?

Admittedly, there must be something biological that occurs when we post snippets of our lives on social media platforms. It sort of feels good. Yeah, our lives rock, our kids are too cute, our knowledge is too stellar.

It is crap. It really is a bunch of crap. There is something to be said for living within one’s own mind and heart and the parameters of a life you created with your own hands. A life that can be turned off or erased, which is entirely the case with social media, is not real.

The time we spend updating people we do not know, care about, or possible even like, can perhaps better be spent on the people with whom we work, love, or trying to love, etc.

There is an emptiness to social media, a puffing up of the proverbial chest, a step back into our primordial minds in which we must have sought validation wherever we could.

Validation cannot be bought, sold, or offered through video screens. Rather, it is an experience inside one’s mind, earned through breathing, letting go, crying, making mistakes, quitting jobs, landing them, giving birth, saying goodbye, falling down and getting up. 

Social media validates itself–that is all it does. It validates technology and the sadness we feel, but rarely express…