Your Alive

What you see is important.

I don't mean what you look at.

What you "see" is important.

Therefore, you should always make sure you have access to an excellent sight to behold shining behind and supporting everything else on your screen.

I used to have the 2007 Bonnaroo Arch as my visual support screen.  It is green and blue and yellow and shining with magical funky possibilities.

I changed it today, because I like changing the scenery.

I watched a slideshow of images from the story I have lived so far.  I feel very fortunate.  I feel excited.  All of those images made me wonder what it was all about.

Today I searched through a folder I have for this sort of situation, and one word immediately caught my eye: "alive."

I instantly made the photograph my background.

 

I found this treasure in Hamamatsu, Japan.  I had been living in the country for a year and traveling freely for one week when I decided to explore this city famous for its musical history.  I didn't have much time, but I wanted to see something interesting, so I got on a bus that was supposed to go to some sort of castle landmark in the city.  Instead I was clearly going to the outer edges of the city, so I got off the bus somewhere and looked around for another bus.  That's when I saw the thin crescent moon smile in the sky, accompanying Venus shining above.  I looked to my right and saw words.  I decided a photograph was appropriate.  Then I got on another bus, returned to the train station, and went back to Tokyo.  This was all about two years ago, a few days before I returned to US.

I look at this picture now, but what do I see?

1st, I see "YOUR ALIVE."  I'm pretty sure most people see that too.  But "your" is in the possessive form.  That means that the sign is talking about your life.  It's your life.  Do what you will with the gift.

Of course, I like to be creative with the gift, so I'm going to imagine that there's an apostrophe behind the 'u' and and 'e' added to the end, so it will mean, "YOU'RE ALIVE," (YOU ARE ALIVE) which, of course, is the gift.

After changing the image to "your alive" I began cooking.  As I walked out of my room, I turned back and noticed that the "y" was covered by a few icons on my desktop, so it appeared to say, "OUR ALIVE."  We share life.  An even better gift.  It's less lonely that way.  And much more fun.  Anything you do with the gift grows the gift.  Living your gift and giving your life by sharing your time with others in the effort to produce joy and smiles is the greatest gift you can give the universe in exchange for its presents of presence.

When I returned with food, I clicked on a picture I had opened earlier, and it covered up the middle of the background.  Then it read, "YOU LIVE."  That's technically true for everyone reading this, but let's work with the font's at our disposal and see how we can make that a little more inspirational.

We are going to change it to, "YOU LIVE."  Better, right?

Of course, sometimes I only see the word, "ALIVE."  That makes me think of the Pearl Jam song, "Alive."  They're from the Seattle, Washington area.  I was actually camping a few hours away from there, in North Cascades National Park.  I had tried to climb Pyramid Peak on a whim because I found out I could while I was already visiting a lake, but I didn't have nearly enough food (a banana) or water (less than half a liter) to climb a 7,000 foot mountain with extensive undergrowth and unmarked hard-to-see paths all through the heavy forest on the steepest mountainside I'd ever walked.  It was all beautiful, but I went too far with too little, and had to turn back.  By the end I was delirious, swearing off of mountains and cursing the friends who ever got me into them in the first place.  At one point I really thought I wasn't going to make it back.  I had walked (and even run) for several hours without water.  I eventually dunked my mouth in the first flowing stream I saw, even though they said you weren't supposed to because the natural bacteria found in it could be harmful.  I didn't care.  I survived.  My car was another twenty minutes away.  The first song that came on when I turned on my iPod was "Alive," by Pearl Jam.  I came back three days later, brought about 60 more pounds of gear (and water) with me, and hiked to the top, where I camped for one night and then hiked back down.  So, I'm alive!

Back to this puzzle... we could also separate things a little, while still connecting them, just in a new way.  For example, we could move the dash from in front of the "A" to behind the "A" so that it reads "A-LIVE."  This itself could be read several ways.  It could be a checklist where we are putting the act of "live" as the first thing on our to-do list.  Makes sense.

Then again, it could also be grading a life, and reminding us to strive for the "A."  Bring your "A LIVE," know what I'm sayin'?

Oh!  This one's even better!  We can see, "YO! U R ALIVE!"  (YO!  YOU ARE ALIVE!)  A wake-up call from the universe, and if you were already wide awake, yet another pep talk from the cosmic coach.  Hey, you!  You're ALIVE!  Yeah, I know, ALIVE!  Pretty amazing, right?

Of course, the whole "alive" theme reminds me how lucky I was to still be alive during the journey, then, now and always.  The fact that I was receiving this message after a year in a country that was in a very scary crisis immediately before I came made it resonate with far more depth and wonder than I could have foreseen when I made the decision to go the year before.  I was overjoyed that the journey came on the heels of two other risky endeavors around the world and my home country and had led me to this discovery.  And, of course, there was an even riskier exciting journey already planned for as soon as I returned home.  That's the one that took me to the pyramid peak.

If I cover the IVE with a photo, it reads "YO!  U R AL!" which could mean that guy in the Paul Simon song about asking people to call you that name.  "He looks around, around, he sees angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity, he says, 'Hey!  Hallelujah!  If you be my body guard, I will be your long last pal..."

Yes.

Let's do one more...

Let's isolate everything, so that all that is left is "I."

Hmm... I kind of miss the other letters.  I love sharing my "alive" with others.  Especially when that "alive" becomes "A LOVE"

The letters are still there anyway, they're just not visible at the moment, because we are focusing on I.  Even so, if we focus on I in the correct way, the other letters will be visible within I, and they will shine with a new radiance.

What is I?

I is 1

I is all I am.

I is Aye.  Aye is yes.

I is Eye.  Eye see.

I see.

I see you are ALIVE!

I wish you joy so that you THRIVE