theintrovertedeye

[theintrovertedeye]

Check out "Death Bells Ringing" by R.L. Burnside on Amazon Music. https://music.amazon.com/albums/B07MBCD78J?do=play&trackAsin=B07MBF7SYW&ref=dm_sh_KnotbmWc0GKjmpATP1l5uTArA

[theintrovertedeye]

[theintrovertedeye]

City Methodist Church Gary, Indiana

I’ve been inside of a few churches in my time. Until the day I took these pictures, I can’t profess to have ever felt the presence of God in one. I actually felt God leading me into this temple. I’d driven past it several times in my early urban exploration days. Before I’d gotten up the courage to get out of my car and actually explore something. A series of private and likely uninteresting events led me to be here on a day when the surrounding area was vacated enough that I could get in without fear of Karen calling the cops.....but there were also two curious Europeans casing the place. It was clear that they wanted to go in but maybe they needed a little nudge. So did I. Maybe we could nudge each other. I parked. I walked in (they followed). I was awed and humbled.

I don’t know that I could ever explain my attraction to urban decay in a way that would be relatable to a person who wasn’t already so inclined. I think it’s one of those things that you either get or you don’t. But there’s a beauty there....a telling of secrets. Not only the palpable weight of stories bled into those walls.......or what remains of them.....by the people that worshiped or wedded or were laid to rest here when this place was alive. What went on behind that door? What was down those stairs before those stairs ceased to exist? There’s also the growing and evolving tale of its slow death. The graffiti and obvious vandalism is the first thing you see. And they are a valid and often artful part of the narrative of the place. My eye, however, is always drawn to the way that nature so easily reclaims what some man surely once thought would be forever. The cycle of the seasons that breaks foot-thick stone walls like wet chalk. How one drip of water, repeated over an unknowable time, can destroy......well...anything. Destruction is just a part of the tale though, because at the same damn time.... life is happening. Things are growing. Not all of them pretty things that makes one run for a camera but the cliched “circle of life” indeed moves on. What’s left is what I saw here and what I hope to relay to you.... the often unappreciated splendor of a thing past its prime. The blending of mans effort and nature’s utter disregard for it in the end....our struggle (in vain?) for permanence by way of edifice. Please follow if you haven’t already and question or comment if you feel so moved. Thank you and be well.

[theintrovertedeye]

[theintrovertedeye]

A soliloquy on a chocolate dream.....

It would seem I have soul to say....

So to speak....

These words won’t sleep their slumber with heartbeat so thunderous in my chest.

Is there such a thing as cordial cardiac arrest?

Micro-myocardial infarction?

I’m familiar enough by now with the start of this dance in the unique time signature known as Duality of Man....

The desire to sit silently admiring still waters from such a vibrant spring.....

Versus the selfish need to mold the stone that brings the ripples.... create wake with these words....then take THAT picture.....

and label it “Art”.......

all while artfully dodging the inconvenient fact that she was God’s art before ever I intervened.

But it is the nature of this thing, I’ve learned, that the WORD’S WILL will be done.

They will speak to whom they choose....

My choice......

Scribe these ethereal lyrical gifts from God....

Or lose them.

I will ever choose them over the abyss that is my heart without this palpable poetic bliss now stirring inside me.

My Poet’s Soul often stands silent so long that I at times doubt the gift yet resides.

But hear me Black Woman.....

In those eyes....

It’s so alive.

In the perfect bow of your lips....

It thrives.

In the indecipherable hue of your third eye....

It shines.

Blindingly.

Binding me in chains of similes and metaphors, bated breaths..... unsettled scores yet unwritten.....

Odes verging on edifice to speak of your beauty.... not smitten.... not even desirous of a taste of you.... just to know that gorgeous face awed once at these rhythmic offerings.....

Words once aimed at harvesting willing and open lower limbs....turned now to hymns praising a Pretty that I shall never touch....

Mystic Muse to me....

In so much or many pixels.... soulful siren trapped in my screen.... Maiden of missives yet unwhispered.

May I occasionally drip these dissertations into your ear?

Sans reservation or fear for what they may mean..... merely typed terabytes to tell of a Queen dope beyond telling.

Mystic Muse to me...

A soliloquy.......voiced as melanin fiend.

D. Hampton

8/25/19

[theintrovertedeye]

This emotional life (collage)

... Is unyielding

So many feelings flowing to and from.

Things ending

Things half begun

The search for one worthy.

The struggle to be worthy of one should she come hurtling from....

Wherever partially believed in things originate.

Quadricorn amongst predetermined fates....

Yet you are the most pleasant of day dreams.

Sunbeam in silken, well-creamed-coffee skin.

The most mellow of imaginings. Seemingly magic thing that brings wings to words that could never truly articulate this auric opulence.

Conjoled into attempted understanding of how each crease and contour of your face has a place and a word in my heart.

Something so simplistically elegant...

The desire to plant kisses on your dimples.

The need to know your scent...

To hear the giggle that fits into such angelic beauty....

You ask, and so...yes...

Seriously...

This is what you do to me...

Without even trying.

Prying these phrases from what was a few months ago, a hesitant hurt soul.

Free words...

Without goal.

Without owing.

Only focused on you knowing the scope of what you have meant to me even in the infancy of our renewed friendship....

From the perfection of your lips pours this poetic potency....

From me...

Only gratitude.

Naked admiration scribed large on the digital face of an iPhone screen...

New aged means to describe modern Queen in terabytes...

What it must be like to touch you..

What it must be like to love you..

Blend you into the core of me. Seamless in supposition of fairy tale reminiscence sans certain aspects of reality...

The technicalities of this emotional life.

At times it seems the thought of you fills me up as music.

Those perfect lyrics that expand your emotion beyond that which you thought was possible.

That nuanced note so insistent inside of you.

That feeling of a known emotional kinship.

A connection....and the inflection that insues....a patchwork soul in hues of melody...

In shades of Harmony...

Simply to say..

Again...

I dig you...

In A Sentimental Mood befits the true symphony of your presence to me.

A well, deep with unworded, almost avant garde sensuality of creative purpose..

And I work this collage of worded wonder into a frame for your perusal..

And per your approval...

True bliss.

D. Hampton

5/28/12

[theintrovertedeye]

[theintrovertedeye]

[theintrovertedeye]

[theintrovertedeye]

Where to start? What to say? Most importantly....how to not come off as a pretentious asshole??? I’m really not sure if I’m pulling that off with any degree of success in real life, so I’m tempering my expectations in that regard. Perhaps you should as well. So why does an Introvert start a blog? The thought of notoriety.... beyond very localized occurrences 😁....has always given me chills. I’ve often said that I’d gladly take the fortune and leave the fame to others. But as it turns out...... I have shit to say. I have a story to tell. I have visions to share. I’m on a journey. Rather than continually holding my Facebook family and friends hostage to my long-winded bullshit and creating that awkward obligated feeling when a friend posts a damn book (maybe that’s just me)..... I figured I’d just put it out into the world and let it be what it is. *shrugs*

So this journey I mentioned..... I woke up not too long ago and found myself unmoored from almost everything that I had come to define myself by. Simply put. And this shit happened BEFORE THE ‘RONA!! My only child joined the Army after Highschool. Essentially transferring all physical parental responsibilities to the federal government (a few emergency cough drop and glove shipments aside) and opening up my mind to one of life’s scariest questions....... Now what? 40 is too early for a midlife crisis (I hope!) and I’ve spent years gearing up to steer my son through college and assorted other rites of young adulthood. That’s not at all going to happen in the way that I’d envisioned. He may still need me here and there but I found out something about my kid.... HE’S MY KID! and he’s apparently been paying attention all along! We had a bump in the road with the Army and as I was preparing to go full Dad mode and physically INVADE an army base..... dude handled his business. Like a goddamn ADULT! It was frankly like watching me be me in glorious 4th Wall slo-mo! This beautiful baby bird that once depended on me for life was adulting all on his own. Hundreds of miles from home. Becoming a fierce warrior person........YAY! But BOOOOOO! 😢 Now what???

I’ve always written poetry since I was a kid. One of the first things I ever bought myself as a child was a camera. A Kodak 110. I still remember the excitement of getting film developed and waiting to see if my childish shots had come out. I was born an artist but like so many of us, I was taught that arting wasn’t a serious pursuit. That you couldn’t support yourself, etc. So I starved the art and I went to work. Sometimes 20 hours a day. I birthed a business. I buried a business. I dove into parenting. I starved the art. Possibly even worse than that..... sometimes I only wrote poetry in pursuit of something other than poetry. I ignored this part of myself on the surface. Consciously. But when I really think about it, it showed in almost everything I did.

Even as a Security provider managing hundreds of officers....there’s an artistry to me. (You were forewarned of possible pretentiousness so shut your piehole and follow me!) On what I now recognize as the years long run up to Great Unmooring, I was gifted a camera by a strange man in the back seat of my car. That, in and of itself, is a story worthy of its own post.....and probably pretty soon as it is so integral to my journey. I’ll skip past it for now and just tell you that it woke me up. So many things happened around that time that screamed at the artist in me and I was embracing them. I was about that life! I was driving for Lyft after a near catastrophic breakdown (while working for 24 hours straight) caused me to quit my corporate gig. I was free. Ideas were flowing. I felt GOOD! Things were possible! I WAS BROKE! A “real” job called..... and I folded. I began to starve the art again..... but I had that camera. The gift of the camera came with an extracted promise that I would always stop and take the picture. In the moment. When you see it. And I have, for the most part, lived up to that. And now I want to share some of those pictures and some of that journey.

I’ll try to keep it entertaining. I think I’m a fairly complex man as far as men go 😂. My interests and hobbies are varied. This should be a fun ride! I invite you to join in and ask questions. Make respectful comments. Whatever. Thanks for reading. Be well.