This is not a record review…
Towering in shiny metallic purple armour
Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground
Blue are the life-giving waters taken for granted,
They quietly understand
Once happy turquoise armies lay opposite ready,
But wonder why the fight is on
But they’re all bold as love, yeah, they’re all bold as love
Yeah, they’re all bold as love
Just ask the axis
My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war,
And ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring,
But very unsteady for the first go round
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I’m trying to say it’s frightened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from, eh,
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
But, I’m bold as love, yeah, I’m bold as love
Yeah, yeah
Well I’m bold, bold as love (hear me talking, girl)
I’m bold as love
Just ask the axis (he knows everything)
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah!
Bold As Love
Bold as Love lyrics © Reach Music Publishing
Played against the terrifying backdrop of satellite photos of Hurricane Irma, Hendrix’s acid-trip inspired lyrics begin to make sense. The color imagery especially ties in with the forces of nature and the forces of human emotions.
Recently posted on Mind the Dog Writing Blog, Reading, Writing, Dog Food, and Validating Emotions, places value on individual experience and personal emotional response. For me, and my ongoing battle to understand my own powerful emotions, it explains much, but excuses little. Anger is like a storm, often forming from nothing. It gains intensity, fed by panic, uncertainty and fear. For all its force, the core of anger is weakness.
Understanding anger and recognizing personal triggers is a small step toward controlling it. If there is one recurring theme of regret in my life, it is the bitter taste of shame that lingers after losing control over a relatively insignificant setback. I care deeply about how my actions and outbursts affect the people I love and care about most, and how they view me as a result. I want to give them the best of me, not leave them with images of anger and frustration.
At times I feel I am making progress. Life’s larger events, illness, personal loss, a physically exhausting task, these things I can handle. But, my reaction to a traffic jam or clogged toilet would make one think we are on the verge of a meteor strike. Not quite a Joan Crawford Mommy Dearest moment, but shameful nonetheless. There is a total loss of perspective. It is the small and seemingly innocuous events that sneak up on me.
I ask that my loved ones look into the content of my heart and to understand that I want to be a better man. For my wife, who has learned to ride out the storms, and to ignore the childish outbursts, I love her for her patience, but seek a peaceful alternative. For my children, I want them to think of me as a friend, and to remember me in those happy moments we’ve shared, just hanging out, doing simple, or silly little things, not yelling out of frustration over some small transgression. I think I’m more in my element when I’m not in parenting mode, not playing the Dad card.
I’ll part with a Gandhi quote I hold close to my heart:
“The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress, the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”
Four Square Miles of Noise 
Thank you for mentioning my post.
My favorite bit of YOUR post was the bit about how major losses or traumas you handle gracefully, but traffic jams and clogged toilets bring out the beast. Truth be told, I think maybe we all break under the small pressures of daily life more than in the middle of a larger, more challenging life event. The little annoyances build up a bit each day until it’s seemingly just one clogged toilet that pushes us over the edge. Really, it’s been weeks’ worth of spilled milk, traffic jams, and clogged toilets. Compare that to weightier emotional storms. We experience so few, often with large spaces of time between them. When they happen, we know they will pass. We know our loved ones have our backs. Traffic jams and clogged toilets, however? Now those are lifelong, everyday irritations–and there are no support groups to guide you gently through cleaning up spilled milk!
So true; it’s rarely just about the spilled milk.