To Be Human by Valerie Parente
To learn what it means to be human
to breathe meaning into this life
is all I could ever ask for.
To feel the liberation of selflessness
to want for someone no less than the best
is fulfilling enough to be left unsaid.
To not just go through all the motions
but to grow and thrive with emotion
is the hope I try to vocalize.
To care about a soul other than mine
to grant solace to another mind
is the only answer I would need.
– Valerie Parente (9-30-17)
Ink by Valerie Parente
Just leave that ink in tears to cry
Let them fall on the blue lines
And create personal marks
That record our beating hearts.
Don’t try too hard to define
All the thoughts that plague your mind
When you turn your conscience off
A list of words becomes art.
Vocabulary describes
What makes chills tickle your spine
Suppressed fears locked in the dark
Motifs hidden in your plot.
The whispers a pen provides
Are emotions summarized
Broken up in royal parts
By a new language monarch.
– Valerie Parente (6-28-17)
The Silver Screen by Valerie Parente
My daydreams bloom from whatever prominent emotion I am feeling.
My daydreams seem to subconsciously and intuitively unravel themselves into ideal scenarios.
Like a movie the daydreams play out in a succession of mental frames on a cortical film reel. At best the mental fabrication distributes its duty between the two-track mind and I maintain my presence; above the absolute threshold I am in the audience and below the absolute threshold I am in the director’s chair. The dialogues between imaginary friends on the silver screen happen so instantaneously that the script’s origin teeters on the line between voluntary and involuntary awareness.
My daydreams are finalized by obsessive and repetitive hindsight.
When mentally reviewed these fantastic mental purges reveal subliminal truths. The loose reigns of control over the internal screenplays, regularly referred to as “imagination”, masquerade as intrusive images too appropriate and too satisfying to be resented.
– Valerie Parente (2-18-17)
Mind generates the fear.
Matter symbolizes the fear.
Obsessive compulsive disorder likes to customize itself according to whichever person it sinks its parasitic teeth into. My list of OCD anxieties is different from another person’s list of OCD anxieties. Though the content in each OCD list might vary between person to person, the layout remains quite uniform.
In the left column we have an intangible thought (a fear of something), and in the corresponding right column we have a more palpable experience or object (that actual something).
These obsessive thoughts, which forbid or demand certain compulsions, are exponentially more anxiety evoking than physically bringing one’s self to the point of defying said-thought.
To put this notion in perspective, take general anxiety into account. A common example is the fear of public speaking. When you have anxiety about going on stage and talking to a crowd the fear building up to delivering a speech is so much worse than actually delivering the speech.
Now revert this idea back to OCD. When I say I am afraid of germs it is my fear of going into a bacteria-ridden public place that causes me more distress than physically walking into the actual setting and realizing, through exposure, that, “hey, I can deal with this”. This is not to say that I do not get anxious when I think I have been contaminated by germs- trust me, I do- but is it the physical germs that are causing the anxiety or a thought itself that causes the anxiety? It is the thought. That irrational frequently occurring thought. The physical germ is just a symbol of the fear having been generated from my mind.
Fear comes from the mind, not from matter. And as much as I want to believe that there is some reasonable connection between my thoughts and the material world I cannot deny the factual evidence that my obsessive compulsive fears are what stir up anxiety, not the actual events or objects which those fears are based on.
– Valerie Parente (6-13-16)
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