To Me

Knowing that you are safe to be yourself is the true meaning of freedom.

What It Was Once Like

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

-Ronald Reagan

40th president of US (1911 – 2004)

Let Me Free

My bruises heal. As do my cuts and bones. Externally I look fine. Internally, is an entire different story. You think your words don’t hurt. You think what you say doesn’t have any effect. You don’t know you’re wrong. Everyday is the same with you. The words. The ridicule. The teasing. But what you say doesn’t hurt. What I believe hurts. The stupid thing is I allow your words to penetrate my soul. I allow your words to hurt me by choosing to believe them. I don’t want to live like this. By natural right I am free. And I choose to let myself free. Free from your influence, your grasp. I am free, free at last.

Tick Tock

Freedom is like the hands on a clock. It changes every minute.

Direction

We all need to a little direction to help us find the road we’re supposed to be taking.

 

 

© Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Free Vote

If you refuse to vote, you’re asking the government not to represent your individual freedom. What’s life without freedom?

 

This is solely owned by me and the website. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this work without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to PaintingTheStage and its author with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Final Destination

You’re free…. where now?

 

 

 

© Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Prohibited

Who controls our freedom?

 

 

© Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Malaya Neri and Paintingthestage with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Bed Head

Have you ever woken up from a goodnight’s sleep only to stay in bed and look at the ceiling to try to plan out what you want to do with your day? Your week? Your life? Well, I have… several times.

It’s a wonderful feeling to have a sense of control of your future. Knowing what you want to do and how you’re going to get there gives you a sense of security. In those moments where you see your future brightly set out in front of you, all you want to do is continue dreaming; dreaming for it to be even brighter. The only problem is; sooner or later you have to get up from bed and deal with reality.

In reality you don’t always feel secure and sometimes things get in the way and block your view from your own future. You might have all these great ideas that you want to accomplish but you overanalyze and worry that it won’t be good enough. Or you won’t good enough. The truth is: you are good enough but you will never know if your work will be accepted or not if you don’t do anything about it.

I live by the 3 C’s of life: “You have to CHOOSE to take a CHANCE or your life will never CHANGE.” It’s such a simple concept but difficult to begin, but trust me it will be worth it in the end. We all have an inborn freedom that is sometimes overshadowed by our own cuffs. We hold the key that will lead us to our individual freedom. Sometimes you have to escape from your own mind to see that you’re the one that’s keeping yourself captive.

-Malaya

Dream of Freedom (Monologue)

I don’t dream. Well, I haven’t for the last seven or eight years. But, last night, I did. And the interesting thing is that I remember every single detail of it. So, I wanted to tell it to you, to get it off my chest.

It was foggy. In the middle of the murkiness was a gate. It was about five times my own height. I know because I was there, in my dream. As I touched the rods that formed the barrier it was as though I was connecting with the people that built it.  I could feel their anger, their hate, their animosity for something I could not see. The metal was cold; it brought back memories of walking out of my heartfelt home into the unyielding grasp of winter. The fog began to clear on the side of the gate I was on, and I could depict rundown houses with shingles torn off the roofs and windows crashed inward. The air was smoggy and smelled of sulfur, so I put a cloth I happened to have in my hand up to my nose. The streets were made of brick, and there were iron fences with lethal points on top lining the forlorn road. As I continued to gaze upon the gruesome place, people like none I had ever seen before began to roam the various, twisting pathways of the forsaken town. Their bodies were thin and pale and dirty like those of corpses. All of them wore the same clothing: torn boots, scraggly working pants, and wool-knitted sweaters that looked like they were clawing at the wearers’ skin. There were thousand, if not millions of them cramming themselves onto the roads, trying to get somewhere, but I had a feeling they didn’t know what their destination was. My arm started to itch relentlessly so I looked down to scratch it and beheld the woolen sweater I was wearing… and the torn boots and ripped pants. I was one of them? But how? I looked up and shrieked. There was a man that had appeared out of nowhere just in front of me and was staring… longingly at me with his almost transparent eyes. No, wait. He was looking through me, as if I didn’t exist. I turned around to see what the man was looking at and gasped. The fog had cleared on the other side of the gate, revealing a lush and beautiful paradise. Orchards upon orchards of ripened fruit: bananas, apples, pears, oranges, grapes, just lying there and basking in the radiant rays of the sun. Birds flew from tree to tree and sang out messages to their friends and family. I could detect waterfalls flowing from beautiful mountain tops rich with vegetation in the distance. I had a sudden urge to get to this land of promise which overtook my senses and my body. I scurried forward and attempted to climb the gate, but I couldn’t get more than six feet off the ground until I fell back down. I grasped the gate and shook it as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. I screamed and yelled and cursed at the wicked obstruction until someone ripped me from the poles. I yelled, kicked, and struggled to get free, but I couldn’t… I just couldn’t. Once I stopped I stared up at the person who had a hold of me, and it was the man who had been staring at, or rather though me. I began to cry. I don’t know why, but I did. My emotions just poured out. I hated the evil, heartless people that had built that gate, the gate that kept me from my freedom, I hated them! I looked around myself and saw that most of the people in the town had gathered around me. The man who had taken a hold of me earlier crouched down next to me and wiped the tear stains off my face. He looked at me and smiled a gentle, yet menacing smile at me. Everyone that stood encircling me reached out their hands in my direction. As they touched me I experienced their dreams that had been burnt, their goals that were never achieved, their sorrows, their grief, their hurt, their loss. And yet there was a single grain of hope in all of them. A glowing sphere that kept them all going, and tied them together into an impenetrable force.

Then I woke up, gasping for air and drenched in sweat. I don’t know what it means. Maybe it resembles the world that we are living in today. Or it could not. Whatever it means, I’m glad to get it off my chest. Thanks for listening.

-Preston

***Please enjoy! I just ask that if you copy this or use it that you give credit to the author. Thanks!