In this light

How can you
In this light
Not succeed

To unravel truths
Once hidden
Beneath scorn and hurt

How can you
In this light
Not see

The great path
Set before you
If you care to travel

How can you
In this light
Not feel

The warm embrace
Of yearning, beyond
Cold stagnation

How can you
In this light
Not know

You were meant
To tell another
And another, my Word.

This is the place of unfulfilled dreams

So I'll post it here.. and try again.  I'm organized now.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Early New Years

Resolutions are one thing, plans are another.  Here's a checklist of the things I plan to understand better this year.

January – Publishing Graphic Illustrations- Animating on flash of DIY colour photo applications
- Cartooning and creating consistent images + Backdrops
- Publishing from other application to proper formatted .rtf or .pdf
- Publishing e-book with menu, illustrations and interactive media

February – Quantum Mechanics

-String/Particle vs. Wave/Particle  (7 days)
-Chaos and Quantum Probability (7 days)
-Evolution of thought (7 days)
-Defined remaining unknowns (7 days)

March – Erhu, Bamboo Flute, Guitar + Housing Market

- Pick up 4 lessons again at RCM after getting back to past competency
- Learn Temple By A River on Dimo, short song on Erhu
- Prospect Condos actively in Sauga

April – Astronomy

- Galaxies, stars, constellations, nebula (5)
- Mars + NASA (14 days)
- Time Travel (9)

May – Empires-Philistines (2 nights)
-Soviet (2 nights)
-Israeli (3 nights)
-Mongol (1 night)
-Han vs. Ming Dynasties (4 nights)
-Ottoman (2 nights)
-Byzantine (2 nights)
-Roman (3 nights)
-Egyptian (2 night)
-Mid-African (4 nights)
-French/Spanish/British (4 nights) 

June – Bible Analysis

David vs. Solomon, Isaac vs. Abraham (4 days)
Leviticus vs. Job (4 days)
John (14 days)
Mathew, Mark, Luke Summary (7 days)

July – Earth Geological History

Hadean, Arheozoic,Proterozoic – 2 days
Proterozoic(5 days)
Paleozoic (10 days)
Mesozoic (10 days)
Cenozoic (3 days)

August – PhilosophySocial – (7 days)
Meta and Epis (7 days)
Of Mind (7 days)
Of Science(7 days)

Sept through Jan

Grad School!

Goals

-Learn about these things before Grad School
-Publish: TIFFs, Hunger, Poetry Selections, Short Story Selections, Before I met you on Amazon
-Learn Song on all 3 instruments before moving
-Move Out
-Reach competency with work
-Apply and attend Grad School
-Also vacation before Grad School

Requesting access

The type of clarity I need escapes me.  Cruel darkness have you no mercy?  Mine is a soul encased in stories untold and words unsaid.   My mind beckons expression but gasps and whimpers under the spotlight.   Free me from the weeds of common sense. Let me soar into empty sky, where everyone can see where I'm going, but nobody knows where I'll end up.

From the sofa, not the loveseat

I am a rhino with no horn, a lemur with no tail, a writer with no words.

That's what I have sounded like for so long.

I have become so encased in myself that I don't even know what's out there, and that's why I don't know what to say, what to write about.

Out there, away from here, are experiences I will never have if I spend this whole season indoors.

Life has become hyperphagic, because the goals I made were made from the basement, underground.

I need to remember what it was like to dream in an open field.

Borderless imaginings.

Beyond you, if necessary, without you.

For us.

In every corner

We will find you in every corner
In every alleyway, elevator and bedroom
Behind every closed door we will shine a light
On what you have done to her

We are popular now
You are out of fashion
We are well known
You are simply known by many

We have rules
If you abide by our norms,
Riches and fame. Otherwise
The opposite is your bounty

We do not care about the particulars
The root problem,the explanations, excuses
We are too popular now
And we don't notice exceptions

Don't try to escape from the corners
When we find your there, fist clenched
Do not run to the grey center
For us there is only black and white

You have hit her
If she asked for it
It was not your duty to oblige
It was your duty to question

Why does she want this?
Why do I?
What will this fist do to her?
What will this fist do to me?

If it weren't for us
These four questions
Would be rhetorical
But now you know they are not

She held herself in low regard
You held her in low regard
It will leave a mark on her forever
It will leave a mark on you forever, or

Her feminine narrative is outdated
Your masculine narrative is outdated
On impact she was forced to face reality
Now you are forced to face modernity

She was angry, fragile, destructive,
You were impulsive, reactive, not thinking
She was dropped without notice
You have been dropped without notice, or

She was after your fame
You were after your dominion
She will settle now for your infamy
You now are her submissive, or

She is a jaded, deceitful sadist
You are an innocent, adventurous sadist
You got unjust pleasure from her pain
She will get unjust pleasure from your pain, or

Or, or..
You get the point
You didn't consider the effect
We won't consider the cause

A stop sign means
Stop always, and look before proceeding
Some people just fly through
Thinking the day will never come

But when you hit her
She became innocent
Far more than pedestrian
And you have no case

We won't join you
In the grey center
Debating just cause or consent
The debate is long over

The debate has survived millennia
And we are tired of it
Never hit her
Even if she asks, begs

We know why she asked, begged
Even though you didn't
How rude of us,
We forgot to introduce ourselves

We are victims, past and present
Forced to these dark corners
When we wanted sympathy
We were given no audience

The corners are our abode
We will shine a light on any intruder
When you hit her, you escorted her to the corners
We'll take it from here

We are only armed with flashlights
All we can do is scare you
Each and every one of you
Who take liberty with our flesh

You must feel deceived, embarrassed
Unable to express yourself, but
Without a friend int he world
We know exactly how you feel

This is not a safe alley
Hopefully you'll do what we do
Try to warn others
Not to walk these dark roads

Because they will find you in every corner
Be rough with you, take pleasure
And not think of the effect
It will forever have on you

New land

Why am I asleep to what could awaken me.  Why am I awake to ideas I should sleep on.  Inspiration cannot take root in these soils.

Goodbye to yesterday

At night, enough hours after the commotion has settled, the errands have been run, my food has digested, my plan for tomorrow has been cemented, I touch the ether.

With my mind alone I touch the smooth and warm fabric of my existence.  Muttering words to myself as if recording a surgery, the extraction of observations from my cerebral cortex.  Out there beneath the night sky I remember what was forgotten.

We already know what is true.

My eyes are closed as I write this.  You know what I am talking about even if I forget to cross a 't'. My eyes are closed because I am not making an observation, I am receiving a sensation.

I am in love with tomorrow.  Actually, no, let me be more mature.  I am in love with yesterday.

Yesterday is the only thing that I know how to obsess over.  It's the only thing I feel I cannot have, now that I have made the transition from feeling young to feeling old.  But tomorrow is starting to look tempting.

When I was young, I was passionately in love with tomorrow.  When I got older, taller, faster, fitter, more intelligent, more successful and wise, I was going to find the greatest love.  And I was going to be the greatest lover.  But I wasn't any of those things yet.  Each yesterday left behind was good riddance; another leaped-over hurdle I was happy to have never really touched, for it would have slowed my progress had I actually endured the stumbles.

But now tomorrow is right in front of me. It's the closest day to today so all I can do is lament on the furthest day away - yesterday.  Yesterday is gone.  It's gone, they're gone, we are no more, I don't remember most of what happened or why it was important.   But I'm in love with it.  I think about it in different colours and different shades, what it would have looked like in the sunlight and what I remember it to look like under the moon.  Each day I try to recapture it, because yesterday is where I left my treasures.  Yesterday is where I left my books, my poems, my drive, my passion, my discipline, my focus.  And each day I open the box of yesterdays and poke underneath the clutter with my mind because I'm certain I left my map in there; absolutely certain in one of those yesterdays I jotted down where I was going.

But each book is now blank, each poem has been swallowed by lovers past, each passion extinguished by circumstance, each discipline interrupted by worry, leaving my drive and focus moot.  The past is dead.  Each yesterday is either a dark empty void or blinding hellfire.  

And that's why it's been so hard to write as of late.  I keep trying to impress yesterday.  I keep trying to impress yesterday upon myself.  I get confused combing through the dark box of yesterdays, eyes wide open, as my fingers comb through those mysterious coarse pages, trying to make observations instead of receiving sensations, I confuse those coarse sheets with the soft ether.

For tomorrow, there is little truth in yesterday.

So tonight I close my eyes to receive the truth, and tomorrow any truth from yesterday will appear to me on its own; I will not despair for the lies that remain hiding forever in my past.  I will not search in the shadows for truth, not even in those I have cast.

Stay the course

It's damn near impossible to end someone else's hunger when you are busy ending your own.

Eat when necessary
Dine rarely
Celebrate seldom

Unmixing words

Some people kill themselves all at once, but a lot of people just kill themselves a little bit more each day.

Maybe for themselves but maybe actually for the benefit of others.  Either way, self-death is better chewed then swallowed.

Your life, your dreams, your desires, are not more interesting than mine but given that they actually exist it's easier for me to focus on them.

And his, and hers, all of them.  Friends, family, co-workers - we do them the little good we can by offering our time because we know the answers they are looking for.  They're asking questions you asked decades ago, questions you answered years ago, questions you grew tired of right before they asked, questions you just can't answer anymore.

But my life, my dreams, my desires, are my secret.  I have to keep them so secret.

Desires of the flesh, I wish. I could slice open a hundred different fleshes and find only one person, the same person, each time. Lonely, tired, unheard, afraid, she has loved me for many years.  When she is not these things she does not love me, but when she is these things she finds me.

But all I could bring from the armory was more armour.  If I gave you ammunition you would shoot me down, and like I said I would rather chew on self-death first.

This isn't chemical

It isn't serotonin or vitamin D.  I've had plenty sun, and plenty sunrises.

This isn't because I couldn't star in the school play, or because my life has been harder than others.

This isn't because I am unable or unwilling to take the next step.

I don't know how.   I don't know how to tell each of you the words that will silence your confusion.   I don't know how to tell you what I've been meaning to say for years.

I don't know what else to say except I wish you came to me, my past.  I wish you came to me and reignited not the flame but the projector.  The slideshow of who I was to you.  Of who I was to myself.

I grow up insecure in love with my future self, fight for security and fall in love with my past self.

But again, this isn't chemical -  this isn't because I have aged or withered.

I feel this way because I want less of what I am and more of what I thought I would be.

I want, the next time you see me, to be the image of the man you know but the spit of the man only I know.

I want that meeting to be now, today, or soon.

Today's labour

It's hard to describe a pain you have felt when you're convinced nobody else has felt it before.  You search for the words that nobody has ever yet said about love lost and heartbreak but everything sounds like a love song. Everything sounds like something I've already heard before, and maybe that's because I only loved the way I've been taught.  I've cared, I've given advice, I've pour my heart out, I've cried, I've protected myself.  I've stayed too long and run away too quickly.  I've forgot to buy her flowers but I've purchased one too many.   I've hurt for days, looked for answers behind the window pane.  I've answered to whims and fancies and been punished by my own.  I've searched for truth in the past and worried endlessly about the future.  I've made myself fat with emotion and condemned my wealth of feeling.  And now, emaciated, I trust no fruit, I endeavor for no nectar.  

I garden with no intent to feast.  I plant seedlings of desire and hope they grow, but without tasting my own product will only be able to recognize a poor harvest.  Endlessly pruning, worrying about the strength of my vines rather than the sugars in my grapes.  And I pick my grapes at night so as to ease the process of production - but at night you cannot see the mold.  The lovely mold that makes the finest wines.  To see that you have to labour in the afternoon sun when free hearts run and everything is vibrant.  That's when I should out there, on my knees, caressing you with my hands, plucking you from your ground tether and filling my oak with you, only you.  Only you today, not tomorrow's you - that is another labour.  

I should look to describe today's love rather than yesterday's love lost.  I should describe the pain of today's labour instead of the pain of yesterday's.

Caxambu

The sun is for everyone.
Trees are for everyone.
Water should be

We believe this
But we don't fight to make this true
So what are beliefs

Dreams in private
Food for the asleep
Forgotten sentiments of the awake

Feet unable to move
With the steps of dance
Our minds learned in our sleep

Hearts unable to beat
To the rhythm we all share
And always have

What defrosts a frozen heart
And can it be
That which defrosts them all

Praia do dia para noite

There is a place out there beyond science and religion where eternal truths reside. This we almost all believe. This we almost always believed.  And each of science and religion have their shortfalls when it comes accurately describing this eternal realm, but that's okay, they're just descriptions after all.

When I describe something I know I never quite capture everything with my words. And when I take a picture it never quite tells the whole underlying story behind it.  The same can be said of our two despairing disciplines.  We're never so perfectly left without questions, by the prophecies and allegories of religion alone, that we come to fully understand God and Its purpose for us.  No matter how focused, how precise, how developed our scientific models become, our perspective on reality remains quite pixelated without an underlying narrative.

The truth that binds our disparate perspectives is that underlying narrative. Above religion is faith, above science is pure logic. Above logic and faith is truth. I am here, whether you calculate or believe me not to be is of no concern to the realm of truth.  That truth slips behind and beneath the static institutional pillars we exalt to try and describe existence, like water beneath clashing ice cubes. In time, naturally, the pillars will wither away and melt away into its true form. Or, if we continue to endeavor to freeze the truth into one large unified theory, we may one day do so, with no cracks or follies, but it will be no matter. We will never drink from the waters of truth that way, we will only separate ourselves from it or encase ourselves in it. 

This is the story of mankind, but also the story of each boy and girl.

You left me

You like me. You want me. You yearn for me. You would do anything for me. You love me. You can't live without me.

Where did all of that go?

Now I'm here alone, writing in the dark.

All you can see is my words.

Dark words shed light on nothing but the obvious.

But would you come see me in the light of the day?

Or do you prefer my shadow?

Easy

It's easy to write about everything that's going wrong.  Easier still while it is going wrong. Even easier when the dust hits the floor and you see the mess you have both made. The hard part is sweeping so you can see the well varnished floor. Wiping the mirrors to see your fresh reflection. Cleaning the pots pans and dishes so that the foul aroma of decaying leftovers can subside.  Making the bed and setting yourself up for slumber in an unfettered home, where the two of you can close your eyes together. 

Yes, the hard part is getting to eyes closed and heart open.

Cold breeze

I always felt as though the day that I die would be a cold windy day. When I was young I used to be extremely afraid of days that were sunny but with a strong wind because it was a reminder for me that after the warmest day there would only be colder days until finally that day when it was too cold to survive. 

So for the most part whenever that wind came I would look to the sky and beg for this to not be the coldest day. And that would work for most of the summer, but then the autumn would follow and the days would get even colder, and I thought to myself surely I have now come to the end of my life. 

So what would I be left with? At first nothing but fear. But then just as the overbearing inevitability of my demise loomed ever closer I would do to myself there's nothing left to do but to reflect. So I would, I would think about the warmer days - really hot days that we're almost so unbearable but I wish for the end. And more than that I would have a memory of that one cool breeze on the hottest day that would satisfy me in a way I don't think it's satisfied anyone else. Because not only did it cool my charring in under the hot sun, but it would be the one breeze that would make me feel as though God was touching me to sustain my existence, rather than as a reminder but he would take it away.

I don't know when I got over this fear exactly, to be honest I don't know if I got over this fear exactly. What I feel cold breeze right now, well, to be honest I'm so distracted with whatever is blowing away, whatever I need to hold on to, but I just don't have time to remember how afraid I am. I feel the breeze I still find myself taking the moment true remind myself but everything's okay or that it will be. And if I'm not doing alright I'm still receding into a pensive state where I'm not getting in touch with nature so much as I am getting in touch with my separation from nature.

Hiding

Are you so afraid
To dream the dream
I set before you

That you close your eyes
At night, and dream for
Less, only to find sleep

Aren't you now awake
Unable to find rest
Until the light pierces your lids

One, two, one two

Today is not
yesterday, I fear
it may be better

...

What a joy

To be heard

Truly heard

What a wonder

To be known

Before speaking

...

Overjoyed but currently overwhelmed

Listening to you speak I feel the pressure

Of being the man I felt I ought to be

When I met the woman I ought to be with

...

All that is past has already passed on

Dead, deceased, unable to speak to us

All they have left us are words

For us to do with as we may

Being angry at the past for not being in our present

Is like being angry with the dead for not living on

Even if they left us with a surmounting task
It is our job to give life to their best wishes

...

I don't deserve to wait

The mornings get harder each week and I'm not completely sure why.  I've come to admit that this isn't what I want to do with my life already, but that doesn't make me feel any more empowered to do what I want to.  The thing that I want to do with my life is also no secret, everyone is waiting for the day when I make the switch.  I can't, completely, for financial reasons - there is a life beyond my vocational pursuits after all.  Going half-assed isn't particularly difficult either.  I no longer bring my work home with me, and even when I do emotionally there's not much that needs to be achieved.  

The truth is I'm here making a vacation out of this adventure and I'm getting sick of the resort.  

You gotta take off the lifejacket if you want to swim the distance...

Raising the Sun

Once upon a time there was a young boy who loved the sunshine. He loved the sunshine so much that he wanted to see every minute of it.  So he woke up early one morning just before sunrise to see the beginnings. When the Sun rose he marveled in its greatness and said, "How wonderful it is to live beneath something so great as the Sun!"  

The little boy now now feeling ambitious decided that he wanted to be able to make the sun rise himself, so the next morning he woke up a little bit earlier and while it was still dark he yelled at the horizon saying, " It's time for you to rise, Sun."  The sun rose just the boy had requested and the boy was happy. He said to himself, "The Sun listens to me.  I love the Sun and I hate the darkness." 

So the next morning he woke up a little bit earlier and again he yelled at the horizon, "It's time for you to rise, Sun" and again the sun rose just the boy had requested.  The boy became overjoyed by his new power.  He thought to himself,  "I really love the Sun, I bet if I try hard I could make the sunrise whenever I want to." So each morning the boy would wake up earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier to make the sunrise at his command. 

Then one afternoon the boy thought to himself, "I'm done with the darkness.  Who needs it? Not me!  I'm going to get rid of every last drop of darkness.  He stayed outside in the field after everyone else had left for supper and right through the evening.  Then just as the Sun  had decided to set and rest for the night the boy said, "Now's the time to act, I'm going to beat this darkness forever."  The boy, barely able to even see the horizon in the night sky, yelled towards it and said "It's time for you to rise, Sun!"  But this time the sun did not rise.  The boy yelled again louder at the horizon, "It's time for you to rise, sun!" and again the sun did not rise. The boy tried again and again and again, but again and again and again the Sun did not listen to his cries. 

But the boy was determined to make the sun rise. So for hours on end the boys to their yelling at the horizon tell him the Sun to rise . The boy tried so hard to make the sun rise that he stayed up all night, and finally just before dawn the boy fell into a deep sleep, as he had been up all day and all night!   The boy slept so soundly that when the Sun rose for the boy he didn't even notice. 

The boy slept all day and did not wake up until after dusk. When the boy woke up, seeing that he was still in darkness, he was unsure what to do.  The boy thought to himself oh no, the sun has left me forever. He wasn't sure what to do so again he stayed up all night yelling at the horizon for the Sun to rise.  Just as before, the sun did not rise for his pleas.  Again the boy fell asleep just before dawn and again the Sun rose and the boy never saw it. And this happened again and again, day and night, for weeks and weeks, and the boy was sad because now he had gone several weeks without seeing his beloved Sun. 

Not only had he not seen the Sun in weeks, but he had not seen all the things he used to see under the Sun. All of the beauty or the world that he could see before in the sunlight was now dark and dim.  And the boy was afraid because he thought he had lost all of these things forever in the darkness. The boy had forgotten why he loved the Sun so much to begin with - not because he was able to control it, but because of all of the wonder the sun created which he could neither control nor explain.

Finally one night the boy had a eureka! He said to himself, "Oh no, the Sun has left me because I have yelled at it so much to rise."  So the boy decided, "This night I will change my tune!"  The boy decided that rather than trying to force the light instead this time he would close his eyes to the darkness, and so as night continued on the boy forced himself to sleep. Now since the boy's sleep was a little bit out of whack this was no easy task, He closed his eyes a little, but then he'd peak see darkness.  Not yet, he realized.  He'd close his eyes a little more, but then he'd  peak again and still see darkness.  The boy wanted to see the Sun so badly he became anxious again.  But this time he realized more quickly his folly.  He realized now he wasn't trying too hard to control the Sun, but he was trying too hard to control himself.  And so at last, under the dark night sky the boy felt the cool and calm of the ground beneath him.  He felt the stillness of the night and lost his fear that everything was going to be gone when he closed his eyes.  Midnight struck and the boy had finally fallen asleep.

The next morning the boy woke up and he was overjoyed. The sun had come back! The boy's friends were playing in the field not from the patch where he had been sleeping each day.  They came up to him and said Where have you been?  We've missed you!  Its been so long since we've seen you." And the boy became sad because he did miss them too, and he knew it was his fault for not seeing them for so long.  But the boy simply said "Friends, I'm sorry. I wanted so much to see more of the Sun so I spent the last little while raising it. But now I realize that what I want to see its more of everything under it.  And with that the boy looked at all of his friends glowing in the warmth of the afternoon and said,  "We still have some sun yet, who wants to play with me?" And the boys played all day until dusk.

Straw Men

How would you feel if you spent your whole life tearing down straw men?

Standing there in a field full of the world's fallacies: Science, religion, disorder, the individual mind.

Feet covered in straw as you gaze upon the horizon for the first time since you were young.  How would you feel to know that all of the truths you have encountered along your quest for knowledge were the dissemination of lies put in front of you, not by nature, not by mankind's collective ignorance, but by storytellers and misfits.

Today I saw the periodic table in 3 dimensions, crudely, via rounded paper.  We want to put so many truths down on paper, in 2 dimensions - right or wrong, black and white, peace and war, love and hate, atheist and theist - but we're never satisfied by 2 dimensions.  Neither is the periodic table.  Try it, cut it out and fold the edges together noble gases to the alkali, and you will see how god created the universe.  Not on a flat surface, but along the edges of a sphere.  God didn't intend for discrete edges of stop and start, he created his elements one after another in a cycle that spirals like a trek across the globe.  And how essential is the north pole of the periodic table, Hydrogen and Helium, the stars upon whom the rest of the globe, and our globe, is contingent.  Then the particles seem to break down around the equator, they decay, they have minute half lives.  I wonder if that is where anti-matters periodic table ends too, at the equator of the periodic table, and it mimics all that we know about matter in reverse.  Maybe there's a link between antimatter and radioactive decay which would explain why there's an equal amount of hydrogen antimatter in the universe but we don't see any of it reacting with hydrogen.  Maybe they can't, being on the true polar opposite sides of the universal periodic table.  Madness? Only if you'd like to continue tearing down straw men.  You want to believe that God came down and said, "I think I'll make this universe out of 4 forces."  You want to believe God likes to knit, so he packed away the stitchings of his creation into what 7 or so tiny dimensions we'll never see, but from our perspective all we can see is a warm cozy universe made of 3 dimensions, err 4 rather - can't forget about time. Nothing arbitrary about that.  The big bang proven, they say, because they found what they were looking for, quakes in the cozy fabric, wrinkles in the cosmic sweater, proving it was once washed in warm.

On they go, spinning us through the cycles of their ignorances and inadequacies.  And we, the people, are just supposed to follow suit and sift between their theories.  But not just the scientists - at least the scientists are actually trying to see the end of the universe.  And like with trying to see the end of the horizon, at least it has the positive byproduct of taking in the horizon.  Then there's your so called religions. You know the ones given to you by people who disagree.  You ever walk up to two children who have been fighting and ask them who started it? Do you ever get one answer? Does either child actually believe, let alone concede that the other person might be telling the truth?  You ever walk up to two religions who have been fighting and ask them who started it all?  Do you ever get one answer? Does either religion actually believe, let alone concede that the other religion might be telling the truth?  But you want to believe their fables. You want to believe that God only endows men with his message, and the only ones who have ever seen him are all dead.  You want to believe He needs woman, but only for her womb and otherwise only for her fragility. You want to believe that the many carry the responsibilities for the few, and that there was a spot of earth given to you by the one above for your feet and your feet only.  You would spill blood, spread animosity, create division, teach hate shrouded in self-love, all so that no man move your feet from your beloved earth-spot, forgetting entirely what feet are for.  You would actually convince yourself that God is as petty as you, concerning himself intently with race, creed, gender and heredity, any more than he did with any other living species, because in the grand scheme of things your bloodline's relative exposure to sunlight and atmospheric pressure is a big deal.  Worse still, you would reduce God to the devil, and only see his influence or his plan when things go wrong, instead of in every other moment that has been tremendously right.

You think God will bring upon you plague but not every moment of life.  You think he cares about your peace but leaves you to commit war.  You think think he gave you the benefit of a planet in balance when instead he gave you the responsibility to balance it.  You will die.  You will die on this rock and you will be forgotten.  You'll be remembered too, but then they will die and you will be forgotten.  Nobody will remember your voice.  Record it - that technology upon which a copy of the sonar vibrations of your vocal chords created were recorded, those too will perish.  The visual phenomenon of experiencing you will become shrouded in mystery and at best folklore.  Your scent is a fable, told each day in a new way, and tucked away into the stigmas and insecurities that held you back from certain liberties is yet another truth, very few will know your taste and touch. You think that you can knock this universe out of whack with your loudest thud but you won't so much as move this tiny globe any more than anyone before you.  You think you create disorder, to the system, to history, to your relationships, to the grand scheme, but you don't.  If disorder is all that you are after then it's safe to say that you don't even create.  All that manifests as a result of your activity will return back to the gentle stillness of universal cold.  The cold, by definition, is order, and is everywhere.

So who are you, beyond the sensory fiction you at best co-authored.  You think you make an impact on your own, but are you an impact without others?  We discussed the effect you have on this rock.  Carve your name in stone, bury yourself within the rock, do as you please, all of that is decay.  You are nothing without your effect on me.  And today I am awaken as to what is worth my movement.  Not your science, not your religion, your desire for disorder or pitiful belief that your mind is important.  Your mind is only a vessel to reach me and mine and the rest of us connected, should you choose to block yours off I will still reach the end of knowledge without you.  It wouldn't even be a detour for me anymore, you're not in my path.  I am done with the lies that have lead me to your vessel in the path.  Out there, likely as far from you as possible, spatially and mentally, is a whole other realm of truth.  You can't even conceive of it.  I'll admit, I hardly can either.  But I've started to.  I remember what my feet are for, and I've lifted them from this field of straw and am happy to see they have not atrophied.

This is not a good bye, just an I'm not here.

Along Four Shores

If I gave you an unlimited budget to travel to the most beautiful place in the world would you know where to go?  Or would you obscure my benevolent request in misguided sentiments, shovelling me grandeur about the beauty of your beloved?

If I begged you to bring me the most beautiful person you know, would you know where within their character to search? Or would you waste my time upon a specimen of overshadowed eyes and undershadowed iniquities?

Do you remember your happiest moment and why it was just that? Or have you lost all appetite for happiness save sensation?

If I asked you who you are would you describe yourself from the outwards in or from the innards out? Or better still from your identity to your thoughts or from your thoughts to your identity?

Would you know where to start if I asked you to journey any of these four great voyages? Or have you told yourself where the voyages end without having ever left the shores.

Let me tell you something

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you something you cannot tell me
Laying there without words and expression
With a thousand things to say and nobody to hear them

You see us and you worry
All this time we spend here looking over you
We should be out living life, making it as great as yours
You didn't work so hard to see us throw away so many precious hours

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, you have lived a great life
I don't have to tell you that for your benefit but for mine
I should know, before you go, that you are happy and regret nothing

You wish for all of us to go, go live our lives and leave you be
You'll be fine, we know, it's pretty comfortable where you are
But I know a secret; you love seeing all of us
Your pride and joy was seeing us grow, and you still get to now

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, you gave us everything we needed
Each and every day you worked so hard, and it worked
We are lucky, we were not left growing up without a father

You want to know that you gave us all the tools to survive, you did
You hope we remember everything you told us, we do
Because you can't tell us again, and again, and again, like you used to
What I wouldn't give to hear you tell me again, and again, and again

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, though I know you're not going to like this
I'm sorry, for all the times I disappointed you or made you worry
For any harsh words we shared and any secrets I kept from you

You want me to know I shouldn't carry a heavy heart
That all is forgiven now and already was before
And you're sorry too, for the same reasons
And for this too, you're sorry you didn't listen to us about your health

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, you're wiser than all of us
Nobody knows how many days they have saved up
But you know exactly how many days you have earned and spent, happily

You wish you could enjoy your time off now, but you never were good at that
You want to be able to hold us and kiss us but you can't
You want to see the weddings and the grand kids
But please don't fret or be sad, no happy father lives to see his child's every joy

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, though you're not going to see all of them
Your loving wife has given you today, what all wives give everyday
A chance to see a few more of life's miracles than you would have without her

You want us to take care of your angel because you can't now
And we will, we know it's different but we will try
You know her, she still wants to take care of us
So we'll take turns honouring you while we take care of each other

Let me tell you something, Papa
Let me tell you, because you can't tell me, that you're still here
Just as before, we feel you when you are in the same room and when you are not
But it's so much nicer when we are in the same room, so that's why I'm here

You want me here, just admit it, let's not waste time lying about it
Let's just sit here, you and I, watching your favourite dramas
And let me explain my dramas to you while you watch and ignore me a little
Let me tell you something more, Papa, I live for these moments with you.

--
You called me Beta and I never got to repay the gesture, I hope this is a good start.

Reader's Indigestion

Be gone sadness
You used to remind me
That something better awaits

Now you only remind me
Something worse once was

Why then do you linger?

Pushing Against Boundaries

Fly fly
Away from here please
You're not wanted
Not here

Here is where we work
Where we laugh on breaks
We don't play where we work
That's silly, and a bit boring don't you think?

You just want to take
Take take take
Never giving back
To the creators

I'm dying to know
What it feels like
To never know
But always yearn

Really, it seems swell
Daily pain
Instead of
Daily gain

No, not here
Not with me and my lions
We don't long for anything
It's ours, or it will be

We don't fear the in between
In fact, that's what we live for
Reminding ourselves
We're still here at the edge

We tip the scales
Of possibility
The only questions left
Is how much better we can get

In our lifetime
The only thing left
After dominating your kind
Is to teach our young likewise

So fly away from here
We will not follow
We cannot hear your chatter
From the edges of existence

Roadside Poems in the Act

Dare to feel.   Dare to feel today.

Feel yesterday in today

When today feels too hard, know today too will pass

When today feels amazing, breathe it in, honour it as it becomes a happy yesterday.

Feel tomorrow in today.

80s Child

It's the 80s again. Can't you see it? Another decade of bad music, fashion motivated by the gaudy, overt drug influence, big hair and fitness obsession, economic decline, an undefined youth waiting haplessly for the next cultural or technological revolution to free them from certain misery.

The only love songs are love lost.  All of art is pain, suffering or escapism. Life imitates art and so do corporations. Every corporation profits from our dissatisfaction, so ask yourself urbanite, how many times you've used the phrase 'the world' in a positive light. No, the economy is fueled by hipsters, and so are the airwaves.

Science is commoditized - get me more terabytes, faster, wherever I am. We beg for more info, but less content.  Your next favourite, lifechanging book is a smaller file than this week's #1 single, but have you made any room for it on your phone, tablet, laptop, weekly schedule, brainspace? Or did you use that bandwidth to power through that old TV series you knew wasn't all that great which is why you never made the time to watch it live in the first place. And we were born in that generation, we are 80s children. When we loved tv, we found the time to sit at the alter of entertainment because it was precious.

What's precious anymore? Do you fill up your weekends or use them? You ask yourself, and maybe even tell yourself, casually, what you would do with more time. But you already have it. Today! Everyday! Would you tell yourself what you would do with a million dollars if you had a million dollars? Don't blame the high-fructose diet, you insulated yourself.  It's easier to have a million dollars and tell yourself what you would do if you just had a billion dollars, than to make use of the million.  Well life is a lottery you've already won, of about 2.5 billion minutes. Enough time to go out there and prove the hipsters wrong and change two lives for the better - yours and someone else. 'The World' is on the buddy system, and if we all help 2 people today, things can be better before this decade ends.

2014 is possible

Possibility is described as a realm, and I'm a bit taken back by the accuracy of that descriptor - realm.  Don't you think of the universe when you think of the world realm?  All of the matter and anti-matter, or perhaps matter and energy, or matter and space, or us and God, the living and the eternal, or whatever duality serves you best?  Why not approach the realm of possibility the same way.

So focused on the impossible, but does that ever get us anywhere?  Depression, lamentation, struggle.  But we don't approach any other realms this way do we?  We're not searching through space to find out how vastly empty it is.  We're looking for one, just one, other planet like ours.  So in the realm that is made up of the duality of possible versus impossible why do we suffer the impossible? Why do I?  Why work so hard to be convinced that something is possible only after thoroughly understanding that it can't be impossible?  Imagine sniffing around the outer atmospheric layer, scanning from pole to pole, to determine that indeed, there is no space here, this is a planet.  In fact, funny thing about space, we never seem to consider it at all until we're running out of it.

So I'm approaching life differently this year.  In the realm of possible versus impossible, I am no longer trying to remove the impossible.  Most realms are zero-sum, so I'm going to test if this one is.  To decrease the impossible, simply increase the possible.  There are things that I just can't find the time in a week (or month or year) to do.  Now, I do a little bit of it every day.  Every single day.  They say, or someone said at least, that what you do everyday matters infinitely more than what you do some of the time.  I think the math is simple there; do something 365 times for even 10 minutes, and you will have done it for, 60 hours.  And did it take longer than 60 hours for you to learn how to ride a bike, drive a car, learn to write, converse plainly in a new language, play your first scale on the piano, lose 5 pounds, read a life changing book, allow yourself to fall for that person?   And this is just the beginning. 10 minutes a day.  Why, I could dedicate one hour a day to 6 things, and put in my 60 hours each, and at the end of the year have 6 new basic literacies.  A pretty good start for novelties.  That Outliers book says that you need to dedicate ten thousand hours to anything to become an expert at it.  But in the meantime, couldn't we dedicate one thousand hours to 10 things to become an amateur at it?  And when you are an amateur at 10 unique things, aren't you only then entitled to determine which one is for you?  To decrease the impossibility of finding out the thing that you want to do the most in life, increase the possibility of there being that thing.  Keep increasing the possibilities, keep doing new things, more new things, everyday. Every single day.  In fact, like space, don't concern yourself with the impossible until you're running out of it.  Until you're jam packed with possibilities and have a population problem, you are not entitled to concern yourself with the impossible.

And life doesn't need to be scattered as a result.  Matter finds a way of coming together as it should.  In time I predict I'll have three or four things that I dedicate an hour to each day, three or four things I can call myself a true novice at by the end of this year, and a dozen other things I put my 60 hours into so  that I'm left with a feeling of happiness to know that I've broadened my horizons, 12-fold.  Imagine each year telling yourself you learned how to do 12 new things.  20 minutes a day at 6 things, for half a year, and then a new 6 things staring in June.  All it takes is two hours.  Seems impossible though, doesn't it? Who has two hours?  I need time for all my bad habits!  Having trouble with bad habits, btw? Easy, don't pay their impossible removal any mind.  Want to decrease bad habits; increase good habits, and you'll simply not have time for the bad ones.

So this is my modus.  The above is how I think 2014 will differ from the years preceding, and why I think it is possible.

Nothing to say

I write my best when I have nothing to say. No point to prove, no theory to falsify.  All of that is quite boring, and it has made it harder for me to finish what I started years ago.  I lost sight of this but I can get back to it now.

There's a reason for this.  When I'm trying to prove something, I know I can never write something as pure and sublime as the underlying truth that makes it true in the first place.  All I really want, in my human endeavour towards truth, is to experience it and be able to describe it.  That's far less ambitious and far more palatable for an audience - a mere description of truths experienced rather than a nagging reminder that the truth is more than you think.

And this explains a lot about my motivations that I couldn't understand before.  Why I cringe at the idea of applying for my masters in philosophy, but remind myself bi-weekly that's what I want to do when I'm 40.  I don't really want to do that until I'm in touch with a deeper layer of life truth.  That's why I didn't go straight into that career.  That's why I wanted to write first and foremost.

Sensations require words, the rest of the universe does well enough with mathematics.

But there are no sensations without experience.  And I don't doubt that I have experienced the many fictions that swim in my head.  These feelings are not neurons.  But with these experiences of the mind that I embark to put in print over the next 2 months and onward, I need to give myself to them.  Certain experiences, perhaps all experiences that are a benefit, require your permission to truly affect you.  For the next little while, it's signal through the noise, as I give myself to my thoughts.