Between Now and the Future

It feels as though you're a stranger who means more than a stranger to me. You're a memory of a memory, hanging somewhere in the ether space between reality and dreams, the past and the present; irreconcilable.

It feels as though I've lost you, but I'm not sure I ever had you. Our entire relationship was formed between "hello" and "goodbye" and somehow has persisted past those boundaries. Conversation came naturally and flowed, the mellifluous words gliding off our tongues and dissolving into the air between us to the cadences of our laughter. Though the multitude swarmed around us, we took no notice of them as they passed, like two rocks, steadfast despite the raging rapids.

In retrospect, we stood together for less time than I thought, and yet it feels as though I took more from that brief meeting than I have taken from the friendships I've had for years. Camaraderie bound us in an instant and careless laughter rose from us almost immediately, and we settled into a casualness, as though we'd been striking up conversations with each other for years.

Perhaps we have nothing in common, but that did not at all impede our banter. I was entranced by your presence and captivated by your voice and the accent which bespoke of exotic places and patchwork summer meadows held together at the seams by low stone walls. I cannot speak for you, but you must have recognised something within me that held you to our conversation. Why else the chat about things that differed from your original purpose?

It may have only been a short talk, but in those ten minutes, I grew into myself as a person. I held myself taller, straighter, and with more confidence. As we stood on the pavement among the city crowd, I no longer felt like a bumbling teenager who did not fit properly into her own skin but like an adult who'd long since outgrown the awkwardness of their limbs and long since resolved the dilemma of their place in the world. I felt as though I'd gained a level of sophistication, that we'd reached an equal footing where countries and ages and positions didn't matter, because we were simply two people laughing away on the footpath. And for the first time, I felt that I had the potential of a seductress, as though I was possibly good enough for someone to be interested in a way people had never been interested before. After all, who looks at the girl in the shadows?

As quickly as it came, it just as quickly passed, for though we were enjoying our conversation, we each had to continue our separate ways. And so it ended with a smile, a handshake and an "it was nice to meet you." I walked away with pride and satisfaction, and a warmth that spread from my chest outwards. I still wonder if you looked after me as I left, hoping that we'd meet again, the way I hoped. I did not look back because I was already looking forwards. I wonder if you too hope that we shall meet again.

A Question of Security

I sit down to write, but I stare into space, unsure of which words to grab from the maelstrom that is my mind. Whirling through at gale force speeds are conspiracies, theories, longings, paranoia and vulnerability. And today I can't quite be sure which one to write about. There's fear and uncertainty about my place in this world and how secure I feel in it. Paranoia keeps me wondering whether I could have compromised my personal safety in some way. In this world of instant information and lax security on identification, it can be all too easy to succumb to the trap of a predator. Sharing something as simple as your name can lead to someone entering your life through the back door; present and unwanted.

The sick feeling in your gut subsides a little when you think it through, but then returns when you realise how easy people are to track these days. There are windows into your life everywhere; a photo here, an account with something there, and you never know who could be watching. Can mentioning your name to someone over the Internet lead to them tracking you down in person? You ask yourself whether anyone would really bother, and whether anyone would really hound you in such a way. You think not, and then all those stories come floating to mind; people who were just like you, enticed and seduced, so innocent, and then destroyed.

In this world of easy access, security is just an illusion.

Beautiful Tragedy

There are those things which are full of immense beauty and a terrifying depth of tragedy. They reach out and strike us in ways unforeseen, brushing against the emotions we didn't know could be brought to life by such things, and we tremble, unsure whether we are comforted by the beauty, or whether we are merely borne onwards on the tides of tragedy.

Fragility keeps us captivated, drawing us into the grief, the sadness, and the sense of secret places, of loneliness, delicacy; the beauty of the broken hearted. We allow ourselves to be torn and scratched and marked with helpless abandon, for nothing else in our existence can touch us in the same way. Unbidden the tears form in our eyes, and we weep, silently, with more grief that we thought could be summoned. We fear that the sounds of our anguish will break the spell of pulchritude, that instead of seeing something fragile shatter, we shall unleash unprecedented chaos and succumb to terror. For though we dwell in that beautiful sorrow, it bears forth no horror, induces no fear; we are allowed to only feel empathy. Should we sever that connection, we lose that sense of delicacy and we are forced to experience the woe in a manner too painfully, too realistic, for it shall no longer carry within it that beauty.

Thus, silently, observing, and yet feeling everything, we witness the passing of something fragile. And the red breasted robin looks on, curious, the vines grip the wall ever tighter, the rusted iron wrought gate shuts without its normal squeal, and the sun hides behind the clouds, afraid to peek from behind its makeshift curtain, lest it devastate the heartbreaking scene with its rays of happiness. In those moments, we are infinite and minuscule, and tall, proud, but completely broken. And in those moments, we live forever. In those moments, we are the universe.

Silence Is Painted Blue

You padlocked the door, leaving me on the outside, confused and lost, without the slightest notion of where to head next. So I sat right looking with hope at the door, maybe you would open it again. You didn't, and I'm still completely locked out. Somehow I don't think you'll ever open that door to me again.

At some point I realised I must stop sitting where you left me, for I was wasting my life away there, growing older and colder and no closer to you. So I wandered, full of fear and uncertainty, and though I try to leave, I cannot bring myself to move completely out of sight of that door, because somewhere, deep in my heart, I still hold that spark of hope that someday you may need me and opening the door, you'd look at me and invite me back to help you. It's the most improbable thing in existence, and yet, improbable isn't impossible.

But if you care to listen for a moment, you'd realise the desolation you left me in. If you quiet down for just a moment, you'd hear it: silence. My world is the world of silence, and it's painted blue. I'm going to wander into the blue; that place from where I shall be irretrievable. Ready?

Scent of the Future

Could you stand by and watch while the whole world burns? When the flames leap up and tear apart everything you've ever known, are you merely going to stand there and watch?

Should you not instead stand at the head of your generation, leading them into the future, into a world where they won't have to live in fear of the sky burning? Emancipate them all from the fear, from the thoughts that chained our ancestors. The time has arrived for change; the very wind brings the scent of a different future, letting it waft through the empty halls and chapels, through our hair, through our hearts. We must recognise it, identify what needs be done, and stand up and do it. The world is not as egalitarian as we would like to believe, though it is in our power to put it on the path of equality. Who is going to be brave enough to grasp the future in their fist and pull it towards us?
Will it be you?

Did you know it could be you?

Those Who Hurt

Can one person save the world?
I wonder.
One person can save a life. Indeed, one person can save many lives. But can one person save every life? Or is that too impossible a task?
They are only the rarest of rare days when everybody who goes to sleep at night was everybody who woke up in the morning. Too often people are lost, disappeared into the dark, the place which the living cannot visit, though they might try.

And those who hurt rub the blade against their skin, leaving behind a fine line, for a few seconds invisible, until the break begins to fill with blood.
And those who hurt hold a flame to their skin, flinching as the flesh burns, but yet remaining steadfast, immovable until the patch is red raw and the pain becomes unbearable.
And those who hurt do not allow a morsel of food to remain within their bodies, starving themselves because they do not see themselves as beautiful, starving until they become loose flesh hanging on a visible skeleton and all vestige of beauty has wasted away like their body.
And those who hurt weep, allowing the hot tears to run down their faces until their eyes become dry and bloodshot, and they cannot cry anymore.
And those who hurt cry out, waiting for someone to recognise their distress and lead them to the salvation they have been hoping for.
And those who hurt smile, and laugh, and joke. And lie.
And those who hurt hope; they hope that someone will see the mask and will gently pull the fake visage off their face and expose the true one below, and then will hold them, and love them, and cure the loneliness, drive away the horrific memories and show them that there is beauty in this world.

So tell me, did you recognise the pain in your friend's eyes, did you notice the fake laugh, did you realise that it wasn't a joke after all?
Did you save someone's life today?
Because sometimes those who hurt leave us, and fall into the darkness, and the world loses another day of which it could have boasted that everybody lived.

Born of Darkness to Burn

You all just stood by and stared as my whole world was torn asunder. The rift that was created in the fabric of my reality bleeds into what's left of my life, spilling over my broken pieces and creeping into my depths. I've tried to dig through it all, to something brighter, something better, but here I'm stuck, in a rut I can't break out of. Senses dulled to the feelings of reality; I can feel no sting, no hurt, no joy, no bliss. Numb to everything; this is no existence. No, I can't take, I can't take this numbness anymore. Must stop to save my soul. Can't fake it, no, don't think everything's as it seems - we can't fake it anymore. Need the guitar to wake me from this nightmare, and pull me deeper into its sweet intoxication.

Need to create myself a cure, need to bleed to find the answer. Too far gone for tears, too far gone for fears. I need to save me. I'll find me a stage, I'll grab me a microphone, I'll make them listen; make them cower, make them cry blood. Raise my voice and make myself heard. Scream the things which weigh on the soul, in the shadow that is heavier than I can bear. Can someone who drowns in their own tragedy make something of themselves? I wonder if you could bear the weight either.

Find me a place where I'll forget my name, forget that goddamn dragging weight. Tired of feeling faithless, tired of being a disappointment, but tied now to that expectation. I'm painfully aware of all the things I do, of all the things I don't feel, and all the things I do. Too aware of how I'm not what others hoped for. Forgive me, or forgive not, I care not at all, but don't keep here. I need to find something to live for, before I become a living corpse, a shadow of a person, of a soul. That question of what I live for haunts, terrifies, goes unanswered. It screams and shouts from within me. It hates, it hurts, it stains and it holds you in its iron grip, making you writhe in pain and wonder why the hell it chose you.

If I can live for the night, for the seduction of the darkness, for the heavy guitar chords ringing through the fibres of my body, intoxicating me, I will. It's a love affair I am willing to risk being exposed. I need to find my place, my empty public place and make it fill with people, make it my private place, and have the courage to sing what I can't say, to expel my panic into the night, and express my lusts, my needs, my pain, my grief. For screaming it out loud is the only time I feel alive. I need something that'll change my life forever. Is the dawn going to bring it? I can't live with the hurt that still shames, I can't live with the grief that still blames. And if it means that I won't ever sleep, than so be it. It's better to burn out and fizzle than to go unnoticed at all.

Music is the saviour of the soul. It will be the saviour of my soul. If it's the only thing I can grab to lead me to salvation, then it is the path I am going to take. I can only hope that Fate will be merciful and lead me to what I need.

Find the Shore

Could we wander these streets forever? What happens when familiar ways become too familiar? When dreams become dreams? Are there ways to recognise what you truly want in this life?

If I spent a lifetime wandering, I'm not sure whether I would be able to rummage through the dark chest my mixed feelings and grab the one of the many that I feel for sure. It's too difficult to be certain; it's too easy to live in uncertainty. The chaotic maelstrom of emotions are a refuge, a safe harbour - familiar. To venture out to discover the truth is daunting, in a way only blue skies can be. Some ships are definitely destined to never set sail, and not all those which cut loose their moorings return to port. Yet one cannot live spending a lifetime shut away from the fears of living. And one cannot progress when each step is a step into the fog.

I'd like for someone to live in my skin, to understand the muddled mess of my mind. I wonder if anyone would be able to make any sense of it. Take a feeling from the storm, mould it in your hands, make it the shape it's supposed to be. Show me the colours through which my life could turn. Tell me whether it's lust or love, confusion or worry, fear or laziness. Explain the weariness, take it away. Show me the path of happiness so that I may follow it. Let me not lie and while the days away.

When does being a dreamer become dangerous?
Is it when you create a life away from the nightmare, a life steeped in music and poetry and beauty, and the seduction of pain?
Is it when you face reality with only a dull notion of what is real and what isn't?
Is it when you are so tired of the way life progresses that you sleep your whole way through?
Is escapism the ultimate doom?
Is the only way to live to die and be born again?

True Beauty

And oft I've wondered whether we can truly feel beauty, whether we can experience it. They are rare moments that will fill us to the brim, and continue to fill until we overload, and it all comes splashing out the sides. But those moments happen.

On the most fortunate of days, and the most rare, something will brush against our very heartstrings and make them vibrate with an energy, familiar, and yet strange; the energy of true beauty. It resonates within us, filling, and filling, until we can longer hold any more. Then you find that tears are leaving trails along your face, and that your heart wants to leap out of its cavity in your chest and melt into the world. You find that you want to shout the feeling into the world, but cannot find the words to express the emotion that has taken hold of you. All at once you find that you are removed from the world, and still so intrinsically linked. You feel connected to everything, and still separate as yourself. You want to take the hands of all around you and draw them into the experience.

Beauty is love. Love is beauty. It is not everlasting, but powerful - the most powerful thing a person can experience. And you will sing, and you will laugh, but mostly, you will cry. For, true beauty makes you weep.

White Knight

I'd love a white knight. I think that sometimes, we all need one to save us from our woes. There is, however, an issue here: the white knight cannot always save you the way you need them to. They too are only human. But for a moment, for one shining, glorious moment, they give you hope, they show you a vision of the way things could be. So you aspire to that. It's not always easy, it's rarely ever simply granted, but must be worked for, and the victory is all the sweeter for that.

It was a flash of how much I was missing out on in life. I met you and you talked about the military, about your training, though you never went on to serve, and I realised that there was so much out there; things I was not experiencing because I was cloistered among the same four walls I had stared at since childhood. I wonder if I am whiling my life away in a useless stupor because I never do what I want to do. You've skydived, you've moved your life to another country and you work for charity; I don't have a thing to compare against that, nothing at all.

Then there was the film. Sometimes a story is just a story, but sometimes, in fact, more often than not, a story is a message. This one said, 'you cannot achieve perfection by repressing parts of yourself, but by embracing all aspects of your personality.' Is that what this is? Am I repressing some part of myself because I'm afraid of embracing it? The truth: yes, I think so.
It's strange how events, people, films, artworks, can all leave a deep, and different impact on you, all on the same day. It's as though all the threads of your life are revealing themselves to you through these things, showing you the things that are wrong, and those that are right within your life. You know it's a sign when you stare at the theatre screen, scared to watch, but helpless to tear your eyes away, because what you see is a reflection of yourself, filmed and projected onto a screen for people to see. The situations are different, the extremity of the case also differs, but you recognise that person all the same; you recognise the patterns, the hate, the obsequious attitude, the anger - the need to be more than what you are.

Then, somewhere along the way, you realise how alone you are. Those you thought would be there for you, aren't as close as you hoped. In fact you were closer with him, with a stranger for a few moments than you were with them, even after a few hours. You grow sullen, though they don't notice, passing it off as another of your moods, but in truth, you were happy before they made you realise that they wouldn't be there for you the way you hoped they would be. You shrug it off, what else can you do, and keep going forward with your life, but staying stationary all the same.

But I keep thinking that I'd like to see you again. You were nice, you were amusing, handsome, obviously charitable, and you made me feel, for the second time in my life, as though I wasn't being overlooked. But I lied to you. I'm sorry, I regret it, but it was the nicest way I could think of saying goodbye and not being forced into something I don't want to do. My way is not to help people financially, but in person, by labour, by support. Forgive me that my way is not your way. So I lied to not have to do things your way. But you were still gracious, and polite, after all, we'd had a conversation about something completely different most of the time. And you remembered my name. That counts for everything. I do have to thank you, because though you made a small impact on me in a day of impacts both large and small, it will be a lasting one, nevertheless.

So yes, I'd like a white knight to show me the way I'm supposed to be going. Or rather, I know the way, I just need help starting down that path. Encouragement, support and help would all be a gift. Inspiration was today's gift.

Hiatus, Return

Long ago, so long ago, there used to live a girl who often sat in the dark and wrote. She would compose endlessly, the words flowing through her and onto the page, out into the world where the wind would snatch them away and take them to the the furthest corners of existence. One day there came a storm; it whipped the pages from her hands, it stole all her words, and flung them far far away.

The lonely girl stood, and watched as the wind scattered all the friends she had ever known and resolved that she would trek until she gathered them all together again. For a long time she travelled, for a long time she wandered, for a long time, she was not sure what would become of herself. And in that time the urge to write would overwhelm her, and she would fling herself onto the ground and weep, for she had nothing with which to record her thoughts. And very soon, the words began to leave her, seeing that there was no escape through that girl.

Slowly, so very slowly, she collected all those far flung sheets of paper, she dusted them off, and she bound them into a book. Often she would flip through that book, and be astounded with what she found there - words that she did not remember having written, words that were beautiful and haunting, which danced and wept and sang and grieved. She could not believe that such things could have come from her mind, could have been formed by her hand across the pages. But it was true; all those pages were memories and feelings, scrawled or carefully traced, and all that was written had meaning.

Always did she keep that book with her. Sometimes she would read it, but more often than not, she would merely thumb through the pages, glimpsing snatches of things that were. She was glad for having found all that she feared she had lost, for those words bound her to a time when she was a different person. Thus she dubbed the volume The Book of a Girl Who Was.

Then one day, absentmindedly stroking the cover of that book, she came to the realisation that the words she thought had fled, had slowly begun to return; they whispered in her mind, the background noise to her thoughts, which would sometimes be heard clearly, other times, be a mere presence, shadowy and insubstantial, but ever there. She let them come. She took her pen, found a fresh sheet of paper, and began to inscribe the phrases which turned in her mind. By the end of the first session, she had looked down upon her work and found that it was different from what she had written before, and yet, all the same, it was strikingly familiar. With a smile she put aside that paper and began another, and another after that, filling sheet after sheet. Then she stood back and laughed, a melodious sound that uplifted her heart. For it was that she had placed aside The Book of a Girl Who Was, and began composing another volume. This new book, she could see was an amalgamation of several books, all intertwining and growing as one: the books of The Girl Who Was, The Girl Who Is, and The Girl Who May Come To Be.

In The Heart

If I looked into my heart, I'm not sure what it is I would find. Too many times does the heart yearn for things unsaid and unknown, too many times does it go unheeded. Too many times do we miss what we most need. We are then left to wander, lost, alone and unaware of what went wrong.

If I was to look at myself in the mirror, and try to discern what kind of person I really am, I'm not sure what I would conclude. I fear the darkness overcomes any beauty that I might possess, if indeed I possess any at all. I fear that all the things that once made me into the person I am were stolen, torn and scattered in the wind, and that I am left empty, a shell, ready to be filled again, but unsure of what things to pour into the new creation of myself.

But perchance, I would look, and I would find what I least expected; the universe spilling through me, ready to be touched, brought forth, and distributed into the world. Perhaps that is all I could hope for.

Laughter

I enjoy making you laugh and hearing the sounds filtering through the walls and settling over the books like a layer of dust. It makes a dark place seem a little brighter. Your laughter creates little bursts of colour that explode among the shelves, and though they bring strange looks, I would not change it for the world. There's nothing better in life than knowing that you make someone laugh; for what is a day without laughter?

Death of a Dream?

 Somehow I think I was not meant for this, and yet I cannot bring myself to let it pass me by. I cannot yet wave goodbye to something it took me so long to try grab. And now it is almost within my grasp. Though I cannot give the colours the right burn, or the figures the right reflections, I still cannot help but want to try again. I want to grasp it and hold it tightly. But when is it time to acknowledge the death of a dream?

This is the same as I have felt before. The idea that someone cannot be close enough unless their heartbeat can be felt through the layers of cloth that separate the two bodies. It's a longing for unity with an art form. For what is the use of an unattainable dream? Is this one perhaps unattainable for me after all? Only time will tell, but I should not wish to waste that time when I could be doing something else that suits me far better. I'd never noticed that decisions could be so hard before. I'd never noticed that reaching for your dreams could be so confusing. I'd never noticed that realising which is your true dream could be so hard.