Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Fall

Suddenly there seems to be a mass of swirling, dancing, morphing colours in the sky again, beckoning and tempting me. "Fall," they whisper, but I'm too afraid to obey, but I hear, again and again, the call, a whisper, then a shout, a breath, then a clamour. They want to drag me into their light, into their pulsating heart and drape me with colours beyond the imagination. They want to place me in the sky, where everyone can see me, but I'm too afraid. I don't want to be seen, to be known, not forever, not the way they want to immortalise me. I'm afraid of climbing all the way to the top and being vulnerable, only for you to shoot me down when you shatter my fantasy. It's a long, long fall from the top. I'm just not ready to risk glory for my life. I'm not ready to be seduced.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Secrets and Walls

There are more secrets here than stories. Among us 5 people, there are more walls than there are in the house we live in. None of us really know what's going on in each other's lives. None of us really care. I'd rather hide my true face behind a façade than expose myself to them. I can't be that vulnerable, I can't explain everything; I know they wouldn't take it very well, and I'm afraid of being shown the door. I may not love them as I should, but at least they provide food and shelter. I would not fare so well without them. At least not for the moment. But I know I definitely cannot stay here forever. My sanity wouldn't hold up - already there are cracks, as I'm sure you've seen. If I stay longer than necessary, then my sanity may end up being devoured by madness. I don't want to spend the rest of my life among 4 walls which never change, and visits from doctors to see how I'm faring on another day. So yes, while I may be using these people, it's a means to an end. And it won't last forever, I'll make sure of that.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Heartbeat

Feel my heartbeat. Someone, please. Is it still there? I thought I felt it stop, its last beat a flutter, unheard and unnoticed. Isn't that the way heartbreak always goes? It lingers in the shadows, it battles in the darkness; the face hides what the heart feels. We don't want them to know: our own personal conspiracy.

No wait, what was that? Please listen to it again. I'm sure I thought I felt it pump one time more. I saw something and it echoed the emotion with its hollow ventricles. A false alarm? Oh, I'm sorry then for wasting your time. It seems I do nothing but waste people's time - their time and my emotion. I get caught up in the excitement of my own fantasies as they play across the cinema in my mind, but spend too little time here in reality, seeing that my fantasies aren't even based on a grain of truth. My escapism is only escapism only because it is so far removed from what is happening in my life. It's exhausting, this double life of mine. I just need someone to bring me back to reality, and prove to me that it can be more worthwhile than dreaming.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Wasting Time

I spent all of my time dreaming, hoping I would catch a glimpse of you. And now I'm the one who pays for all that wasted time, because you didn't come back, you weren't thinking of me like I was thinking of you. I just have a heart painted with scars, and an empty book of all the things I should have been doing while I was thinking of you. You seem to have disappeared into a foreign place, and I can't speak the language. Instead of doing what was required of me, I was here, staring at the sun, hoping that it would burn the image of you forever into my retinas. It's too late now, isn't it? You're gone, and I'm here, and you're living and I'm dreaming, you're fine and I'm irreversibly scarred. That's ok, I'll be fine. I'll wear the scars to remind me of the things I should have spent my time on instead.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Sleep and Work

How tiring it is to have to work all the time. Too soon your eyes begin to itch and the eyelids begin to close, and you must blink repeatedly to stay awake. Concentration slips and everything blurs in and out of focus; you forget what you are looking at, it doesn't make any sense. Your brain isn't getting enough oxygen, and your mouth is open in a perpetual yawn, trying to fill its needs. The bed calls to you, enticing you, tempting you. You look at it from the corner of your eye, remembering its soft feel, its warmth and comfort, but then you wrench your gaze back to the paper before you. The pen in your hand feels heavy, it's impossible to keep it upright. Your writing looks like scribble, an illegible scrawl that you shall have to decipher later. And you know you can't go to bed, not yet. There is too much do be done. Should you leave it, the work would still be there tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that too. It will keep mounting higher, the piles drowning you with their weight. So you soldier on, pushing through the boundary of sleep which tries to impede you, and you try to finish.

Dawn breaks and the light filters through the slats of the Venetian blinds, filling the room with a pale glow. The light finds you hunched over your desk, pen still in hand, glasses askew and cheek glued to the paper you were working on. You should have just gone to bed after all.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Yet Again

Gut clenches, nails dig into palms, bile rises and eyes sting. You've realised it all over again: there isn't anybody to care.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Now and Then

In my quiet moments I'll be still and with some timidity, let my thoughts float back to you. Only in this perfect solitude will I allow that freedom, only when I'm truly alone. Those thoughts are still painful, it's true, but that pain is tempered by sense, a realisation that things happen the way they do for good reason. All they said about things moving on was true, and yes, I'm fine, I've got myself, I've got those who care to stick by me, and the world progresses like it always did, only without you in the centre of the picture; somehow you've moved to the periphery, present, but blurry, a ghost, or a shadow, felt but not noticed. Maybe one day you won't be in the picture at all.

Maybe one day a lot of things will happen. Maybe I'll stop feeling you when you aren't there. Maybe I'll forget what your hand felt like in mine. Maybe I'll walk away with my clothes covered in the smell of someone else's cologne. Maybe one day I won't think of you anymore.

But not yet. As yet, I still remember what all of that felt like. I still remember the warmth of your body next to mine in the dark, I'll remember the things we laughed at, the things we fought over, the tears we cried, and the way we timidly loved. Oh yes, I remember, but I don't let that control the way my life heads anymore, I simply recall, revel in it for a few moments of loneliness and solitude, and then throw myself into the next thing to forget. But we'll know the truth, you and I, it'll be our secret, because we know that every now and again, I think of you.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Vandalism Vs Art

You can call it what you like, all I have to say is that I've made up my opinion and I'm going to stick with it. This time my stance is unchangeable. I know I've wavered in the past, but not this time. For you see, it's infused a lifeless place with colour, with personality, and who could hate colours when the rest of the world is brown and grey? Who could hate something that takes you from the reality of your setting and throws you into something else with more vigour, more life?

So yes, go ahead, call it what you like: vandalism, crime, a disgrace, but it is what it is. And I say it's art. Fabulous, overwhelming, dizzying art.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Outsider

Who are you that you sit apart from the world, mind wandering through distant realms? Who are you that no one talks to you when they pass by? Who are you who gazes but never sees? Who are you that you can talk to strangers but never to your own friends?

Are you missing something in your life that you do not engage with the world the way you ought? Are you afraid of something? Are you waiting for something? Are you sure you're going to find it? Are the answers to your unasked questions waiting just around the corner?

Do you want to know the truth? Do you think you can handle what life has to throw at you? Do you believe that everything that happens to you is everyone else's fault? Do you really? Do you think you can escape it by burying yourself in books and images of beautiful things? Do you think immersing yourself in someone else's creation is going to subdue your own urge to create? Do you think it's going to subdue you're desire to destroy? Do you think people are going to be able to hear you when you don't say a word?

Is there something you can do for yourself? Is there somewhere you can go? Is there something you can see which can inspire you to drag yourself from the tumult of shadow that you've thrown yourself into? Is there something worth living for?

The truth is, you are lonely, so you sit apart because you find that no matter where you go, no place every feels like home. People talk to you, but soon they lose contact, because you never encouraged it, you never reached out. Sitting in your shell of a self, you wait for others to try find you, but you never want to start the journey to find them. You would rather sit alone than be with them. You watch as everything passes by, but your eyes are glazed over, watching the world but not noting anything that happens. The only time you observe the detail is when you have a pencil in your hand and the blank page of a sketchbook before you. And even then, it is only you and your subject, nothing else matters because nothing else exists. And when someone talks to you, you smile and laugh and play along with the conversation, because they are there for the moment; a stranger who has stopped to talk. And you know, within the next few minutes, or hours, whatever it may be, that person will walk out of your life and you will never see them again. You think this wonderful; it is all moment and never relationship. You never could maintain relationships. You always rather watch them crumble to dust. It's much more poetic to be on the fringes.

You miss many things in your life. You do engage with the world, just not the way others do. People think it strange that you prefer not to be with other people, that you feel nothing for their pain, feel nothing for their joy. But they do not move you; never has a person in your life brought you to tears for their kindness or for their beauty, instead the smallest of things, like the final raindrop clinging to the tip of a leaf are what make the tears roll down your face. You live your life in the overlooked moments, in the inbetween. You are afraid that people will only hurt you, for so far, that's all you've ever experienced at another's hands. You are afraid that should you allow yourself to feel for another, something will happen and you will be left behind, another notch in a piece of wood, tiny and meaningless. If you're going to let someone mean the world to you, the only thing you want in return is for you to mean the world to them, and you fear that is never going to happen, so you don't let it get that far. Though you question it sometimes, you're never going to let yourself bring down the barrier long enough to find out the answers that no one knows you're looking for.

You don't think that your shoulders are strong enough to bear the pain that life will inevitably hurl at you with a vengeance for all the years you staved it off; you may never have been truly happy, but you were not depressed for the most part either. Sometimes you blame the loneliness on other people, after all, is it not they who overlook you? But you understand that it is your fault as much as theirs. They only react to your actions, or rather, your lack thereof. So to keep the thoughts of that loneliness at bay, you keep yourself occupied in books, in other worlds where people always overcome their problems, where they are always tough, where they always find what they are looking for, where they always live happily ever after. And you lose yourself in beautiful things: in art, in photography, in the things which touch your soul. Because they are the things which keep you bound to reality, however meagrely. All the while you never speak to anyone, a mere presence, and no one knows how you weep when you want to create but things never come out as you envisaged, and how you long to destroy, and you weep because it goes against propriety and you feel you shall burst at the seams for keeping it in all the time. You don't want them to care, so you don't tell them.

Of course you could be the cure for everything you feel is wrong. There are things you can do, people you can see, or talk to, or be with, but you feel that they don't have a permanent place for you in their lives. And so you don't bother. The things which inspire you shall continue to inspire you, but you shall bear no fruits of that inspiration, merely riding the wave until it breaks against the shore of reality. Of course, you say, there are things worth living for. But nothing worth fighting for. Nothing worth dying for. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Cut Open the Sky

I had it in my hand, within my very grasp, and then somehow, something imperceptibly changed and it was gone. I lost it before I could make a memory, and the only thing I have left to hold on to is the feeling that I had it, that split second before it disappeared. Even now I've forgotten the weight on my tongue - those words that melted into oblivion before I got the chance to commit them to paper. I am only a poet when I do not attempt to transcribe the words that spin through my head. And then this feeling settles on me, ugly and dark, a feeling that there should be a scar for something that only existed for a moment, so at least to have some record of its existence. But there is nothing, only a frustration that it was there, and is not any longer. The idea whirled into the void, and my mind was only a pit stop along the way, the way people pause at gas stations and leave no trace when they depart, save a slightly more diminished reservoir of petrol.

Though I retrace my steps to find those words again, they are gone; disappeared, never to be seen again. Searching everywhere in the city, from high to low, dark to light, streetcorners and skyscrapers, each yielding nothing. But I promise to slash the sky until the words rain down from the heavens. For what is a poet when they have lost the tools of their trade?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Single Diver

I'm trying not to think about it because when I do, there sits a weight on my chest; panic. This is the feeling of being lost, without map, or compass, or even anyone to ask, and knowing that while you wander, time is running away from you, slipping past you and into the void behind, to that place from which it is irretrievable. It's having an oxygen tank strapped to your back but knowing that you're lost, and too far from the surface to make it back with the air you have left. Suspended in space - panic starting to creep in, but too shocked by the knowledge of your situation to be able to do anything about it. This is helplessness. And it looks at you with cold eyes that burn, and sees through you, and it knows, it knows that it has won, and that there is no chance of your salvation. Because you've given up before you even dared to start. Your failure was not attempting and not succeeding, but in not bothering to try at all; and now you'll never know whether you could have made it. If you'd fought hard enough, you may have.

And while you're suspended there in the void, the last of your precious air is escaping you, forming bubbles and rising to somewhere above your head, disappearing into the darkness. You see them and despair, for they are going to the place you cannot bring yourself to try reach. I'm seeing my air disappear. I'm seeing my time running out. I'm watching myself giving up because I'm too afraid to take up the challenge, because I'm too afraid of the failure. But I've already failed because I didn't try. I didn't try because I was lost and every direction looked the same, none leading to the light I so desperately wanted to see.

But you see, thinking about that failure, it snapped something in me. I'm ashamed of having given up when there was still time left. I was ashamed for not having any faith in myself when I deserved it. I'm ashamed that I would let opportunities slide over my head so easily. So I stood up. Though I didn't see what I was trying to find, I grabbed in the air before me, and I found something, some leverage to bring me back. I determined to climb back, though my reason said there wasn't a hope. And I'm going to make it. I'm certain.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Colour

Do something worthwhile: throw colour everywhere you can reach.

The Wandering Mind

 I wonder if you ever woke to find that your first thought was of me. I wonder if you always hoped that mine was the first face of the day you'd see. I wonder whether you were excited at the prospect that you and I could spend another day together. I wonder if you realised it wouldn't last forever.

I wonder if you ever spare a thought for me now. I wonder if I walk casually into your mind, or whether I burst in, unwelcome and unwanted. But really, I just wonder too much, and all my wondering will come to nothing because I will never get any answers.Oh wandering mind, it is time now to go to rest.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Let the Music Speak

I want to play you a song to tell you how I feel. That's the only way I know how to say the things I cannot speak. I'll take you to a meadow, where the grass was allowed to grow wild and untamed, and with the guitar in front of me, I'll let it do all the speaking for me. The melody will wrap around you, and filter into your head, obliterating all other thoughts, until you do nothing but listen and understand what I am trying to tell you. The sky will mirror back to you all the things hidden in my heart, all those things I was unable to communicate in any other way. It will show you things you wanted to see, and some things you never wanted to know. And all the while, the guitar will speak softly to you.

I shall sit there and watch your reaction, for that is the thing I fear most in the world. Though I was afraid of what the world might think, of how they may cast me aside when I lose all sense of mystery, the enigma I maintained because I didn't know how to deal with consequences, I would still be brave enough to fight through it all, if only you tell me you'll stay by my side. I'm still not sure what love is, and whether I can be strong through all the changes it will bring, at least I will try. For you, if not for anyone else. So I beg, it's the least you can do, even if it means nothing to you, please sit down with me in the meadow, beneath the azure sky, and listen to the song I want to play for you. And if it turns out in the end that you want nothing of me, I shall lie, and say it was just a song I wrote about feelings I'd only imagined. I promise to never let on that it was about you.

My Vulnerability

I stared at the sun today. I was trying to find perfection. I was trying to find something that made sense. For you see, I'm lost, more lost than I have ever been. I can't tell which way is up, which way is left, and I don't know which direction I was heading. Suddenly I've found that all my emotions have been stirred from where they had settled at the bottom of my heart. And I realised that I haven't accepted everything I thought I had. It's amazing how one thing can have such a profound effect on you that you experience an onslaught of emotions every time you see or hear it. Not a thing in the world has ever affected me this way before. It's thrown me into the maelstrom I thought I had ridden out. I don't cry only because it's beautiful, but because it brings out the hidden fragility in me, and the things that do that are the most terrifying of all. I'm scared of being the weak one, the victim, the one who has no control. I'm terrified of the things which leave me in tears, utterly helpless because they show me to myself.

I can't bear to see my own reflection; it reminds me of too many things. Of how I don't know my place in this world, of how I am too afraid to carve myself one because I may isolate myself and have nowhere to go. It reminds me that I am alone, it reminds me of how terrifying that is. It reminds me that the clock is ticking and that I am growing older, still as lost as I always was. I feel old, and tired, like this has been an uphill battle all my life, and I still can't see the crest of the hill, no sign at all of relief. So I hide my face in my hands and cry. The silent sobs shake my body, and nobody notices, and when I face the world again, the only sign that something's wrong is my slightly red ringed eyes. I can't find a way out. The only exit is the one I'm too afraid to take. It means I have to be honest with myself, with everyone. It's not something I'm brave enough to do. What if all it does is show me that I'm more alone than I thought? What if it doesn't lead me to the things I really need? Because some words, when spoken, change the world forever.

Everywhere I look there are remnants of things that are no longer; vestiges of people, of memories, of feelings, and they all bring out something darker than nostalgia. They remind me of times that I knew where I stood, when I was not a speck of dust alone in a cloud. But alone is how I do things. I'll never speak these words out loud until I've come to terms with it on my own, and I'm sure I'm not going to break down in front of anyone. I'll make sure the only time I'm this vulnerable is in the dark of my bedroom, past the midnight hour, and no one can burst in and see my fragility. Time makes you bolder because the consequences of facing your fear diminish as circumstances change.

All the while I shall wish what I have always wished: that I could sail the sky.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Burdened

No, I don't want to be alone anymore, I can't hold myself up, I can't walk the same old streets, seeing the things I always have. I can't stand the profound loneliness which grates my heart and dulls my senses, cloaking me in misery and turning everything ashen. The constant deep breaths I take to stop the tears will one day no longer be enough, and even as I try to hold myself together, I shall be seeping through the cracks of my own defences. I feel that day is arriving sooner than I had feared, and that it will find me splattered on the ground, innards where everyone can see, where everyone can read the things I kept to myself. And none of them know how it really feels, to be so vulnerable, so small, so tired; so alone. I wonder if they ever feel so alone.

It's like sitting on the outskirts of town, watching everyone as they laugh, as they talk, as they pass from familiar place to familiar place, knowing where they came from, and knowing where they belong, and the realisation dawning that as close as you are, you are not part of that at all. You are the outsider, the watcher, the one that the world passes by, a forgotten face in the shadows, a silent observer who hides behind their veiled eyes. But I'm slowly becoming undone, by the hand of none other than loneliness; that dreaded companion who tortures you even as they pretend to comfort. I was never strong enough to bear this. The silence descends and nothing can distract me anymore from the darkness that's eating me from within.

So I sit down with the lights off, and I wrap my arms about my legs and let myself cry the tears that I've always tried to suppress. Instead of trying to fight it, I let the loneliness fill me, and the feeling overwhelms my frame, the very fibres of my being tingling with the sensation, with the knowledge that there is no one. I'm tired, so, so tired of fighting this. My cracks have turned into crevasses, and I must simply let myself be, broken and collapsed with weariness, succumb to the terror that I have failed myself. Not even my anger can save me now. I betrayed myself by not being who I am, and the world betrayed me by passing me by like I was unimportant. I'd just be another story ending with tragedy. Sometimes I think all we are is tragedies. I shall put myself back together and pretend this never happened, but I shall carry the weight around, my cross, and I shall bear the scars forever. But you'll never catch me in a such a moment of vulnerability, and you'll never know the raw feelings that course through me. All you'll ever get is this, a mere shadow, for I have not the gift to express it in words.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Women

It's wonderful to see something of empowerment. It's fantastic to realise that we can be more than what we are, and that we don't need to be told how to live our life, or to be forced to live by rules made up by societies long ago. The people who change the world are the ones who are not afraid of defying it's conventions.

It is utterly ridiculous when you stop and think about all the things we conform to just because they are the unspoken 'rules' of society. All areas of our lives are affected: to some extent we all worry about our bodies, how they look, how they smell, what kind of impression we give to other people. We put pressure on ourselves to be there in the roles that are expected of us, and though we say that this is not the case, the world tries to impress upon us the importance of fulfilling those roles by putting up impenetrable iron bars when we want to progress past those boundaries into the lives we see, but are not allowed to attain. We have all become spectators in the game of life, where we are only allowed to sit and watch while others, the men, play the game itself.

But the rules are slowly changing. Here and there, among the masculine brawn, you may spot a woman, fierce in her femininity and holding her own against those who would usurp her. These women are inspirations to those who sit at home, burdened by domesticity and bound by outdated conventions. The collective consciousness has changed, has begun to accept that we are a part of society just as much as the males who have traditionally held the power, and they are beginning to realise that we can roll the dice just as skilfully as they, and perhaps even better. They are beginning to see that equality must be accepted for the world to grow beyond its current boundaries.

And one by one, we are stepping up to the plate, and each of us are hitting home runs. They can no longer deny that we have the power to be great, and that nothing will stand in our way; neither men, nor conventions, nor rules. We can have it all, and we intend to take it.

Unexpected

We were talking, the way we always do, when something out of ordinary happened. You reached out, placing your hand gently, but firmly over my eyes, hiding the world from me. I was lost to the world of darkness, and the only thing that held me anchored to reality was the sudden, unexpected feel of your lips on mine.

Only, it wasn't reality, for I woke up to the cries of the crows.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Threads

Things unravel. That is the nature of life. The threads pull apart, and where they were once part of something bigger, they become individuals once again. Alone. All we are are threads, woven into the fabric of each other's lives.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Love is Life

The familiar feeling struck again today, cutting through the haze of my thoughts and torturing the soft part of my brain with an overload of emotion. I closed in on myself, thinking dark thoughts, remembering bright memories; and dark memories. I wonder where it's all disappeared to, that potential that seemed so great at the time, but has now disintegrated into the wind, the way ancient skeletons crumble to dust. It seems so long ago, and in fact, it has been, but the loss of those feelings haunts worse than any ghost. Perhaps it's not the person I miss, but the feeling, the warmth that seemed to radiate from my life, outshining the dark cracks that have always run through me. It may not have looked like it, but I was happier then than I had ever been.

I try to keep my façade of confidence, whilst beneath the surface do battle The Things That Are, The Things That Were, and The Things Which May Never Be. Each face two fronts of battle; three entities struggling to find their truth - my struggle to find my truth. I found, as the battle drew on, that it will never truly stop, and I shall look for the truth, for hope in any place I can find: films, books, other people, the paranormal; after all, the true reason we read is to find the one character who is unmistakably ourselves, and to follow their journey, so we may know how our story ends before its conclusion. And all the while we have the same longings, the same fears, the same habits of mind, turning our world on its axis; some of us wait to find the one to shift our world on its poles, others of us merely want to know when it will stop its gentle revolution.

But somehow, through all the pain, through the war raging within ourselves, we find that sad place of desires that have never been fulfilled. These desires create a special kind of melancholy, reaching in and peeling back the layers of skin to expose our heart, reaching through the blood and the muscles and the tissue layers to expose something which should never see the light of day, though it yearns for it the same way a poverty ridden artist yearns for a paintbrush in his hand and a fresh canvas before him. It is more than desire; it is life. And life is composed of those small moments of delicacy, of intimacy, of love: the smell of a lover in the morning, the curve of their spine against your chest, the girth of their body in your arms, the way their hand touches yours, and the way they berate you with mirth in their eyes. Life is composed of those moments: you brushing their fringe from their eyes, they placing their hands on your hips and whispering in your ear, the way you kiss their neck, the way everything just fits between the two of you. Without such moments, we cannot claim that we have lived.

Yet, some of us travel without being blessed by such moments, and the self doubt creeps in and sets its dark roots in our most vulnerable place. Instead of love grows despair, and one day you wake up in the grip of pure panic, thinking that you may wake up alone for the rest of your life. Instead of joy in friends' happiness, twinges of jealousy taint everything, and you wonder what it is that keeps you from having what they possess with their own lovers. You wonder how you could be so repulsive to others. You despair that you may never find a person who shall love you, and whom you may love in return. The wounds are kept raw because they are constantly chaffed by the world; it seems you just rub the wrong way with them all. The best you can do is hope.

Monday, March 7, 2011

The Shut Up Hearts

Where the towers of metal and glass kiss the sky, there wander a many people who have since been dubbed the Shut Up Hearts. Each day they wander through, each day they are as lost as the day that passed before. They march headlong towards some vague and distant goal, nestled among the lying city lights, which promise that all dreams come true. Too afraid of pursuing the pleasures of the heart, they decided to ground themselves to this life in their work; tedious, dull and repetitive - they convince themselves that this is life, and this is the best it's going to be.

They are strangers not only to each other, but to themselves, for they shade the desires of the heart as well as they shade their eyes from the glory of the sun with their expensive glasses. They don't know how to caress their heartstrings to play a haunting melody, nor open their eyes to a stranger on the street who suffers the way that they suffer. They each hide from themselves; the Shut Up Hearts cannot venture from the prison for which they hold the key, because they believe that they are safe behind its bars. The fear of loneliness keeps them alone.

The trees sigh as they pass beneath them, knowing that they shall all be lost in among the skyscrapers' shadows. To each other they are the Faceless Ones, for they do not open their eyes to see one another, their gazes sliding off and away, the way water slides down glass, leaving it unmarked and untouched. They are ghosts, walking shadows, eyes expressionless and dull, glazed over and looking into a world that is a mere shadow of the one that they refuse to see before them. They trace the same steps in the same way, until the unfamiliar becomes the familiar, the overlooked, and the mind becomes lazy in its observation, noting nothing but the unusual. The Shut Up Hearts wander in dark corridors alone and wonder why they cannot find a way out, when they are at the very threshold of escape, but choose not to use their energy to take that extra step. The buildings of metal and glass know this, and they laugh as they kiss the sky, for they know that they bask in the light which the Shut Up Hearts wish to seek.

One day, they will awaken. One day they shall recognise the glory of the world they live in; one day they will discover that the city lights do not deliver on their promises; one day they will find that the world is not so dull as they have come to believe; one day they will see that they are not as alone as they thought, and that the rest of the world was just waiting for them to wake up.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A House Is Not A Home

What makes a house a home? What renders some buildings magnificent, and others shabby? Why is it that we react to different spaces in different ways?

We find that wherever we go, we react differently. In cathedrals we are awed, the Gothic designs bearing down on us lightly and heavily at the same time. The arches show us to heaven, but the sandstone grounds us on this earth. The majestic spaces fill us with longing, but beside the gigantic columns and the ornate stonemasonry, we are humbled, and the paradoxical yearnings struggling within ourselves come to a compromise, and this we call spirituality.

And then there are moments, out beneath the dome of the sky where we experience a similar awe to the one that held us captivated in the cathedral. It is similar, and yet, so different; where the cathedral kept us in quiet appreciation, the outdoors makes us want to cry out in euphoria. There, watching the sunset burn the sky a thousand different colours that make our breath catch and our eyes widen to etch them into our memory, we feel that we are infinite. In those moments, we can see eternity stretching out before us in one long, beautiful sunset that never fades, and always brings passion and tranquillity to our lives.

But those spaces that are so overlooked are the ones which mean barely anything to someone else. They are those places where we feel most at home, relaxed and comfortable. A home is more than just a house, more than the furniture, more than the colour of the walls, more than the books on the shelf. A home is a reflection of ourselves; somewhere where everything is where we want it to be, where everything looks the way we want it to and where everything smells just the way it ought. For someone to truly understand you, they must only need to look at the personal space you've created for yourself in the world - whether it be a room in a house, an area in an office, a house in a city, an apartment in a building. That space is yours and yours alone; it is personal, it is private, and it is where you go to lay your head to rest after a tiring day.

We are stirred to fiery anger when someone tries to access that space without our permission, or when they try to change it, rearrange it. We are driven to irrationality, to deep ire, and we shout and become increasingly upset the more the space is changed. For once someone begins to alter what we have created, it loses the meaning it once had; it is no longer personal, and the connection of familiarity and comfort is shattered. You don't know where things are, you don't like the colour of the furniture, nor the smell that it gives off, the fragrance of its wood different from the fragrance of your wood. The room loses its personality; you do not become the space, and it looks strange with you in it. You cannot look at it with affection and pride, you sulk and look at the colour of the walls dejectedly, remembering what it was like before. The space loses the essence of you. And you lose your home. You lose a friend. You lose yourself.

Friday, March 4, 2011

The House of Strangers

And I don't know where we're going, I can't even say where we started, but we can hope that it's better than here. We'll take all that we can carry, everything that we hold dear, and we'll forge something better for ourselves. We'll take the music that plays in our minds and transcribe it in the sky, then we'll float to the heavens and dance in the clouds. And the words that drift through memory will be scrawled onto bits of paper; the poems of our hearts.

And should there be things that we need forgiveness for, we shall see that we have found our redemption in the smiles that we give to passing strangers. Everyone who meets our eye takes away some small part of ourselves in those smiles, so we know that should we die, a part of us lives on the memories of those moments, in those people whose faces we shall forget. For the eyes are the doors of the soul, and while something of ourselves leaves through them, it enters into the other person who catches our glance, and nestles into their heart, if but for a moment. And we'll find that wherever we may go, we are not alone. The world is full of people carrying around minute parts of others. We are all houses for the kindness of strangers.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Hidden Art

I fear that I shall not glean the surface of my mind and that all that creativity that flows within it will stay trapped there. I know that beyond some door, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, there is a well of creativity, a room bursting at the seams with ideas that chase each other, tumbling and rolling in splashes of colour and light and energy. Beyond that door is not a room, but an entire realm, living, breathing - infinite. But somehow the key is hidden, and so far all I have experienced are those tiny pools, which leak from beneath the door and drip from the keyhole, melding together and beckoning you in, only to prove they lack the depth that they promised.

I fear that I will continue to present only the obvious - the tip of the iceberg that sits above the water, gleaming in the daylight, tall and proud, but lacking majesty and mystery. For the magic lies with what is beneath the surface, beyond the tumult of thoughts that revolve around a dull routine and mundane concerns. It lurks, letting the obvious take the credit for its subtle work, for wherever the surface turns its head, the lurker is directing. Theirs is a marriage between marionette and puppetmaster. The marionette is on display, laughing and teasing and basking in the attention it receives, but the puppetmaster sits in the shadows, bristling with pride and grinning with satisfaction, because he knows that the puppet above is only a shadow and a product of his work below.

But I fear that the puppetmaster cannot be harnessed. I cannot help but want for his genius to be omnipresent and easy for me to reach into to pull out a masterpiece. I fear that the brilliance will forever be hidden, and that I shall be tortured with the flotsam and jetsam that I am allowed; for who, seeing only some tiny corner of the night sky all their life, would not long to see the entire universe? The potential is present, it is just a matter of learning to utilise the majesty and grandeur guiding us towards creativity in our short moments of madness. For only the insane truly know the genius of humanity.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Anger That Won't Disappear

Make a fist. Smash it through a brick wall. Feel the pain. That's the only thing you can do to keep yourself from ripping out their throats and from kicking them till there are no bones left to break. They won't ever understand you, and you don't need them to. You just want to be left the fuck alone. Their chains dig deep into your skin. Isn't that enough to satisfy them?

It takes every fibre of your being not to pummel them and bash them and bruise them and kill them with anything you can find. Hands itch to hit, hands itch to hurt, but you must restrain them. Can't let them know that you hate them with everything you have. Turn the music up louder. And louder. AND LOUDER. Is it working yet?

Dig nails into your scalp. They bite and it hurts, and it draws blood. But that's all you can do. It's all you can ever do. Otherwise you'd end up in prison for murder. At least this way it'd look like suicide and they'd never know the truth. You want to scream, you want to hit something hard, but you can't because they'll hear. They're always fucking listening. There's no escape, and you can't take it anymore. So you write it out, hoping that it will take away some of the itch. You find that it doesn't work at all, that it only makes it worse. They disgust you, and you hate them with a passion; one of the only passions you've ever learnt to summon. You weren't meant for love, only hate. It's all they bred you for.

You make a fist and go to strike your desk. With your hands held above your head, the muscles in your arms stiffen as you fight against yourself. In the end you win out, but you cry in frustration. Tears blur the words that you write to get it all out. Why the fuck should you keep it back? Why?
You think, and realise. It's because you can't tell them anything. They never listen. They never care. They'd laugh and brush it off, or else think you've gone mad, succumbed to the Devil. They sent you to him themselves, fucking hypocrites.

You can see it now, all those people's reasons. Why they run the knife against their skin, digging it deeper until it brings blood to the surface. Until it's deep enough to scar. Because there is no other way; you hurt yourself because you can't express the pain in any other way. This. This is the low that you've brought us to. Are you fucking proud now?

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Crash Landing

I had hoped that everything would go smoothly, allowing me to descend from above and comfortably settle into that position I'd picked out for myself. Alas, nothing ever happens the way you would like, most especially if you were not precisely sure of what it was that you were doing in the first place. Crossing your fingers and hoping never quite seems to work.

Still, it was better than having my parachute tear in mid air. I merely crash landed, though not too dangerously. Now all I must do is look around and find a way to return to the place which I had intended to inhabit. Surely it cannot be too difficult. Though it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, surely my landing is not irreversible and that I can somehow find my way back. I can only hope, it's true, that something happens and that I am allowed into the fold, despite my actions and stupidity. Oh lord, I hope that everything turns out in the end.