Fossil

There is a war within me. Two opposing forces that are playing out an epic life long battle of wills. It is a war of sentiment, on one hand good enough, on the other - never. They are reactionary but they are also inherent.

I have come home to a place where familiarly is only implied, no longer expressed in the essence of things that have waited in animate apathy for my return.

I have lived a year of restless solitude, inhabiting a dark-like space and filling it with glory, mercy and grace through great moments. The beautiful sunrises, the mountain landscapes, the warmth between new friends, challenges faced and surmounted. It has been a year of tremendous change and tremendous struggle and now, face to face with the context provided by home it seems impossible to hold on to the revelations, impossible to transfer the feeling of being so in charge yet so out of control it nearly kills you. But of course, it doesn’t. It creates texture and color and music in the deepest parts of you. It isn’t always joyous, but it is a melody of allegory and change, sometimes somber, sometimes rapturous, but always ringing out within. To say that I know myself now would be disingenuous. It would presumptuous to think that there is some type of constructed personality, or internal character that you can know this way; as one would uncover an old dinosaur bone in the layers of hardened sediment.

The creation of the fossil is the discovery of it.

Each experience is hot magma, compression and the scattering of carcasses. Each day that I woke up with challenge in my heart and the newness on my tongue I pressed these things together and saw that they were mine. That is how the self becomes myself, you claim it, one bone at a time.

So I wandered Europe, collecting bones and looking for new light to see them in. Looking for the meaning that would truly set straight the confliction between wanting to fit in and tear the whole thing apart. Tear apart all conceptions of reality so there were no more lines to draw, no more crosses to bear, no more have to’s. I wanted there to be only me and the open seeable universe to sink my feet into.

And I have seen it this way; sitting on a cliff overlooking a blackened midnight ocean being eaten by the reflecting stars. It’s in the knowledge of inevitability, how fate and fortitude walk hand in hand when you finally put all those chips on the table. When you look the future in the eye and say ‘this is what I’ve got, I’m either going to make it or not’.

And you do.

And you do.

But like any migrating creature the time comes to return to home. Here back in the snow globe of old hang-ups, old anguish, old fears are so many unanswered questions. Maybe we’ve been inside this glass dome all along? Thinking we were traversing great distances but really we were just spinning in concentric circles around the same thing everyone is; the gravity of pleasure, to please and be pleased.

The Great Finale

Europe in all your manicured glory look what you've done. Teetering from your 6 inch stilettos putting a spike through this. On one side; the pouring emptiness, black like clouds, rolling around in soot and ash. The other; crystalline swordfish, beauty in magnitudes of 100 degrees. Whipping about your unlit passages. Juggling your cluttered groves. Stone angles and demons, rebels in new wave mullets. And even though beneath it all is everything I may still never know, this much I do know is true - these streets are as muddy with my footprints as I am with you. This is Europe. I have spent nine months staring at people staring at things. Taking picture of people taking pictures of things. Big things, small things, old things, new things. Concrete and gravy. People rocking back and forth without realizing it as they sit out for tapas. Licking their tiny bowls and dancing their greedy eyes on each other. Europe you clever devil. How did you manage to pack that much bullshit into one sales pitch? Sure America has it too, telling you what you want and when you need it. But you, you polish it chrome make it half the size and charge twice as much. Selling dreams. Selling quality of life. I don't trust anyone anymore with a moleskin notebook. Don't get me wrong. I am not resistant the charm. There are so many things that are just better here. But even as I dare to criticize this idyllic paradise I know concern, its exposure will be met with serious resistance from those who need to keep the dream alive. I treasure the things I have seen. The developing further a serious love for contemporary art. Culture continues to intrigue me. But to study this, is to study a travel brochure. All of this is dependent on telling ourselves what is good and what is bad until it encroaches in on itself; an artistically decorated box. Here is what I see. Intermittent with vacillating exasperate joy is the desire to continue to push back. Push this thing on its head and tell it to stand for me. It's the desire to shake people from their perfect hateful conceptions of themselves. It's pictures of manicured, pedicured, over-cured meat. Its money. Old money and old men. Little china dolls, overdressed children. Its people living lives yes, struggling, destitute, hopeless lives. It's chasms and schisms and rocks. Its youth and it's age, together at last, looking for the same thing, but staying at different hotels. I have spent nine months in Europe watching people on vacation. Watching family dinners by candlelight.  Watching lovers roll around themselves in midnight embraces.  It's the feeling that despite travel being my life's ambition, despite it being all I can think to do with myself, despite it being the one thing that was to save my soul, despite all of this - they need it more than I do. This casual jazz music on terrace patios over-looking history. They need it to be good. Better than what they know. They need the romanticism to capitulate them towards better pictures of themselves. Mirror plates over sewer grates. Its ok too you know, that it exist like this. Marginally more real than Disney World. Its the nature of things. Of cities, of people, of the Western world. Times progress speaks through it. Its decades, centuries of money and growth and progress widdled down and chained between past and future. Between standing tradition and the influence of the new West. Its my cultures elders and with that comes a certain amount of knowledge of how to do things. Unfortunately its what they cannot teach us that continues to haunt me. Happy enough to find beautiful ways of balancing among the ripples, the disturbances source remains lost in time and tailored clothes. Lost in its own perfect cobble stone roads. Perfect intersecting rows, left ,right, left, right right. It's just a pattern too. A pattern about bringnig about the flavor in olive oil, the complexities in wine, but not the essence of this. Why need this in the first place. The coddling love of crafted lives. Money still owns you here. Maybe more than anywhere. This is a refined system of human government. Of casual perfected complacency. Of knowing where you stand and caring less and less in the distracting spittle of an 18th century fountain.

Simplicity More or Less

Two little girls.

one piece of chalk.

disobedience

like an excited ferret,

in their grasp.

one act.

the joy of being,

mischievous.

side long glances

with trepidation streaked brows

as they scurry off,

into the dusk.

--------------------------------------

time keeps me

god know I cant keep it

prisoner,

executioner.

there is a will in it

more ancient

and deadly

then original sin,

it holds me

in its cold embrace

and reluctantly,

unskillfully,

I follow.

Glass

The click-clack of heels down a midnight street
as the waves come rolling in
on an empty beach
while the board walk walks
with lovers
friends
and me

gazing skywards the luminous orange shift of street light
ascends in the sea fog
beaming towards the clouds
caressing their undersides
turning them into
burning orange embers in the sky

salt water cool humidity
and perfume
on a womens breast
passing by spilling radiance
picked up in the wind

passing conversations
a cluck clack of tongues
raining down on the sound of waves
as run away bags
chase run away dogs
in the cool heat
of a seaside night

to be a passing spectator
on a lovers night

is to have golden eyes
in inky darkness

to be loved by the wind
and the years gone by
layers of old photographs
seen through my modern lens
trying to pick them out
despite the blur

to honour the moments of beauty
of solitude
sadness
and grace
that are passing by
all around us

this man and his half empty glass
of Chardonnay
spilling dust clouds from his mouth
white smoke against a night sky

vindicated here in the half dark
the windows of palaces wink at me
from the other side

glass
glass
glass

people and courtyards and cemeteries
made of glass


see right through
from the other side

all this space and all this time

is glass

Dawn

Twelve early mornings in my life I've sat sleepless inside a dream, watching the early mornings rise.

In my life there are moments such as this that are remembered forever. There are moments that linger on; in memory and sound, in light and shadow. And in all these mornings I remember the same caress of cool wind, the same smell of early  morning foods.

And me. Neither hungry nor tired but wide awake at the fantasy of shuffling rays rippling up in the air. Cliffs abandoning their shadows. Night warriors on their last patrol.

I am neither because I am all. All I see in the dawn.

I know many parts of me in this time. I know the sounds of solitude . Brilliant crystalline solitude. While every occupied space still lies in wait for momentum to inspire them towards daylight, I am already here. I am always here. Waiting. Willing. Wanting. The fruits of the mania. The grace in the perfection that is the assuredness of the existence of today. As it always has been. As it always will be. Though the sun may burn itself through. Though the earth may cease its rotation. The dawn I share, this dawn in me, continues on; never to be set down in entropy.


I am a walking cloud. Too light to rain I write my droplets on to the page. Splashes of sun creating rainbows in the mist.


What do I see?


The wings of a bird set in dew. The sliver like beams of light and shadow across building tops. The arching raven, coal black wings. The sky, pink-blue sky, a perfect shade of metaphor. Before corruption wakes and sets in. Before the markets hum and the bells chime. Before the beggars kneel and the cars whirl and promenade. Before this, before all of this, there is me. Me and the dawn and the silence.


Dawn, my dawn! My rippling clothes-line laundry sprinkled dew. My morning with no night. My day with no end. My perpetual weakness;


to be here when nothing stirs,

but you

and me.

Post-Tramatic Rest

No matter how far I've come, I feel that there is is still further to go. Go back, go forward, go down. 

I scroll back: where is the beginning of my memories? Are they apart of this? Or merely a favourable sequence of colours that go streaming through my sub-conscious? Do they pull from pasts before me, or are they created in the moment out of cognisant possibility? What is possible? I can never be certain, I am not still chasing a mirage, a place of caged apathy that helps me control the lack of control we have - over everything.

If desire is truly the root of suffering how can one continue tin ideal passiveness despite the crushing certainty of being asked to be partial again?

I feel so deeply.

Stories cut me, others cuts through me. I can feel the tepid waters of idleness that hug those around me while I wonder what I am doing here. Wonder, perpetually, if I am not a point making machine in a temporal world of absurdity. So desperate to find a cause for this disgusting display of cranky tears that fall, at the opening of every refrigerator door, that I would give the sun and moon and stars eyes and arms and call them friends. Or worse yet, dare to call them a metaphor for this.

I feel a joke coming on and I am laughing at my own expense.

I have been inundated with detail for too long. I have lost the ability to remember where I stand, or where I am to go again. I am lost, awash in things I have seen again and again and again, moments upon moments, place after place. Awash in lethargy, a more comfortable request is to rest indoors, then to spend the energy needed to grate this brain against the grain of everything. Judgeless judgment is what I have mastered. See them, hate them, love them, it matters still and it matters not. I will continue in gulps. I will continue to reach out, but more slowly now, as my restlessness begins to rest; flaccid cool-aid acid test.

Still so much time and so little. A pick me up here and there,  while still wondering what am I seeing? Visions of similarity? Or just my own reflection? A perpetual narcissist maybe it's just seeing my own ideals, in the eyes of everyone. Do I need to feel less alone so badly that I would add God to coincidence? Meaning to randomness? I can't sing or play guitar, but I still feel like a genius every time a mediocre song comes bursting through my lips; only to be crushed in the light of day that is repetition. I know I am small, but I feel so big in these little pants, pulling at rolls of fat which marshmallow around my bones. What right do my indulgences have to hang on, exposing me, my weakness; undercontrol.

All the days now begin to blend, who will remember them all when they fade from view? When my spirit leaves the mind and memories it has entered? When it runs off the streets in a midnight street sweeping, reflective yellow and green jackets, coming down hard with their machines, to wash it all away. What will Europe be without me? Me without it? What infinite thread can I tie my heart to hard enough, that it will pull it out and carry it on, across the universe? I don't need to beat anymore, if the beat goes on.

Is there energy in torn shoes on a desolate highway? Bulgaria, Romania, Hungry, Croatia. These exotic words fumble around in my mouth like superheated marbles, looking for a drink to cool the burn. I want to know how they taste on each part of my tongue; bitter, sweet, sour. I can sit for days on a bus or train. I can believe in fate and hold out a thumb. I can know every road as I know myself. I can. I can. But do you promise, can you promise me that the time will come, when the road rises up to greet me and brings with it - the direction home?

Clickity clack. The beat goes on. Yadda yadda yadda ya, the beat goes on.

Three steps ahead of myself to jump out of this open window. Lets head for the dessert. Feel its breeze. These tired legs can't hold me here much longer. We will have to go again and differently again.

Sigh...

Ah modesty.

Ah moderation.

What do you look like? All I see is you fading, a discolored balloon in the distance on the road of all the way.  All the way. It's painted in my eyes. It is all I know. All I breath and it reminds me, it's never enough. I know I am more than even my greatest fantasy. My greatest whim or desire. I know it is about residing in nothingness and beingness. . .

I'm working on it

Either way thank you for today. For these words that bring instant pride. For letting me get through another dangerous teetering cliff of depression and misanthropy. I see you little forgiver. I see your sly castle. Even if I don't want to believe in you I see you and the grace in your wisdom. I will let this mess rest, and wait for it to continue to pull me through.

Thank you for today.

Double Dog Dare You

 
I swing wildly from longing to peace, excitement to self doubt. Though to be truthful most days are sprinkled with a pleasurable surety, a willingness and a desire to continue, even a sense of not having enough time.  After all, I can't see everything,  can't do everything. All that we can do is hope, hope  that the things we do now are important, are giving back the lessons, thoughts and experience to say what will need to be said.  Where is god in the everyday? What does freedom look like? Feel like? What is it that unites us?

God is hope. I can even see it here now, God in the concreate. The hope that builds art galleries, underground community centers filled with graffiti, free music and solar cookers, boiling up nourishment for everyone. Identities shaped in hope. Created in belief. Of faith in change. The hope of a nation is that it's people rise of the belief in creation.

I see the city now is more of a living thing. It's energy is friction. It's buildings, roads and bridges are perfect cellular constructions. Arteries, veins, organs, valves, pulse and serge. It's windows, girters and steel are created in symmetrical unity - an evolutionary phenomenon - human perfection.

This is not  a discussion about what it lacks.

Like humans, for a city to be great it needs to be forgiven and simultaneously called to progress.

I call thee. Rise Up!

Take back knowledge from the culture of expert.
Take back expectation from advertising.
Take back God from religion.
Take back joy from comfort.
Take back the night from the lights.
Take back freedom from self doubt.

Dare to be passionate.
To forgive.
To feel.
I dare you to see the world in this way - culture less, boarderless, filled with complexity, unhinged, chaotic.
I dare you to suffer the damnation incurred in the erosion of everything you think you know.
I dare you to give up. Give in. I dare you to fail.

Get up. The revolution is dead. But the one in your head is just beginning.

We are more than this.  We are more than this.   We are more than this.
We are more than this.  We are more than this.   We are more than this.
We are more than this.  We are more than this.   We are more than this.
We are more than this.  We are more than this.   We are more than this.