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| may 2005 |
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| Ups and Downs | 4:48am tuesday, 31st may |
I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve been going through an endorphin roller coaster of late. Or perhaps I shouldn’t blame it all on the chemicals, no? But it seems to me that such little things will build in me that make it seem like the end of the world is nigh, though other little things will make it all right as rain again. It was just that maybe Sunday was a bad day, but if you took pieces of it, all that you might find would be merely minor annoyances; but perhaps such things build in a psyche like me to an inordinate magnitude. Really, though — I look back and find it ridiculous that I should wake up so despondent Monday morning (actually, early afternoon). And perhaps one detail: I find it equally ridiculous that just taking a nice long walk would make things all okay again, as if the former had passed away, and I breathed in a new heaven, and stood on a new earth.
I am reminded of an old 80’s song, by the group Men At Work: “Overkill”. “I can’t get to sleep / I think about the implications / Of diving in too deep / And possibly the complications / Especially at night / I worry over situations / I know will be alright / It’s just overkill” — that’s the theme to madness, is it not? Though perhaps it’s merely a neurosis in me now, not quite so severe as all that. And if I think on it, little things can build up in even the sanest of souls, and they burst, too, if tipped past the breaking point. Perhaps I am fortunate, after all, to know that I can survive right on through being broken, that there is healing even when the situation is beyond dire. The lesson: we make do with what we have, and we all have gifts. Sometimes the ability just to hang on, white-knuckle it through the night — for we know enough what happens if you let go like that.
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| Composition | 4:30am friday, 27th may |
I once postulated that the world was all made of pain,
that all sensations were merely different flavors of that substance.
Like everything looks like a nail when a hammer’s all you have.
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| Inertia | 6:48am monday, 23rd may |
I have had a sort of inertia, lately. Last month, near the end, I quit the job I had been working, as a programmer here in Korea. They weren’t paying me enough — about one quarter of what I had been earning in the US. I started doing a project of my own, right after that, a commercial venture using Amazon web services, and I was doing it at a good clip for three weeks, but last week — I dunno, I hit sort of a wall. Got a little done Monday and Tuesday, but practically nothing for the rest of the week. I do recall I have had this happen to me before, but for the life of me I can’t remember how I shook it off times previous. Not quite depression, just kind of a bleah, don’t want to do anything (useful). Maybe it just takes a little forcing myself to be productive — it’s that rest friction, which is greater than friction of motion. Yeah, I’ll get over it. Weighed down as if by the air itself, I know, though, there will be times when I will feel as if I were going to float off, when this feeling of now heaviness can scarcely be brought to mind; time is funny that way.
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| Fantasy Life | 3:11am thursday, 19th may |
Here falls my desire,
upon unread poetries, and
paintings that have never been
brushed. They are
forgeries, all the signatures
of wisdom, all that said
they spoke truth about what was me.
(A thousand sunsets,
and never two the same colors —
yet I cannot say
I have ever written down
what those colors have been.)
I have had the audacity
to ask where were my wings,
to declare that halos
were silver, and not gold,
even when I was in my senses,
even when I could see
that I had lived a fool’s fantasy.
(And so, my rise is my decline,
yet I felt only relief
that I was not shouldered
with the weight of the world,
and humility was only
a great release.)
Do you see me where I stand?
Like so many would-be saints,
I have had good intentions,
but breathing the air
way up there: I rather
that I not be so constantly dizzy,
and find myself awake
cool in the night air,
and say to myself, just a dream.
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| Feast and Famine | 9:00am sunday, 15th may |
I have times of feast, and times of famine. There are times when the words are just spilling out of me, when the feelings are so intense that they naturally overflow onto the page. Then there are days when I wish not to write at all, when the experience causes me a sort of dull pain, as if I were slowly extracting some part of my lower intestine.... Some days, I feel that this world is far from spent, not anywhere near as dying as some would suppose upon it, and that there are so many things yet to do, and to experience, and that art has a limitless expanse from which to draw upon. Then, on a day like today, I feel as if I am bleeding a dry branch, that it even says in the Bible that there is verily nothing new under the sun (that’s in Ecclesiastes, if you want to know), and I can definitely see that there is wisdom to this saying. But yet, I write — because I must.
I have never had very much discipline in my life. This, this site, and the other now that I have running, is the most I’ve ever had of it, and so, wish dearly not to quit on such a thing. What I emote to you, I suppose, is scratching the most base of what there is of such an endeavor, that I tell you how sometimes it is difficult. But I can add that there are rewards to be had in difficult undertakings. No, they seem not always commensurate with the effort involved, but often, there are more subtle benefits that may not show their articulations in your life in the more obvious ways. If nothing else, these times of famine, properly stored in conscious memory, make you all the more thankful when there be times of feast. And oh, I remember how those times of feast taste, even now: I recall, even knowing what I know, how they seem like they’ll never end.
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| Night Falls | 10:52am wednesday, 11th may |
Night falls, a test if faith will last the dark, not lose itself in the nothingness.
Night falls, and all the stars show themselves from behind the blue curtain of day.
Night falls, and a hundred candles means romance, while one candle stands for hope.
Night falls, but the moon is sometimes a better companion than the sun.
Night falls, a slow exhale of the inbreath, the accumulations of the daylight hours.
Night falls, a cool blanket of midnight blue that collects in it all who rest from motion.
Night falls, and I discover sometimes I can find myself better in the dark.
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| Being Lost | 5:42am saturday, 7th may |
Sure as I have been that I was lost, every single time, it would be when I completely surrendered to whatever forces assailed me that a prevailing wind would direct me back down the way — maybe not where I had wanted to go, but perhaps the way I was meant to. For I may seem at times to be strong, and outwardly project a sense of confidence, but o how many times they were when I could not surmount the workings of the most trivial of fates, and I let things walk over me — because I initially would not let them pass, whereupon they would overcome me. But always, in me a consolation, a solace that there was something greater that was working, here, and the smaller I realized that I was, the larger did I know that thing to be. I remember what the Blessed One said: those who are first will be last, and those who are last will be first: no, I was not that I could hold to such noble things during my sufferings, but when think on it now, I am thankful that I was lost — for it was then I knew the state I had always been in, without realizing how desperate this soul.
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| Peel | 8:32am tuesday, 3rd may |
A heartbreak, and I find all illusions will peel away,
though what is left is only the reality of all that hurts:
and I know that I know nothing, in a harsh calculation.
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