| |
| september 2003 |
|
| Unraveling | 12:04am tuesday, 30th september |
There are instances when I feel that reality itself will unravel, to show its true, hidden form. It is a form of paranoia. It is the suspicion that the world is not as it seems, that there is a conspiratorial, underlying order beneath the surface, which I seem to glimpse from time to time. It is terrifying. These moments are usually triggered by music, usually a song I haven't heard before (but not always): when somehow the words seem to know something about me, and it is as if my fate is being sealed in some horrible way. When it happens, all I can do is hang on for dear life, grab whatever sense of reason I have, and work out how what I think is happening is not really happening — that the world is still the world, and not some paranoid plot to damn me. I slowly regain reality.
I never know what might trigger these psychic outbursts. One day, I hope to be free of them altogether, and actually, it has not happened for about a year, now. I am getting better, but it may be that I will always be susceptible to some turn of phrase that causes me to lose touch with what is real, and to brush up against the madness.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (5) so far. |
|
| Mirrors | 12:20am monday, 29th september |
I imagine I have not gone further inside my own self than many philosophers. But they were looking for truth, something that they imagined would be in their heart of hearts if they dug deeply and earnestly enough. I was looking for a way back out. To live in a house full of mirrors — some cracked, most distorted — is to get to see an awful lot of yourself, and every little defect, every little wrinkle shows itself if you live there long enough. When everywhere you look, it is only you staring back, you want to disavow yourself, to escape your own skin, to be invisible. I have learned things about myself that I never wanted to know. Thoughts and dreams I from which I could not escape. I was not a person; I was only the figment of my own imagination.
When you emerge from a house full of mirrors, take your first breath of air, the birth is a painful one. It is difficult to communicate with people; you struggle for something to say when before, the slightest movement provoked a reaction from the mirrors around you. They don't know you. They cannot look into your head and know what you're thinking, not like the reflections you have lived with so long. You make do with speaking words that only half fit what you intend to say. But slowly, you adapt. You get used to language, you get used to being a person again.... I cannot say, now, that I miss that life of mad solitude, but you take what you can get in this life, in this world, and it is your job to make something of it. I remember what I have seen. I know what I am.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| I Have Heard | 12:07am saturday, 27th september |
I have heard the secret messages no one else could hear.
I have looked into the heart of infinity and with awe and fear.
I have wondered what was true, and I knew no one could tell me.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (2) so far. |
|
| Before, During, After | 12:01am friday, 26th september |
Yesterday has burned itself out: I gathered its ashes and spread them out over the river of time. Today is the eternal now, that which began too far back for anyone to remember, to end somehow that no one wants to think about. Tomorrow is the dreaded desire, it is the quiet dawn, it is not as new as it used to be.... I imagine these to be the three fates of before, during, and after; and I have often wondered why their faces look to different directions, as if they never talk between themselves at all, blindly tossing the day from one to the next without thinking of the consequences of occurrence. Or perhaps it is only one fate, after all, constantly shedding her skin every passing dawn. And as I grow older, it seems to me that the day is getting shorter and shorter, to become at the end of this my life the single instant that lasts for all eternity.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| Times of Calm | 12:04am thursday, 25th september |
There are times of calm, I must admit. A moment, perhaps stolen from some of the doings and goings of busy life, a pause where I can sit and think, sit and daydream, or sit and do nothing at all. No, they usually don't last very long, these interludes, but I can say that they do come. I can stop for a little while — like a break from life, where I may suspend all my cares, worries, and stresses for just a few minutes: a rest stop on this journey through this world. I don't know what I would be like without these times of still contemplation, whether I am capable of carrying the weight of this life if I don't unload it occasionally and stretch these tired muscles. We all of us are capable of handling just so much without something snapping under the strain of constant pressure. We all of us need some times to relax our hearts so full of their troubles.
I do have instances where I ask that impossible question: why? When I question the motives of this world, when I wonder what God had in mind for the things that happen to me. Sometimes it infects my peace. Somewhere, though, I understand that some questions I can ask forever and no answer will satisfy them. Learning to let things go was one of the harder lessons to learn — I always wanted the magical answer to my woes and blamed all the world for why something went wrong, why my plans always blew up in my face. Then there came that day when I discovered holding onto all those frustrations gave me no room for me, that I was becoming very small, indeed. I learned release. And these times of calm, now: the world is very far away, just for a minute: just me with myself, not to ask any questions with no answers, free of all cares.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| A Lifetime's Sleep | 12:05am tuesday, 23rd september |
I have lived a million years, or so it
seems right now. I have seen
everything there is to see, or so my heart
feels this moment. I am tired, I
want no more of living and motion,
or so my legs tell me, weary of their
wandering. There is nothing left,
nothing I want to see, nothing I want to do,
nothing I want to feel, nothing
I want to experience. Or so my spirit
would have me believe: that it has
expended its last and has no more
to give, that it will not last the day.
And there I lie, curled up and naked
on the floor, wondering why I was born
at all, if it is only to come to this,
if it is only to despair at life.... My
window is open, and outside is the world.
The wind carries in the song of a
sparrow, and then a rain washes down,
drumming the pavement below
in a rhythmless percussion. Suddenly,
I long for something I cannot name,
and I rise to that window, to the
storm growing outside: I sense life
happening all around me: birth, death, love,
hate, wonder, boredom, creation,
destruction. Destiny is often disguised
as ordinary circumstance — this I
realize like a new heaven and a new
earth; and I awake from a lifetime's sleep.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (3) so far. |
|
| Drinks | 12:11am monday, 22nd september |
I have drunk from bowls scrawled with runes I could not decipher. I have drunk wines some say have been aging from the beginning of time. I have drunk from streams that flow down from the vaults of Heaven, though each time after, I forget where they are, and must be led back by guides who never touch the waters. I have drunk concoctions said to be liquefied night, cold and black, with the taste of ink — perhaps that's all they were, ink. I have drunk from the blood of the Lamb slain at the foundation of the world, but we all have, whether we know of it or no. I have drunk of many things, but these were distilled in dreams, most of them: one, however, I must say that thus I did drink, and tell it true.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (2) so far. |
|
| A Step | 12:01am saturday, 20th september |
I take a step out into the void and I do not know if I will fall or fly. Most likely fall. But take this step I must, for where I am seems intolerable to my senses, and I must go. Yes, it is that I hear the void calling me, that fearful thing called the future is whispering my name as if it knows something I do not. I will step into the unknown because the known all around me is not as worth knowing as it once was. I realize destiny I cannot rely as guide except that I know it plays a part somehow; I must make my way as best I can understanding that it will make sense only far after I've done the things I will. Whatever must happen in the courses of the world I cannot say, but I at times I sense something of destiny's hint around many things that occasion to occur, and even a few things that I make do myself. I arm myself with faith, and I leap.
What can one do but take the chance? Who wants in life that at the end of it all regret that he never found out what would happen if he were to reach for the prize? I might say, I have tried, and I have failed, but I was alive: when he says only, I have never tried, how can he say that he lived? Someone once said that if you are not brave, pretend to be, for no one can tell the difference. That will be my principle, as I am not one who has any more courage than anyone else. It is that perhaps I fear different things from the one who never dares to step into the unknown: I fear wasting away more than I fear to falter or fall. The day is half gone, and I want not when the night comes that I have wasted the whole of light. May the Lord guide my way in ways that I do not conceive; may I come to the shore where I am meant to be, and do what I am meant to do.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Onward | 12:03am friday, 19th september |
I have gone far, and there is far to go before I sleep.
Sometimes an infinite weariness stops me, like a wall of null.
Then I take one step, two, like learning to walk for the first time.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Up and Down | 12:23am thursday, 18th september |
There are days when I think I'm falling apart. Stresses press down on me, and I feel I'm in danger of collapsing under their weight. It passes, though: it comes in a wave, and like a wave, it crashes onto the beach of my thought to subside back into the subconscious waters of its creation. There are, too, some days where feel as if I could bear the weight of the world and not buckle. These times clad me as if in an invincible armor, but these, as well, wash away as if they never were. I think, I know, that perhaps everyone feels something of these ups and downs, but mine somehow seem unnatural, artificial, conspired. Too desperate or too bold to be of sane air, I try not to plunge too far down, nor revel too high.
I ask you, madness, will you never leave me? Will you ever linger in the bottom of my mind, reaching up from time to time and wrench my heart out of place? It is a strange curse, one that at moments helped me discover my true self — the self I was afraid to face. But I am tired, O living blot. Let me be. I want only to live my life, like anyone.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| Focus | 12:04am tuesday, 16th september |
My thoughts, these days, have not had much focus. For months, I was like a laser in concentration, starting to work on some ideas I had right after my day job (even on the train home, not even waiting till I got home). Now, though, I don't know, my dreams don't drive me as they once did. It might have something to do with my desire to leave the country and settle in Korea, for that is a major thing, that takes mental energy to consider — but even that I have not held as tightly to the fore of my consciousness. What is it? What did I have that I have lost? Or did I lose nothing at all, really, that this big fade is natural to he who pushes himself so hard for so long? What am I to make of this, this cloud that hangs over me?
It's probably some simple thing that is making me this way. I probably just need to exercise more or some such. If I think back, I can see that I have had other times like this, days and nights of lull after a period of intense and single-minded fix on this idea or that. I just wonder, that is all: what is it that moves me and then stops, what is the spirit that possesses me and then lets go? "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans," John Lennon said. And oh, how I have planned. These ideas that I have sweated on: they are nothing but plans, nothing concrete, as of yet. But these plans are — were — things that lit my senses, which made life sweeter to live. I miss them, that's all.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (3) so far. |
|
| My Age's Stream | 1:10am monday, 15th september |
Though time is higher than my touch,
what I have ever seen
is in my heart and in my hunch
I'm caught in its machine.
I pedal through my life it seems
forever in a race,
but as it flows, my age's stream,
I know not what I chase.
In dreams I conquered dreamy lands,
but in this solid realm,
I have but my own feet to stand
and I am overwhelmed.
O what shall I foresee for me
in time's unyielding wheel?
This world: I fall down on my knees
in hopes to one day heal.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| I Have... | 12:15am saturday, 13th september |
I have heard the rhythm of a thousand waves wash over the beach, each crying a little of sadness as they subsided back into the anonymous waters. I think I heard them say, "This is me," in their individual voices, one on top of another: innumerable and indistinguishable.
I have seen a field with a thousand flowers dancing in the breeze, each imbuing the air with its own sweet scent. When evening came they disappeared from the ground to appear in the sky a thousand stars, winking at me as if they knew something I never would.
I have dreamed a thousand dreams, each more mysterious than the last. I do not know what it is that breathes into my mind, but in my heart I remember a thousand friends that never were, a thousand songs that were never sung, a thousand deaths I never died.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| Thoughts on Death | 12:02am friday, 12th september |
I thought about death the other day. Now, I have thought about death before, but those have been more or less mere theoretical speculations. This time, it was the specter of the inevitable, that which we will all face sometime in the days and nights we have on this world. I don't know why it came up in my mind, but there it was: the image of me lying on the last bed I'd ever lie on, letting the last of this life go: death. Interestingly enough, I was at peace with it. Maybe I'll feel different when it is more of an imminent thing, but for now, I am okay with its total release, to see what's on the other side. What can a man feel but this? We none of us will live forever, all of us share in this last thing, this finality.
I have a lot I want to do before I go. But there is a little faith in me, something that tells me that I will get done all that I need in the time allotted me in this life. It might not be all I think I need do, or perhaps I may even accomplish more than I dream, but in my heart, I believe that the days given me will be enough. It is not to say that at the end, I won't think life too short, but in the grand scheme of it all, the balance book of my existence will amount to what destiny had in mind for me from the beginning. One may hope only that when you lie on your deathbed, you may look back on the life that you've lived and see a life lived well, one that seized the day when it could, a life lived deep in life.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Slips | 12:11am thursday, 11th september |
I have had fantastic things slip through my fingers, vanish.
Some I knew not were precious until they were gone, fool that I am.
The few I treasured, time cheated me, traded me dust for them.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Beginning | 12:30am tuesday, 9th september |
"Let there be light." These words are the first words that are spoken in all creation, according to biblical text. Myself, I won't buy a bible that doesn't translate this sentence just like that, this simple, profound command. There's something to that phrase, something that hints of a higher meaning, something of the divine, and in my heart I could not imagine a better start to the beginning of it all. Various people have tried to reconcile this phrase to our physical beginning, the moment of the Big Bang from which this universe sprang; but I see no reason to try and match things up like that: let it stand, I think, as a mysterium tremendum, as it should. We do not know how one may conceive of light when darkness is all there is. And we cannot conceive of how one may speak, and the elements themselves obey that voice.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Dreamer, Come | 1:37am monday, 8th september |
What foretells the evening of something great? The ideas that shape our lives and our worlds, oftentimes they are merely sketched on a cocktail napkin, sometimes forgotten for a period and glimpsed again by accident. Many a hard cogitation yields very little fruit, and then some breeze happens by to whisper something new, something wonderful. How shall we prepare for the next stupendous happening? We cannot tell, none of us, what lies in the present day that will make of our tomorrows a fundamentally different way of breathing. Somewhere scattered in the cities is a tune so strange we will not recognize the notes until we become part of its playing, and the music a part of our moving. What is to come? I wonder and think that all my wondering is wrong.
Some great things do come from the patient working of many hands, much perspiration, much experimentation, and much slow evolution of thought. But these have never captured the heart as much as a lone gunman of inspired dreams. Who is he, who is to come? Perhaps you have met him (or her) absently looking into the sky, imagining things he cannot explain, pondering the nuances of an idea for which he has invested something of a lifetime. I dream of the dreamer. I believe in a future where some crouched visage turns the static thoughts of all the crowds to a light with colors they never imagined could be. Do you have dreams? Perhaps it is you. Perhaps I wait for those your dreams, that you scarcely believed ever could be, to change the world once more.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Ephemeral | 12:08am saturday, 6th september |
There is a rhyme to my wanderings.
My ways: I knew not when I walked them,
but they have been led by some
strange higher order; and if I look
back upon my journey, I sense the glimpse
of mysterious purpose, the feel
that ineffable meaning has walked with me.
I know not the rhythm of the divine,
I foot my roads without thought
that some calling guides my courses;
but I cannot but ponder what the plan
may be that will seem so plain when I peer
back to this time, these motions.
I think I will not ask why I am here or for
what I have been created, for these are only
ephemeral mysteries, as I am as
a raindrop falling through the vast open,
who cannot see plain to where it goes,
only that it must travel in the path
to which it is guided by gravity and wind.
The mystery reveals itself in the eye
of the man who has eaten the wheat
that grew from the ground where the raindrop
fell: his eye carries a fraction of the
sky to which he lifts his gaze in wonder.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| Musics | 12:04am friday, 5th september |
In my mind, I have played drums like the many armed Kuan Yin, all fire and rhythm. In my mind, I have played electric guitar riffs from the theme of Romeo and Juliet in the fashion of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton. (Too, I have hit notes Jimi Hendrix never did, charged with the essence of raw passion, piercing through all façades.) There are themes of blues melodies I have imagined where I could wail improvisations from a single sad cry. Pieces of symphonies, too, with fifty strings and ten flutes I have conjured, there in my head, that no one else ever heard. Maybe there is some grand tune in me, locked away, or maybe these melodies came from elsewhere; but these musics I have invoked come from somewhere deep, that perhaps were never meant to be played, or perhaps to be heard once and forgotten — ephemera of the infinite mystery.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (2) so far. |
|
| Not Even Longing | 12:01am thursday, 4th september |
There are times when I feel imagination has left me, when inspiration has fled, and I am alone in a vast desert where nothing grows. These are the times when it is as if some divine Purpose has forsaken me, when I am left to fend for myself with none of the tools needed for survival. Wandering, wandering, wandering, wandering, I search for something I know not what it is and may not even be sure when I see it. I sit alone in an empty night, I wait for a wind to whisper that I should go on, I am sheltered only by sleep. There is not even longing: longing would mean that my heart desired some thing, but it is that my heart is instead dulled to all sensation. These are the times when pain is welcome, just to feel.
It is in these times when it is hardest to pray. Really, sometimes it is only to prayer where I may go, and it is lost to me in these times my dullness. In moments of gladness, prayers of thanks bubble from me, and in hours of dark, I desperately entreat That higher for an end to my woe, but in times of the dead still — nothing inspires nor begs me to fall to my knees. Neither hope nor despair fills my soul, I have everything I need to live, yet I feel not alive.... Perhaps it is to wait that is all I am to do, that like all things, this shall pass. I can think of no more that I am able, these nows, for nothing may lift me that I know of to try.... (But maybe a quick prayer, too, why not? Just four words: "Move me, Lord. Amen.")
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| Which Way? | 12:09am tuesday, 2nd september |
Which way do I go? The signs are oftentimes uncertain.
The highway to destruction looks to be like any other road.
And salvation's road is the rockiest, least traveled, uphill.
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (1) so far. |
|
| Of The Hand | 12:40am monday, 1st september |
I am of the Hand that quiets the messengers of time. I am of the Dream that distills the essence of the moments that pass without marking. I am of the Thought that fills the night with hope beyond the reach of its forgetting. I am of the Heart that no love has ever escaped, that touches the spirit in the darkest of hours. I am of the Justice that imagines the world in such strong desire that the world is changed thereof. I am of the Peace that in trumpets of victory shall overcome even the wars within one soul against itself. I am of the Truth that does not die, that no one can escape when the everlasting day has come. And though I am a stranger to this world, this world is no stranger to me: its darkness, and its light....
|
| » comment on this entry | read comments, (0) so far. |
|
| ^ Top of Page | |
|
