The thing with the feathers...

Hope is the thing with feathers,

that perches in the soul,

and sings the tune without the words,
and never stops at all.

And sweetest in the Gale is heard,
and sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird

that kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
and on the strangest sea,

yet never in extremity,

it asked a crumb of me.

I blame angles like you...

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our soul, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called someone of substance - people who are kind and generous and who know what it means to live like there is no life at all. And it is through all our sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we came here to acquire and which will make us more like those who have already left and proved that despite everything, our ability to exist is such a wonderful thing.

Hold on to each other...

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. For once you lose hold of it, the journey back can be tiresome if not impossible. It hinges on your desire to obtain what once was, instead of searching for newer, more meaningful connections. It can lead you astray with its tantalising inconsistencies - what once felt happy, now uproots the feeling of burden and regret. What once held promise is now spent and wasted. So fight for it - hold on for dear life, because it might never again be as magical.

Somewhere beautiful...

Might as well start with us...

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to experience every side of the coin - to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be kind. You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger, and I have no choice but to express it as wholeheartedly as I can. I've tried to be forgiving. And yet; there were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you're angry? When someone is enraged, you don't doubt it for a moment. If we are to survive, this is something I truly have to work on, really have to change, and while I can't promise I'll be successful, the least I can do is promise that I will try.

On the mend...

I remember when you lost your head,

sometimes I wonder how you stay so sad

when you're so beautiful?

I remember every word you said -

how you were scared,

because you'd never been somewhere so beautiful.

So tell me why we're talking

when we dance so good?

I remember when I lost my head...

Singing hallelujah...

I stand firm - despite what may come across. I have survived worse, and as recent circumstances lighten their grip and I regain my composure, I realise that the path I have chosen will not spare me pain or disappointment. My experience is predetermined to be paved with an onslaught of challenges designed to shake my confidence and test my resolve. To make me feel like I have nothing more to give, yet demanding so much more. To flabbergast me as my future unfolds, and reveals how very wrong I was. How my subjective truth was nowhere near the right one, how I needed to fail to see what it means to survive. It will certainty not be easy, especially considering my addiction to anxiety - to forever remain electrified, to not forget what it means to be alive.

We dance so well...

Maybe it was all too much...

He feels it is time to admit defeat. Not with shame or prejudice, but simply acknowledging that he is not special, he is not great, and saddest of all, he is not a writer. If he were any of those things, the world would have surely told him by now - someone would have seen something in him and given him the chance to breakaway. Yet here he stands, as he always has, as he always will, with his heart about to be shattered, and with a future he can see from a mile away, yet still, it will knock him off his feet. All of this means it is time to leave. To say farewell and move on to something simpler. Something more real. Something he can grasp without falling beneath the pressure of being unique. He will go out as pathetically as he came in, and will not cry because it is over, he will rather smile because it happened.

Facing the darkest days...

I try not to think too much about the future because I can't seem to phantom how this could have a happy ending. It's just all too much - too much to bear, too much to grasp, too much to hold on to. I've never faced such circumstances before and I'm not sure how to proceed. Everything holds so much promise, it would be a pity if it turned to dust. I wanted so much, and now as my life unfolds I wonder what percentage of what I wished for will actually come to fruition? If even anything at all.

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are. It is this sunset that I watch day after day. I project it into every person I meet, every scenario I am in, and I hope that its rays burn away my flesh and reveal my soul. That I find myself amidst the ash and undoubtedly start being born anew - kinder, gentler, smarter, funnier, more beautiful, a tiny bit more daring, and infinitely more profound.

Blackouts and airplanes...

Tough boy

in the fast lane.

No time for love,

no time for hate.

No drama, no time

for games.

Tough boy

whose soul aches.

In the fast lane...

Big boys cry when their heart is breaking.

I find no happiness in the addictions I sometimes allow to take hold of my life. It is not something that brings me joy or a sense of calm. It is a wary attempt to escape from a tortured past, from a sense of being alone and a fear of some magical forthcoming gloom, that can only be controlled by running here, day after day, to this place I created with all of your help, like it was a bottle of whiskey. So I crawl inside all these words, right to its core, for it is a world that I have complete control over. Something I can tangibly relate to and call my own. Now, as it slowly begins to shape into a form I never imagined I could sustain, I realise that truly, without a doubt, this thing that is not a blog, is my one true love - the thing that keeps me afloat, the safe-heaven I couldn't live without.

Take these walls away...

Me and you.

Lay with me so it doesn't hurt...

I try to tell you, but it won't come out...

Me slišiš? Si še tam?

Sometimes the best and worst times of your life can coincide. It is a talent of the soul to discover the joy in pain - thinking of moments you long for, and knowing you’ll never have them again. The beautiful ghosts of our past haunt us, and yet we still can’t decide if the pain they caused out-weighs the tender moments when they touched our soul. This is the irony of love. This is the bane of his existence. Always finding a way to balance the scales. If things go too well, a way to make himself less of a man, if they go too poorly, a way to make himself more whole. He is nowhere near complete, nowhere near the man he knows he can be, so every new stumble hurts more than it should. He is disappointed, for he should be vastly more stable and sound, yet he is enveloped by fear and doubt, making him feel alone. So fucking alone.