I'm the master of my sea...

See the beauty through the pain...

My hopes for the future have been told before. On this very thing that is not a blog, in fact. Yet sometimes life is a circle, and our thoughts find greater meaning when repeated. So here we go; I hope that in the year to come, we make more mistakes. Because if we are making mistakes, only then are we reaching for new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing ourselves, changing one another and changing the world. I hope we do things we've never done before, and more importantly, that we're doing something. So that's his wish for all of you, and for himself. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

The one at the sail...

I know there were no guarantees. No way of knowing what came next for me, or him, or anything. Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a great song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down the corners and peering close, hoping you still see the person you see there. That was the thing ... you just never knew. Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in his words.

We went on for some time rehashing everything that had happened, and somehow we were both right. And like two people who have loved each other however imperfectly, who have tried to make a life together, however imperfectly, who have lived side by side and watched the wrinkles slowly form at the corner of the other's eyes, and watched a little drop of gray, as if poured from a jug, drop into the other's skin and spread itself evenly, listening to the other's coughs and sneezes and little collected mumblings, like two people who'd had one idea together, we spoke deep into the night, and the next day, and the next night. For forty days and forty nights, I want to say, but the fact of the matter is it only took three. You were off to experience the world, as he had once done, and all that was left, after everything was said and done, was to cheer your success, and cry as he got ready to wave you goodbye.

Sign of the times...

Just stop your crying, have the time of your life,

breaking through the atmosphere,

and things are pretty good from here.

Remember everything will be alright,

we can meet again somewhere -

somewhere far away from here.

We are family...

I always hear people talk about dysfunctional families - how their version of it was so detrimental to who they are, that they really had no other choice. It annoys me, because it makes you think that somewhere there's this magical family where everyone gets along, and no one ever screams things they don't mean, and there's never a time when sharp objects should be hidden. Well, I'm sorry, but that family doesn't exist. The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice.

Our rhyme has to be perfect...

Hungry for the power...

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side. And he has learned during his travels that there’s a trick to the graceful exit. It begins with the banal vision to recognize when something is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out. But also, he knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: It is simply a matter of finding a sunny place during a winter fairy tale, where the light is golden and the snow is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.

Feel it washing over me...

If only you knew...

Over the years I'd lodged her in my permanent past, my pluperfect idol, and I put her on ice, stuffed her with mothballs like a haunted ornament confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I'd dust her off from time to time and then put her back on the mantelpiece. She no longer belonged to earth or to life. All I was likely to discover at this point wasn't just how distant were the memories we created, it was the measure of loss that was going to strike me - a loss I didn't mind thinking about in abstract terms but which would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we've stopped thinking of things we may never have again.

"Loss" is a thoroughly inaccurate verb in the twisted skein of pain, where learning from someone, and growing up, are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to them again in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like the trapdoors of adolescence, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomed drawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which the shortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we are and what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty that only a higher power could manifest. 

Walk on water...

Why, are expectations so high?

Is it the bar I set?

My arms, I stretch, but I can’t reach.

A far cry from it, or it's in my grasp,

 but as soon as I grab, squeeze -

I lose my grip like the flying trapeze.

Gone with the fallen leaves...

Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. And as much as we'd like to believe that we are unique, and our stories unparalleled; in truth, everyone goes through a period of enlightenment - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.

Our cold mornings...

Stars don't disappear, they keep blazing...

Maybe it was the alcohol ... maybe it was the truth ... maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, or write it at least, because this was the time to proclaim it, for it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I have felt so calm for the last year, and why you are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, since only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. So I did it, just like that. No thought of the repercussions or any feelings of shame. I simply told the truth.

So right before I will forever shut my eyes, I want you to know and understand deeply, that if you remember anything, and if you truly loved me, then before you leave as well, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of us and get into a taxi because you have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just for that moment, turn to me once more, or if I am already gone, envision me in your mind, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the eyes, hold my gaze, and call me by my name.

I swear I'll try...

Cross my heart, hope to die...

The main thing to learn about how to fight is that some of us are not born with that desire, because while some are put on this Earth to bear weapons, others just aren't. Some of us are forced by life to take up arms and fight. The art lies in knowing when to wield those arms and when to put them down. I don't think it's a matter of pretending to be ideally unharmed by life and untouched by darkness; because that is hypocrisy. Rather, I think it is a matter of being true to your truth and learning when to fight and more importantly, learning when to let go.

You're painting me a dream...

Over the hills and far away,

a million miles from L.A,

I know we've got to get away,

someplace where no one knows our name.

We'll find the start to something new.

Just take me anywhere, take me anywhere -

anywhere away with you.

Sing my song...

Through his writing he has travelled and learned what he might dare to dream about the world and himself. He had acknowledged the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, both existing in a different dimension from his own. But he felt that he, too, existed much of the time in a different plane from everyone else he knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there was writing, a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which he might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. His real, true world. His perfect island. But if these years have taught him anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

This one's for you...

All the pieces fall right into place...

The best teachers have showed me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly - we only think it does. The motion of drawing back a bow and sending an arrow straight into a target takes only a split second, but it is a skill many years in the making. So it is with a life, anyone's life. I may write about things that could be described as moments captured in time, but they are only shadows of the larger truth, fragments separated from the whole cycle of becoming. And if I can tell an old-time story now about a man who is walking about, it is because I spent many years walking about alone, listening to voices that came from nowhere, and kept me company as I sailed towards a greater understanding of myself.

The flames on our skin...

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it's own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that's why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot - being only human - put asunder what the universe has joined together.

The more you talk about it, rehash it, rethink it, cross analyze it, debate it, respond to it, get paranoid about it, compete with it, complain about it, immortalize it, cry over it, kick it, defame it, stalk it, gossip about it, pray over it, put it down or dissect its motives it continues to rot in your brain. It is dead. It is over. It is gone. It is done. It is time to bury it because it is smelling up your life and no one wants to be near your rotted corpse of memories and decaying attitude. Be the funeral director of your life and bury that thing!

In his eyes, there's a heavy green...

I've been running through the jungle,

I've been running with the wolves,

I've been down the darkest alleys,

saw the dark side of the moon -

all for you, yeah, all for you.

My end game...

They tell you: follow your dreams. Climb every mountain and open every door. Listen to your spirit and the sound of your thoughts telling you to reach higher. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure and learn from your mistakes. Dream. Dream and dream big until you are standing at the highest most pinnacle. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until there is nothing left but the satisfaction of knowing that your dreams are coming true. I think ... I think that’s crap. I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? They are busy doing.

Waiting for you to bang the gong...

Fly like a jet stream...

Painting me a dream...

He suddenly realised that we were on borrowed time, that time is always lent, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more. So if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

High above the whole scene...

Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. You'll love it up here.

Each man has only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. His task is simple and pure - a way to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness. You’ll be told in a hundred different ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Making forts under covers...

My baby's fit like a daydream,

walking with his head down,

I'm the one he's walking to.

So call it what you want,

call it what you want to.

My baby's fly like a jet stream,

high above the whole scene

loves me like I'm brand new.

Fit like a daydream...

Most of us, who have been at this awhile, are forced to acknowledge the histories of life. We are forced to admit that despite everything we are taught, everything we have been raised to believe, certain kinds of magic do indeed exist. In owe of logic and reason, there are things beyond our grasp, and history, memory and the ghosts of our past are sometimes just as tangible as anything we can hold in our hands. We have to understand that just because someone isn't directly in our life anymore, that doesn't mean they don't affect our everyday. That words spoken eons ago don't resonate within our souls and whisper lessons long thought banished. So alas, to love is to lose, yet to lose doesn't not mean to forget.

At least I did one thing right...

And so we dance...

From distant sky...

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces. November, with uncanny witchery changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes - days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. He cared not, though. He has built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

Call it what you want...

I remember days when I used to get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets. It overwhelms me that I was once that person sitting on the bus; watching the golden leaves from a window; thinking of everything I let go. But I slowly learned to breathe through it and keep walking. I learned to make things nice for myself. To comfort my own heart when I woke up sad. To find small bits of friendship in a crowd full of strangers. To find a small moment of joy in a blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk an early morning in November, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying: "I thought of you. I hope you’re well."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that no one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Watch some movies and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what movies he watched himself. But above all, learn. Learn to make things nice for yourself. Try at least. Always try.

Stars don't disappear, they keep blazing...

You're saying it's hopeless, 

heaven can help us, 

and maybe she might.

You say it's beyond us,

I'm trying to save us,

You blame human nature,

and say it's unkind.

Let's make up our own minds, 

we've got our whole lives -

let's see and decide.

Falling out the window...

What if everything we've been taught and thought we knew is more complicated than we ever imagined? What if maybe the opposite is true as well? Because, if bad can sometimes come from good actions, where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad? Maybe sometimes the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right? I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe we shouldn't give up on our dreams, just because our path seem unfamiliar, and those before us would deem it foolish and irresponsible to pursue.

I still love you everyday...

... just not the lover kind of way.

My home was never on the ground...

I have found, through agony and thought, that the life we want does not happen all at once. We are constantly in a state of growing and transforming. It takes a long time, and that's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are done, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real, once you are true, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand, people who are still on their way. So I sat in my room, listening to the sound of his sleeping breath with a smile on my face, and I realised that it wasn't just the sound of breathing, but the voice of life, the voice of being, the voice of perpetual becoming.

He's too young to die...

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies. Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the autumn day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night. The bell can only be seen at the fall of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again. When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart ... hold still. Stay there and tease back the layers. You are in the space between your comfort zone and infinity. You want to hide ... not be seen, not be open, not be vulnerable, but you have to. There are two ways to do this - soft and gentle or fast and hard. Both will get you to the other side, if you let them.

I was still a young boy when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling into a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood at that train station peering upwards through diagonal rain, looking for the train that would take me home. It was there that I finally heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of something that felt familiar, yet I couldn't quite recognize. My body hairs pricked up, each one a willing receiver, and to my young ears, the sound of these amplified guitars was angelic - although, in hindsight, I don’t suppose angels would take the time to play me sweet nothings. I heard a voice that suggested vocal chords of polished silver soared alongside razor-sharp overdriven riffs. I knew that I was hearing my future.

The hardest truths to face...

As it turns out, life is not sitting in hot amorphic leisure in the backyard idly writing or not writing, as the spirit moved you. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing - singing, laughing, learning. This is what it feels like: becoming the master of your life. Even though one continuously rebelled against it, at one point it feels like the only natural progression to your life. And so it was with him. What to do? Where to turn? What ties, what roots? Questions he ponders, as he hangs suspended in the strange thin air of back-home? Which people to leave behind, and who to fight for? What to let go, and what to forever hold dear?

I'll help you hate me...

I know you wanna see me falling out, 

falling out the window.

I know you wanna see me crashing down, 

crashing with my plane.

Baby, I'm way too young to die,

but I'll help you get over me.

Remember my name...

I know you all over again...

So happy it turns back to sad...

You expect to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fall from the trees and their branches are sent against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you know there will always be the spring, as you know the river will flow again after it is frozen. And at no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe essence of every living thing; a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost, something incredibly nostalgic and significant, as we bare witness to the annual cascade of autumn leaves.

Walking through the midnights...

Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock or a clock without hands, what would time be? Without matter time itself is unknowable, for it is a function that needs to be measured in order to be known. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.

His eyes were of different colours, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as an ocean wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. His face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath his left eye gave his features a disturbing asymmetry. His mouth never curved into a smile. The universe, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He was touched - by genius, by madness, by the darkness, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. He took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. He had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By his own account he spoke with angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. He was passionately kind to all living things. He was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever.

The world is on fire...

The life I have imagined for myself is somehow slipping from memory, and if anything, we are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. So now, as I have entered a time of great success, both personally and professionally, I find people around me being in owe, yet what they don't know is that this isn't nearly my finish line. I am still steadfast on reaching further, but what I've accepted is that my journey in not about giant leaps, it's about small, yet firm steps. It's about enjoying every moment of ones path, and not obsessing if you're moving slower than you had hoped - as long as you're on your way, and as long as you find joy in the path ahead, then you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

Everyone prays in the end...

You won't find me in church reading the bible,

I am still here and I'm still your disciple.

I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please,

I'm broken, alone, and afraid.

I'm not a saint, I'm more of a sinner,

I don't wanna lose, but I fear for the winners.

When I try to explain, the words run away,

that's why I stood here today.

Still your disciple...

Find what you've become...

A bird flashed across the empty sky. A cart immobile on the horizon, like a midday star. How could something like this be remade? Yet someone would, no doubt, attempt to repeat their journey, sooner or later. This thought made them feel they should be at once very careful and very daring: careful not to make a mistake that would render the repetition impossible; daring, so that the journey would be worth repeating, like an adventure or like a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Is he to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox?

Deep in the dark...

He lives, he loves, he lies...

I admit, I was in a rut. Life just seemed to be moving too fast for me to grasp. I felt like my thoughts were slipping through my fingers, and I was merely a spectator, witnessing my own life as it rushes through in a blaze of discontent. I needed to take some time and forcefully slow down - almost to a standstill. Only as I was on the brink of existence, did I at long last hear my thoughts again. My mind stopped spinning and I was able to dream once more - even if for just a moment.

There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomach in a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in the darkness of the grave, how it frightens him beyond all things ... how it whispers dark secrets thought long forgotten ... how it enters his dreams and lets loose a foreboding gnarl. And do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lost memories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreams play when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?

I scream your name before I fade away...

Is this the place that I call home?

To find what I've become,

walk along the path unknown -

we live, we love, we lie.

Deep in the dark I don't need the light,

there's a ghost inside me.

It all belongs to the other side -

we live, we love, we lie.

Shedding tears of love...

You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you wake up in the morning and realise that you've had a good night's sleep. You are able to eat breakfast and as day turns into dusk, you find yourself being able to smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy? How dare I be glad in a world where you are no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss the ones that left too soon as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of sorrow. So begins the cycle anew - always and forever in motion, between gratitude and grief, between life and death.

I'll take it lying down...

Like a desert in the rain...

It was one of those unexpected realisations, yet there he was, sitting near the ocean, as waves came crashing towards the shore, and he thought how beautiful it was that despite everything, he managed to return. It became so clear that it was not about the world but in fact it was all about him; the way one grows wings. He finally understood that it was not his fault, any of it. And those who still choose to point their fingers at him, are to be let go and forgiven. He sat there and had fire blazing in his eyes, ready to be raised and soar above the sky. The whole world looked at him in awe and wished if only they could understand how he came to be, for he was suddenly no longer confined to be on the ground anymore. He had wings of fire and he left a trail everywhere he went, for others to one day follow.

You make it rain, but I'll make it shower...

Too good at goodbyes...

All of the things we were hiding,

because we were young and ashamed.

Send us to perfect places,

all of our heroes fading,

and now I can't stand to be alone -

let's go to perfect places.

I've got the power...

My scars remind me that I did indeed survived my deepest wounds. Ones that were inflicted upon my heart in hopes of finishing me off forever. Yet here I stand, still marching forward, and that in itself is an accomplishment. All my scars, they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. Better equipped to face anything life might thrown my way ... anything at all.

He is not his broken heart. He is not the weight he lost or miles he ran and he is not the way he slept all alone under the bare sky in smell of tears and whiskey because he had nowhere to go and wanted something solid to sleep on. Like concrete. But above all, he is not your fault. He is the muscles building cells, a little every day, because they broke that day, but bones are stronger once they heal. He is smiling to the people that pass him by and replacing his groceries once a week and he is not sitting for hours in the shower anymore. He is the way a life unfolds and blooms and seasons come and go and he is the way spring always finds a way to turn even the coldest winter into a field of green and flowers into new life. He is not your fault.