All of the stars...

They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For most, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on a timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself years from now, maybe at my hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my twenty seventh. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of my brothers steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the park, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine it being deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows.

We'll meet in the spring...

There's something about the way 

that you always see the pretty view,

overlook the blooded mess, 

always looking effortless.

I got no innocence, 

faith ain't no privilege.

I am a deck of cards, 

vice or a game of hearts.

And still you, 

still you want me.

It's becoming a freak show...

If outer events bring me to a position where I can bear them no longer and force me to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief, or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of my dependence on that power, then this crushing may open the door to grace. Because we need nothing more than the experience we are having right now. It is enough. It is plenty. It is perfect just as it is. It was designed for you, given to you for your experience. All you have to do, and all you have ever had to do is accept this gift. Take it and let it in. Let yourself experience the present moment just as it is. It doesn't get any better than this. This is the simple truth we refuse to accept, and it will suffer as long as that is the case.

Forgetting is a harder fight...

Little do you know...

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. And he had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water's deeper than you think and there's nothing there.

I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from my obsessions, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use; the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There is a whole universe growing outside my window. The tea is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on my way again, to create and to inspire and to reach beyond. My own writing on the wall, that I created. Me ... little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's almost spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.

I sympathies, I recognize...

Spin round you can feel the breeze...

At such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that it is linear. Because in panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, want time to appear to run forwards because the 'future' is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn't move. And if time isn't running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You're buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events.

If life was a highway...

I've been a liar, been a thief,

been a lover, been a cheat,

all my sins need holy water, 

feel it washing over me.

Well, little one, I don't want to admit to something,

if all it's gonna cause is pain.

Truth and my lies right now are falling like the rain -

so let the river run.

Fire in a silver dream...

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. And through all that waiting, here I am. For a long time, life was what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my journey would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through like a lifeboat. But I was wrong. So wrong. Because life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearls. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than at first glance. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I was waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this is it.

Heart clap, we skip a beat...

Loose up and break the scene...

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power. While they can indeed present a great temptation, their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of something much larger. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticises me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking: "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." 

Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swivelled and changed direction on the strength of a single remark, perhaps spoken out of turn. But that is life, isn't it? Fate. Luck. Chance. A long series of what-if’s that lead from one moment to the next, time never pausing for you to catch your breath, to make sense of the cards that have been handed to you. And all you can do is play your cards and hope for the best, because in the end, it all comes back to those three basics. Fate. Luck. Chance.

Caught up in the overflow...

 

A whisper shall herald the light to come...

I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. Yet when I go to rest, I usually wake in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, I feel my face, but it has in fact been dry for many years now. Then I look at the window and think: why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain. So I turn over, more confused still, and fumbling about for my dripping sleep, trying to slip it back on. It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.

We got to lose it...

Downtown we let it go,

sunset high and our bodies low.

Blood rush in the hazy glow,

my hands, your bones.

Loose up we break the scene,

one step deep as you fall to me.

Heart clap, we skip a beat -

count one, two, three.

Blood rush in the hazy glow...

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

Give yourself a moment...