Broken arrows in the dark...

You stripped your love down to the wire,

fire shining cold alone outside.

You stripped it right down to the wire,

but I see you behind those tired eyes.

Now as you wade through the shadows that live in your heart,

you'll find the light that leads on,

because I see you for you and your beautiful scars -

so take my hand, don't let go.

The hope in my heart...

Foot against the pedal...

Our shadows hate people and their stories; they have hated for so long and with such intensity that in the end the darkness enveloped their whole bodies until their shapes were no longer discernible. That is also why they are so difficult to defeat, because they can disappear into walls or into the ground or float up. They're ferocious and bloodthirsty, and if you're bitten by one you don't just die; a far more serious and terrible fate lies in store: you lose your imagination.

I have conceived life as a road down which one travelled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, and then one had to wait, and by god, do I hate waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seems composed entirely of expectation. I expect - an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.

See it in his eyes...

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within him as a swallowed star. For perhaps happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. And surely happiness is not a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But rather the result 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.

Ready for anything...

When you find someone who calls you beautiful, who calls you back when you hang up, who will stand in front of you when others cast stones, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who will hold your hand when you're sick, who thinks you're the best thing that ever happened to them, the one who shows you off to friends, the one that wouldn't bear your rejection because losing you means losing the will to live, who kisses you when you screw up, watches the stars and names one after you and will hold the fort for hours so you can sleep ... you marry that person and you never let them go.

Taking pictures in the dark...

So pull me closer,

why don't you pull me close?

Why don't you come on over?

I can't just let you go.

Oh baby, why don't you meet me in the middle?

I'm losing my mind just a little.

Your fingertips trace my skin...

Welcome to the jungle...

Fighting against all odds...

He likes to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So he figured if the entire world is a big machine, he has to be here for some reason. Any reason. Any reason at all.

Training isn't a sport for squishy boys. It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. It's all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. It's about finding meaning, even when the world feels like it lost all of it.

Call me by your name...

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for my baby - such is my idea of happiness. Because all I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky. That's what I want, and I think I may have found it in you. I just hope it isn't too late, or my demons get the best of me. I'm afraid that if I screw this up, I won't get another chance, that if we don't clench to our blessing, another may never come for either of us.

I've been running through the jungle...

In your eyes, there's a heavy blue,

one to love, and one to lose.

Sweet divide, a heavy truth - 

water or wine, don't make me choose.

When it all falls down...

It has been so long since I felt so ... so ashamed. As I stood up and I looked across the room, seeing the faces of everyone I thought didn't matter, my heart sank into my stomach, and the rest is a complete blank. I'm not disappointed that I failed, I'm more sad I took it for granted and allowed my arrogance to lead me astray. I have been preaching lessons for so long now, that I forgot that I too need to follow them. I have ignored that these emotions still existed ... that I was able to make a complete fool of myself and risk losing everything I worked for. So while I tried to close my eyes and sleep away the memories, I realised that these feelings of defeat were perhaps needed more than I can admit. I have been flying so high for so long that I disregarded what it means to stare failure in the eyes, and despite everything, despite anything laugh and keep on walking.

A rebel just for kicks...

Whatever it takes...

Oh, I forgot to mention ... perfection of effort is not required, by the way. It is the consistency of attempting to work your tools that brings progress. It’s like anything else. If I want to tone muscle, lifting a ten-pound weight a few times every day will move me toward my goal much quicker than hoisting a fifty-pound barbell once a week. Yes, it really is true; slow and steady wins the race. Just try a little, every day. You’ll see.

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another man, who kept his notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, he wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. That's why I write this thing that is not a blog, in order to see life in its true dimension and to defy my own poor memory.

One, two, three they run back to me...

Coming over mountains and sailing over seas...

He wanted to be like the birds. He wanted their songs to flow up through his throat and burst out of his mouth. He wanted their feathers to bud from his flesh. He wanted their wings, he wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so he consumed them. He speared them, he clubbed them, he tangled their feet in glue, he netted them, he spitted them, he threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because he loved them. he wanted to be one with them. He wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when he was young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, he did not want the mess of being born, and so he crammed the birds into his gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, he couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, he can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs ... he didn't stand a chance. For he is mired in gravity, he's earthbound. He's ankle-deep in blood, and all because he ate the birds, he ate them a long time ago, when he still had the power to say no.