Here's to one hell of a decade...

To capture a predator...

This is a dark tale. A grim tale. It's a tale from another time, a time when wolves waited for boys in the forest, beasts paced the halls of cursed castles, and witches lurked in gingerbread houses with sugar-kissed roofs. That time is long gone. But the wolves are still here and twice as clever. The beasts remain. And death still hides in a dusting of white. It's grim for any boy who loses his way. Grimmer still for a boy that loses himself. Know that it's dangerous to stray from the path. But it's far more dangerous not to.

Become the beast...

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my choices and my path in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

I have learned to cherish my solitude. Maybe to a fault. I can take trains by myself to places I have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive without knowing where I'm going. To go so far away that I stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when I don't want to do something. Say yes if my instincts are strong, even if everyone around me disagrees. I had to decide whether I wanted to be liked or admired. To decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what I'm doing here. I had to learn how to believe in something. How to believe in myself.

Splinters of my soul...

I've always been a hunter,

nothing on my tail,

but there was something in you,

I knew could make that change.

To capture a predator,

you can't remain the prey.

You have to become

an equal in every way.

So look in the mirror

and tell me, who do you see?

Is it still you?

or is it me?

That special time of the decade...

It's been quite the year. Hell ... it's been quite the decade. And as both are slowly coming to a close I cannot help but think about everything that happened. And when I say everything, I mean it literally. As in; in the past ten years everything had happened. Literally everything. It's hard to even phantom the magnitude of those moments - that defined, shaped and moulded me into the man I am today. Can you still remember that boy? Who ran away, just so he could one day return back home? Do you remember how he took long walks, listened to music and thought about all the mistakes he had made? If only he knew back then, that they weren't mistakes at all, and that the walk he was on, wasn't leading him in circles, but was paving the way forward. The way through the pain. The way ahead.

A sentimental feeling...

You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong? And as you will slowly come to realise the truth, your heart will burst like stars do when they die, and you will fall on your knees. Time will stop and it will feel as if the whole world is looking at you in awe. You will light the whole universe with your fire for the briefest of moments. In the end, you will be as beautiful as the stardust falling from the sky and your heart won't ache anymore.

Walk through fire for you...

More than you could ever know...

Make my wish come true...

I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.

He doesn't want to forget these moments that constantly remind him of who he is, who he was, and who he is yet to be. He doesn't want to forget his past and all the things about this world that's brought him here. With you. So stop making up excuses. Stop hiding. Stop running from him. You're the light at the end of his tunnel, his saving grace. Admitting that made him think about how much everyone wanted to be free; how they went mad wanting their freedom; he began to wonder whether it was he that was mad because he was happy to be bound; whether he was alone in knowing that he could not live without the clamor of your voice besides him.

Back to my ways...

I am a big believer in setting goals. Simply dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life in the future. What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? The answers help you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come. Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go.

Run down your wildest dreams...

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 list things that might be described as my accomplishments, 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, a city born man, it is because I spent many years walking about myself, listening to voices that came not just from the people but from the walls and buildings, and lights and stones.

Just let me adore you...

Your wonder under summer sky,

brown skin and lemon over ice,

would you believe it?

You don't have to say you love me,

I just wanna tell you something,

lately we've been on my mind.

I'd give anything, to have you here...

The demons we're made of...

Feeding the flame...

I have thought a lot about death recently - what it means to lose someone close. To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who inhabit the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing - I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it's own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. What to say and how to say it to provoke a reaction. 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.

Quiet winter melodies...

It just hit me - it's the last month of the decade. And this thing that is not a blog has been here for all of it. Documenting, commenting and most importantly helping cope with life. Because if anything, it really happened in the last 10 years. Life I mean. It happened so intensely and vigorously that I cannot quite grasp it. It set the foundations for the rest of my journey, and while that scares me, I am also excited what this existence still has to offer. But to fully embrace it, the triangle demands three complementary elements: love, power and danger. Mixed incautiously, these elements, like those in physics, are volatile and potentially explosive. And while I am not quite ready to announce it, this decade is about to go out with a bang.

Everything I wanted...

Because we're the masters 

of our own fate,

we're the captains 

of our own souls,

so there's no need 

for us to hesitate,

we're all alone, 

let's take control.

Captain of my own soul...

Makes me want to yell...

It's easy to see how far you are from your desired outcome. It's easy to see that you are not the man you want to be. But the easy thing is not always the best thing. It's also easy to get discouraged about the marathon that you are only a fifth of the way through. Instead of focusing solely on the hard work and pain ahead of you, maybe I should take the time to celebrate the steps I have made, the milestones I have passed. Maybe I'd feel better. Maybe I'd arrive sooner to certain realizations and maybe, just maybe I'd sleep a bit tighter. I need to make some changes, of that I am sure. To become someone better. Wiser. Calmer. Less of a boy. More of a man.

Upside down...

I am now almost 30 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I'm starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life's sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. Quite exciting, isn't it?

I don't do goodbyes...

 

You won't take the blame...

We couldn't turn around

until we were upside down.

I'll be the bad guy now,

but no, I ain't too proud.

I couldn't be there

even when I try.

You don't believe it

we do this every time.

My joy in reclusion, the poetry of hibernation...

If he could sleep, he thought, sleep through the unhappy months, the heart's hunger, the months of death and cold and not having what you most want, and wake with time gone past and blurred and a new year coming. But perhaps it is too early in the year, he thought after that, and besides, he is not a bear. Not yet at least. 

Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Even if you know that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, you should still plant an apple tree. You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've walked half way around the world.

Love you, mean it...

It might be time to let go...

It's just that he is about to do something out of the ordinary. And after he does something like that, the everyday look of things will surely change just a little. Things will look different than they did before, yet somehow still be faintly familiar. But he knows he shouldn't let appearances fool him. There's always only one reality - one truth - one perception. For the man who comes back through the crack in the veil will never be quite the same as the man who simply went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which he tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

You will find me in the place I know the best...

For me, becoming isn't about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. But your path doesn't end just because you attain something, because while you might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness, know that this too would in fact be an attachment. A proclivity to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom. So keep moving - even if only you know you are. Even if the world thinks you are fading away. Keep moving and evolving into someone you've always wanted to be.

Now the day bleeds...

She had wished him well in finding his own fate to follow, and he never doubted her sincerity. But it had taken him years to accept that her absence in his life was a deliberate finality, an act she had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of his soul still dangled, waiting for her return. That, he thinks, is the shock of any ending. Realizing that what one might still be holding onto, is perhaps something already finished and done with.

That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is supposed to be. Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

Think about forever now...

I'd spend ten thousand hours,

and ten thousand more.

Oh, if that's what it takes to learn 

that sweet heart of yours.

And I might never get there, 

but I'm gonna try.

If it's ten thousand hours

or the rest of my life.

Changed with the weather...

Look at him now...

In his writings, he has traveled, not only to other worlds, but into his own. He learned who he was and who he wanted to be, what he might aspire to, and what he might dare to dream about the world and himself. More powerfully and persuasively than from anywhere else, he learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. A wrinkle in time described that evil, that wrong, existing in a different dimension from our own. But he felt that he, too, existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else he knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were his writings, 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.

The dancing is killing me softly...

I wish it could be...

I am really trying to finish off this year in a calm and collected manner. I feel like so much has already happened, and if anything, I will never stop trusting extremes that led me to this moment. I will always believe that anything worth having is worth having in excess. The good things are worth hoarding; sex-aching loins, joy that fires through you like popping popcorn, or love, the weakness at the sight of someone who makes your chest ache like indigestion. If it's good for you, it ought to be good for you in any amount, and you should track down every available bit of it. And if it's toxic, if it turns your liver into a hard little rock of scar tissue, or curls your memory at the edges like something burned in a fire, or makes your stomach flop, or your mind ache, or your personality contorted, then it must surely be something worth having ... right?

I feel your signals...

Can a mountain stand without a sea?

Put me in a cage and set me free.

Sundays are my favorite,

all we do is come home and sleep.

What do I get by being sincere?

Love and pain and what is dear to me.

So small, where do we go?

Aren't we all lost in a world so big?

Simply wanting to know where to go...

To want to run away is an essence of being human, it transforms any staying through the transfiguration of choice. To think about fleeing from circumstances, from a relationship or from work is part of the conversation itself and helps us understand the true distilled nature of our own reluctance. Strangely, we are perhaps most fully incarnated as humans, when part of us does not want to be here, or doesn't know how to be here. Presence is only fully understood and realized through fully understanding our reluctance to show up. To understand the part of us that wants nothing to do with the full necessities of work, of relationship, of loss, of doing what is necessary; to learn humility, to cultivate self-compassion and to sharpen that sense of humor that allows you to get up every morning, and try again.

A mountain standing without a sea...

Going into it blindly...

How many of us stop short of success on purpose? How many of us sabotage our own happiness because failure, while miserable, is a fear we're familiar with? Success, however, dreams coming true, are a whole new kind of terrifying, an entire new species of responsibilities and disillusions, requiring a new way to think, act and become. Why do we really quit? Because it's hopeless? Or because it's possible?

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 now, and I think it's what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We'll become too set to change. If we don't take our chance now, another may never come for either of us.

Shining until it stops...

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going. Without a doubt a path has been laid before me, and it is just a matter of time until I arrive, and God knows I've been travelling for quite some time. And as I gaze at world passing me by, I remind myself that the sea may catch fire, the planets may collide in space, the sun may quench off its heat, but what we understand is that our peace is like a river in our souls; it's surface may wave about in turbulence, but it's bottom is cool and gently calm.

Set fires to my forest...

Just like a monkey...

They say oh my god,

I see the way you shine.

Take your hand, my dear, 

and place them both in mine.

You know you stopped me dead

 when I was passing by,

and now I beg 

to see you dance just one more time.

I'd do it all again...

A story is not like a road to follow ... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. For in the end, we're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.

Take my hands and look me in the eyes...

Quite miss home...

At no other time than autumn does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honey-sweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.

That old October feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and heartache in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer. So use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.

I see the way you shine...

His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prospect of feeling worthwhile. Daily he woke up and cast downtrodden eyes upon the sea and he would say to himself with a hint of regret at his hitherto lack of indifference. All a dim illusion, was it? Surely it was foolish of me to think any of this had meaning. He would then spend hours staring at the sky, wondering how best to pass the time if everything - even the sky itself - were for naught. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no best way to pass the time. The only way to deal with the illusion of time was to endure it, knowing full well, all the while, that one was truly enduring nothing at all. 

Let's make believe...

If I'm honest, what I liked

were the things we didn't know.

Every morning, every night

I'd be beating down your door,

just to tell you what I'm thinking,

but you already know.

Screw this, I don't wanna let it go.

The things we didn't know...

You will write him off. You will not give him his due. You will classify him as a failure. You will say that he was a fool. You will call him mediocre. You will call him a man who had no talents. And all these are mere labels. Nothing will matter to him. But what will matter is that future generations might one day stumble upon his words and get inspired to keep up their struggle. The struggle to chase your dreams. The struggle to never give up despite adversity, despite the odds not being in your favor, despite the mocking laughter of the universe. And he may still be hailed as a hero ... he may be still seen as savior. Perhaps. One day. Perhaps.

Remember what we wanted...

Dancing in the sand...

No need to be saved...

I have lots of things to say now, in case we never meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a tree on a cold autumn moonlit night. It said that nothing ever happens, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence we know that everything is alright. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught long ago and not even at all. 

It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, empty and awake, it will never crumble away because it was never born.

I know I'll be alright...

If I had a great big mansion,

I'd rather live in a shot gun shack with you.

If I drove a red farari,

I'd rather ride in an oldsmobile with you.

If I won a million dollars,

I'd give it away to spend more time with you.

If I had a million lovers,

I would trade em all for just one more night with you.

With you I can be myself,

with you I don't have to be somebody else.

It's like putting on my favorite pair of shoes,

I'd like to be with me, when I'm with you.

Like ice in the summer heat...

When you lose something you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, the bad news is that you never completely get over such a loss. But this is also the good news. It lives forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. So wash off the day in the shower. Have a glass of wine or your favourite whiskey. Stare through your window and admire the night-sky. Close your eyes and think of everything you will one day still do. Notice how everything around you is silent. Notice how your heart is still beating - despite it all.

If I could sail across the ocean...

I understand addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could someone do something so self-destructive, knowing that they're hurting not only themselves, but the people they love? It seemed that it would be so incredibly easy for them to just not take that step. Just stop. It's so simple, really. But as so often happens with me, my arrogance kept me from seeing the truth of the matter. I see it now though.

This cannot end well. That's the crux of the matter. I've been down this road before - you know I have - and there's only heartache at the end. There's no happy ending waiting for me like there was for them. If I stay here, I will become restless and angry. It's happening already, and I cannot stop it. I'm becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, they'll leave me as all the ones before. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. One way or another, you'll all be gone. Is it not wiser to end it now then, before it gets to that point? Is it not better to accept that this happiness I have is destined to self-destruct? Tomorrow I will leave. Tomorrow I will stop delaying the inevitable. Tomorrow I will quit lying to myself, and to everyone else. Tomorrow.

Life has a way of driving me crazy

It's dreamy, wished it on a genie...

You know better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. If you can, please keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity. Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But if anyone, you know that in the end I will need a few friends. Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong. Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint - it is so hard to live with some of them - but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces. Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, please, give me the grace to tell them so.

Everyone keeps a darker place...

As his sufferings mounted he soon realized that there were two ways in which he could respond to his situation - either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. He decided to follow the latter course. And as he did, he felt like his heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted him to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and he tried to, he wanted to, but he just had to lie in the mud with his arms wrapped around himself, eyes closed, grieving, until he didn't have to anymore.

I have to start somewhere...

Yesterday felt like my graduation

but now some of those kids have got their own.

Been a while since I took a vacation,

it's been a while since I really let go.

Don't wanna look back,

thinking I could've done this

or I could've tried that.

Don't wanna look back

because it's going by fast.

I'ma call my mother,

it's been a while since I've been home.

Take a trip in the summer,

see all the lights in Tokyo.

Get lost in the desert,

just to see what I can find,

so when it's my time,

I'm smiling when I die.

Keep it moving...