Please, please, please...

He was afraid, but he knew now: fear usually meant he was standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something he would never shy away from ever again. Because life is full of near misses and absolute hits, of great love and small disasters. It's made up of ice cream and tears and your face slowly getting older. It's dead-ordinary and truly truly amazing. What he's realized is it's all here now. So he takes a deep breath and swallows it whole, for life; it just whizzes by.

There is a pattern in all things that are part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of a berry bush or the pattern of a leaf. We try to copy these patterns in our lives, seeking the rhythms, the dances, and the forms that comfort us. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. The ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death. 

As foolish as he can be...

There's always a joker in the pack,

there's always a lonely clown,

the poor laughing fool falls on his back,

and everyone laughs when he's down.

There's always a funny man in the game,

but he's only funny by mistake,

and everyone laughs at him just the same,

they don't see his lonely heartbreak.

I'm the joker now...

Dancing in the flames...

Lost in the words that he screams...

A great burden awaits him on his path. Soon, the dice of fate will be rolled once more. Is he strong enough to face the tests placed in his path? Is he strong enough to save his family? His heart beats furiously. He has to beware of the lord of shadow, while seeking the twin flames. And then he must figure out why he keeps returning to beginnings - why he seeks the single thread he might pull to unravel the tapestry of his life in the hope that behind it he will find the truth of why. But there is no truth. There is only why. And when he looks closer he will see that behind that why is just another tapestry. And behind it another, and another, until he arrives at oblivion.

I need plenty more...

In all important transformations of life we have to take a leap in the dark. If I decide to leave the riddles unanswered or if we waver in our answer, that is a choice I make at our peril. If I choose to turn my back altogether on the will of the universe, no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that I am mistaken. I stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which I get glimpses now and then of paths that may be deceptive. If I stand still I shall be frozen to death. If I take the wrong road, I shall be dashed to pieces. What must I do? Simply act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes, and if death ends all, I cannot meet death better.

And it looks like it's all unraveling...

Because when I'm seeing double,

It's your lullaby love that keeps me from trouble,

It's your lullaby love that's keeping me level,

It's your lullaby love that keeps me awake.

An avenue once bent in shadow...

Swim against the tide...

I want to change things on my own terms, to show that there's no right or wrong way to change the world. There's no entry test. I don't need to suck anything up. Pay any dues. Just me and my anger and my voice is enough. If I only have the courage to use it.

It was like he'd climbed Everest, had the summit in his sight, the flag in his hand, all ready to pierce it into the top of the mountain and proclaim victory. And then, out of nowhere, perhaps from the heavens themselves, an avalanche swept him right back to the bottom of the hill again. As he lay underneath tons of snow, he wondered if it was even worth bothering to free himself and climb it again? He was exhausted. So profoundly out of breath. He'd already climbed it. He didn't want to do it again, but what other choice was there?

Sweating through the sheets...

Here's a short recap of his state of mind: when he fights for what he believes in, he comes across a lot of obstacles. People who don't agree with him, people who agree with him but only some bits, people who delight in ripping him down, people who are threatened by the strength of his belief. But he was beginning to realise, the biggest hurdle to overcome was the hurdle of himself. The true test of life isn't how he copes when everything is going in his favour; it's how he deals with things that could destroy him, if he lets them.

It's the last call...

That's the thing about anxiety. You can worry about anything and everything, dream up all sorts of weird and wonderful situations to be terrified of in the hope your fear will control the world somehow ... and yet the world remains uncontrollable. So we all carry on with scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories - we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can't make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we're finding it so impossible to get over. You can't force pain to leave until it's ready to.

Give me all you've got...

It might seem crazy,

what I'm about to say.

happiness she's here, 

you can take a break.

I'm a hot air balloon 

that could go to space.

With the air, 

like I don't care by the way.

Everything that hurts me is still the same...

Not like us...

And I cry, it's not fair...

I have always felt as though I have something to prove: I have to do more, be better, to make other people's gifts and offerings worthwhile; to earn their care or justify their faith. I spent years trying to live up to the sacrifice I believed the people in my life made to allow me there, while also trying to be good enough for other people to love. I am still living as if the choices made by others are debts I have to repay, marks in a ledger I can never hope to expunge.

He finds himself, leaves himself, go towards himself, comes from himself, nothing ever but him, a particle of him, retrieved, lost, gone astray. He is all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that he is them, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else. Yes, something else, that he is something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that he listens, and that he seeks, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts.

Die with a smile...

I don't want to tell just one story, I want to tell every story, everything all at once, not anything in particular that might be said through the words I know. I try to roll all sounds into one, to accumulate more and more syllables, as if they might make a new strip of language in which everything, everything is contained. There is a hidden rule even in this quest, though - that the sounds have to resemble real syllables, that they can't disintegrate into brute noise, for then I wouldn't be talking at all. I want articulation - but articulation that says the whole world at once.