At the end of the line...

The best you can do is forgive...

He keeps imagining the worst possible outcomes, so he's ready if they ever come. But what if the things life has in store, he can't even begin to phantom? He keeps asking questions of the universe, but it has gone silent. Does that mean he's been abandoned or is being taught to rely more on himself? To see luck, where he previously saw failure? To uncover courage where fear thrives, and nurture understanding even where chaos consumes all?

If anything, this year has been about letting go. Letting go of my ego. Of the notion that nothing bad can ever happen to me, and that I am somehow exempt from the trials of life. Letting go of my belief that my willpower alone is enough to control the outcomes of my endeavors. Letting go of my need to resolve things, to get answers where there are none, to be seen as the mediator, as the savior. Bad, terrible things are going to keep happening, and I need to build myself up in order to withstand them. To be a reliable partner, brother and son. This year I have been tested and failed at almost every turn. Tried and stumbled, took the wrong path, cried when I should have been strong and pointed fingers, when I should have given grace. So many things I could have done differently, so many things I now have the opportunity to change.

It's a long goodbye on the other side...

Another glimpse of what could've been,

another dream, 

another way that it nevеr was.

Falling back in the wilderness,

waking up, rubbing salt in thе cut.

Every breath is a break in the riptide...

Last one to know...

In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice. And in this sown together life, good luck is more dangerous than anything. Bad luck teaches valuable lessons about patience, timing, and the need to be prepared for the worst; good luck deludes you into the opposite lesson, making you think your brilliance will carry you through. Your fortune will inevitably turn, and when it does you will be completely unprepared.

This life isn't forever...

I'm on the edge. I'm off the edge. I'm over the edge and falling into hell on the other side. I'm down in the cracks of the sidewalks. In the dirt and in the blood, and the ants are looking up. I'm in the trenches and I can't get out. No matter how hard I try to maintain my calm and collected persona, I know it is all a ruse. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hide. Hide from the world. Hide from my memories. Enter a shell and never leave. But mine would always be a broken shell, with all her cracks and holes exposed for the world to see. The veneer I had carefully painted to protect and hold myself together was peeling away.

Pull me out of the waves...

When push comes to shove...

It's all right riding around in the breeze,

it's all right if you live the life you please,

it's all right doing the best you can,

well, it's all right as long as you lend a hand.

You're glowing in the dark...

It is a dangerous thing with brothers, to think that you could be as strong as them, or as wise as them, or as good as them. To believe that you could have been the same person, if only you hadn’t gone a different way. To think that your parents raised you the same, and that your genes combined the same, and that the rest of what has happened in all your triumph ... or failure.

He wishes that he had some guarantees about the afterlife. He wishes he were absolutely certain that his grandparents are now together in some tranquil and restful place, sharing endless walks and talks beyond what their too-short stint on this Earth allowed. He wishes he knew that they were offering enough comfort to one another to allow them both not to remember their distressing, even excruciating, last hours and days. Perhaps in this very moment they are peacefully making their way down the zigzag trail that joins the villages to the rest of the world below. And in his imagining, whenever they lose track of one another, one or the other calls out in a voice that echoes throughout the hills. Where are you? Right here, my love. Right here.

Oh boy, I think I'm in trouble now...

For so long I thought I've been playing the last act of this nightmare of a year. With my life in turmoil for so long, it just seems impossible to avoid the setup of a shattering countdown when it will all be over and the tide will once again turn in my favor. So I give an insistent appeal for crucial answers, but I only receive evasive responses or killing silence from the universe. But the banks of my patience are bursting, an intractable cataclysm disturbs my interior world. Yet, this disruption might allow me to restore my emotional power by cleansing the oppressive environment and purifying the air that I breathe. Maybe I can still get out of this alive. 

They stare because they know...

All normal expectations went by the board and my daily habits were disrupted by a sense of ever-spreading all-consuming chaos which rendered the future unpredictable, the past unrecallable and ordinary life so haphazard that I simply assumed that whatever could be imagined might come to pass. That if there was only one door in a building it would no longer open, that wheat would grow head downwards into the earth not out of it, and that, since I could only note the symptoms of disintegration, the reasons for it remained unfathomable and inconceivable. There was nothing I could do except to get a tenacious grip on anything that was still tangible. 

How it was, it will never be again...

The cost of your mind...

But the sun's going to go ahead,

and tag right up,

and we don't understand,

what we're standing on,

and we sure come in blind,

with our timing. 

So I've culled what I can't tame,

I have taken all that I can take,

It got bad enough.

You couldn't write this...

I'll put my guard down for you...

He imagines giving up. No more peering through windows, mourning the loss of a life that could never again be his. No more hopeless desire. No more uncertain future. No more terror. Then he wakes up.

Now, it felt like every day a new oozing pustule of emotion came glopping out. One day it was a goopy mass of abandonment issues. Then there was the gelatinous muck of hyper-independence weighing down my proverbial galoshes. The steaming, writhing mass that was my identity crisis was particularly pungent some days. It had come to my attention the hard way that for years my coping mechanism had been to numb myself; turn my emotions off completely. Any that snuck through were instantly squashed under humor, deflection, or anger. A perfect plan, until that damn straw had hit the camel's stupid back.

Heart in the casket...

He is always a different man; a reinterpretation of the man he was yesterday, and the day before, and all the days he has lived. The past is gone, was always gone; it does not exist, except in memory, and what is memory but thought, a copy of perception, no less but no more replete with truth than any passing whim, fancy, or other agitation of the mind. And if it is actions, words, thoughts that define an individual, those definitions alter like the weather - if continuity and pattern are often discernible, so are chaos and sudden change. He is changing again.

And what a simple thought...

Everything I have become,, everything I will ever accomplish cannot compare to my most impressive feat: I have loved you, fiercely, and assiduously. With the very marrow inside my bones. So that when I die, they can crack them to find you there. So that when I die, they can open me up and see your name tattooed on the wall of my heart. So that when I die, my epitaph will neither commemorate who I was nor what I did, but will read: he loved. And loved. And loved. And so, I smile now, because that is no small thing. 

If I go, I'm going...

A stranger light comes on slowly...

I wanna hold the hand inside you,

I wanna take the breath that's true.

I look to you and I see nothing,

I look to you to see the truth.

You live your life, you go in shadows,

you'll come apart and you'll go blind.

Some kind of night into your darkness,

colors your eyes with what's not there.

Anyone with a heart would agree...

The cherry on top...

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 come 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 I really want to quit? Because it's hopeless? Or because it's possible?

Oh life, how oft he throws you off and think, enough, enough of life in so much. Here's a cause for rupture; herein he must break with life, or be himself unworthy; here he is wronged, maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell life! And so, as a froward babe, I hide my eyes and think all ended. Then, life calls to me in some transformed, apocryphal, new voice. Above me, or below me, or around. Perhaps I name it nature's voice, or the universe. Tricking myself, because I am more ashamed to own my compensations than my griefs. Still, life's voice! Still, I make my peace with life.

Ran out of options...

He would liked to be able to say say that he has never wanted to hurt anyone. That all his actions have been true and altruistic. But that wouldn't be quite truthful. In fact, it would be very far from the truth. When his heart shattered, he wanted to hurt everyone, to make them feel what he felt, or even just not to be alone in it. In the wake of his loss, he longed to throw away everything he has worked for, just to undo the agonizing truth that he could not accept.

Get on my speed...

He stares, because he knows...

Beyond the edge of the world there's a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard. And it is on that very edge that you will always remember me, at the edge you will last be remembered, where sanity and insanity come together, for a time, then separate. Like leaves on autumn trees, that color the world, but for a moment, then leave. At the edge, where life losses its edginess, and thoughts will become one, someday. At the edge the sun drops, the ring falls, and senses of raindrops climb upwards to the gray sky.

In my room...

I'm going up, down, 

backwards I got forwards for you now.

You care for me,

when no one else is there for me.

You provide air for me, 

to breath I'll watch you restlessly.

Come tomorrow...

All our lives, we journey from one dream to another, trying to grasp the ones that captivate us the most. Yet, tragically, these dreams are as fleeting as dry sand slipping through our fingers, no matter how tightly we hold on. Sometimes, I fear that you may turn out to be one such cherished dream in my life.

Suddenly, the river swept round a bend, and the banks rose upon either side, and the light was hidden. To that fair land he never came again. The travellers now turned their faces to the journey; the sun was before them, and their eyes were dazzled, for all were filled with tears. Torment in the dark was the danger that he feared, and it did not hold him back. But he would not have come, had he known the danger of light and joy. Now he has taken my worst wound in this parting, for such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream.

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Not so long ago, during what felt like an outpouring of his live, there came a moment when everything stopped. Time stood still, and his soul become trapped in that very moment. It was like a coiled spring that could extend and stretch, but ultimately, it always returned to its original shape. Back to that frozen moment in time. He doesn't know when you'll see each other again or what the world will be like when you do. You may both have seen so many horrible things. But he will think of you every time he needs to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in this strange thing we call life.

Like the words of a song...

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. From now on, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will act now for now is all I have. I am not a failure. I will act now. If I delay, success will become lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

Tomorrow I'll be gone...

It isn't easy to say goodbye...

For a while there, you had me convinced...

Swear it was like, 

I'll be damned, 

I'm finally back to being who I am.

When I was over, 

it was overnight.

Light came on, 

it all felt right, 

when it all went wrong.

It all depends...

I think I might have forgotten that life was never meant to be understood. It was meant to be felt. I spend so much time trying to figure everything out. Trying to fix. Explain. Solve. Control. But life is not a puzzle, it's a wave. And I was never meant to carry the wave. I was meant to let it move through me. 

The joy, the fear, the heartbreak. The moments that didn't make sense until much later. I was never broken. I was becoming. I think my sadness comes when I try to hold on to what's meant to pass. I grip the moment, the person, the feeling. Hoping to freeze it in time. But everything I ever loved, was borrowed. And the beauty of it was never in the holding, it was in the being. So when it starts hurting again, I won't rush to escape it. When I get lost, I won't race to find direction. I'll feel it. All of it. Because this too, is part of the dance. And maybe if I'll listen closely enough, even my pain will teach me how to be alive. 

Sleepless in the onyx night...

Vsak spomin, ki v meni je,

plačam z mučnim vbodom v srce.

As the day ended, I went out and searched again, but found nothing, neither paradise nor resurrection. What had been said proved unjustified. Everything is starting to feel like madness. There has never been a time quite like this. And I have a sneaking suspicions, that it's just preparation for what late adulthood still has in store for me. The miracle is that I can never really know for sure where I am on the journey of my life. The laws of nature shall not spare me, even if I live amidst a lie and to die for one. It follows that the very laws of the universe are nothing but a made up set of rules, a farce put on by the creator, to pass the time more easily. What's there to live for, answer me, won't you please?

Starting to think my house is haunted...

He had a vision. He lay half asleep in the dirt. The sunset behind the hills had burnt his skin. And in the dream he saw a throne. His throne. Built on the tower of his life. When he woke all he could think of was his vision, etched so clearly on his mind. He worked for three days and three nights, with no food or drink, until his vision had become a reality. Perfect in every detail. He pondered the significance of this edifice and shook off his trance. He felt tired. He felt lonely. He felt confused. He felt so bloody confused. But at least he felt like he was on the right path.

Failure brings you freedom...

Life is a dream, it ends when it ends...

It’s been hard to trust again...

Gone by day and gone by night,

it's not an easy road that

leads you to the light.

It's windy now,

but someday it'll straighten out.

But it's worth it on the other side,

when he brings that city down.

You only get one shot, 

everything to lose.

Lord take me now, 

I'm broken and bruised.

Can you save my soul, 

because I need you.

Let's go song for song, let's go back to back...

But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn't that clear. It's dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you're moving slowly, not sure which direction you're heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You try to calm yourself, find some sort of inner peace, but fear and anxiety never truly leave your body. You don't realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.

Sad as it seems...

People are like water: Many rush pass you, as some will over-flood. Some will drown you, or force you to go their current ways. Some will be cold or hot-tempered, but try to stay with the warm ones. Some will come as a raging wave and cause a ripple, or a calm sea, supporting you, quenching your thirst, and flow by your side to where kisses will always stay wet.

Sometimes it can be as brutally overwhelming as a tidal wave flooding every orifice, the suffocation, the pressure, the immensity of this damnable fear. Like an ocean, unsurmountable. It swallows him whole and gnaws at his very bones. It floods him over and over, drowning him over and over. It's a torturous broken record player with a scratched disc on repeat, the wailing disrupting any possible good remaining after the tsunami. It wails and wails inside his ribcage and inside his skull. He cannot make it stop.

Rain on me tsunami...

And the black cat laughed...

He leans back and tilts his head so all he sees are the clouds in the sky. He's looking back inside his head with his eyes wide open. He still doesn't know where he's going; he decided he's not crazy or alien. It's just that he's more like one of those kids they find in remote jungles. A wolf boy. And they've dragged him into this fear riddled state, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles. He in a state of shock. Flight no longer an option, every single interaction is a fight. Foes and friends are blurred. There is only one way out. To go through. 

As legend has it...

If anything, this year has made up in the quantity of lessons the previous few have lacked. What it means to be a good partner, brother, son, and friend. Things I severely took for granted have come crashing down on me relentlessly these past few months. And perhaps the reason I needed this wake up call is because I was too lenient with my deadly enemy. My fear. Instead of fighting my battles, I chose to retreat from them. Avoiding conflict and not allowing myself the opportunity to grow. But all too obviously, my inability to bend, has caused me to break. My failure to let fear pass over me and through me has sent shockwaves through my body. Ones I'm not sure I can fully recover from. Fear is the mind killer. And mine is almost too fractured to ever repair. 

I'm out of my head...

Someone just told me to leave all my sorrow,

if that is true, I don't know who to be.

Could be these troubles are part of the plan?

Could be I need to just to take a chance?

So I forget what was taken from me,

I will bequeath from the victor your vacancy.

Tell them: these troubles are out of your head.

Tell them: I'm free to use them to clap and dance.

It sealed the deal...

I need to dream. I need to believe. I need to know that I have some control in my life. That if I work hard, that I will be rewarded. That life is not arbitrary. I need to believe that bad things happen to good people, for a greater reason. That dedication, sacrifice, hard work, discipline are all worthy attributes that will eventually produce extraordinary results. That if I live a certain lifestyle, that my family will be better for that. That there is a direct link between my actions and my results. That If I prepare properly that I can face the insurmountable foe and look him in the eye, knowing that I have defeated death. 

Sometimes events that lead him bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance. A car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late. Then the real test of his humanness becomes front and center. Is he able to, in light of that knowledge, ever to recover? When he again finds his way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in his suffering? When he is able to march forward, with no grand design that would explain why the universe tore him asunder? That's when he can say, that he's finally grown up. 

Chasing after finer days...

I got lost in the pool...

Never breaking my vow...

Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. To be completely enamored in scenarios and circumstances that can hurt you. So when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. The always present factor of being eaten by wolves. If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that can come of it? What could happen that would make me lose everything? And now that I can imagine it, I can create a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I'm learning that all I need is a plan in place, for when they do.

Dancing through the lighting strikes...

Gave up a piece of my heart,

then I turned to run.

My head is in the clouds,

but I don't feel close to the sun.

And the light fades away from my face,

and the tears fall like rain.

So I turn all my words into faith, 

hope it's me that they save.

That's the crazy part...

I spend so much time thinking about regret. Imagining the outcome of different paths, trying to figure out where they would lead. So much mental capacity deciphering my own thought spiral and its accompanying conviction that there is a perfect, placid life, my own alternate existence, pristine and simple, existing in a neighboring reality in which certain turns in the road were never set upon. But it isn't true, is it? Any of it. I knew that. I had learned it. But it is an irresistible fantasy, if only because it implies I have some control over my own fate.

Layers I can’t unfold...

Only one way to go from here...

He is the interpretation of the prophet. He is the artist in the coffin. He is the brave flag stained with blood. He is the wounds overcome. He is the dream refusing to sleep. He is the dance that swings till dawn. He is the grass on the greener lawn. He is the respectful neighbour and the graceful man. He is the encouraging smile and the helping hand. He is the straight back and the lifted chin. He is the tender heart and the will to win. He is the the rainbow in rain. He is the shoulder to lean onto. He is life running away from death, and tripping every step in between. 

I'm wondering; what is the most profound difference between between us, between you and me? Between the people that seem to skate through life, and those that barely float above its surface? I wish I could have full access to my ancestral memories. For them to come at me in the full glare of awareness and not like whispers from my blind side. Some call it instinct or fate. The memories apply leverages to each of us - on what we think and what we do. Am I immune to such influences? I stand here and tell you: yet it moves. And that which moves can exert its force in ways no other power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this.

Feel the fade...

Make a spark, break the dark...

Your name, I'll never know,

as we get down in the world below.

Caught up in an overflow,

my hands, your bones,

wide eyed, you look at me.

Set on fire in a silver dream,

spin round you can feel the breeze.

Next to you...

I guess it took a long walk through the darkness, a long walk through the darkest shadows and corners of my soul to realize that those are a part of me as well. I have refused to shine a light on something that is imperfect, because my fear of judgement and rejection. But I am now choosing to look towards the light as the only source of true beauty and love that can help me in the cleaning process. I no longer hope for understanding, no longer hope for the opinion of a calmer being. But I hope to find the words that touch the soul before the mind. I hope to find the touch that warms the heart from deep inside, and hope to find that far away abandoned part of me which I've left behind.

When the sun is not burning...

You will be the light

that leads me through. 

Sometimes I scratch, claw and climb so hard to conquer a mountain that, once achieved, I cling to its summit much too long and it ultimately instigates my fall. As I dangle by my fingertips I grasp and claw at what's no more; with a fear of falling into the dim unknown. But, ironically, it's in that very moment that I am empowered to choose. I can stay cliff hanging in my darkened fears clinging to a time that has past me by or I can faithfully and freely fall into the hands of a new destiny. Sometimes, persevering is simply having the courage to let go.

The storms won't steal my thunder...

Hear that sound ringing in your mind...

I have spent my life clinging to my own shores for safety. Flying like a bird above the storm waters of my own body, too scared to land. I guess that is why the sea floods in to visit me. I have been too frightened to venture out into her depths alone. To scared to take flight.

The central core of me is dark and churning, I can only sense it vaguely. It scares me with its power. I realise that this experience is partly neurological. My sensory abilities are all hyper-aroused on the surface, and my nervous system melts down when it becomes overwhelmed in everyday places. But my ability to know what is going on within is flawed. Instead of an accurate information readout, there is a big, dark, unknowable mass within. I am sailing blind without a map or a lighthouse within my own skin. It feels a very daunting place to have a life sentence. This is why I write: to attempt to find words for what this big scariness is, to try and find images to give form and name to the wild churning expanse.