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.

Chasing vultures and black crows...

Hey, miss sunshine, 

I took a tab and felt the sky.

It's a good life and then it's bad, 

but that's alright.

On the bright side, 

we all sit and sympathize.

So in the meantime, 

might as well enjoy the ride.

Don't ask for forgiveness...

I find me, leave me, go towards me, come from me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone astray. I'm 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 I am they. All of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else. Yes, something else, that I'm 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 I listen. And that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts.

Hear that sound ringing in my mind...

We have each other, at least. Even though in many other lifetimes we lived apart; we finally understand now what it means to be together. Our failure to touch, to belong to each other has cost us dearly in the past. Now it's all we know. But soon it won't matter anymore. Everyone is gone eventually, and we will be alone again. We are born apart, driftwood on the banks of an endless dark ocean. And we will be carried away by the swell soon enough. But in between, even if in a single day of living, dancing in a strip of sunlight, we can find what we've been missing. The love that makes us whole. The imminence. Not everyone finds their other. This pattern is ours. 

There's no telling what comes next...

They're here for his soul...

Just keep watching...

When I'm overwhelmed within,

from the weight of all my sin,

I need a friend to call my own,

I need a house to call my home.

When I'm broken down inside,

and there's nowhere else to hide,

I need a place where I feel known.

Can someone help me?

Then I hear your reply,

bringing teardrops to my eyes,

saying I'm not alone.

Worst case scenario...

If he truly had understood what that meant, that time runs out. he would have done it all so differently. Maybe you can't understand until you're the one standing on the brink. Maybe we're not meant to. Maybe it's some biological trick designed to keep us safe from the saber-toothed tiger, only now it keeps us building big homes and worrying about deadlines. Maybe we're not supposed to get that it will all be gone, we will all be gone - until it's too late to do anything about it. If life's a joke and death's the punch line, in any good setup, you never see it coming. Because if we did understand, we would spend it all in the sun with the grass between our toes. What else was the point? 

We're here, then we're not. And before that and after that, the mountains stay put and the waves keep crashing and the storms come and go and none of any of that is aware that for a brief, fleeting moment, we were here too. I was a part of it too. In some sort of way it's a relief to know that I don't matter. Understanding that brought me the first moment of peace I'd known since you had passed. Surely you must have seen that too? After all, you had walked ahead; I was the one just catching up. None of it, none of us, matter. And once you see it, once you get it, once you're free from the false belief that you think you have time, you can just enjoy it for what it is. And it is all so, so beautiful.