Like shadows on the moon...

Wearing that same stupid smile...

I guess I'm giving in...

I have layers over layers of a memory warped in place. There is the deepest layer, with the ones I love the most, or have shared this journey longest with. Years and years and years. Maybe, I think, these are all the memories I'll ever be able to make. If I remain stuck here, I'll slowly but surely dry out. And so here I am, trapped between layers of my life, like wallpaper on top of wallpaper for centuries, and I need to peel everything away, I need to be the bare boards, no memories, nothing left. But to get rid of some things, I would have to get rid of everything. So here I am. Living on. A house with ghosts.

Put me in drive...

A flicker of hope,

a feeling begins,

rattling bones,

and I start beliving in something again.

A smile like the sun,

under the moon,

the beat of my heart is riding the edge,

of the way I'm about to move.

Don't stop until you get enough...

There's a time in our life when we're about to give up fighting battles that we choose not to tell to anyone. We fall apart, we break into pieces, and find it hard to make ourselves whole again. We tried to start over, but found ourselves breaking once more with memories we tried to forget. We found ourselves crashing to the ground again, and all we ever thought was to give up and let ourselves go. We became hopeless. Love slowly fading, and we started to forget who we truly are. That time is very close, but I'm not there just yet.

I'll make you remember...

Če te prosim,

bi počakal z mano,

da spet najdem pot?

I will gather up a lifetime of things unsaid, write them down on this thing that is not a blog, and then offer them all to be lit up and burned. All at once. And then I will watch the whole thing turn to ash. The whole damn thing. Light the match, and watch it burn. If flames could speak, what a story they would tell. One of pathetic yearnings and small moments of victory over ones self and the world around me. Turning bones to ash. And it was the burning up of curses and all things bad as well. The universe knows I have had and still have demons, and even curses. Real ones.

Whisper my name...

Love me for who I am, not who I was...

Initials in the sand...

Connected, I'm so in touch with it all,

feel protected by the moon and the stars.

I'm walking barefoot, feel the grass in between my toes,

Bombshell, wind in my hair, let it blow.

It's been a while since I cried over something so nice.

I'm not coming back...

At the lip of a cliff, he looks out over the countryside, through the bare branches of birches and the melancholy covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows up out of a cavern and over his face. He knows this place, he knows its seasons - he has hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a fall. He feels the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in his heart, serenity and peace will come again. But first the scars left behind by the storm must be waited out. And that waiting has worth.

Come on and change my mind...

How often have I lifted my foot to take a peek at what I'm standing on, only to discover that there's nothing there and that I've been confusing falling with standing. And while it's certain that healing brings a better life, it also threatens to permanently alter life as I've known it. My relationships, my position in the world, even my sense of identity may change. Coping patterns that have served me for a lifetime are being called into question. When I made a commitment to get better, I didn't realise I would be risking losing much of what is familiar. Much of what made life so easy. 

Seasons come like seasons go...

Life is like the river: endlessly moving on, ever seeking, exploring, pushing, overflowing its banks, penetrating every crevice with its water. Impermanent, ceaselessly trying to penetrate, to break down any walls, behind which there is confusion and misery. 

I'm still here. The doubt, the fear, the heartbreak, the depression, the anxiety, the insecurity: it didn’t win. The people who hurt me and let me down: they didn’t win. The disappointment and the failure, and the hopes and deferred dreams: they didn’t win either. I'm not really who I wanted to become, but I'm not someone I entirely hate either. I guess what I'm try to say, is that I'm doing my best, with what I've been given. That's all I can really do. Move on, go forward, try to find more meaning, more joy, more love. Hopefully some more laughs, and a deep awareness, that life moves so quickly: I hope I don't miss it.

We'll be frozen in time...

I can't wish away the scars...

And do you ever feel the motion?

And have you ever seen the sun,

setting fire across the ocean?

And I will promise you, 

the best is yet to come.

And if I have to wait a moment,

let the ache fall from my heart,

because I can't give up on forever.

And if I stay a loaded gun,

because I can't live with now or never.

The fate of Karr...

If I imagine myself at the finish line, it seems almost unfathomable I'll ever be able to finish. It just feels like it was something I reached for without truly understanding my limitations. A dream I had without realising what it means to actually live it. So now I am left with a choice. Brute-force my way to some sort of conclusion, or walk away from something that was never really mine in the first place. Or maybe I'm being too hard on myself again? Maybe the only rule is that I don't remain still. That I start with the first page, and then maybe tomorrow, try to finish the second one. And then maybe the third. And then maybe I end up somewhere I can't imagine. Maybe.

If you've got a flag, plant it in the ground...

The more I kick and scream, bite, scratch and try to run away, the darker the skies seem to get. It is now very clearly evident, that I cannot run away from my pain and I cannot outrun the storm. The rain keeps falling, the skies keep trembling, and I am caught in the thick of it. But as it turns out, the water does not scare me anymore. I have learnt to swim. Against the current, with the current, without the current. I am still here, and I am in no rush to go anywhere. So stay awhile, and listen; how the boy became a man, and if luck remained on his side, how the man will become an elder. Quite the story, actually. 

Put in love, put in hours...

He is like that spark of fire, that fell on a leaf and burnt the whole tree down gradually. Look at him now, all you can see is the memories and reflections of a tree that stood tall and strong once before. But he will not let you win. He will show you, how life can rise again from just ashes and dust.

The rain began to fall harder, and it distracted me. I tried to pull myself back, because I felt on the verge of understanding something large and important. It seemed to me that this moment, the light and wind, the sweep of fields, the falling of the sky, captured a sort of life that I have longed for, a life of order and harsh beauty. It seemed instead to be the thing for which I must daily give up my life, an act of submission to something I could not name and only rarely, in moments such as these, have a sense of. Life during these moments seemed neither lost nor ruined but a power to be shared. And devoured.

Give you all that I have...

Forgive me if I jump...

I'm the trouble ahead,

and I scream in my sleep.

You're putting money on red, 

I'm a sure bet at a losing streak.

I keep showing you doors, 

but you can't open them up.

because it gеts harder to see me,

the closеr you try to look.

Not coming back here anymore...

Now that you're standing right here...

He wondered if some part of him knew what was waiting for him. That he would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire - but that he would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That he would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn't bother to look, but only to fear it, then he didn't particularly care for them, anyway. He wonders if, even in his despair and hopelessness, he was never truly alone. He wonders if he was looking for this place - looking for you all. The people who look at the stars and wish. The stars who listen, and the dreams that are answered.

From the bottom of my boots...

Rad bi rekel, da sem že prispel,

ampak mislim, da sem še daleč stran.

I try to focus, but there's a disconnect between my body and my mind, like nothing about it fits anymore. I don't feel like I belong in this body; like I've lost my ability to interact with this world. It feels like I'm observing through a veil, and I don't know how to move. Panic is a type of pain too. And going forward I really need to learn how to tame mine. My thoughts aren't real. The scenarios in my head aren't a warning. They're a pathology. And like any other corrosive limb, I need to cut it off. Set my body free and continue with less of me. Hopefully enough to still resemble a person.

On the edge of gone...

I know you're worried. I'm worried too. I'm sorry for not being able to explain things properly or give you the answers you want. I'm just, very ... I can't think of the right word. How do I explain that my mind is too slow and too jumbled all at once. That I'm out of gas and I barely get through the day? That I've failed, and the only way to keep from falling apart is to accept that? Or that maybe I've already fallen apart, and I don't know if I can sweep the pieces back together? I guess I'll settle on three words. I am tired.

Not good at staying still...

I wish I could know you much more sometimes...

If you wanna kick this rock around,

if you've got a bone to pick with me,

if you've got a flag, 

plant it in the ground.

I'll stay here until morning,

we can fight like we used to fight,

bony-limbed, red-faced, and teary-eyed,

under the glow of the TV light, 

I'd be willing and able.

Just let me be broken...

It's a state of mind...

Have you ever felt your destiny unfolding in front of your eyes? Have you experienced the intensity of the hunt, the fixation of attention that only fate can explain? Have you ever told yourself your feelings were excessive, but known that something huge and pivotally important was carrying you along like a riptide? I can fight that current all I want; but I know it will still have its way with me. Or I can try swimming along with it, and grow amazed by my own power, until I pause and realize that I'm not moving but being moved. I'm not in control, not at all, and that's what makes the feeling so exquisitely exciting.

Lay it on the table...

Sometimes getting to the other side seems impossible. I know there's a way. I can actually see the steps in my mind, but it all seems out of reach. I must pause. Relax. Let me muscles rest. I have to remind myself to do what I can in the moment I'm in. 

He doesn't like it when characters fade from his story. So apologies in advance, for having to bear with subplots within subplots. Plan within plan. His life just somehow turned out that way. By chance or willpower? He can never truly decide. He leaves people and places and times behind. And then he encounters new ones. Sometimes he can't see the patterns or connections, but they are there, between one breath and the next. In the ebb and flow of tides. In the rhythm of the dance.

I think I'm seeing things...

More than anything, I think I want to walk through life, gently. And I want to treat this journey with reverence and as much as possible, I want to walk in peace. I want to walk lightly, even joyfully, through whatever days I am given. I want to laugh easily. I want to step carefully in and out of people's lives. I don't want to tread any heavier than necessary. And throughout life, I think I would like to walk with more humility and less anger, more love and less fear. I want to walk confidently, but without arrogance. I want to walk in deep appreciation. I want to be genuinely thankful for life's extravagant, yet simple, gifts. If life is a journey, then how I make that journey is important. How I walk through life matters. 

Fill up my lungs...

Can't decide if I should let go...

It's in my blood, 

you got me drifting.

Fill up my lungs, 

a new beginning.

Feel so alive inside your echo.

I lose my mind,

you got me falling so deep,

we stop the time,

now you're all I see.

Inside your echo...

Sometimes it's not what you do differently it's what you do consistently. In recent weeks I approached solving my life's problems from many different angles. I used to try to make everything perfect, wanting everything in its place, life proper and justified. That was my desire. It did not happen though, yet that desire did not die. Ironically, as I fell into deeper adversity, it grew. And in some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. I felt the meaning for my self imposed suffering was the honorable character I would later possess; it had to be.

Don't have it all, but I sure have it made...

Come on and change my mind...

Maybe. Who knows. It still might happen, right? But I'll tell you something: I think he's a magician. The way he spins reality around himself, and transforms it into something beautiful. He is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? He is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.

Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But maybe I can find another way. A way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. To allow my imagination to open doors that don't actually exist. To phantom an existence based on good, and fair and justice. To surround myself with people that fan my flames, not dim them. To learn how to break the world that so adamantly tries to break me.

If I go, I'm going...

Healing was the spark in a wildfire...

I don't want your garden,

I don't like the cold, 

we don't see it coming,

but we know how this goes.

Maybe it's just something,

something that you say.

Everything means nothing,

until it goes away.

This is what I hear in my head...

It felt like I was stopped dead in my tracks. That I had fallen, or maybe even tripped, and maybe even kicked while I was down. I cannot say for certain, all I know is that I was unable to get back up. Stuck in a rut and wading in the muck. Paralysis set in. I was in deep inertia, disempowering and disabling. I wondered what was it going to take for me to restart my engines and get moving again? What exactly needs to happen? And what do I do while I'm at the mercy of the universe? I guess I'll wait. It's the only thing I'm really good at. 

Died on this hill...

I'm still not quite sure why things had to happen this way. What specifically I did to cause such an intense reckoning with myself. I don't understand the reasons for causing each other pain. But mere understanding wouldn't chase away the hurt. It does not call upon the sun when dark clouds have loomed over me. Let the rain come then if it must come. And let it wash away the dust that hurt my eyes.

No matter how hard he tried to maintain his calm and collected persona, he knew it was all a ruse. All he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hide. Hide from the world. Hide from her memories and this awful, dreadful year that he is leaving behind. If only he could enter a shell and never leave. But his would always be a broken shell, with all her cracks and holes exposed for the world to see. The veneer he had carefully painted to protect and hold himself together was peeling away. There's nowhere left to go.

But you learned to survive...

It was a very ordinary day, the day he realised that his becoming is his life and his home and that he doesn't have to do anything but trust the process, trust his story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who he's become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when he falls asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. The day he saw flowers and learned how to turn his daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long he let his life slip through his fingers, like water. He's holding on to it now, and he's not letting go.

Losing self control...

So it goes, so it goes, so it goes...

Poison spreading to my lungs,

I'm not holding my breath, 

not holding any faith at all.

And I'll pray for you, 

be in pain for you.

I'll leave the porch light on,

heartbroken, each morning,

when it's me that turns it off.

Only do what pain allows...

The waiting. The wanting. Something inside me snaps. And I hate myself for it. And I hate those around me who contributed to it. And I hate how I've failed, and how others have failed me. I hate that I have to deal with this. And I hate how I can't count on anyone to be completely there when I need them, exactly the way I need them to be. And then I can't even sleep, because of my noisy brain. No matter how tired I am. It's impossible to accomplish anything but lying here in bed. Frustrated and victimized at three in the morning.

The world has changed his heart...

But it all adds up to nothing...

It's that feeling I get somehow knowing that something great is about to happen. While every passing day nothing great really does happen. I wake up, go to work, exercise, play my games, sleep and wait for another monotonous day. I know the great day is not tomorrow, not even the day after, not even in a week or a month's time. 

But it will come soon, the way you meet someone without expecting or knowing that you are going to have so much fun together. It will come soon, the way dreams come true overnight, demanding years of perspiration, ironically. It will come soon like a gush of cold air in a hot afternoon. It will come soon like a stranger you feel you have already met. It will come like a guest who would be here to stay. It will come like an eternity, a serendipity, an irony. It will come when it is time for it to come, the way you fall asleep and dreams arrive from a distant land, surely but stealthily.

If I stay the course, I could get it right...

A river doesn't hold a grudge against a rock in its path. A leaf doesn't refuse to blow in the breeze. It allows itself to be spun around and then lands gently, once the storm has passed. A plant doesn't deny water or sunshine. I know all this, yet here I am, struggling to keep myself afloat. I have been given the gift of self-awareness, but it is quickly turning into self-destruction. Here is what I must accept: I have appeared from nowhere, I will disappear into nowhere, and on the way I am madly running, not really enjoying what is now and here. I must let whatever comes, come. Let whatever goes, go. I will stop demanding. I won't regret. Won't cling. Won't control. I will simply flow. I will let it go.

Running through my head...

The voices of my conscience hitting ground...

When I was a young boy, I was honest,

and I had more self control.

If I was tempted I would run,

then when I got older I began to lie,

to get exactly what I wanted,

when I wanted it, and I wanted it.

Now I'm having trouble differentiating

between what I want and what I need

to make me happy.

So instead of thinking, I just act

before I have a chance to contemplate

the consequence of action.

Aperture lets the light in...

Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream, slowly. Even as I continued to hold my heart and try to calm its beating, even as I stood tall, trying to catch my breath, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of those who love me. It was the fault of the circumstances that had been inflicted on us in recent months. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain. Enough.

Setting the bar beyond the stars...

Close to closing time...

If I cannot fix your broken heart, can I put mine in its place? Because these stars are not enough, and what our life was supposed to be, has left both of us in the lurch. We promised each other more, and who really is to blame, when both of us failed one another? Failed deeply and at the same time. 

It began raining harder and his thoughts drifted towards the waterfall from the night before. He wondered if the water might work itself into a frenzy around him and drag him down the cliff with it. Flash floods were becoming a common thing in his life; they came every time it rained. It kept coming down, harder and harder. He cozied up closer to the frigid rock and buried himself deeper between the rubble. By this point, the rain was building into streams and flowing off the rocks around him. He sat there in the fetal position, wondering if the rain was going to sweep him from his feeble perch and down into the dark abyss.

A dream, aloud...

Karr lives in fantasy...

I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn't feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror's reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. Who are you? I'd ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn't me. I'd watch my lips moving and say it again, who are you?

Holes in my pockets...

Lately, I don't feel inspired,

wish I was a better liar.

It's too late to be this early,

heaven knows you tried to hurt me,

maybe that's why I blame the moon.

Saw it from afar, now here we are...

This birthday, I am letting go. Letting go of the expectations of how my life should have turned out, especially in recent years. I'll be leaving that angry, resentful, crying little bitch out in the dust. Or at least I'll try every day as hard as I can to not look at the world with such gloom. Because as I blew out my candle, all I could think of was how much I actually have. In the grand scheme of things, nothing that would stand the test of time. But I have a small part of someone, and I gave a small part away, and I call my mother, while I still can, and I listen to my brother, while he still wants to talk to me, and I try to exercise while by body is still alive, and I have friends I try to support, and I have people who try to understand. And despite everything, I still have that stupid grin on my face.

Headstrong right and dead-end wrong...

The benefit of starting from rock bottom is that I've basically been handed a gift: a clean slate. My pride has been utterly demolished, my ego is pulverized, my fear of failure has been realized in its most brutal form. Yet here I am, if nothing else, absolutely free.

He started weeping out loud as the scenes of his past replayed through his head. He'd always seen the universe's interventions as highly intentional and careful selected. Something he started to rely on when he was faced with the realities of this world. Surely the universe wouldn't leave him our to dry? Surely not, after all this time? So he waited. And waited some more. For a sign that he was not abandoned. And so a year has gone by, and he is still sitting there, realising how much it cost him to hope for something that never came. But even more terrifying, what if the sign had come, and he just didn't see it? What if he had become blind to the universe's will? Maybe the universe isn't broken. Maybe the only thing that has forsaken him, is himself. 

This is what it comes down to...

In the midst of life happening all around me, I lost the ability to be okay. I lost the ability to trust. I lost the ability to love myself, and it feels like I've lost everything. And when the one person in the entire world who loves you unconditionally doesn't seem to hear what you're saying, then you start wondering will anyone ever truly understand? And then I get scared that I have to even ask that question. And then I feel lost, torn, broken, unfixable, damaged, and like nothing in the entire world could ever possibly be okay again. So I feel even smaller, even weaker. And then I realize again, that I lost myself. That in the midst of life happening all around me, I lost the ability to be okay.