these hard times

Morning falls like rain into the city life
There goes another night
Losing my breath in waves
Knowing that every crash is bleeding the hourglass
and taking the strife from all our lives

Everyone keeps talking
They promise you everything
But they don't mean anything

We may loose our focus
There's just too many words
We're never meant to learn
And we don't feel so alive

So goodbye, these days are gone
and we can't keep holding on
When all we need is some relief
Though these hard times
Through these hard times

Move your hands in circles
Keeping me hypnotized
The power behind your eyes
Move around your bedroom cursing the naked sky
You should be here tonight
But you stay alone and cry

deletia

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It stands for everything that has been lost.

wasted sarcasm on the oblivious

I used to be an employer of sarcasm. I used it for much evil. However, there was a change, and somewhere along the line, I was 'tamed'.

It still surfaces though, from time to time. But it's taken on a new tinge. It's become so integrated into my psyche that even when I don't mean it, people are unsure. I guess it's got its advantages, because sometimes people just don't get it.

But the worst is when that effort is wasted on the oblivious, or the really good intentioned.

Then I should learn to employ niceties and gayness in its place perhaps.

enlight

I read a paragraph of words today. It sang of truth and it echoed my unspoken thoughts.

In one of the classic curtains-were-lifted moments, the truth was unveiled to me. You would think that it would then be easy to proceed from there, but you're wrong. It was just so simple, sure, but they couldn't be more complicated at the same time.

And so, we stand on the verge of that something really great. What happens here on is as uncertain as where the wind blows. Time changes all things and no one can be sure of the future.

matchboxtwenty - long day

long day

I have a new source of light in my life.

All the old joys have sort of faded to the background; they're still there, but this new one has sort of taken precedence for now.

I lived for moments previously, and I lived for time spent with people because they're never around for long. I lived for the exhilaration and the suspense, as well as for the entertainment, adrenaline and passion. I even lived for the sense of accomplishment.

Recently, a little fish has swam into my fishbowl, invaded it, and left an indelible mark, which I fear, will be harder to wash away than dried-up bird-droppings.

However, a similar noun - die - will come in soon, and like a bug-eyed goldfish, this one might die too. I only wish there was a longer lifespan to it, or a way that it will survive for a longer time.

Familiar?

matchboxtwenty - all i need

Everywhere someone's getting over.
Everybody cries and sometimes.
You can still lose even if you really try.

Talking about the dream like the dream is over.
Talk like that won't get you nowhere.
Everybody's trusting in the heart.
Like the heart don't lie.

And that's all that I need.
Someone else to cling to.
Someone I can lean on until
I don't need to.

Just stay all through the night.
And in the morning let me down.
Cause that's all that I need, right now.

Everywhere someone's getting over.
Everybody's lied to someone.
People still use other people with a crooked smile.

And all around the world.
There's a sinking feeling.
Out there right now someone's really down on themselves.
And don't know why.

Life ain't no beauty show.
We don't know where tomorrow ends.
And when we're sad.
It's kind of a drag.

That's all that I need.
That's all that I need right now.

the need for exploration

In the same way that your tongue seeks out the space left by a missing tooth, or the way your hands caress different fabrics as they slip through the fingers, my feet crave foreignness. They are desiring that unknown element that comes with venturing into another country and knowing that the earth beneath my feet is something both ancient to the world and yet new to me.

I am driven by that quest for knowledge of hidden textures, other lives and unexplored possibilities. I need to be free to explore and lose myself completely, if but for a short while.I want to be unknown to others and forget who I was or who I am.

I want no agendas and no constraints. I want to slip away in a crowd and be swept along by nothing more than my mood or some fleeting thought or desire.

I crave nothingness and yet I want to experience everything. I want to know how it feels to breathe the air in the Swiss Alps. I want to revisit the wonders of Africa with my own eyes. I want to know what it’s like to take in the view from the Eiffel Tower. I want to reach out and touch the bark of an ancient tree in New Zealand.

These are things that cannot be told and cannot be read, they need to be done for one’s self and savoured as an individual sensory experience.

I want to feel with my fingers pressed against a wall, sense through the ground beneath my feet and imagine with my mind all that has come before. I want to soak in the knowledge that history has passed underneath my hand, beneath my feet or under my gaze.

I want to take this knowledge to heart and be thankful for it. I want to be reminded that at this point in time or at this place many more have come before and looked upon this spot or felt the grit beneath their fingers in much the same way as me.

I want to sense all that is still yet to pass. I want to recognise that time does not wait, that everything moves, everything changes, and nothing remains the same. This cannot be done at a distance.

It is necessary to reach out and place yourself directly in such a moment to remember, because in the end sometimes memories are all that remain.

While my being in a place at a particular time may not be recognised and recorded by all, such visits do go down in one version of history.

They become part of my own personal history. Though these records may never be written they will be with me always and turned to time and time again. (And if you are someone close, you will know that this entry is beyond tourism.)

clarity

It’s funny how we started as irrational individuals initially and now we requires ourselves to be mature and responsible adults in maintaining what we have and striving for what we want for the future.

And seriously, i think it’s just so special that way.

outward manifestation of an inward regression

Is there a selfish reason behind doing everything? Are we inevitably all about 'me'? Are there actually inherently good people with the purest of intention? Or is that something that we're led to believe?

Take your actions today, look at what you did. There is the outright/overt intention, then there is the underlying intention, and there is the hidden agenda. Do we really have 'pure intentions'?

I think perhaps we're all about satisfying our own desires. We do things because we want to, we give in to people because we have to (because going against it would be going against our interests).

Help - is it really a singular one-way effort to assist?

Offer - do we really offer something and not expect anything in return?

Love - unrequited? Love without expectation?

Sometimes, we just have totally negative views of the world.

the rider's perspective

Recent days got me in a pensive mood. I think. I think. and I think about the joys of life from a rider’s perspective.

It’s not the big things that define what life is. There’re too few and far between. They come and are soon gone. Be it a sensitive lover, or a wonderful parent. For me, it’s the little things: like a smile meant just for me, my work rewarded by simple thanks, or just… the perfect ride.

It’s in the quick spurts of power (aka pleasure) through the responsiveness of twisting the gears and getting rewarded by sheer mechanical power: power that you can control in and out of a beautiful bend. The exhilaration of being close to the ground beneath that just rushes by. The quick flick of the eye to reaffirm the speedo is at a respectable point. Feeling one’s body precariously hanging off the growling, road-devouring beast, all the while almost touching the passing asphalt.

It’s not the showing off, for no one but your machine knows what you’ve been up to. It’s not the ego-boost, for everyone feels he’s better than another. No, it’s just the holistic feeling of being in total control on that excruciatingly perfect lean of any long deep corner - anywhere.

By and by, such moments get reduced. They come in and impose odd restrictions and limiters on your machine. They develop new-fangled products to keep you in check. They constantly redefine the imposed system of control.

“Lead a mundane life, be a loyal and obedient servant.” You will be fine/fined if you follow these tenets. Clones: is that why they make creativity an essential module for our poor young? And yet they limit you to walking speeds and expect adventurous, risk-taking entrepreneurs? Perhaps they should reconsider this positively (negative) repressive approach.

Our joys get blacked-out and tossed into the past. What about the irresponsible and the criminal? Why shoot-down the lone wolf? His life is his own, is it not? His is not to run with the pack.

They take away the joys of life, and leave us with nothing. Soon, we’ll not only be told how to be courteous, but also how to start smiling again - for soon dreariness shall set in, and the right to one’s happiness… revoked.

When that day comes, I shall look for a sure means of flight. Cut the strings that bind me and carry on flying to my own. I want to keep my little joys always.

Fight the power. Don’t let yours get taken away.

airports

I love airports. I know it sounds strange, but i love airports. I love the energy they have. It has to do with their architecture - high to the ceilings, light, airy, use of beautiful natural woods together with steel and glass constructions. The architecture of the airport lends to the atmosphere. When it's high to the ceiling and light and bright, it feels like anything is possible. An energetic, happy expectation fills the air.

People are either headed out on a holiday or a business trip that's full of possibility. Or they're arriving home after a trip, happy to be home. So, generally, people in airports exude a positive, expectant energy.

It has also to do with liminality. A favorite topic of mine which i haven't visited. A status i think i would use describe where i am in life at the moment.

An airport is a purely liminal space - on the border between what was and what is yet to come. Everyone is full of the potential for change - to be changed by the sights seen on a holiday, to be changed by the next business deal, to be changed by the new people they encounter and the experiences they will have.

They are on the threshold, in transition. Maybe that's what i love about an airport. Its liminality.

It's lucky i love them, because i'm starting to spend quite a lot of time there.

down

Too many volatile events. Too many lengthy thoughts. Rather hard to configure them into coherent reminiscence. Happiness. Warmth. Gratitude. Spontaneity. Desolation. Unconsciousness.

The heart and the brain smiles at each other...and then they disagree. Conflict and destruction. They resign helplessly.

A mind capable of deep understanding can be very conflicted. A heart born of intense sensitivity can be very fragile. Put them together when one is morose and the other torn, you land in this state of convulsive delirium.

Imagine laughing and appreciating humour and the next moment, your face is buried in a pillow soaked in tears that doesn't seem to dry.

Imagine knowing that you are so fortunate and truly appreciating life, and then not long after, thinking that you do not deserve such blessings and feeling apathetic to such goodness. The cycle repeats after itself.

Exhausting becomes almost too shallow for a word.

fig trees and priorities

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar