#i23091-#i25004
IN THREE PARTS
SEVEN ENTRIES
INTROSPECTIONS
I have smothered my light to see the dimmest stars and watched my deepest fears play out across a pristine landscape.
AWARENESS
INTERWOVEN
There’s something here, something in the fabric of the world that catches on the hem of my soul. I can feel it looming like a memory I can’t place, a yearning tempered by peace, by understanding, hiding just beyond view. The wind welcomes me like an old friend, playing on the water and whipping the waves into ephemeral dancing currents, reminding me of the times I’ve been here before. Thoughts of eternity, of life, of timeless time, breaths of fresh ocean air.
What drove me here? Why do I return? These memories should be a painful reminder but today, they feel like a return to center, a visit to some forgotten harbor in my soul. It’s calm and quiet but for the waves and wind and rain — the beach is empty, a fog is rolling in. Lighting strikes distant, it’s been a while. Years since I watched the weather express such anger, since I’ve seen the sky painted by heaven’s sparks. The storms I’ve weathered of late have been internal, projected on an unmoving California landscape.
I suppose that spring is supposed to bring feelings of rebirth but this is a remembrance, not a ceremony of new life — an acceptance, a resolution. When last I sat on this shore, my head was a muddled mess of unanswerable questions. But I left those conundrums behind — I can see them there, just barely. They’ve been eroding away with the crashing of waves and soon, there will be none left. The clearer I’ve defined myself, the less obscure this corner of my universe has become. This place is a threshold, a refuge.
Why do I dream of me rather than simply being me?
DUALITY
Through my greatest triumphs and grandest achievements, I have been equally engaged in a grapple of emotion, a deeply disturbing discontentment which stymies all attempts at understanding. As in all things, this is a test of balance, give and take. But it has become ever clearer that in my darkest hours, my trials of despair have led me straight to the hearts of lovers.
All lovers must become fighters, all warriors must become the strongest of fathers, the purest of heart. This narrative a drama, and I find the director at my heart’s center, that place where the pieces of my fractured soul rest in shambles as I once again find myself. Those we allow into our hearts are the deities of our existence. Each of these gods has the ability to create, transform, and destroy just as much in your world as theirs. These mythologies and fables we carry are to be reminders of the capacity within each of us. Every god is mortal, amnesia is abundant.
Upon waking here in this body, I seem to have a sense of assuredness, no doubt a result of the discovery of my royal lineage, my decisions are executed with precision and gravitas. I play a much deeper game than my opponents; why should I expect to find vigor in a game of pawns? I’m playing my own game now, independent and unsure. Now is painful as I cauterize the wounds left by the amputation of my right hand, my soulmate yet again, and hopefully, for the last time.
JUDGEMENT
PLOT CONTRIVANCE
I don’t want to remain a writer, to be a character in a story that I only remember in reading pages of a book I rarely remove from the shelf. I see myself in photos and I can remember happiness, the warmth and presence. It feels so far away. Now, I only find myself grounded in moments of intense loss. I’ve been mourning for so long, I’ve lost myself in the experience of others and concerned myself with their worries
I am heavy, a leaden weight in my chest dragging me down into a vortex of foggy darkness. I am not so eager to leave this void. I am comforted here in the presence of my many deaths. In the graveyard of all that I’ve ever been lies all that I’ve ever known — is this not home? This place where memories are kept? Buried beneath a layer of dust and neglect lies my heart, where I dropped it. I don’t bend to pick it up. This is his bed now, his roost, his tomb. Here, there is nothing to run from or to. Here, I float between misery and bliss as the leading edge of my consciousness overtakes the horizon and leaves me here to sleep until the sun sets and rises again.
DORMANCY
What is there to be scared of? The anxiety that claws at my breast has been, until recently, powerless. Smooth jazz plays over the speakers while the dwindling evening light paints vividly the autumnal glory outside my window. Perhaps I am beginning to mourn, to accept the closure of this chapter, my fading power. Always, there must be a period of decay which follows a great triumph, a rebirth. I need not fight, rather I should allow the flood to overtake me. The transition to rest is not an easy one for a heart burdened with longing, But I need not allow this sleep to be final, simply to respect the quiet of the grave and carry on in the morning.
Life becomes more dissonant as the subconscious becomes unfamiliar. When the course is altered, you destroy your conscious existence. Hedonistic consumption leads to a compartmentalization of self. The unified self, found in the moment of death, is the concentration of your existence into a single vessel. Your best self is a process, not a result; if you must have a master, make it yourself; to be god is to be alone.
HIBERNATION
Why won’t sleep overtake me? How does this silence creep in like a biting midwest chill in the dead of winter? It makes its way deep into my bones, following old fracture lines, making brittle the structure of my being — a pitiful scaffolding whose adornment weighs heavily, slowly descending towards the earth and the certainty of gravity’s embrace. This thing, this becoming, this desperate attempt, this mourning a conference with a broken self, the one whose feet wore this anxiety into the floorboards. Sit with me, child. All is not well, but it will be; you will not know this misery for long; soon, it will be a stranger, a desolate beggar who yearns for riches and other impossibilities which fill the cups of his oppressors, blind to the fortune in his mind. Sit beside me, child; I will stay up with you until the light of the rising sun lulls you into sleep, finally safe from the demons of the night, those reflections, the depths of your pain; I will outlast your midnight, when relief is impossibly beyond you. All is not well, but it will be.
LOVE
NOTE TO SELF
It is my hope that this note will reach you there, desolate and diminished. Might this bit of joy and peace find you on the cliffs of distant shores, the realm of unconquerable quandaries and conundrums. In my darkest hours, I have not reached the bottom of the endless well; even in my worst memories, I am still afloat — if only just — drifting uncertainly, but certainly alive. You sit there alone and afraid, feet set firmly upon a crumbling foundation, end encroaching. Somehow, you kept the light on, weathered the storm, and made it here, six years of endless darkness later.
Maybe all of those nights spent in a bottle were an attempt to reach you, the tortured soul writhing in the agony of loneliness; if I could find the lowest level of my psyche, I would be able to consolidate the lessons learned in the dark, the silence — I would hear an echo of my own eulogy. Maybe I’ve finally heard it, found my dead selves on their way to hell and shown them the way out, the beauty that still clings to life in the maelstrom of misery outside. I died alongside them to teach them the power of resurrection.
Continue onward, you will never be alone again — immune to the chaos of the ghosts attending your frame. You shall not want for this any longer, this isolation. You shall awake to an ever-brightening horizon as your love intercepts you on the path, binding you together more tightly than the threads which weave together the whole of reality. One day soon, this warm light will bathe you in its glow and there will never again be distance or time between these hearts which beat in synchrony.
REFURBISHING
Those who have been marked in life, for better or worse, are wellsprings of knowledge, of profound truths of existence. Maybe we should be listening more, dreaming more. How can the world heal with hate? How can the world heal with love? Imagination isn’t fabrication, it’s seeing, seeking, pinpointing, finding, arriving. I am building my village, gathering around myself those who I love deepest — a community of incredible beings who live, work, grow, and create together. We will revive the truer form of humanity here in the heartland of destruction where once, abundance created and sustained the people of corn.
I’ve never really fit in anywhere and for that, I am grateful. While the world was busy forming uniform blocks out of the infinite potential of children, my uniqueness was not quelled, but nurtured. I want to live with an intensity that matches and fluctuates with the heat of my internal fire. I’ve simply been avoiding the current moments in an attempt to draw nearer those which appear grander. Attempts to rush forward are always met with frustration. The absurdity of my life reached a fever pitch — I met with the other great force of this universe in a collision that shook the fabric of reality so profoundly as to align with certainty. The control of my narrative has always been within grasp, but now something more seems to accompany the pen; an assuredness, a commitment to my own desires, perspective, judgement. In those moments in which I hold back nothing, infinity is at my fingertips.
I kept looking, seeking a bit of reality floating fragmented in a cosmic sea which I thought to call home. That sense of peace always felt just beyond the horizon and as the years dragged, it felt ever unreachable. The answer was simple — my gaze looked outward from that place, the home which was always me. That time is now at an end, the landing stage is in view. Even the youngest sapling may learn the wisdom of the giants whose shadows it grows beneath — he has but to accept the droplets pouring off their needles from on high. I am what dreams are made of.