August House

Bloodgold maples turning white.
A sense of loss and sadness that will not go away.
I would walk a thousand miles just to see you.

A heart, amplified

I know I will wake up to the dark of a winter day tomorrow with the same thought as this morning.

And I know that I will stare at the black water of the river and the endless stream of ice sheets floating by.

In the light from the dashboard, I will choose a destination, plot a course, and delete it. Again and again.

At some point this dream will collapse. It will collide with time and space, and as it is with all things timeless, such as a thought, a prayer or a dream, it will burn. But right now I am not willing to let it slip into the unknown. Not just yet.

Overture

Oh god, this hurts. 

Aetās, Universum & Omnis

"To write is human, to edit is divine." - Stephen King

The fireplace in the bedroom breathes and crackles. I have just finished the writing part of what is quickly becoming my favorite book, "Dark Zen". It has taken me a very long time to write and I have abandoned her to entertain other muses for years at a time. When doing so, she has invaded my sleep and made all sorts of ultimatums and demands. She demanded to be completed.

Now comes the process of editing (and correcting a ton of typos, I presume). I am notoriously bad at it, but I will give it a shot at first. I actually have someone in mind to edit the book, but here lies the problem: I don't actually know her. This person has a tremendously strong voice herself. She reads the same books as I do, listen to the same music as I do, and uses the same exact verbal expressions as yours truly.

Here are the last words of Dark Zen:

And here we begin the last short chapter in this collection of thoughts, arisings and reflections. I feel the need to point out that you, dear reader, should not take anything at face value, not anything I have written, nor anything else. Everything under the sun and beyond should be scrutinized, dissected, and improved if at all possible. Everything should be laughed at and ridiculed, when there is need. I find myself more and more detached from the bullshit of the world around me. Sure, I live in these constructions and function in them like anyone else. I continue to be a ghost, riding a skeleton made of stardust on a convertible spaceship hurling hundreds of thousands of miles per second through the vacuum of space. But, once I have stared at the abyss of meaninglessness of existence, shed the childish preconceptions of any meaning of man-made contraptions, I find myself metaphorically standing on the same Mediterranean beach I stood twenty years ago, staring at the rising sun, waiting for my life actually to begin.


There will be no such transformation in store for me as the autumn of my life looms already in the horizon. I know what I am, and I know my place in order of things. The wine will not taste as sweet. No sensation will be as explosive and profound, as those I have felt and left behind. I have made a journey of discovery within myself, and through that journey I found the world, such as it is.


For the first time in this existence, I feel content.


The flame of restlessness of youth is moribund and withering now, turning into a cold, declarative low fire. I am content that there will be new discoveries made every day, although every such discovery reinforces the notion that I know next to nothing. I am content that I am allowed to create something new every day. I am content that I am no longer afraid of the darkness, but the darkness is afraid of me. I am content that I have had the opportunity to experience perhaps the longest period of peace in world history, and I recognise it can end any day. I am content that I have seen the technological and scientific progress from the 80s to this very day. I am content that I have loved and been loved, and that I have made peace with sorrow and loss I have encountered.


I am content that I have learned to choose quality over quantity, reason over rage, compassion over hate, and doubt over faith.
I am content that I have learned to be quiet when any word would do.



Lost

"I am afraid that I am lost if I put out the candle tonight,
but is it in the fist that opens that has the key to what's inside?
And I didn't travel three hundred miles to find myself on this shore,
let alone buy some time I have already paid for.

This cold handsome devil, a tall image of a man,
tells you what your looking for and to leave while you can.
A teardrop, what does it tell you, is it begging you to understand?
Is it all you've ever needed? A simple way to show that you can't."

I wrote that originally eons ago sitting on a beach at sunrise in Catalonia. The text found its rightful place in a song called "No One Home in Heaven".  And, I find myself humming the melody tonight.

Free Falling

It is Tuesday January 21st. Naked trees sway in the wind turning north. I am lost in my thoughts at the office desk, absorbing the silence only broken by gentle clicking of various mechanical keyboards, an occasional muffled cough. I love my crew. They embrace this silence as much as I do.

It has been said that a standard cycle in a man's life is seven years. Most of the cells in human body are regenerated in roughly ten years, save for very specific brain cells which can last from 50 years to a lifetime. I am not the same entity I was 10 years ago in so many levels. I have learned that the things I want and the things I need are not the same thing. I have learned that nothing in this existence is truly easy. We earn our keep every day.

And yes, we plough through it all without giving it much thought while at it. We keep vigil at night for the hours and days wasted. We mourn this loss when we think no-one sees.  

I am not enjoying this free fall through time, through days and months. At some point I will reach the figurative escape velocity and change course. With this momentum, with one fell swoop, I will eventually crash land to your shores.

From the rooftops of Gaudi's cathedral,
saints please bless me for my heart pulls south.
No prayer can save me now,
no such word strong enough.

And I don't know what has gotten to me,
or what brought me here tonight.
I have nothing to give you but my heart
and these thoughts I claim as mine.

Now that image is no longer
and a figure forms naturally.
When you stand beside all the nonsense,
then what would you really be to me?

A portrait of a goddess,
or a painful lesson learned,
or the closest thing to perfect
in a less than a perfect world.

Mirage

And it was on January 16th around 12:50 PM, something happened. Something stilled, something quieted down. A question was answered somewhere far away.

Imagine this:
A sensation not unlike anxiety but without a trace of anguish. There are ripples emanating from the solar plexus. ASMR has nothing on this, nothing.

And then it's gone.

Now, imagine this:
Someone somewhere reads the same books as you do. Someone listens to the same music as you do. Someone uses the same exact verbal expressions as you do. Someone feels the same weight of the world, the same soul crushing pressure and suffering, this existence places on our shoulders.

What would you make out of it? Now, I am old enough to understand that all this might mean nothing. It might be a curiosity, a mirage, and a distant light shining beyond the horizon. It might be a Schrödinger's Twin Fire; a quantum state disappearing, or behaving differently, when observed.

Or, it might be a figment of my imagination. A wish upon a star. I find myself writing as if talking to a lonely candle.

"I am a railroad track abandoned,
with the sunset forgetting I ever happened."
- Jeff Buckley, "Opened Once"