Plastic

"By analogy, think of earth’s horizon. The horizon is not a physical thing. It is a concept. If you tried to put some horizon in a bucket, you couldn’t do it. “Yet the horizon is observable and understandable. It seems to be physical and it seems to have form and substance. But when you run toward the horizon, no matter how fast you go, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same distance. You can never reach the horizon, no matter how fast you move."

Scott Adams

~

I don't know. I don't even know that I don't know. Here I am, twenty meters away from the dark ocean, cross-legged on the driver's seat. I know that I'm not really here. And I know that part of me is under the delusion that their story is worth telling.

[...]

Here I am, now, a few hours later, seated in the same position, except this time I'm ten meters away from a darker ocean. And a part of me is under the delusion that it has to continue where the other part left off. Maybe we can never really be whole. Maybe we can but we just don't want to because it would be boring. And maybe it's true that our minds can only generate delusions. Delusions. Delusions come and go. They come as we try to fill the gaps. And they go to leave room for upgraded versions, gap-fillers that are better at pretending that no void-stuff is leaking. But maybe, there are some things that we feel, that we feel truly. Maybe there are specs of light in this immense lie, in this rotting darkness. I don't know. I know that I don't know. But I know some things - I guess. What do you know? No, seriously, what do you know?

Sometimes I think that dreamers are far less detached from reality than those machines who are so desperately trying to feel at home here. I don't even know where I stand on that graph. Yet, I've been thinking that the more I try to be down-to-earth and 'realistic' the more delusional I become.

I don't know. Well, I know the limits. The big limits that bring all thought to its knees, there, at the bottom, where the silent absence of answers makes you suspect that you have three different shadows and all three of them are synchronously dancing at a frequency of one point six one eight kilohertz just to remind you that you're paralyzed. I don't know.

Thirty minutes ago, I saw a homeless man sleeping on a bench on the side of road with a black plastic bag hugging his head, tightly clutching his face. He probably doesn't want the streetlights to wake him up. We don't want the streetlights to wake us up either. We're all wearing some sort of avoid-the-truth plastic bag. And you can go ahead and check. You can put your hand on that space between your nose and your left cheek and if you focus well enough, you can feel it. That's exactly what you check every time you wake up in the morning, the mask that filters most of the horror, most of the dread, inside, outside and in-between.

The difference, you see, between my light and your probability is scattered in Parmenides' lost fragments.

The road is long but the sphere is pretty small. And the end is near though we haven't yet begun. The faith is strong and the thoughts, unclear. All these seasons are a single fall - and it's the one you can't outrun.

When you understand the difference between metaphorical reasoning and metaphorical resonance, the difference becomes you - and you, something borrowed, something greyish-blue.

Blessed be the Knight of Faith and his sword of genuine love.

~

"One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?"
Stephen Hawking

Ocean

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
Werner Herzog

~

There are some details you fail to see. There are beautiful eyes no one ever notices. I don't write to feel significant. It's funny how they can turn their backs on the ocean. I'm so tired of being me. I'm not experimenting. I'm not doing anything at all. What have you broken? What have you stolen? What is this music you can't play? Who is this child locked outside your door? Why did he stop knocking? Why are you asking all these questions? Why would you hurt the people you love? Why are you not okay? Why can't you be okay? Why can't you pretend anymore? Why can't you clean this bloody ink off your hands? Why are you so weird? When will you find your place in the world? Why do you keep forgetting to exist? Why won't these dark thoughts go away? Why are you dying so slowly? When will you feel their 'cosmic smiles' again? Why can't the ocean beat in you anymore? Why won't you shut up?

There are no real boundaries here. My shadow embraces me. My shadow embraces me and there is only darkness.

[...]

If you want to transform the earth, you must first allow it to transform you.

The skeptic relentlessly tries to rationalize the magical act. He doesn't know why he's witnessing it. He can't see who's performing it. And he can't even tell that he's the main part of the show, that he is both audience and scene - and everything in between.

So instead, we scream to process the fear and we laugh away the pain. And happiness is a nonexistent old lady who keeps snapping her neck to look over her insanely paranoid shoulders, dying at every moment, at every turn, at every breath.

Why are you still here? Where are you going next? When are you gonna change? What are you still waiting for? Why is it always raining on this empty field you hesitantly stutter to call home? What have you stolen? What have you broken? Who is this child locked outside your door? Did he really stop knocking? Are you listening?

~

“I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.”
Dejan Stojanovic

Heaven

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky

~

A small rock falls off the edge of suffocation. You can call it death. You can call it desperation. But that's not the point.

A blue-feathered bird is standing on your left shoulder. You can call her Sky. You can call her Blue. But that's not the point either. The point is beyond the void, beyond imagination.

A dying star explodes in your brain. It forms a virtual glass dagger, a cold lake between your right eye and ear. She used to call you her universe. Now she's just the radioactive stardust in your head.

A little girl with heaven painted on her face is sitting on her old red bicycle. She's in her own world, where no one else is welcome. She's so unimpressed with the grown-ups that keep failing at stroking her cheeks. And it's as if she can see them for what they truly are. Maybe that's why she can't bring herself to smile - I honestly just wanted to hear your voice. And maybe I wanted to know your name, and how you pronounce it. I wish I'd taken a picture of you, a picture of heaven. Okay, I can call you Heaven.

A subtle feeling of brokenness hovers around your lungs. And outside this shell it would look like a bruised emptiness, a leather jacket that would look good on anyone and anything. Whether it's covering the nonexistent shoulders of the tombstone of someone you lost, caressing the wooden arms of an empty chair, or embracing the naked skin of the human being who broke your heart, it would still look good.

A fragile flower breaks the sea. And the firmament becomes a morning glory of violet dreams, bedcovers for the delusional ghost of a peaceful childhood that once fell asleep in the arms of a long summer day at the beach - and it never woke up.

A gentle breath now chokes on time. And a pathetic sigh mocks the transparent liquid in your eyes. The pain is real. The pain is real. No, you're not listening. The pain is real. And I, I hide in the shadow of the scars, metaphors of a relentless mind, bloodied chords and a broken rhyme.

The raging dreamer takes off, off the edge of aspiration. You can call it life. You can call it liberation. But that's not the point.

The point is right here.

~

"Father in heaven, when the thought of thee awakens in our soul, let it not waken as an agitated bird which flutters confusedly about, but as a child waking from sleep with a celestial smile."

Søren Kierkegaard

Hell

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
 Friedrich Nietzsche

~

This ink is not dry.

Sometimes you need to switch to a new pen. She tells him about the major ideas that make up her system of beliefs and it's as if she's passionately describing the curtains of her bedroom, a bedroom in the grand castle she's been trying to escape all her life. She doesn't really want to invite him to go inside her fortress because she perceives her lonely dwelling as a weakness. Her sole desire is to show him that it's beautiful, even if she can't call it 'home'. It needs to be beautiful because it's a partial reflection of who she is up to this instant. The few dim lights are ideas of the people she loves. The rest is a bunch of character traits. The rest is history. There is a lot more to say here. There is a lot more to lie about.

The flashbacks return. The people that left your life in the ancient past return in the present moment in drops of rain that honor the scene, drops of fire that honor your cigarette's grave.

The lies don't return. They don't return because they're always there. They're always there and I just wish they'd go away. I swear that I'm not pretending. There are no lights and I'm not pretending. I'm not pretending and maybe that's why I'm tired - then again maybe not. I can't breathe. I mean I can - but not really, you know? It's not really me. Even though I'm not pretending, it's not really me.

The world is as broken as your eyes. And your body language is chaos manifest. And you can't embrace this mess of a person you've become.

Do you even know what you're doing?

These papers are so thin, so insignificant. And this ink still isn't dry.

So whether it's all about saving the world or being saved from it, narrating the supposedly compelling tale of the hero that you are or the wonderful story of the beautifully courageous people you love, or whether it's about being yourself and doing what you feel is right or about understanding the sound of this broken record that's glued to your soul, what the hell are you doing?

The headaches return. You are but the memory of a memory that died trying to remember who you once were.

But that's okay. It's always okay until it isn't anymore.

Is it time to wake up yet?

There's ink on your hands.

~

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lies

“If you go looking for love you won’t find it because love is never lost; only we are lost.”
 Shannon L. Alder

~

The rhythm is lost and, then, found again. And the eye is centered on the heart of sin.

The headaches return and the colors fade. Self-hate is at the door. Three knocks and a half later, I find my hand on the broken knob, an armless, timeless clock.

The world is a ball of gray spit and all heartbeats are frozen midair. Your smile has lost sight of childhood's shore and, though I know I told you to be patient, we both know you blink the rust off the eyelashes of each lonely dreamless night.

Now whether it's martyr, monster, mystic, maya or all that precedes this sign, choose your destiny. Choose the word beneath the phenomenon. Choose wisely because the navy ointment's extremities will stretch around you like a bubble. And the spherical sky will sail and burst at the corner of your lips. Now you will either taste the passion of transcendence beyond the suspension of the ethical or... you'll suffocate. Two knocks and a half earlier, you'll find yourself choking on your own poison - a fading stain locked inside the four bloodless chambers of the heart you sold.

Look around, beneath and, then, beyond this ornamented lie. Look again and tell me - tell me. What do you see?

Picture the face of the stranger in the shattered waves. Picture the photograph you would want as a discolored pillow alongside the dust of your decaying cheekbones. Picture the innermost layer of your being waiting for your deepest fear to serve for the existential championship point at the turn of the next sentence. I Love You. Did you just smile? Did the thunderous voice of serotonin caress your thighs as your eyes inhaled the silence of this digital juice of romantic lies?

All you need to do to survive this fictional web of deception is to find your rope, tie the knot that binds purpose to identity, and just hold on - or perhaps ascend. But the question's right there, etched on the inside of your bloodshot palms. Can you feel the taste of vinegar as these worded acidic threads struggle out of your sore throat?

Can you smell the horror behind this scented fantasy? Or are you just as numb and oblivious as I am? Decompose the confusion. Pour vile metaphors on your core contusion. Recompose the melody. Forsake that unpaid debt. Replay the delusion. Re-calculate. Rephrase. The answer is always the same; you can't breathe.

The rhythm is lost and, then, lost again. The eyes are frantic and the heart is- what heart?

~

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
 Ernest Hemingway

Movies

"And when you go don't return to me my love."
My Chemical Romance

~

The door isn't open. Maybe it never really was. But I can pretend. I can always pretend.

"Give me a shot to remember and you can take all the pain away from me."

The shadow of the unknown beckons. I can feel it stretching across the blankness of my mask. The long lost scent of childhood is either dead or undercover. And, I cannot yet unmask this state of shade. The same old heaviness keeps increasing in invisible weight. Let go.

Let go and know that, in non-random fact, the truth shines through your cracks and whispers to your eyes: 'Tomorrow, I will be revealed.' Meanwhile, acrylic delusions frantically blink, staring at whatever colors they'd been spitting on my face. Don't let go.

Bits and pieces of me may well be scattered across the enneagram lines. But, you... do you really think you're swimming in my stream of consciousness? Look around. You're inside your own head. For the lines that, in your eyes, blur out the rest, they're on the other side of the coin you always flip. And they were facing the horizon right before you shoved them in, right before you sold them out to flush the red sea of lies, the one you'd pushed out of your lungs just to decorate that beautiful boring room.

"You're just a sad song, with nothing to say, about a lifelong wait for a hospital stay."

This soundtrack is bruised and broken. It might as well be dead. But our pictures are in motion and they bear no frames - they extend; they extend to infinity. Now the question is right there. It's always been there. 'Are you watching closely?' Are you listening? Are your lines in the script tearing up the fabric of your heartstrings? Do you need to talk to the director?

"Drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo."

Get out. I can't always pretend.

~

"We all carry on, when our brothers in arms have gone.
So raise your glass high for tomorrow we die,
And return from the ashes you call."
My Chemical Romance