Shadow

"Et entendre ton rire comme on entend la mer 
S'arrêter, repartir en arrière."
Renaud

~

She was a galaxy and I wanted to cross all the light-years stretched within her eyes.

But I'm tired. I'm tired and this new kind of pain isn't one I can tune out into the numbness of my veins. I'm tired and the breakdown is on the verge of tearing up my papery soul.

I can't maintain composure and I can't maintain my hateful self-criticism. I can't help seeing the flaws and I can't dodge them anymore.

And no matter how far inviolable principles go, the fraudulent eye is there to put up a smokescreen masquerading as the immaculate horizon.

This is not me. It's just how my broken parts behave. This is the broken road of growth mazing under the clouded sky of insanity. This is not me. It's just an ugly mask consuming my skin.

Anger. Rage. Anger.

Every day, I see strangers walking on the street, with virtual copies of themselves fighting off their inner and outer demons. And as they all fail to keep a straight face behind the dance of light and shadow, I keep wondering why we all keep pretending. And I wonder if my buried struggles ever appeared as a sword-fight in someone's imagination.

What are we doing here? Does anyone really know when or where or why or who they are? And if you're on the quest of becoming who you truly are beyond all those kinds of despair, then how do you know you're on the right path? How do you know you're not just pretending not to be pretending, like everyone else?

This is the point that stretches into a dimension. You either see it or you don't. We're all acting as if this is real, as if we are for real. When the truth is that what truly matters is kept hidden behind the stage, while we falsely lose and regain despair as quickly as the spectators' fake smiles fade. Maybe it's always going to be this way, human beings beating their egos against the wall of despair.

I know that some things matter more than life. And, yes, there are moments that outweigh the universe. But I don't want to talk about any of that.

People change. People help other people change. But no human being can fix another.  Everyone's broken; some are broken beautifully, others not so much. Yet, breathing aside, people lie to themselves far more often than they do anything else. People are cruel. And they're ruining everything. People are selfish. And the first thing they always ruin is themselves.

I wonder if my dreams and my words are part of the script I'm pretending not to read. And I wonder if anyone in the audience ever truly saw the mirror-like property of the eyes behind the mask. I wonder if I will always be acting alone on this stupid stage of delusion. And I wonder if I will ever stop wondering and just walk out of here.

There is a thick line between honesty and self-deception. Where are you?

There is a thin line between identity and purpose. Where do you want to be?

There are no more lines. All you can do is read between the lies.

Action.

~

“Act well your part; there all the honour lies.” 
Alexander Pope

Star

"And I just wanted you to know."

My Chemical Romance

~

An eternal feeling unhesitatingly and continuously screams in the depth of your dark abyss. Echoes bounce off the walls, fueled by a resentment toward the conditions of time and space. It says that it is unconditionally timeless, boundless yet wonders, under its breath, for how long it's been stuck in this hole. 

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others are tender shattering dew. 

In the midst of noise, words crawl on a sidewalk. It must be really loud in your head, mockingly whispered the abyss. Even your words know there's no way out of here. Is our truth cold enough to puncture that heavy soul you so terribly wish to abandon? Paint the pain upon the brow, disillusioned by delusions, and punch the rain into your eyes, for this is but the world of lies. Like an inherently divided coin, sailing through the cobblestone, I wonder which side fortune will pretend-bury today, as its brother washes away under this dusty broken loan. Alas! Know that hell is not bounded by the red corners of your eyes. And so you must look further and beyond that gaze you distance yourself from - for the deeper you dwell, the closer your home to hell. 

We're in this together, said Heart to Horizon. 

Light music ensued. 

We're in this together, said Mind to Pattern. 

Mute lights fired through. 

Why is no one dancing? The soul wondered. 

I am, echoed Silence. 

But no one heard it. 

So listen. Listen to the shadow dancing in the rain, singing the praises of creation. Listen to your story and everyone else's, for a single thread can only resonate within its web. Listen to the lines hiding in their retinas, the ones their mirrors forget on the other side. Listen, second-most of all, to your silence. 

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others just never make it through.

When time loses meaning, and you feel that you don't belong in this body, or at least that this planet is not your home, it makes you wonder if it's simply all a dream. Yet you can't help but try to make sense of the contents of your existence. Thus as I attempt to hug you, our feet planted at the center of the bottomless rift of our fractured identity, I find that you are as opaque and immaterial as I am, that this open-ended monologue is a meaningless echo that bounced off all the voices in my head.

I believe the main difference between the suffering individual and the individual whose brilliance is widely recognized is identical to the difference between difference and similarity, because empty space is empty, and because Divine Perspective rules them all.

Some nights are broken, dead and true. And the stars align with your suffering because they want you to be you. 

What about me?

What happens to me when the music is gone? 

How bright will the hour of my star shine when I pass?

How short is the breath to failure? And how deep is the road to contentment?

What about you?

What do you see in the horizon?

And how does silence make you feel?

How do you fill the many blanks between these lines?

And which of the seven versions of you is blinking right now?

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others bless the divine in you.

~

"One who doesn't know how to dance, says the floor is crooked."

Nepali Proverb

Cut

“In the cloud, reflections mirror reflections, cutting out the object and leaving only infinite emptiness.” 
Joseph MacKinnon

~

My hand was in yours. Your hand was in mine. And there was a moment where I didn't know which was which. Then, the moment was gone, and another one came. It was the moment of separation, slowly tearing the pages of the book we wrote in our minds, pages about the dreams that we carried in our hands, interlocked. Yet, right before that second moment ended, time froze. Time froze with the tips of our fingers barely touching and I knew that a blink later I'd be falling off your side of the edge like drawings of sands made of demons while you'd be falling, over and over, in water-drops, off mine, like an imagined suicide scene on playback.

But time froze because it knew we were timeless. And it just sat there on a dusty chair that had 'Faith' carved on its back, watching the motionless picture of Fear's sword of Doubt pointed at Love's heart of Hope.

Cut.

~

You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience, watching an ego disguised as reason taking up the role of the lead actor. You should know that this podium is not only set for a grand masquerade where the truth doesn't matter. It's set for anyone who has something genuine to say. And everything you see on stage is but a staged symbol, a moderately hidden clue for what's going on behind the scenes. So get up and come inside for it is in the dark curves of your mind that you find the scriptwriters. And when you do, it will neither feel nor smell good back there because all your lies, fears and insecurities dwell in the ego's lair, fueling your quest for a nonexistent power. Maybe, just maybe, one day you'll find it in you to write your own script, your own lines instead of lying yourself to sleep.

~

And so we spend the time that wastes us and write stories that erase us. Then time just vanishes because the shame leaves no place for any other concept but disgust. And they stare blankly at the conscience that died with its mouth open and its eyes gouged, screaming two simple words for the child that ran away into the horizon, Come Back.

~

Once, in a nonexistent time and twice, in a place of delusion, a child ran into his reflection in the mirror and broke it. Both were running to find themselves but what they found was something else. The boy in the mirror found a broken hourglass of sand and water, drowned in mud. And the boy with blood on his face found an open locket with an empty picture frame and a clock that's always stuck at dawn. Each paced around in his room in recurrent patterns of confusion between the definition of a curse and the 'nondefinition' of a curse. And as they walked through life, the pieces of glass wrote, with blood and footprints, tainted puzzled words and painted worded puzzles. They met again, and again, in different colors and shapes, on the surface of other people's eyes. And many mirrors were broken twice, and twice, again.

~

Whether you break mirrors because you can't see yourself in them or polish them because they withhold the truest lies you've ever written, know that you are neither of the elements of the inner fight, nor are you the sum of the broken mirrors.

You're that person still sitting in the audience, alone.

~

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” 
Konstantin Stanislavski