Bracelets

"Don't, don't, don't, don't."

Simple Minds

~

It's late and I... I really don't know what to say. Let's see. I'm listening to music to feel better about myself. Sting's Shape of my Heart is playing. "He doesn't play for the money he wins. He doesn't play for respect. He deals the cards to find the answer, the sacred geometry of chance, the hidden law of a probable outcome - The numbers lead a dance." I think anyone would love this song.

Once more, tonight, I'll be hiding behind words. And yes, I know the night is beautiful, even if I can't really feel it. Boyce Avenue's cover of Drops of Jupiter is playing. "Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken? Your best friend always sticking up for you, even when I know you're wrong. Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance, five-hour phone conversation? The best soy latte that you ever had - and me." I wonder if I'll ever learn to play an instrument and make someone feel this way.

"Et si j'ai tort de lire dans tes pensées où rien de beau ne m'échappe - à part toi. Seuls, quelques silences m'effleurent encore quand je dors. Je n'ai plus de raison d'aimer. Et tant pis si je me détruis et je fais le tour de tes mots, tes promesses et tes envies d'ailleurs." The only thing that's more interesting than structure is that freedom one almost feels when they break the structure.

It's truly funny how other people's words can get to me more than my own. My veins are emotion-intolerant. Maybe that's why sometimes my heart seems as if it's gonna explode. Maybe I should stop smoking. He wanted to have the bracelet that was made of my heartstrings. And he has it now even though I had vowed to myself that this bracelet would be the final witness to my final pulse. It's truly funny how, sometimes, everything makes sense - even when all that is substance feels too foreign to exist.

"Do or die, you'll never make me. Because the world will never take my heart. Though you try, you'll never break me. We want it all, we wanna play this part. I won't explain or say I'm sorry. I'm not ashamed, I'm gonna show my scar. Give a cheer for all the broken. Listen here, because it's only-"

What are words compared to this? This thing you can't see. This heaviness I don't want to feel. I don't want to feel. Welcome to the dark side of melancholy.

Welcome to the black parade.

~

"Hey, hey, hey, hey."

Simple Minds

Fight

"Empty spaces - what are we living for?"
Queen

~

What can you say? What can't you say?

I can say that false ideas can be the right and necessary steps to reach correct conclusions. I can say that no one likes a broken toy that keeps repeating the same half-sentence no matter how hard you push its button. I can say that I don't know whether I'm more afraid of what I want or of what I might find out. I can say that it all falls back into the distance between love and fear though I know that there's a lot more to it - to this. I can say that I hide my face behind metaphors because I can't stand the sight of the truth. I can say that my imagination fixes the brokenness of this world though it feels like it's other way around. I can say whatever I want to say because freedom shapes both biology and the bed-covers that hide it. I can say whatever I want to say and you can interpret things in whichever way pleases you and I can say that this phenomenon indirectly, and in some unnamed half-lit perspective, accounts for both heaven and hell. I can say things in my head in a combination of talk-back and play-back and broken-back modes just to exhale the recycled shit I have bottled up. I can say whatever you want to hear but I'd have to truly know who you are and I don't because no one really knows anyone and no one knows what's really going on. I can say that I know myself but I'd simply be lying to someone I don't know. I can say anything but it will always be closer to nothing than to some thing. And I can say that the show must go on, no matter what.

I can't say that I didn't want to mix the 'cans' and the 'can'ts'. I can't say that this isn't compensation for my lack of organization. I can't say what love is. I can't say that this isn't getting boring. I can't say that the word 'fraud' doesn't always come to mind. I can't say that coincidences exist. I can't say that I'm honestly doing well. I can't say why I'm doing this can/can't thing even though it's not making me feel well. I can't say what I really want to say but that's fine because I like it when the words come out spontaneously - and they are. I can't say that I don't admire how everything, even hardship, is so well-designed. I can't say what self-love is because I don't yet fully know how the process works. I can't say how I really feel for multiple reasons. I can't say what these reasons are. I can't say that I like order more than chaos. I can't say that I'm not disappointed by the lack of coherence here. I can't say that I can't say things anymore. And I can't see it, and I'm not sure I want to.

But why? Why do different questions always lead back to answers that sound and smell the same and yet taste like different kinds of pain? Why do words initially appear so unique and then commonly feel like torn papery skin that smells of old carpets? Why does knowledge ache more to be forgotten than to be known? Why do I crave forgottenness rather than oblivion? And why am I asking all these questions anyway?

This is empty and sad. And I claim to be currently neutral and devoid of feeling. So either this isn't a faithful reflection or, maybe, I'm just being as self-deceiving as ever. This is boring and disappointing. And on a scale of one infinite void to dull refurbished introspection, this is paradoxically both and neither and utter nothingness.

When the words fail, one has to wonder what is left floating in the shipwreck. When the words fail, the welcome mat on the door of your imagination spells embarrassment with a single 'r' to tell you how unwelcome you are - here. And here is all you have. And here is nowhere suspended in brokenhearted ill-shaped half-breaths spat-out into vomit-inspiring stains on the portrait of someone that looks like someone you thought was you. So go on and write and read this terrible attempt at not being terrible at a life you wake up everyday to deserve. And live on though you can't re-write what you repeatedly failed to read in that smoke of these burnt-out candles of those dark wishes you whispered to the endlessly suffocating night you couldn't save. And now exhale incomprehensible light into this sin-eating darkness, while the night's neck-snap still echoes in your trembling hands. When the words fail, as you can't see, this happens and you don't.

What do you want to say?

I want to say that I can't take it anymore.
I can't take it anymore.
There, I said it.

Is that your final answer?

No. The show must go on, no matter what.

~

"Outside the dawn is breaking."
Queen

Snow

“I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.” 
Jonathan Safran Foer

~

The walls were deep dark purple. The door was grey on the inside and it was open. The room was empty. The wooden floor carried the scent of burnt-out stars and I was sitting there by the corner. There were no windows. The ceiling was made of reflective ice and it became blurry whenever I pictured the faces of the people I loved. It was all fiction. It was safe fiction, and so was I.

He could enumerate his complexes in non-alphabetical order and compare the sum of the numerical values, corresponding to each of the starting letters, to the difference in salinity between the left eyelashes and the right ones. He could write this whole damn spectacle in an equation and solve it with his eyes closed but he could never apply the result. He could always tell the difference between arrogance and despair, lurking in the spaces between the lines, trembling in the tells beneath the lies, and sending him back to bed, where all dreams lie broken, dead, unread.

I can't tell you where it all went wrong even I wanted to. I can write it down in patterns and maps across the infinite realm of metaphors. I can't remember when exactly it all broke down and I'm not even sure I want to. I can breathe out smoke and become skin but it seems that I was built to do it the other way around. I can't say that I can do whatever I set my mind to - not anymore. I can tell you how you feel. You can break these chains whenever you want to. You can break them; and timing is key.

But the door is open, remember? How would it feel to be open door to an empty room?

Maybe the truth - the attainable one - lies in the distance between fiction and reality, time and timing, freedom and necessity, hope and despair, between the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the temporal, the sickness and the remedy, and, maybe, between the left eye that reads the lies and the right one that sees through them. And maybe the sum of all these distances will one day become you.

I don't like labels but I think all human beings are delusional. And the grandest delusion of them all is when we make the slightest smile of all, the smile that thinks it understands what it just read, what it just said, though it neither sees beyond the wine nor tastes the heartbroken bread.

The point is that, that there is this veil. The point is right there, right behind the veil. That's why everything you see, everything you see is always asking you the same question, here and here and there: What do you see? What do you see? What do you see?

[...]

Once, there were dreams and then, there were none. Twice and thrice, I faked and faded,

Maybe it's time I take my best shot.

The walls are still the same, though a lot of people have tagged their names and left. The door is maroon-black on the outside and it's closed shut. But it's still fiction out here. And I can't wait till you see the invisible paint I have on my face.

Maybe the truth is in the difference between these colors we exchange and all those we keep to ourselves.

I'm sorry I ran out of colors.

~

“Think of what starlight 
And lamplight would lack 
Diamonds and fireflies 
If they couldn’t lean against Black...” 
Mary O'Neill

Resolution

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle." 
St. Francis of Assisi

~

Where to start?

Unbent horizons and hollow cigarettes. Broken ties and eye-tearing smoke. Imaginary bonds and colorless daydreams. Dramatic plot twists and star-gazing epiphanies. Time-twirling questions and good music. Guest appearances and starring roles. Comfort zones and -

A new year comes with new promises and new surprises, a new you and a new me.

~

Her eyes, they spoke of words unsaid and torn manuscripts that were never read. They blinked with the sound of the turning pages of an untold tale; eyelashes that could paint fiery courage pale. Yet, the voices recurrently told me that silent songs and buried bones share an eternal friendship, that a breaking heart in a broken home is an open door to an empty room, that there is an infinite light and a single candle staring down all the darkness of the multiverse, that there is a forgotten hourglass beneath the chest with sand that smells of fraudulent heartbeats, sand that shakes to the sound of the fractured violin and its stuttering echo, both jumping the rope of this infinite loop. But when I looked at you, none of this ever came up. When I looked at you, the voices just wanted to listen.

Her eyes, they spoke of stars and constellations, scattered across our interwoven dreams.

Her eyes, they spoke these heart-pressed lines. They sailed the waters of remixed rhymes. But I was taught to trust no one, not even myself. I was taught to notice the invisible, to make long-distance power plays -with people who didn't know the power-play dimension- right before the end of the game, to lose in every damned dreadful way before I land my final strike. Throughout the years, I learned to doubt every line and definition until I forgot my own shape. I learned how to map lies on someone's face and how to lose mine in the frozen shadows of sinful icebergs that bear neither name nor memory. I swam through letters just like these until I lost sight of the shore and I never looked back because home became an array of pixels beyond a screen. There, I pulled three roses up my chest, through my trachea, and I laser-blasted them away from my eyes into 'virtuality' slipping what was left of my dreams into the pockets of blessed fictional characters. Then I filled that cardiac space with songs that wore a perfume similar to that of the crack-ridden petals that fell off.

Her eyes, they spoke of future visions paved inside the hallways of the Grand Design and old childhood swings that unknowingly operated at the frequency of the Golden Ratio.

Where to stop?

The dreamer and the dream. A candle in the mirror. Words in his heart. And music in the dark.
The dreamer and the dream. A play of light and shadow. An addiction to fiction. And a thirst for reality.
The dreamer and the dream. The truth behind the veil. A tale of myth and legend. An empty holy grail.
The dreamer and the dream. The chill upon your skin. The tears that won't come down. The fracture in your crown.
The dreamer and the dream. The broken beat within. The game of love and pain. Rays through your windowpane.
The dreamer and the dream. The mirror in your eyes. And the love in your words.
Listen.

Her eyes, they speak.

So listen to the music sitting behind the countdown.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

~

"Either define the moment, or the moment will define you."
Walt Whitman

Bulletproof

"Lost my heart

When I found it

It had turned to dead, black coal."

Sixto Rodriguez

~

He shoots.

Imagine an ocean covered in clouds. Come down, and through. And look right. If you look closely, there's this thin horizontal space hovering in-between white and blue. And that's where you're suspended. Now, if you have water on your face, then you must understand, deep down, that one must not dwell in metaphors, no matter how swell the reflections on the waves or how comfortable that bed of clouds.

But everything's interconnected and it's beautiful. And while the two voices in my head tell me that the universe is within and that all the colors of the world extract their ink from your retina, the third voice sings the discordant chorus in the background: "Run, quit and disappear. Get back to bed." And it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder if all this wondering is coded in the same pattern my feet always sculpt in the terrible sands of reality. It makes me wonder if I'm at least a good enough runner to get some sand up there with the useless dust -at the turn of my chin- on that mirror. Maybe that way, the guy in the reflection will appreciate the effort and let me fade away without the extra bullets in the back of my head. Maybe one day, your reflection won't let him shoot. And they'll both watch us walking away into this hellish madness, painting gardens of bliss under our feet.

Are you fearless or are you too afraid to even realize what it is you fear?

Are you fearless or do you just have nothing to lose?

How can you be both fearless and loving?  It stars with an F.

[...]

If only you knew my story, maybe then you would understand why I vanished; first last sorry goodbye.

Perspectives and interpretations dizzily spin above two concentric circles, and the colors, if any, shift from warm or cold on the light spectrum - nothing to declare.

Enter dark cold rain. An old white hoodie with blood-orange stains. The river flows in you and so too does the light from that train. The mind wanes and wails and trails behind the rhythm so you put on your headphones to follow the pain and silence the source that echoes it... that maimed heart, masquerading as this crooked hand, bent to write all this 'inkkrap' just to get through the night.

[...]

The broken deconstruct the script. The bent twist the tale. The dreamer designs the metaphor. The actor salutes the empty stage. The dust seeps through the mirror. The clouds impersonate a smoke screen. The story becomes the characters... or is it the other way around?

He bows.

~

"But don't bother to buy insurance 'cause you've already died."

Sixto Rodriguez

Awe

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” 

Rudyard Kipling

~

I was frozen face down, my nose nearing a centered hug to the edge of the pavement, and life's bare foot thundered down on the back of my head. Reddish retrocausal lightning ensued in a bloodied painting with no title. The shattered fabric of the crushed brain dyed the sidewalk dust with the dry dew of the paradoxical void - a silent story read in between the lines of cobblestone about a broken face of a soul that wrote itself off onto the empty memory of a conceptual black hole that sucked life's misstep into the razor-light mirror-like shredder I was hiding behind my eyes. And thus the only hug was that of a two-dimensional bear-trap set to the seventh Solfeggio frequency folding life's knee into counter-clockwise oblivion. The scent was that of frozen concrete melting at the touch of the eccentric lullaby of a victim of anti-heroism, an artless artist with ink flowing from the edge of his hair to the shadowy sunset of life's heel. What you heard was the melodic ink, a rhyme and a tale about the minute difference, all delicate and frail, between the hellish curtains and the holy veils, the ruptured mirrors and the punctured grails, the conceptual twist of the maze-like tails and the paradigm shift of the wind in the sails,

Adjusting.

Speak of necessary fine-tuning to the projector of meaning before the story ends, beneath the pattern that bends under the weight of reality settled on the surface of the black swamp in your hair. Speak to the night of the morning pale, the edge of colored thoughts and humid lyrics about the reconstructed taste of dawn in the tea and the Pyrrhic victory of two ends converging behind the illuminated bitter-sweetness of smoke. 

Failing.

There are no words.

Some see words as series of clawing strikes to the face of existence attempting to rip it of its raw beauty, leaving lettered scars in a light of diminished value. That's why they say that there are no words, why silence is revered in the realm of beauty.

Obviously, I disagree.

There are words. And when placed in the right way, for the right reasons, the words, presumably read at the right time, will change both you and your existence. And they will then tell you that it is up to you to change the world.

Re-adjusting.

My words often fail to make it back from the realm of metaphorical resonance. They fail to make a difference. But we are who we are and it is what it is. No.

Now, what if we could see the different scales that map the maze of mankind, the magical axis of imaginary time, and the bright light of childlike wonder floating in between the moment and the while - what happens then?

The iris was frozen in the labyrinth it holds, and life put a knife through its back.

So it poured its story of melancholic tears in the thirsty lines between cockroach mountains. No.

I found the axis set to the beat of my heart.

And I discovered that the light was made of metaphors. 

I opened the map at every turn and every curl and I kept asking myself, what do you see?

What do you see? What do you see?

I saw the map staring back at me.

I happened.

And now, there are no words.

~

"Once we realize the extraordinary power we have to compose our lives, we'll move from passive, conditioned thinking to being co-creators of our fate."

Jason Silva

Check

“Boring is the right thought at the wrong time.” 

Jack Gardner

~

Seize the moment, if you can perceive it. Wait but what if you're running short on moments? What if you have the wrong glasses on? What if everything is monochrome and you're invisible? What happens to moments that never make it out of time?

Let the moment fill you. Transform the edge of your skin into a boundless ocean of existential stupor. Write about the unpredictable high side of the melancholy before the feeling is gone. There is a light and it never goes out. But why?

This is a moment. Can you read it? Can you feel it? Is this your voice or mine, your mind or mine? Are we sitting on a bench and having a conversation or are you just messing with my head? Who are you, anyway? And why would you put a comma there? Where? Where are we? And why doesn't any of this make sense to the suffering?

Who cares, anyway? I'm not unhappy. I'm content that I understand how and why things are the way they are. I'm happy because I have had the chance to meet wonderful people in my life. I care about moments because they're kind of all I have. Moments either symbolize the start or the end, though they usually appear masked as whatever's happening in between. 

Nothing's happening in between. It's all a game. But people matter. No, they're just figments of your imagination. No, they're real and it's my duty to take care of them. Society is a ghost concept - you know that. I'm starting to feel that you're the only ghost here. How can you lie to yourself when you know this is all an illusion? I'm not lying to myself; you're lying to me and it's a DELUSION - for the most part. We've been having different versions of this same conversation for years - isn't it time to get over this mundane schizoid monologue? Isn't it time for you to tell me about my real fears and insecurities? Well played, old friend. You're not my friend - you're that nothing in between.

The melody is on repeat. It's always the same note, and almost always the same dialectic on that shore that tells the waves to call it Horizon. Hope and delusion, justice and evil, recognition and selfishness, love and despair, freedom and basically anything that stands in its way. The waves are set to the same old playlist. And none of these people can tell their waves from someone else's. They're all confused because they've forgotten about the light shining down on everything, every moment, every moment.

Some think that life is about turning the duel inside into a duet. Others believe in a third, secret player hiding in the audience. Some people are cold and hungry. Others have died on the highway of trying to figure this whole thing out. Some are born with superpowers they can't see. Others hope they won't die before they get the chance to make them see.

The moment is gone but its echo lives on. In art, in memory, in the quiet commonplace distance that exiles most kind words and that other one, that terribly loud one with the broken road at the end of which everything becomes calm and still, when you find the heart you thought got crushed in between this breath and the next.

Moments come and go. But you are here. You're right here and people change people.

Moments come and go. But I'm here with you, in the undefined meta-level that only meta-levelers understand. We're sitting in the numb paradoxical void of metaphorical euphoria. We're sitting on a bench - with nothing in between.

Seize the moment, if you can feel it.

Your move.

~

"Time is an illusion."
Albert Einstein

Maps

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
John Green

~

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that a person often says that people never change right before he or she changes into someone very different.

Take a bowl of family problems. Add three spoons of trust issues and half a cup of self-esteem. Mix well. Drown them with a few drops of an over-complicated history of disinterest and seventy-one milliliters of unfinished business. I don't know the rest of the recipe but I recall that the whole thing has a very peculiar taste of emptiness.

So yeah I don't know why you want me to write about myself. But here goes nothing.

I usually dislike it when people call me weird because it reminds me of how I always fail to belong. Most of my recent problems stem from my tendency to transform everything I feel into ideas and concepts because it's far easier than processing feelings. I enjoy using song lyrics to think when I get bored of my daily recurrent thoughts. I would like to own a chain of restaurants one day. When I run into people, I try to envision how they used to look as children. I believe that true love happens only once and that it never dies. I also believe that friendship is more important than blood, that randomness does not exist and that society is a phantom concept. The contents of my head usually belong to one or more of five different sections: P, M, C, D and I. P stands for psycho-social, M stands for metaphysical and I'll tell you about the other three when I see you. In any case, let us call the PMCDI map, I-Map for simplicity. This I-map has a shadow counterpart for raw feelings called the L-map. The latter, however, does not contain sections because my heart happens to be indivisible; it's all or nothing. Anyway, the L-map contains songs, a number of unforgettable memories, fictional characters from stories and TV shows, people I know, people I used to know, and, of course, you.

The two maps are quite honestly worlds apart. And yet, in between the two lies a different kind of map, one of infinitely powerful links, that sometimes allows the dimensions to converge in moments of pure beauty. Two of four walls in my room and my beloved ceiling refer to this special map as the M-map. And though I'm not sure whether the M stands for meaning, magic or metaphor, I'm good with the name.

So in summary, I guess my being can be reduced to three maps: I, M and L. I know it might seem very boring now but when I draw them for you on paper with all the main theories, numbers, names, symbols and songs, you'll see how your initials happen to mark the treasure at the heart of the M-map, how the I-map shuts down every time we kiss and how the L-map almost beats out of my shirt when you jump to hug me.

I hope this wasn't too weird or too disappointing. I hope to be good enough for you. And I really hope that you will be smiling somewhere in the next thirty seconds.

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that no matter how much I change, I will always love you.

~

"Everything will change, but love remains the same."
Gavin Rossdale

Frisson

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.” 
Orson Scott Card

~

Silent threads of virtual ink stream in waves of darkened light toward bright eyes. And while the mind seeks to project a meaningful melody onto multifaceted words, I gaze into the friendly night in my room with my eyes open because I know that if I close them, I will see you.

I've long developed the mechanism of transforming intense feelings into concepts. And it usually resembles a giant water-wave fearlessly rushing toward me, only to find itself turned into dust, polishing the multiple sandcastles around my fortress. And yet, there you were, moving with profound grace, unknowingly leaving me out of breath every time you smiled or laughed. The supposedly invincible kingdom of thought has since become as lost and drowned as Atlantis and I honestly don't care because I just want to see you again.

In any case, it was dark and slightly chilly and I was settled on the grass trying to ignore the beautiful moon even though it was clearly playing hide-and-seek with me, trying to make me win, though it knows that I know that it knows how clouds become brighter when it hides behind them. Regardless, the scene was one of wonderful harmony as a mostly soft wind, soul-gazing stars, ancient trees and nostalgic music in my earphones all waited for you to providentially sit next to me and talk. Just talk. But you didn't.

So tell me, do you even know that you are Magic? Do you know that I can't think of metaphors when I picture you in my head because every element in my imagination momentarily disappears? Do you know that I just laughed at myself because I remembered how I childishly smiled when I saw you running in the rain? And now it's worse because I'm not sure whether the scene qualifies as 'heavenly' or 'divine' or simply both.

There are infinite questions and timeless answers, multiple worlds and recurrent dreams, half-written novels and wands at the ready. And then there are the stories that converge as our fingers interlace. And right then and there would come the ending and the ending would never end, because all infinity would be starstruck, and time would henceforth be suspended once the worlds and dreams dormant within my chest get to feel the rhythm of your heart.

And these words that run through me ceaselessly fail but that's okay because images of you are there too and they're interminably beautiful.

Now, moments of magic have always eluded me in a similar manner to how I transcended those that were tragic. And for most of my eventful life, I felt stuck, not knowing what to say or what to feel, how to go or how to heal. Yet, the irrational has happened and I somehow sensed a wind of unknown nature storming into my indifferent eyes.

A fire inside me has awakened.

A fire inside me has awakened and all I can think about is how it would feel to fall asleep around a campfire with you by my side.

~

“When people of similar frequencies come together, output is not a simple sum of individual work, but exponential. In science we term this phenomenon as resonance. Output at this stage is beyond any logical limit.” 
Ravindra Shukla