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

Dream

"So go on, Love, find a new direction."

Mayday Parade

                             ~

I keep having this recurrent impression that all this is a collection of interwoven dreams. And it seems to me that every person I know really has no idea what's going on; they don't fully understand the story beneath the dream. Meanwhile, I sit here watching them, surrounded by mirror-like holograms, gateways through which I convince myself that I understand their dreams. Now, knowing that we're all the same in some sense, I wonder what kind of dream I'm living in, and what kind of life I dream of. I do, however, know that if I live enough to become really old, I'll have plenty of stories to tell about all these mirrors around me, and like most or perhaps all people, I will try to subtly mention how I played a nice small role in the lives of the people I loved; or maybe I'll keep that part to myself to be able to sleep at night.

Perhaps the motive behind these words is to tell myself that I'm a mirror too, that I'm not invisible and insignificant, that I'm neither broken glass nor darkened dust breathing through the projections.

Either way, for now, I sit and watch, stuck between the void and the light, hoping that the heroes around me will rise above their struggles, and that those I no longer have the chance to see find love and faith and, one day, themselves.

All these wishes upon a dream, they vanish in the blankness of my thoughts, slightly beyond the numbness of my nerves. They dissolve at the edge of the mirrors before they reach my personal space - the one I refer to as a castle when I want to compensate for my lack of confidence and as a fortress when I want to hide my trust issues.

All these wishes upon a dream and, still, last night, she asked me to make a wish. And she had no idea what I wished for but for some reason it made her smile that I breathed death into the candle, probably because she sees life in the little things.

All in all, it was a beautiful day with wonderful people. If there were a detached narrator, he would probably focus on the view from the rooftop. But for me, the real moment was in a subway that didn't know our names around strangers who probably thought expensive brands could make their names and bodies more valuable. The real moment was timeless, and independent of space, and it knocked at the door of my fortress.

In all honesty, it took me a while to understand that the world I live in is mostly about decisions, sometimes about actions and rarely about words, that when you read someone else's words, you only understand what you wish to understand, that all decisions are real actions yet some actions are a waste of time, that all actions are meaningful words but some words are a waste of breath. And regardless of what I say now, you probably have no idea what I really mean because whoever you are, you're just like me, stuck in a dream that you don't understand. Yours is perhaps in a painting that you can't draw yet while mine is in a book written in an ancient language that I don't understand.

In any case, whatever you choose to name your painting, be sure to figure out the name of the artist(s) first.

All those wishes upon a dream and I sit and watch them float around me. I slowly watch them die just as slowly as I realize that I don't deserve them.

Sometimes, the dream deserves a better dreamer. Sometimes, dreamers die because their dreams become nightmares. Sometimes, the dreamer and the dream don't know that they're the same person. Sometimes, they just want a good night's sleep and sometimes they just need to wake up. And sometimes, time kills them both with a single shot to the heart. But sometimes, in a flashing moment, you understand that your dream is a mirror, and you wish for it to be unbreakable. And that is how a dream triumphs over time and destroys it in a single, eternal moment of love, most real, most true.

Once upon a dream, I folded the night and my heart into the wings of a paperplane. 

Once upon a moment, the plane flew and disappeared in your eyes.

And one day, the morning sunlight will seep through the windows and fall upon the covers covered with our scent. And my eyes will be open and yours will be closed. And the paperplane will reappear - at least in my imagination - and the wings of night and heart will unfold. And that's when I'll tell you the story behind the wishes upon the dream.

I'd start at the beginning, where most things usually end:

"Once upon a time, I met this girl [...]"

And once I say that, you'll smile because you want me to know that you're only pretending to be asleep.

Then I'll wake up.

In the symphony of silence, we remember moments.

Yet, in the melodies of noise, time makes us forget.

                              ~

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

Albus Dumbledore