Butterflies

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley

~

It’s crazy, isn’t it?

It’s crazy how everyone’s insane, how they keep pretending not to be.
The night is devoid of comets and stars. And I have three cigarettes left. It’s funny how I try to silence the pain with toxins, though I know poison could never be a cure. But I’m well-acquainted with the easy way out and I’m tired. I tried to convince her why she shouldn’t kill herself. And I saw my failure reflected in her eyes.

My fingers tremble because I’m overwhelmed by all the pain I see around me - not because they’re typing intense words. What I let out is nothing compared to the world my eyes perceive. All I see is hurt; a world of dying butterflies slowly crashing to the ground like multicolored leaves. The night is devoid of color and soul. And I have two cigarettes left.

How can they not see the patterns? The path to perdition is set. The road to self-destruction is paved with broken smiles and desperate lies. The confusion is deafening. And I can’t listen to the cosmic melody because all I see is the blood on their hands as they play their instruments. Someone once said that we become what we lose. He was wrong. We become what we want to become.
The night is devoid of moonlit words. And I have one cigarette left.

She couldn’t unzip her dress. So he helped her. And her skin was like that of a flower unfolding the beauty of the universe behind all the smoke streaming through his lips. There’s the universal, the particular and the veil we’re trying to pierce. There’s the actor, the audience and the curtain closing as we speak. Then there’s you and me, and the mystical unity we fail to breathe. And this night is devoid of love and sanity. And I’m all out of cigarettes. And I’m all out of love.

This smoke is as real as the grand delusion. And it mixes well with all the words I could never say. So take this secondhand ramification of endeavors that never made it out of my head. Take it even though words will never be actions. Take it because I’m out of breath and out of smoke. And I can borrow the latter but does anyone have a breath to spare?
The night is devoid of light. And I wish that I could say that 'there is a light and it never goes out.'

But not tonight.

Tonight we die. But tomorrow, we live again. 

~

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
Victor Hugo

Death

“You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.”
Neale Donald Walsch

~

They got it all wrong. But I see things for how they truly are. That's what most tell themselves in secret, in-between breath and breath, in repressed silence. We all fail to notice the most integral part of reality, that we see nothing, nothing but ourselves, deformed.

They got it all wrong. And as they engage in thought while recurrently failing to pause the grand game of delusion and blind trickery, they also fail to notice that no matter how deep the intellect digs, the finite hole and its neighboring treasures will never account for infinite weakness.

They got it all wrong. And though it's admirable that they can see in the curls of simple letters old particles of dust dancing in fresh yellow sunlight, they still fail to recognize the music. And I fail miserably just the same to rescue the timeless tempo of the soul drowning in this ink.

They got it all wrong. And their pale figures are like beautiful old buildings tainted with the cheap paint of modernity and a touch of make-up to hide the battle scars. They left the castle and paved the circular road to vanity with expensive clothes, walking naked in copies of shoes as polished and tarnished as their faces.

I got it all wrong. I got it all wrong because I buried anger in the deepest layer of my being. And the calm silence that ensued continuously reminded me to forget that all these people were going in and out of my house faster than this lucky smoke I'm breathing out.

I got it all wrong because I write about temporary failures because I am both temporary and a failure. And I write this nonsense down as these words words fall from my eyes onto paper in a blink. So here's one for the upcoming death of my parents. And here's two for the people I love the most, since they're already dead. But that's okay. It's okay because we all paint death in broad daylight with the letters our lips draw - little bits of earth that align, layer upon layer, above our cold and motionless bodies beneath the gravestone that invisibly reads: How soon is now? 

Everyone you love is going to die. And that's okay because death is a good thing. For while the doors of life are a rite of passage from one lie to another, death is the gateway to truth and justice.

To be fair, there are some things here that are worth delaying death for. By 'some' I mean 'two', Love and the Human Spirit - Love and Art for short. And if by any nonrandom chance you manage to add purpose to the recipe, I have a feeling that death would take the long way home to listen to what kind of music you can make.

Now, things here are either for rent or immaterial. And all that is immaterial is either a well concealed lie or a mostly forgotten truth. Now the cool thing about mostly forgotten truths is that they're right there in front of your face resonating with the vibrations propagating across your shirt. And the coolest mostly forgotten truth is that other people are wearing shirts too.

My heartbeat is not for rent.
And my voice is my voice.
Great performances unfold in dramatic monologues. Yet memorable ones write future history in and with brief moments of mixed frequencies, voices that team up against life for the sake of an honorable death.

So run. Run toward death with your favorite soundtrack beating inside your invisible headphones. Run toward death and touch every heart you meet with grace. Run toward death and give it the parts you really want dead. And then, with whatever remains of you, run through.

~

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” 
J.K. Rowling

Wind

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns."
Chuch Palahniuk

~

I need to get this out.

This silent wind I breathe in is sharpening its heated nails with my lungs, scraping blackened red paint off the wall that falls for no one. So I light up one more lucky cigarette to fight fire with smoke. We all depend on things to make it through the night.

Whatever truly carries your breath and allows your mind to traverse this multiverse of lies, make sure you're going in the right direction. And whatever you push back onto the world with your lips and feet, go for watery brushstrokes of Art, on the right pages of earth and wind.

It's still there and I can't get it out.

The music fades like a vanishing painting and I don't know the spell to bring it back. What I know is that the rhyme is lost to me because the heart I once knew had its drums punctured over time. So what happens now? We light up one more for the sake of ancient fire.

There are two kinds of people. There are those who write the song title first and those who write the artist's name first. There are those who are busy in the race to become the best slave in the system and those who are busy becoming the best person they can be.

What if nothing comes out?

Ring the doorbell and break the wall. There are no doors beyond this smoke. You fall in the well, the well you sow, the well you sow before you broke. This reddish dawn is drawn with blood. And this rain is the ash of all your drugs. So with flooded lungs and shattered drums, reap the pain on which you choke. Breathe in hell,

The presence of missing links underlines a meaningful absence of coherence. What eventually comes out is thus unsound at best and, at worst, me. But the resounding question remains: Who are you? Perhaps you project what you miss onto the blank spaces I leave between the lines, here, and, in-between words and letters which, there, fail to materialize.

The first rule is to partially respect chaos. The second is to find meaning in the song. The third is to allow yourself to get lost in the melody. The fourth is to let go of the parts that don't belong. The fifth is to stop counting rules that don't make sense. And the last rule is to devote your life to understanding the constituents of the glue that stitches rules onto chaos.

The hazy daze is spraying crazed footprints in my head and the stranded pen is stuck in the shadowy circle it sketched to project and protect itself. And I don't know. I don't know anything. Maybe the way for better days is coded in musical notes. Maybe it's in the key under the blind illiterate mat that reads Hope in Old English Text below the nonexistent door on the wall I couldn't break. And maybe there's nothing here. Maybe there's nothing here.

In a state of chaos, there seems to be neither cause nor purpose. In a state of chaos, there are multiple patterns and a single question. And the question shines in multicolored layers in your eyes:

What do you see in the wind?

~

“Words are wind.” 
George R.R. Martin

Smoke

"What I've felt, what I've known

Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door, should I open it for you?"
Metallica 

~

It is a dark and deeply beautiful view. And I want you to be here with me. And I tell myself now that I want you here because I want all the stars hiding behind empty clouds above me get the chance to meet that one star that shot through my heart. But I know that I just want you here because I love you. And I just said those three words out loud four times in a row and I don't know exactly why.

Yet now I tell myself that words are but empty promises, hopeful fireflies that die when their ink catches fire, when the plot reveals that death is the hidden title of everything they wrote in the wind at night. And I suspect that this wind travels through me because I am not here, and that even if I were, the night would still magically lose its memory at dawn, just like it did yesterday.

So what happens to these forgotten moments of wonder where you only exist in my imagination? Do they die with me just like I'm dying in them, with the sound of your laugh in this fictional background? Perhaps the fireflies I made up will align in this starless sky to spell out your name in light, to make me smile right before the curtain closes and death applauds with the starry letters falling gently onto my empty bed of heartbeats. And, then, perhaps, you'd wake me up in the glorious morning night-people dream about when they're dead and that's when I'd tell you that you are the light and deeply beautiful view that erased the night in my heart.

[...]

It's almost morning now, and the silently still buildings are staring back at me with a giant grey cloud fading into pieces above them. And the motionless scene reeks so badly of death that I almost forget that there are hundreds of lives having dreams as vivid as the smoke in my breath and as dead as the breath in my smoke.

Yet, interestingly, just like smoke, the truth has three faces. And to every face, there are two scales. When you face your heart, the pendulum swings between Faith and Fear. When you face your self, the clock either ticks for Goodness or for Power. And when you face your soul at midnight, you'll either see that Love is a timeless mirror, or you'll be lost in the drama of self-deception, divided in images of broken silhouettes in the shards of glass you pretend to inhale so you can fall out of sleep from this grand delusion.

[...]

So enter the world of an enigma that was broken when it was born. Enter the world of lies, a world that tricks its own existence into death. Enter a world that can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction. Enter a world of make-believe purple rain falling onto yellow autumn leaves to write a fairy-tale even though the author is colorblind. Enter a world where thoughts become footsteps that leave no trace on this desert sand, while all the feelings in the world are colorlessly buried alive underneath this damned map of empty patterns.

[...]

Just like this smoke, I have one face. Just like this smoke, I was once the purple fire that caught the curtain by surprise. And just like this smoke, I, now, into the morning wind disappear.

So wake up and read the wind and perhaps you'll comprehend how beautiful it feels to burn into love with the sound of your laugh in the background.

I know the night won't remember any of this.

But maybe you will.

I love you. It's only one whisper this time. And I know you just heard it.

~

"I take this key
And I bury it in you

Because you're unforgiven too."

Metallica

Music

"Inside these pages you just hold me."

Ed Sheeran

~

My dreams are burning in the sky. A part of me calls them stars, the other, dust. And I don't know whether my soul is made of cosmic dust of a star that died, or of one that is not yet born. And while confusion lays its empty weight upon my numb and wasted mind, I secretly pray for cold rain to protect my dreams from the fire. 

My senses fail and I feel no pain. The 'I' I gaze upon inside escapes me and I'm too slow and exhausted to try and catch up with it. My heart keeps failing to materialize. But why?

There must be some explanation for this non-feeling phenomenon. And there must be something more here according to my calculations. Or perhaps I've made some miscalculation. But where?

What is my heart waiting for to show up?

I keep telling myself that I've understood every step in this ancient journey of mine, but have I really? Am I lying to myself like they all do? Aren't we all the same at the end of the day?

Who the hell are you? 

Scratch that and rephrase.

What the hell have you become?

[...]

What are words when you no longer know who you are? The symphony that has been playing in my mind all my life is gone. But where to? 

The chairs of the artist and the composer have disappeared. Oblivion. There is no proper wording to verbalize the situation. Thoughts fade. That is all. Thoughts fade. And like a dying autumn leaf that bears within its patterns the sleepless marks of every season, I fade too. Even the state of spontaneous expression fails to find the crooked path into my soul. Perhaps, the latter has gone out of its way to find another. Or perhaps, it's busy playing hide and seek with a kindred mate. All I have here is a small number of songs that recurrently shape my lips and state of mind. And since all I had has become a forgotten number of ancient memories, I intend on filling that space with whatever comes next. Whatever comes next I hope I earn it. I hope I deserve it.

Meanwhile, blessed be the noble knights of honor that have reflected light upon my broken road.

And blessed be the brave.

[...]

The warm wind hums a long lost melody that loosens life's tight grasp on the heart. And yet the music does not go in. It just takes a numb machine out of its cage for a dance.

And they dance to every sound because they know that everything is music.

It's in the slightly audible whistle in the movement of smoke as it parts ways with my breath to seek a more inspiring partner. It's in the sharp knife in bloodied fingers as it slowly moves against the violin in all my flashbacks until all the strings are torn and I fall asleep. It's the same music that made the metro stop and listen to how a little girl and a very old man were exchanging genuine smiles that transcend ethnicity. It's in the way your nose and my heart wrinkle at the sound of your laugh. And it plays in my blood whenever I imagine all the memories we're never gonna make together. In sad and happy moments alike, the music is there. And it's beautiful.

I wish I could describe the dance but I can't. 

So what do you feel? Is the music really there or am I imagining things? Don't answer that.

Answer this.

Is there music when you close your eyes?

~

"I just wanted you to know."

My Chemical Romance