Disconnect

"When the paper's crumpled up it can't be perfect again."
Linkin Park

~

Yeah but, she co-wrote my life with the words she never said.

There was once a young kid who thought he could do anything. One day, he read somewhere about a common phenomenon among teenagers called the Invincibility Complex. From that day onward, he understood that 'eventually they all fall' and that no one is invulnerable.

"What if I fell to the floor..."

There was once a young kid who dedicated all his observational skills to discover the strengths and weaknesses of everyone around him. One day, someone told him that he was projecting. From that day onward, he started including himself in his analysis.

"Couldn't take this anymore..."

There was once a young kid who got hooked on self-destructive behavior. One day, he came across the concept of self-love but he could not comprehend it. From that day onward, at every given opportunity, he told people that they should not reduce themselves or others to the mistakes they make.

"What would you do..."

And she breathed out love when my blood was mere fire, when I only saw my bruises in the blue sky.

When the definitions are wrong, all our stories, whether written or read, neither, or both, will be flawed and misunderstood. The worst stories are those that have missing links, where the reader can only focus on how the events are unrelated, how it's all incoherent nonsense. The best stories are where the reader feels part of the story, where the characters can somehow touch him, and thus, change him.

This is not a good story. It's just me looking for one in the emptiness. There are no characters here. There are only voices that my mind is trying to silence.

The origin, you see, is a sad conversation on an old and broken phone. The process, so far, involves an inconsistent run over fictional obstacles. And the purpose is -

And she stood behind her silent voice, staring at the sea, all three conspiring to heal my broken skyline, to mend the horizon that bends behind my eyes.

This story isn't designed to make me feel anything. It's not supposed to make you feel anything either.

But how do you feel about not being able to feel anything at all?

Does it hurt? Does it hurt to be you? Is that blood on your mask? Is that pain in your heart?

Where did she go? I just wanted to make her smile.

~

"I see you up again wandering so diligent
Crossing your T's as though it weren't irrelevant
They say formality, this is what they really meant:
They can be the walk and we can, we can be the pavement."
Agesandages

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

Courage

"I went to sleep a poet, and I woke up a fraud."
Fall Out Boy

~

A downside of living inside your head is that it takes you a while to understand what is really going on. And though being detached from reality isn't the worst state to be in, it sadly does lead to a terrible place, one where it is very hard to look at life - or at the mirror - from a perspective untainted with disappointment.

The upside of the state of disconnection is, however, not to be underestimated. Over time, genuine solitude allows you to become immune to everything. It allows you to observe the fake and ugly world without knowing that you're a part of it. It also allows you to see that what you loved and believed in slowly drowned while you were staring at the sunset, writing poetry about childish dreams. Eventually, you find yourself writing about how people turn from strangers to memories, memories to ghosts, ghosts to ideas, ideas to words, and then, somehow, from meaningful words to meaningless moments of silence. Like this one.

All it takes is a single moment of disconnection, to see things for how they really are, and not for how we want them to be. And there it is, all around you, falling apart in a mind-shattering instant.

Insecure eyes. Subtle imitation. Circular repetition. Delusional ego, there you go. If you don't follow, read that again.

It is perhaps the fear of being undefined that most defines us. Meanwhile, in a world of endless labeling, we hopelessly attempt to define ourselves, over and over and over, pretending to know what's going on, believing our own lies every once in a while. And it works, for a while. It works because we can relatively breathe easy with the mask on, during the day, and at night, we just sleep and forget how much we hate what's under the mask.

The thing is that, as our age increases, we learn to slightly alter the sound of our ideas, unknowingly making them, obviously, unsound ideas, shedding light on certain places and darkness on others. Slowly and steadily, the lies take over you. And in time, you become a lie, a fake. Then, you wake up, hopefully.

Result. Some people spend their lives focused on manipulating everyone and everything around them, as if spilling black paint on a coloring set will change the colors of the pencils. Others waste their lives waiting for someone or something that only exists in their imagination, as if there were a mythical creature or prize that has the special ability of turning shit into gold.

Conclusion. Neither spend your life nor waste it. Share it, instead.

The disconnection formerly mentioned is thus, for the sake of sharing, bound, now, to become a connection. So, deluded self, kindly be brave enough to break the walls you've built around your heart and mind. Be brave enough to risk them both again because some people are worth it.

In fear, we run to escape our own soul.
In courage, we run to find it.

~

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” 
E.E. Cummings