Resonance

"Well, bless my soul
You're a lonely soul
'Cause you won't let go
Of anything you hold."
Ryan Tedder

~

Do you know where your heart is?

The hardest questions are those you do not ask. And all their answers are buried in your mental blind spot. Now there are right and wrong answers in this 'visual snow'. Then there's you, covered in the multithreaded blankets of your optic nerve, pretending this blood is acrylic. And I'm there too. Or at least, part of me is. You won't find me beneath the shadow of synchronicity because I won't be there. But perhaps I'll be that forgotten variable that got crossed out by mistake in the mystical equation resonance always wears as a necklace. Crossed out and forgotten, sure, but I'll be there.

My fixation on a number of mysteriously attractive expressions remains unchanged. And that's okay. Maybe they're those empty diners along the road to purpose. I know most people are ideas - I think. And that's okay too. So are you an idea in their life? Are you a road sign or a street light? Are you a traffic signal or a torn bumper sticker? Are you one of those ideas that come with an expiration date?

He wanted to tell her everything but he didn't. Metaphors came rushing to his mind. The light that drowned the river. The moonlight that jumped off tree branches to land on her skin with an assortment of purple morning glories. His favorite fictional friends implored him to tell her about them, about all their chilling moments. Then the voices came and reminded him about the purple death of dawn and the failed birth of stars, the breathless haste and the daunting heart, and... those sudden bursts of heartache that fucking burn every beautiful image in your head. What happened to you?

I don't know. I don't know if there's someone who can save you from that freefall under the sheets. I don't know if there's a remedy for all those who were knocked unconscious by the lies of society. I don't know if this rotten world can be fixed. It's as if there's this force, you know, a force that won't stop erasing people's identities. Is it their doing?

That was useless.

The world is ugly. And the lonely stranger awakens everyday to walk it alone, knowing that, this, it isn't his home. Wherever he goes, the inviolable fabric of existence asks him terribly ambiguous questions.

What do you see?

Come back inside. Get back to bed.

Don't just stand there; paintings are formless. Don't look at me like that. I can see the dense blood drops slowly sliding off the right corner of your lips, you know? And though I'm not sure whether they're dreams or sins and secrets, I know your eyes can smell their rusted scent of despair. I know your heartbeats have long given up on becoming free-floating clouds, hopelessly hoping to swing the self-inflicted gore back inside. I know that you know that the children of a broken cardiac rhythm are but dehydrated, forlorn hands, recurrently feeding you the delusion within the delusion, punching holes through the painting, spitting you out as you swallow the void and exhale the inner child - dead on the dead knees that got tired from chasing you, his soul submerged in a shallow fictional red.

I don't dare you to move. But please, please do. And, for now, it's okay if you don't mind the gap between Kant and Kierkegaard. Because we both know only divine grace can you lift you up. And we both know that not a single soul cares about your inner battle - because they all know you're collateral damage.

No. [...] Because some singers pause their singing only to rekindle the hope beneath the moment.

So let there be light and many, many shadows. And blessed be the brave that are stuck in between, both wound and unwound by the teleologically suspended question, resting invisibly atop the woven waves of dreaded ink.

The question is right there. It's right here.

Do you think you can find it?

~

"People say that it can't work, black and white; well here we make it work, everyday. We have our disagreements, of course, but before we reach for hate, always, always, we remember the Titans."
Sheryl

Symphony

"Juliet loves the beat and the lust it commands.
Drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo."
My Chemical Romance

~

You go inside and you close the door. You drop that straight face to the floor. You shut your eyes to silence the burns beneath the mask. The stranger's whispers in your head say that they no longer recognize you. And you then wander from phantom to phantom in the ghostly castle you had built for your heart. And as the borders of reality fade away, the inner edges grow sharper, harder, darker. I don't expect you to understand. Even I barely get it. There are roads and lines, you see. And while some patterns pull you deeper into the matrix, others push you over and beyond. So, much like metaphors, we float atop the notes of this veiled symphony. And, dazzled and perplexed by the enigmatic mathematics written in its shadows, we remain ignorant amateurs copying answers from one another. The truth, perhaps, is that the answer is the question and its supposed question is, ironically, its answer. And if we keep going backward in that perspective, maybe things make the most sense.

Questions and answers are probably bound by the metaphysical noumenon underlying the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. But none of that matters, does it? Because that kind of universal truth is inaccessible to human beings. Once accessed and comprehended, it is likely to hinder our progress in the quest for purpose.

Either way, I remain in my sea of dysphoria, occasionally saved from this normopathic world by musical bursts of artistic enthrallment. Indeed, most of my words are but sublimated abjection driven toward death by this aporic void. Yet, the music plays on and I am not a fan of tight-lipped melodies. So I'll just keep adding aimless commentary to this boring soundtrack I got stuck on repeat.

Now, you. Battle this delusion of sin and that delusion of reference. Try to put your head around the coexistence of Capgras and Fregoli and after you do that, go back to your room and hang that mask you dropped on this nonexistent door. Then sing the ruins of this imagined tale, and jump and dance on this bed like an uninhibited child. For all you are is a little kid with a pounding heart bouncing on and off an old mattress to shake off the insanity. Now, him. He can unveil that graphic symphony - not you. It starts and ends with a straight line as you lie in bed both born and dead. And there in the middle, all these ups and all their downs, there you go, high, low, high, low; die slow.

Wait go back. Maybe... maybe we can jump on the same bed together. And then, when we get tired we can just, you know, fall asleep and share all those dreams we had buried in ourselves for each other. It always goes back to love, doesn't it?

It does.

So channel the dreamer. Channel the warrior. And channel the believer. Push away the confusion and silence the mind for it is heart and destiny that together one another unwind.

Blessed be the brave, the souls that run on love, with love, for love - infinitely, unconditionally, inexhaustibly.

Break. Breathe. Become.

~

"And I broke my heart in two
One for me and one for you."
Reuben and the Dark

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

Sleep

“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
Akira Kurosawa

~

The echo behind the whisper in the voice told me that the meaning of the meaning of life reveals itself in those colored bits outside the lines.

Do you see them?

Now do you see the artist's hand tearing through the painting? It throws a spear into your left eye because it wants you to see it right. It wants you to get out of your supposed self, zoom out, and see the second painting, the picture of a recollection of a bloodshot awakening.

Now go back to the first one.
Do you smell the blood on your cheeks?

This is the blood of the heart of the heart of the matter, the co-authored fabric of a waning soul as it weaves waves of scented verses, a red and wrinkled rhyme, a poem on your face.

Truth is, broken borders are gateways for the gallant, to embrace the patterns beneath the chaos, to hold the pulse in the blood of the heart of the heart of the matter that has nothing to do with matter.

So can you hear it? It's knocking on the door behind you, like the wind of sinusoidal hope fading in and out of faithful light, through the only keyhole you've ever really known.

Yeah. Okay. Now what? What do I do with all these words?

[...]

How do I turn it off? How do I make it stop? Why am I thinking about so many things that I don't really want to say? I don't want to get it right anymore, I just want to get it. I want to say what's really going on. I want what's inside to come out unchanged even if all that I am left with is noise. I want the words to honestly reflect who I am without all the games and illusions. I want to make sure that I am not a fraud, that I am not a growing cancer of fabrications. I want to be real. I don't want to be a well-told lie about the content of an empty shell. I want to be real. I don't want fiction anymore. I want to be real. Why won't anyone teach me how to be real?

[...]

What a sad way to wake up. The pain brings you to your knees. You're all alone - just like you always were. And all these metaphors you take shelter in are just as weak and broken as you are. Just go back to sleep.

Live on.

I can't anymore.

~

"He who lives more than one life, more than one death he suffers."
Oscar Wilde

Momentous

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd. It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.” 
Stefan Zweig

~

A melody of subtle happiness travels in floating musical notes around the center of my eyesight in a masquerade of invisible birds and planes falling into shreds of feathers and paper, settling on a heart that beats pain and anger disguised in a helpless symphony of sadness.

One, a shortness of breath. Two, an echo of a dying heartbeat. Three, a mind beheaded by confused and elusive variables with the constant ax of pain. Four, her eyes were once full with the depth and breadth of life. Five, her eyes are now a broken portal to a non-existent dimension. Six, flowers wither. Seven, flowers wither. Eight, flowers wither. Nine, number-shaped bullets shoot the music down.

Discrete hands softly encircle the kitchen clock that makes up her neck. She can't tell the time because it's hiding beneath her throat, face down. But her breath smells like seconds. And the focus shifts from the heaviness of chest pain to that of a headache as a single minute dives through her blink and into her swallowed pride. This clock is broken - it lost its parts in a battle against time. This clock is broken - and her discrete hands were not her own. This clock is broken - and it took them thirty-one blinks to slowly slit her throat.

Maybe things don't need to make sense.

But assuming that things do make sense. Perhaps I'm seeing you through multi-shaded spectacles, with thick lenses stuck between the color of your soul painting its outer layers and the faded hue of mine lingering on the worn-out interior. Maybe everything happens inside the lens and everything else is just the illusory reaction of the universe. Maybe we should all take off our glasses to see things for how they truly are, how we are all one. But then again, we are not all one. We are free to become whoever we want to be. Whether you want to be a jet black anti-hero or a desert gold victim, a greenish maroon protector or a blood red mercenary, whether you're a frozen ocean blue that paints paralyzed waves or the fiery purple privilege of the night sky, whether you're the most broken grey of all or the light-ray that only made it to grey blocks of letters, we are not one. We are many and each one of us must discover his own true color, dip that dry, unused, magical brush in it and finally get to paint beneath and beyond the borders of this line drawing they call 'life'.

So to each her own passion, his own poison, her lying truths, his truthful lies, the moments that meant so much to her though they never really happened and the moments that shaped the edges of his bed while she was half asleep. Reality recurrently dies at an alternating frequency. Yet the Truth is right there, at every corner and every turn, in every wave and every curl, engraved on the heart of the hero, and questioned in the mind of the weak. So send apologies to the ego of every weak hero because they forgot their introspective glasses in the house. And send flare signals for every starving existentialist who's writing stories with the crumbs that were supposed to take him home.

The ice, it either melts or breaks. And the same goes for glass. So whatever you're made of, sooner or later, you will stand in the middle of the line that joins your melting point and your breaking point. And in a moment of momentous divergence, you will make your move.

'Who you were, who you are, and who you want to be,' that's seven-dimensional chess with three demons and an extra player you cannot see. We are not all one. We are the seven that only become one after twenty-one handshakes, two broken mirrors, and a one-in-a-million mixture of humility and courage.

So blessed be the titans and the knights of honor that unknowingly know the difference between a game of chess and a set of drums.

And blessed be the brave.

~

"You've gotta find your big, gigantic drum kit."
Nick Andopolis

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

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

Emoh

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” 
Anton Chekhov

~

Shadows form when the light is blocked. And while many stipulate that dark shadows often stand in the way of beautiful colors, the truth is that this darkness is merely the vacant spot of unexpressed light. And while the obstacle moves closer to the source, the shadow grows, larger and larger. As a reaction, the source usually increases its intensity, making darkness darker, and turning the edges from which we fall into it to mysteriously shimmering black gold.

So it is likely for a shadow to appear as an intricately ornamented enigma which life challenges us to unlock when, in reality, the complex design perceived is one projected by the mind. The latter is one of the pieces of the puzzle. You can measure its edges and understand its limits to see the source behind it or you can simply fade into its appeal.

At most, if not all moments, our soul attempts to express something through our mind. The message is corrupted by the noise of false assumptions, misplaced desires and, most commonly, a dishonest sense of self. Naturally, the sources of noise overlap. And while only a magical blend of love, faith and wisdom can redeem the purity of the message, it is essential to remember that in a single life, a multitude of souls and minds are part of the equation.

Now, when you look at something, a wall for example, or a screen, there's always that distance between you two. And sometimes, when you truly focus on that space, it makes you lose focus, and it feels as if it's transferring you to a different world. It is in this same world that people imagine scenarios in their minds, scenes or memories of scenes that make them smile or blurt out parts of a forgettable script in front of strangers on the street. It makes sense now how, throughout my life, I had felt most at home while walking empty or nearly empty streets. It's always that same distance, that same space. You can choose to drown or swim in it. You can ride its tireless trains or just watch their fictional and occasionally thrilling accidents. You can visit people there, like those who stopped being in your life or those others with whom you've shared not more than a single honest gaze or conversation that was cut short by the ways of life. Clearly, this personal space differs from one person to another. Mine happens to be the closest thing to a constant home that I've ever had. And though it merely looks like a worn-out piece of stained crystal glass onto which my thoughts are registered with a permanent marker, the chaotic scribbles, graphs and figures have become like the curtains to a window. And these curtains seem to have far more appeal than the outside world.

I don't know if you've ever come and sat by my side because my eyes have always been locked on the tainted window. All I know is that I've been sitting here forever, slowly writing on fragile glass, painting layer upon layer of imaginary curtains, secretly wondering why the people outside can't see me. And right now I don't even know if there's a door behind me if anyone wants to come in.

Shadows form when the light is blocked. And my window is covered with curtains of words and faces, memories and dreams, lies and confessions, numbers and profiles; a drawing that makes no sense. Yet. fortunately, sometimes I can discern a distance between the window and me, and when I do that, a soul-sent message finds a peaceful place in the chaos, filling in the blanks with meaning, blanks I thought were vain bullets in my heart.

But it turns out that's where the light goes in, through the puzzle piece, through a letter your soul sent to you. . 

So where are you now? Are you sitting next to me? Can you see these rays painted with the light of meaning? 
A four-letter word shines through the specific locations of the puzzle pieces on the window of the story of your life. 
[...]

I've always believed that Art is an explosion and that Love would one day gracefully bring the old tainted piece of glass to pieces, to fireworks for two soulmates that sneak out of their windows for a late night embrace and a loud conversation under the night sky about the stars above them,followed by a silent one about the stars in their eyes. But, perhaps, I'm wrong. You might very well be this light that's piercing through, and I might even be yours. And, perhaps the light is divine. Either way, love is not the explosion of the glass-like story of your life, it's just an exchange of light blocked by whatever obstacles you have floating on the surface of your eyes. 

Some waste their lives trying to solve equations in the dark, with numbers and variables that only exist in that personal distance that no one else can see. Others waste it by breaking out, with shards of glass broken in their pupils, not knowing that a light not seen through one's own eyes makes them slowly bleed out till the human in them becomes too ghostly to be alive.

Perhaps love happens when a window momentarily functions as a mirror.

So look closely until you see the reflection. Or maybe just close your eyes. 

What do you see? 

Is his window hers and hers, his own? Or have they built a secret passageway in-between?

Who do you see?

Were they unknowingly sleeping next to each other all those nights they thought the bed looked too empty?
Were their fingers interlaced this whole time? 
And are they now both smiling at the same reflection?

I don't see any reflection.

Are you here?

Are we home?

~

"When you look in the mirror, do you look at yourself, or for yourself?"
Unknown