Nothing

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
Anne Lamott

~

I kept trying to change her mind but I couldn't. I had so many chances to show her that she was wrong. And I failed. Maybe there's a point behind her sickness. Maybe it's for the best that her memory is so remarkably damaged.

The soft wind falls gently on my skin and it all feels so undeserved. I seem incapable of writing anything novel. It's all a bunch of recycled secondhand words that I can't escape. I keep shedding them like dead skin and they just always find a way to grow back.

I know it's not a big lie. And I know the game isn't rigged. But think about it. What's the point of writing or reading any of this? It's useless. It's just a way to convince ourselves that our lives are worth being examined. 

But is it worth it, really? Who gave you the right to think that your life is worthy of this or that honor? Are you full of yourself to the level of believing that your struggle deserves a narrator? Does anyone really care? Or is it all for your entertainment? More drama, anyone?

Look around for God's sake.

These words are like those old reeking rags you see failing to cover an ugly balcony of a nameless shattered home. They're like a worn-out welcome mat that has no key under it. They're like a broken door. They're like my broken door. Why can't I let anyone through? Why do I not have better words?

I don't want any of this. I just want to sleep. I'm not even sure why I wake up everyday. This is not even creative. It's narrative-ish. I wonder if this mosquito knows how much I don't care about her drinking habits. I wonder if the stars who were once my friends still remember my name.

Here goes nothing. Really, nothing. Nothing at all. Do you see it? It's so empty. Can you hold it for me? Do you know this language? Do you know what I mean? I'm not even sure I do anymore. It's okay. It's all gonna be okay. We need to talk. I'm sorry. I'm tired and I'm sorry. No it doesn't matter. It's okay. I just need to get this out. Get out. Please get out. It's not your fault. It's gonna be okay.

I try my best. And they just keep dying slowly. All around me, they're all dying. And I can't seem to make a difference. Why won't they stop dying? Can we just pause life? Please.

What are you looking at? What do you see? Can you help?

It's okay. It's gonna be okay.

~

"He said: Son when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?"

My Chemical Romance

Child

"I'll be yours
When it rains it pours
Stay thirsty like before
Don't you know that the kids aren't al-
Kids aren't alright."
Fall Out Boy

~

I need to do this well. I need to do this right. If I don't, then I'll have nothing left to hold on to. If I can't jump over this wall at the edge of my fingertips, what does that make me? I tried on many labels and none of them worked. If I can't write anymore, what else should I do? If I can't arrange the words in a way that makes me feel something, how can I genuinely move anyone else? If I keep forcing this by intentionally lining up letters to face my existential crisis for me, will this headache go away? Why are all the holes in the ground waiting for me to dig deeper? Why aren't there any holes in the wall? I'm just tired and out of breath. And I need to let things out. But I can't write anymore. I can pretend. It's very easy to pretend, as you can see. But like most things in life, this is bullshit. I'm sorry.

Now, I must dedicate this to this voice I can't recognize as my own. And as it now silently transforms my dedication into the empty acknowledgments of a worn-out novel made up by the blank pages it contains, I would like to thank, most impassively, the dark shadows in between the papers, putting the desolation to light and mysterious sleep. This is the emotionless story I make-believe about all that within me beats in vain. And it now ends with your eyes, gazing as blankly as they should.

None of this was supposed to happen, but it did. It happened and I didn't. And if I could destroy all these mirrors I call metaphors, I would. No, I wouldn't. I would never give up this illusion for the terrible delusions of reality. I would rather live forever in this uninspired lack of inspiration than accept this collective brokenness, that grand affliction pushing against my eyes, against the heart I hid behind the void, my beautiful impermeable void that challenges this failing world to pierce it.

Yes, the world is ugly but my horizon is unbent. My horizon is unbent. The world is ugly but I live on because there's good music and good people - and because Christmas is coming. The world is ugly but there is a loophole in this loop of holes that have me by the neck. My horizon is unbent. The world is ugly and I can't breathe well. The world is ugly and I can't breathe right. The world is ugly but I have you to hold on to. The world is ugly but there's no wall I can't jump over if I know that come dawn I'll have your skin at the edge of my fingertips. The world is ugly but all its labels blur out whenever we lock eyes or hands or bodies or the door and the world behind it before we go to sleep. The world is ugly and I can write time into oblivion just to make your heart skip a beat or two with mine by its side. The world is ugly and I hope this is making you smile because I broke all these walls just to get here and hug you. My horizon is unbent, you see. The world is ugly but I'm hugging you now and this is wonderful even if it's not really happening. In my head, the world is, sometimes, almost as beautiful as you are.

And thus we knock on the door beyond chaos and perdition. And then we knock some more. We play hide and seek with the magic seeping out from each side of the veil. Sometimes it's light. Sometimes it's pale. And sometimes it's dark. But there is a remedy in the music that moves all that is frail. So can you hear the beat in this awfully composed cure? Can you hear the faint melody knocking on your chest? Can you see the magic painting your face? Or are these blank pages on the surface of your eyes?

As I said, I can pretend. It's very easy to pretend, though you might not see. And like most things in life, this is a love letter disguised as bullshit. And i'm not sorry anymore. I'm intentionally lining up the next letters to face you.

uoy evol I

And it now ends with your eyes, gazing back at mine.

That unbent horizon, this is it.

~

"And in the end
I'd do it all again.
I think you're my best friend.
Don't you know that the kids aren't al- 
Kids aren't alright."
Fall Out Boy

Chocolate

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." 

C.G. Jung

~

In what concerns the choice between vanilla and chocolate ice-cream, he codes the first with 'V' and the second with 'C'. V reminds him of the fall from grace and the loss of purity. C reminds him of the glow, the glow of the dark side. He chooses V after convincing himself that the glow is truly that of the hidden light of people living in darkness. This makes him wonder why the shop doesn't offer CV ice-cream in the menu and call it Life. Deep down, on the surface, he knows that he just prefers the taste of vanilla. Or does he? Shortly after, he lights a cigarette and then uses the light behind his eyes, the one he licked off the tip of blazing ash, to observe his tentacles. Again, he wonders. He wonders if he is a squid or an octopus. He already knows that he is a squid because he thought of it first and he is definitely not in a self-deceitful mood. Or is he? Upon pondering the significance of the respective colors of black-blue squid-ink and black octopus-ink, he finds his tentacles metaphorically patting him on his now reassured back of a squid. He whispers to himself, in the sarcastic tone of rudimentary intelligence he despises: "It's okay. it's okay." A second later, after subtly extinguishing the flame of a potential rebellion in Stress Level District, he considers the possibility of coming up with a joke about a squid that likes vanilla. But right then or a fragment of a second later, he notices the salivary metaphor, just sitting there in the wet white glow, waiting to expose the contents of the squid's black and blue feelings on paper-like ice-cream. However, a young and forgotten voice interrupts the trailing train of thought. The train makes its infamous whistle, a lullaby of cryptic words in the supposedly distant cigarette smoke. The indifferent child is just standing there on some random rail in the railway. He looks to his left at everyone he loves as they attempt to survive an overwhelmingly beautiful and ugly Reality. And then he slowly shifts his head to the right: a comfortable, colorless bed, a silent, color-shifting window, and a comforting, infinitely-colored screen - The realm of Fiction greets thee with the infinite hope of lucid daydreams. Look at me. This is where you belong. Otherwise why would this fictitious speech bear your voice? The train's whistle returns, moving upward in curly lines of smoky ink, blue from his quasi-closed lips and black from the sleepless nights, nights glowing like arched lamp posts reaching up his inflamed skin to the purple light suspended in his eyes. The child's mind screams 'jump' but his heart writes it off in lowercase letters. He imagines the swing of an old pendulum hanging onto nothing. Left, right, reality, fiction, love, dreams, death, void, stress, security, people, him, cruelty, metaphors, delusion, illusion, purpose, identity, love, right? Jump? Where? What does a baby squid write on vanilla ice-cream? Reality or Fiction? What a terrible joke...

What if I don't jump? If the train is real and I am fictional, it won't hit me. If the train is fictional and I am real, it won't hit me either. If we're both real, I'll be dead in a few seconds. But what happens if we're both fictional?

Blood. Void. Rewind. Love. Faith. Purpose. Become.

If this is fiction, am I the kid or the train or both - or the distance in between? Am I watching or drawing or both - or neither? Am I the unmentioned elements in the questions or the potential fruit of the tree above their roots - ? Are you listening to the sound of the train or are you some writing writing in the smoke - or are you the sudden void after every question?

~

"What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate." 

C.G. Jung

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

Wolf

"Tout ce que tu ne sais pas donner te possède."
André Gide

~

...that the roads lead to nowhere when you have walls around your heart.

There are outer obstacles and inner scars, wounds at the surface and fractures that tear you apart. There is the decision or a lack thereof, the drive to authenticity or a falling to pieces, the will to build on goodness or a forgotten painting about forgetting - forgetting what?

Then there's you and you and everything stuck in between.

Then there's me and it feels as though I've lost all my pens, as if the words perceived my thoughts as unfair taxation laws so they drowned all the instruments of expression into the realm of immaterial ink and then wrote themselves off. Thus, I now find shelter in words that describe how the old ones used to arrange their letters in me. I know that my eyes have been closed for a while, and that none of this will open them because the roads on my eyelids are flooded with apologies that never made it out of my head - unless dreamworld counts.

For now, the dot follows the patterns that match the mysterious code of identity. The dot can't always see the dot within. The dot breaks itself into symbols under which obscurity hides meaning and meaning hides light. The dot sees itself in other dots and, sometimes, the other way around. The dot has no understanding of scale because it has never met a unit. The dot's favorite geometrical concept is the infinite line it can't wish into being by itself. The dot knows of the third dimension but pretends that it doesn't exist while it enjoys the two-dimensional labyrinth. The text, the paper, and the pen, they're all predetermined. But the dot is free. The dot is how much love you're freely willing to give. The dot is the handwriting.

Different people feel different things. But perhaps my void and yours are the same. My void compares itself to the empty center of a spider's perfect web, the eye of the secret storm that sees the Nothing in everything and feels the Everything in that Nothing. Perhaps that's what I hope to understand, the calm infinity dwelling in the nothingness of this beautiful song, the calm song in everything and everyone.

But the words don't always fit the music. For between the point where symbols fail to carry the feeling and the point where the heart can no longer beat off that feeling's weight, there is a line of lonely letters living lovelessly in the blind lavender ink spots of the imagination.

I watch and wonder, wonder and watch. I watch the games at their fingertips and wonder how aware they are of the game inside, the one between the hero and the villain, the victim and the pretender, the warrior and the chess-master, the composer and the lyricist, and my personal favorite at this moment, the ego and the anti-hero.

The game is won when the big antonyms become synonymous. I don't know them all. But for now, I can recall that sometimes unreading is reading, covering is uncovering, giving is receiving, unlearning is learning, breaking is mending, dying is living, doubting is suspecting, growing is a return to the child and, more often than not, I am you and you are me.

For now, in the seemingly perennial distance between being and becoming, I see a child riding on the back of a wolf, a grey and white wolf that was born in the snow.

I wonder where they're going next.

~

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.” 
George Gordon Byron