A whispered truth.

There are people in this world who live every moment, who believe what they do and live accordingly, whose lives are beautifully, romantically right and wrong. You can’t actually live on a plane of ideals though. Ideas can survive all the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but they can be broken with a comment, a phrase, a conversation. A life lived so high above the rest of us supported by pillars that don’t bend but shatter. We are forced to more supple methods out of a fear of falling.

Sophistication.

Do you see the lines in the world, the invisible seams and smoke mirrored walls? They separate, compartmentalize, alienate us into sects, cliques, close us into corners in our minds. “When the way is closed, then change. Having changed, you pass through.”

The truth about the wind.

[This is sort of a personal post – read at your own leisure/risk]

I mentioned briefly my plans for yesterday in my previous post, and I’ll add a somewhat non-trivial appendix:

Everything went unnaturally smoothly, or so it felt to me. My buddy and his girlfriend show up at my house, wearing Lions and Man U gear, with me hopping in the back in my Leeds United jersey and my British-style hawk haircut; we pull around to the field to see what the action is like there but nothing significant is going on so we circle back in to town and grab a seat at one of my favorite breakfasty diners in town, making idle talk with an Australian bus girl and a very cute waitress.

And it seems, as I’m slouching in my chair with a half empty, half warm, good cup of coffee in my hand, a half consumed but delicious eggs benny concoction on my plate, and an ozone scent drifting through the air on this drizzly day into the packed but relaxed restaurant, that I’m home, settled in, looking out upon my lands as if from some Platonic throne.

This, of course, slightly terrifies me, and continues to do so after the meal, when I manage to get three scalped tickets to the game and walk leisurely through the concourse to find front center seats waiting for me (I knew a guy).

The problem that I see here is simply that no where I have ever been has actually felt like home. I’ve been a nomadic, vagrant, oil-equivalent to an army brat my whole life. I’ve moved more times than most of my friends have been to church. And while I am all for change, and actually find the feeling very comfortable, I am simultaneously worried that this change is one to a lack of it.

I remember being four years old reading six books at once about dinosaurs and wanting to be a paleontologist. I remember being 13 and teaching a room full of people older than I was how to code HTML. I remember moving to Colorado and writing a math placement exam for a thirty three year old middle school that set a new record. And here I am: a different man than the boy I once was, worldlier and less ambitious, better read and perhaps not quite so well off for it. Changed. Normalized… Settled. Like a lion in a zoo when he notices the cage, notices that he hasn’t killed in years, notices the open door, but doesn’t leave.

Riding the tail of a flying serpent.

As I awoke this morning, I realized that I have been neglecting my enamored and slightly nonsensical bulletin board. I am actually on my way out the door to try and buy some scalped tickets for the U20 Canada vs. Brazil game, and then grab a bite to eat and watch said game. Substantial updates and musings are to come within a reasonable duration – enjoy the long weekend all.

From atop a non-commercial soapbox

From the other side of the security/freedom fence, I can appreciate the well written, persuasive argument here. Though, his latin isn't great ; )

Gutenberg messiah.

"Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face, but black words on a white page are the soul laid bare"
--Guy de Maupassant

Reading list:
Code, and other laws of cyberspace - Lawrence Lessig
Leviathan - Hobbes
Mind Hacks - Tom Stafford & Matt Webb
Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin (Sept. 26 paperback)
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse (re-read)
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Olympos - Dan Simmons (Aug 1, paperback)
The Art of War - Sun Tzu (re-read)

Your antagonist.

We are constructs, skeletons wrapped in wreaths of vein and sinew, cloaked in blankets of flesh and fur – we are human bodies as vehicles for people.

Breeding can bring you beauty and health, fitness and physical prowess, but the mind is not something so genetic. We weave patterns with axons to trap memories, and use them as a foundation for the reflection of ourselves we see in others. Do you remember yesterday? Was it impressive enough for it to have been worthwhile? Or is it another in the painfully long line of days that you have merely erased, grayed over, and cast aside to the pile that was for surviving but not really living? Those were all failures.

Make a life extraordinary enough to remember, or with your last step so too will be the last whisper of your name.

Your fairytale.

The truth is it’s all about memories. Where are you now? Who do you love? Where are you going? This life is a feeling in an instant, and the memories to make it real.

Morituri te salutant.

Behold beginnings at the end of things, finding the finish line ends in a road that winds away, always running. Do you see the verdant fields and the azure vistas, or are you confined to your path? You don’t need to stop running to do a little sight seeing now and then.

I see a ship on the horizon, a savior made of mirage, cloaked in the setting sun. If it’s paradise or the mariner’s death, I will find out for the craving of change.

Everyone's a critic.

Security seems to be one of the largest issues that today's western society struggles with. For the last five years, publically, it has been an awakening for many everyday people, with news reports and headlines telling them alarming responses to bleak hypothetical questions.

The west has, invariably, begun to trade some of the freedom, that we took so much for granted, for security, with many obvious repercussions and many not so obvious, such as telephone surveillance treaties between the United States and Canada, and email snooping; they have modified terrorism laws that allow them to detain citizens, and have all but declared war on their possible enemies in some sort of preventative move against possible hostilities, and all in the name of national security.

The modus cogitatio is easy to understand, and from the perspecitve of a scared populace, it all makes sense. But where do we draw the line? I'm reminded eerily of a television show I used to watch as a kid: one of the strange remakes of the transformers franchise where, instead of having modern day vehicles turning into robots, it was in a future where the antagonistic arch nemesis, the evil Megatron, had won. The cityscapes were bleak and orderly, and the "good guys" of the series would attack key installations in order to help bring about revolution.

The similarities resonating within those memories are striking, and bring a deeper understanding of the situational differences between the phrases "freedom fighter" and "terrorist". What is the west but the uniform, offensive industrial machine?

As an aside, let me say that I have little interest in politics, even now when people are crying for blood and empeachment and making jokes and having rallies. I don't vote because I am too little informed, and I prefer things that way, but, as they say...

Harmony.

Notes like playful raindrops on door chimes play a tune,
Serenading their brothers and falling and soon
To make beauty out of a five minute life:
A playful operetta in spite of their strife.

--

Officially day two of my little personal experiment, has passed by without event. I’ve managed to work a full day, schmooze with relatives, cook a meal, hang out with some friends, read a book, and practice my piano for the first time in years. Oh, and there’s no issue of enough hot water at 4 in the morning – just hope I didn’t wake anyone up.

Focus. [updated]

A million rays
From a million ways
Are focused into one,
-
To shine upon me,
With sadness or glee,
A lens you have become.

--

I’ve been writing as much as I can lately; getting used to a new cadence to life always forces certain things out of the spotlight, which is forcing me to find new ways to efficiently use stage space. I’m starting a polyphasic sleep cycle tomorrow in an effort to “find more hours in the day” so to speak, which will leave more time to read and write. Or, it could just make me sleep deprived and crazy.

Tragically peer-pressured addictions to pain.

Sweet seduction distracts and enthralls,
Pulling me thither and whither it will.
And I am on its gossamer leash, led by sweet words and kind faces,
And a whisper of a promise.
Guide these tired feet to a warm sun-lit path,
Guide these tired feet home.

-

Through fire and shadow and a freezing wind,
Through heartache and headache and soles worn thin,
I realize that I never wanted this path, never wanted this leash.
I wanted me: with eyes open, with conviction, with poise.
“In the shadows of a nightmare where justice naked is”,
I wanted a reason beyond the tug at my neck,
I wanted anything but this.

-

Stop leading me, and I will lead you,
For this rope was a leash for two.
Let us walk off this path, in to the cool grass,
In the sunset hours to come.
We shall gaze at the stars,
Not the smog and the cars,
And we will find our own ways home.