Amidst All The Black And The Undone

So high. Just amazing, the view from up here. There are few clouds in sight, apart from the one I'm on of course. Floating is freeing, physically. What happened?

Firstly, let there be words.

Entanglement
Written words
Desolace
Gentle whispering
Forgotten

Flickering street light
Breathing
Footsteps
Nowhere in particular
Crowds
But no one

Broken inertia
Dream of the day
Awakening
Eyes widening
Anchored heart
Pull
Pull

Yearning to escape
Confronting the past
Dancing
Empathy
Emotions are loss, abandonment
Question
Floating in the yonder

Now, let there be a story.

Somehow, beneath the following tracks of the pendulum, the earth moves. It slumbers and turns, awaiting to meet the yonder by breaking through. In purgatory, I await entangled, nearly daily trying to break free, to escape. This is no prison sentence, no "Mein Kempf" to go with the lyrics scraped on the walls of the cell. I shan't personalise it, I might become attached and grow emotional claws to hold on. But the written words are clear. In this world, this desolace, I am alone, free to weep, to crawl, to deny, to seethe, to participate, to cower. Existentialism dawned on me recently in my cell. Characterised by a shadow of hopelessness and other nasty feelings that I'd rather not feel but still are part of my available pallet (because I still decide to make use of them in my artistry efforts), the day is a process of getting up and getting through. Occasionally there is a gentle whispering, not nearly loud enough to deafen the silence, but noisy enough to remind me that I can still hear, that I am still here. It's soothing, but as soon as I turn my head towards it, the quiet that had never left returns and I am once more left sitting by myself. This is the only opportunity I have of remembering that I am forgotten. No one knows I am here. I used to not know too, then my frontal lobe developed and my place was revealed. Its purpose is yet unknown to my physical eyes, but in the greater scheme of things, I am there, certain.

In the evening, through the bars of the cell I can see a lone street light, lit. When I watch it, it flickers and this exposes the flying specks of dust orbiting around their star. I'm somewhere in that solar system, probably in a prison cell too, wondering why. There is nothing else to wonder about. When it's cold, I huddle in a corner with a make-believe blanket. My breathing is then visible, an expelling of steam from the mouth of a dragon that never really had a chance to live. Another one of my fantasies is hearing footsteps. I sometimes hear them through the same ear and from the same area that the whispering comes from. But like the latter, it disappears when I turn my head, when I try to trap the perpetrator into my net of judgmental sight. I haven't caught anyone so far, and I don't expect to, but I still do it. It's a habit of being for so long nowhere in particular. There is no certainty, everything is a blur, so any expectation would become lost in fog or amongst the crowds. There are other people here. I am whispered that they are my brothers, but they are faceless, they don't look anything like me. I get the feeling that many of them are in their own prison cells but they are always free when I watch them circle the street light. Shadows dance as it flickers and it makes whatever they are doing that much more mysterious and odd. Watching them, I found myself circling in the middle of the room, trying to copy them, but I wasn't getting anywhere because I was nowhere. So I stopped, but I still watch them now and then. But no one looks back at me. Sometimes they look at my feet, but I get the sensation that they are looking through me for the moon or some other celestial object they can orbit around.

All time is in this piece of fresh avocado I present. The inertia is broken in my ambling from bar to bar, yearning, pretending. I have my dream of the day. I am an astronaut floating in space, sans the suit, traversing distances that are relatively insignificant. I am a light, or inside a light, and I watch as faces I obviously recognise but fail to identify shimmer into view only to fade the next second. I am whispering back to the gentle whispering, telling it that I want to know where it comes from, and it replies by repeating the same question I ask it. I am in front of a glass through which I see the flickering street light, the orbiting, the circling, and then I see my silhouette trapped in the glass like some painting I wouldn't want on my personally autographed mirror walls. When the awakening comes, I simply see the light from the street light for a longer few seconds without flickering. My eyes widen then, because I can see more. Light lights the way and grants me vision. I cannot see in darkness, which is why I have been blinded for so long. I probably scared the gentle whispering and the footsteps away through my rash actions or my lack of initial acknowledgment. I couldn't see. I have a heart though, and because I couldn't see, I have anchored it until further notice, i.e. until I can be free and see and let it beat. When I awaken, and I look out at the brothers going in circles, I pull. I pull because I want to join them. I pull the chain because their own version of this great tragedy appears to at least be more mobile than mine. That makes it interesting, I suppose, and more bearable.

Despite my imprisonment and my settling into this null world as if it were my home, I still yearn to escape. Even after so long here, I do want to leave. Comfortlessness is comforting only until I realise that there is no comfort in it. Contradictions... there is an ample amount lying around in the recesses of my mind, by the bars, in my dreams, around the street light. Somehow I am anchored into a prison from which I may not leave. Here, I am condemned. I have to confront my past, not because I have to, but because I cannot let myself not do it. I cannot see anything different but darkness until I face the light. Dancing. It helps sometimes to put myself in the non-ritualistic mood that is required of me for such realisation. If only those brothers of mine would be more empathetic towards me. If only they could see me, maybe they could tell me how to find myself amidst all the black and the undone. Because, I feel abandoned. I feel an emotion of loss. No one is here. Not even me. This makes me sad. One question arises, in many forms, though. Who is the dragon? Who is the astronaut? Who is the brother? I float there in the yonder, right by my side, and I wait with open arms for my return.

B-Side

Look at us now, chasing ideals
Thinking we've got to run far.
I ask you what it is you feel
Do you know who you really, really are?

Have you been asking around?
Have you been searching away?
Before the pain strikes its bleak sound
Let yourself find the heart's own way.

It will lead you here
And it will be great
A day without tomorrow.
Skies might be grey
No tears on this path
I won't ask you to follow.

Know that I tried to break through
Carve a tunnel to find you.
Among the rubble I discovered
Pieces of your scattered lies.
I know enough to not assume
That fragments are what's left of you
For truth can't hide its permanence
And there's not a single secret to be kept.
I know you.

In the mirror I was looking for
The reflection of my own image
I found nothing, my boat, no oar
Flowing away under this bridge.

In this light I changed my ways
Stumbling on my lone impotence,
Wayward from the hanging haze
I charged ahead with renewed deference.

It will lead you here
And it will be great
A day without tomorrow.
Skies might be grey
No tears on this path
I won't ask you to follow.

Unearth the worlds in distances
Don't pretend they do exist
Walk among your brothers well
And sing to them your wholesome love.
Fall apart those sediments,
Those illusions of real sentiments
Remember your hand of guidance be
Nothing cold, unknown, no mystery.
I know you.

Illuminate your thread,
Those false weapons you shed
Fly across the depths
Across windswept Everest.
Glow in the dark, glow
Let the only light show
Those that close their eyes
Will see through their meaningless disguise.
Into my mind and theirs.
Into my heart, always
I know you.

Ready The Camera, Cue The Voiceover

Time, it goes slow sometimes and faster other times and each way it goes, whether backwards or forwards, we all know that one way or another it's going to leave us hanging in the balance if we believe it really can go both ways, either ways. But not way, it can't. That would not be controlled, like is the fighting now of the brain of the whole of the wow I am writing this fast and I feel like maybe I'm making a run-on sentence now. So. Pouvons-nous vraiment perdre notre tomps en faisant n'importe quoi? Qui sait? Ok so this is my attempt at continuing and following the thread that I am subconsciously yet automatically making. Go on, the camera is panning, tracking each movement along the line, and these words you see here are the voiceover that accompanies the lovely images you see in your head. Tick. Tock. Please, this isn't any time to have one-word sentences that aren't really grammatically correct but at this time there is little care for such things. I'm still heaving that emotional brick I exposed last night, it's still crushing me - because I let it. I don't know how to stop it even though consciously I should, I don't want to listen to anyone tell me how to do it because I think I have to already have the answer yet I'm not really in the mood to listen to myself because I don't trust myself enough in order not to get into crap. So here's the predicament then, why this wall of text is so long, is because the thread goes on and on until someone decides to cut it, which probably will be me, but it might also be circumstance in which case it is me in the guise of something that is not me. Hear hear, I'm confused too. Should I go out clubbing? Drinking? Partying? I remember the ball last year, and that was fun, except then I had no alcohol and dancing, while awkward at times, was actually quite fun once I realised that no one around me really cared about how I did dance. Once there were some girls that I liked, at one point in the night I mean, that came around and they danced in front of me. The one in the yellow dress was quite good and they seemed to actually dance with each other which if you've never seen is quite nice to watch, not because it's sensual, arousing, sexually appealing or whatever else you want to call your horniness, but because it's freeing, it's much less constricted by the thoughts of others. I.e. they don't care what you think about, they just dance, and they move with the flow. I wished I could do that, I wasn't very good at what I was actually doing there because I got held up by my embarassment and my surprise that they were kind enough to actually come and say hi. For the brief moments of their sejour that they stayed in front of my awkwardly moving body, I felt out of place, because those girls, were cool girls. They had lives of their own, they had their own little swagger-thing going on (je ne sais pas si j'ai utilisé le mot correctement mais ça ne fait rien maintenant) and I felt included by their presence. Then they left, so I turned around back to my circle of awkwardness where I felt less awkward because the awkward friends that were dancing were awkward themselves and I felt like I was dancing better because I didn't look quite so awkward from my eyes compared to them. But of course, back then was still prime ego time, which means my eyes weren't quite open to what I was doing. So then the question arose lately whether I want to go clubbing. Odd, there's people that say they want to see me get drunk, so maybe I might be a happy drunk, but hopefully not an aggressive drunk or an emo drunk... I don't think I would fall into either latter categories but you never know, I might be hoarding emotional turmoil for revenge on some unsuspecting citizen. I don't think I can pull off the Veronica Mars quips and smart-ass comments so I'll just keep going on my own little train of thought and not tell myself that I'm Veronica Mars, because I'm not. She's funny, she's not real. I'm. I am. I am. Ok, the more I say that, the more weird it sounds in the eyes of me seeing through what I perceive are eyes of others. I tend to do that, look at how other people look at me. It's paranoia, that's what it is. There's this girl that I want to ask out, because she's great, funny, modest, smart... I feel she knows a lot about herself and that's what I think really attracts me to her, besides her visual appeal, which there's plenty of so I don't need that box ticked especially, but in this case it is (yay). Still I don't know if she likes me because she's into her own little things and I don't think I fit into her wall of text if she ever did write one. Possibly not. I act different, I say that a lot, and if you know how I act around people you would be able to tell that I did act different. Why do I act different - and why am I so scared of really opening up to people? I don't think people will approve. It sucks when you're in the world and you want to open up to people but just before that you uncover a certain barrier, a glass piece that has needles in it. They sting if you get closer. Magnetism pulls you closer, but you can turn the switch off with a quick shot of alcohol probably. I don't really want to lose control. I fear that if I'm drunk people might actually get to know who I really am and will push me away because they will find me different. Two things though - can you get drunk and actually show off who you really are? I think that's a good question because it's honest and you can tell what others would be thinking of you. I sound like Christopher Boone here, Asperger's? *shrug* I want people to know who I am. I want to be authentic with myself. I know some aren't quite yet ready to accept, but I think those that I do meet and connect with are. The consensus is that I act differently because it's a mechanism for security - if I'm funny, people like me, I make friends, I am happy for a time. But it's not real, because while around people I am mostly funny, jokey, sarcastic-at-times, it's not really me, it's just designed to get them to like me because if they don't I'll be a sore loser that's alone and has no friends. Pathetic. I would call it scared, actually. I'm just terrified inside. It's not quite the excuse I was going for but it will do. Fear ain't real, yet I believe it is so I place my belief in it and voila, life threatening situation sentiment. It was so easy to slip that coin into the slot that I keep doing it on and on... someday, now, I wish I wish I wish now, it would be now... that I save my imaginary money and stop gambling with what I think is real. Where to then? Where to? Hitchhiking somewhere maybe? I am scared of what might happen, and so we come to the point where I would say something inspiring so I can conquer my fear. There's nothing really I can do, but shatter the glass, be who I am. After all, who I am has no requirements. I give love to people and allow them to be who they are, for the hope that they would do the same to me. And if they don't? If if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if. If then clause. Yeah. If I go clubbing, drink, relax, dull the barrier, I could run through. Oh here's what Blaise Pascal has to say, according to the calendar.
"We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us from seeing it."
This tells me that when I am not inebriated is the best moment to be who I am. That way, they can get used to me - not that there's anything to get used to, but I seem to think there is. Seriously, the glass pane I put up for my own protection early on in life, has to come down. It has to. It has to.

Emotional Brick

From my perch against the wall on my bed, I see the clock. The clock is asleep. Against the white background, the numbers and lines almost impose themselves into my view, watching. Each second, the long black line matches up with one of the short lines, and my memory of the movement from what was to what is chains my gaze and slowly turns my insides. Yet I notice the light reflected in the convex transparent plastic that shields the numbers from escape. The lamp on the ceiling, there, it glows, and you can see a halo around the light bulb's light.

Meaninglessness? Take your vegetable from the pile and carry it around with you. You may like to eat it, but maybe not. I've got this emotional brick heaved upon my chest. I don't quite know how to remove it. Its chemical make-up is not something I learned about when I did science in high school, so I'm trying to make up for that now. The sentiment is round, with uncertain borders. Those blurred distinctions between the emotion and the beyond makes me feel like somehow I am connected past my body. What does it feel like, you may ask? Hold your chosen vegetable in hand while you read below.

Palms, hands, of a person you love are pressed on top of each other, on top of your chest. CPR? Seems like it at first by the initial pressure, but this misperception is quickly dispelled as you realise the hands are not coming back up. Held down they slowly are crushing the field of my body. Pulses, from lighter to stronger back to lighter then the dial turns back on stronger and it's jammed. Why? Why do they want to cut your breath? What is it that they want from you? Will your death solve any problem in their life? The questions come but aren't verbalised when you realise that it shall not be a quick kill. I never wanted it to be a death in the first place, just idyllic heroism. It seems that tape I recorded for myself is bringing itself into the world in the form of emotional pressure - since it never took a tangible form. The energy has to go somewhere, and this is where - in the hands of the one you tried to save, trying to save you, because you want them to care so much for you that the emotional brick presses harder the more you think about it. Such weight, and only from a desire to be wanted. In my idealised dream-like scenario, I save the person, I am the hero, and they are grateful. But I am not, it is not enough, so I have to rewind and re-record what happens again, to add a touch of drama, a tinge of emotion, a hue of magic here and there and whatever song I painted can be displayed on my headboard. A failed wish. It's not satisfying, the fake, the illusory. The reality of it cannot exist, but I would have liked it to. Consciously, I do not wish it real, and I know I could not. Unconsciously, I dream and the tape repeats, each time slightly altered but the same heroic features are present. It's draining to believe something is real when it is not. The result of my fantasy, my fiction? This emotional brick, appearing lovingly human, is in fact nothing but an illusion created by me to satisfy an unexpressed-until-recently desire. Connection, love... Dreams do not become reality - something unreal may not become real, for they are of different Orders of Reality - of which only one actually is real. Reality becomes reality. If I can dream it up, reality responds with the feelings. Created to address the unreal, the energy is built and not expelled because it is unfulfilled. Those hands pressing down on my chest, then, are pushing down only because I refuse to let go of the dream, to let them dissipate and be fulfilled. I take a breath now.

It's scary, you know. It makes you feel trapped, violated, in need. In need of saving, specifically, by the bearer of those hands. Fantasy is dramatic - it pretends to know reality after all, but there is no drama in reality because there is but truth. They cannot coexist. Nothing cannot fit into all. Until we learn that, the bricks keep on pressing onto our souls, squeezing us into giving up believing into what is unreal. When we do let go, there will never have been a brick.

How do you like that carrot now? You may eat the potato now in case you haven't already started - it is cooked well, fret not about that.

How do I let go? Theoretically I can hold on until I cannot survive the pain any longer, but there is a much simpler method. Align yourself with God. Therein is your answer.

Every Point On The Line

Child, young, standing in this very spot,
Holding the escaped rebellious red ball
Looks wide-eyed at what could be th'end all,
The headlights bright, breaks heard but screaming not.
The son frozen.

"You're a legend, awesome, fantastic, the best,"
To the slaughter he now goes with all the rest.
From the white winter tops, right down to the basement
He's fallen; an abyss mirrors his replacement.
Watch and learn.

Those lessons he's receiving, to deduct the jealous,
Will purge him all of masquerading mind-made madness
For his fate is written-thus, that no self-made can alter.
With his secrets revealed, unhiding, the son cannot falter.
Be homeward bound.

No three, no four, none can claim a prize not to be won
When brothers all connect, correct and create as one.
It is forth that they must bring their minds and hearts
To unite their worth, meaning into a sum of all parts.
The lone fall.

His ways to complicate have been lost and failed,
The rhythmic contemplation, despair has sailed
Upon some wavelengths unreal, to mouths of fear.
The boy saved, has no need to run but be here.
He is returned.

What roads he has crossed, derelict, with sorrow,
Are lessons that remind him the lack of tomorrow.
He did not write himself into his being, but played a role,
An amnesia that he had to forget, to return to what is whole.
And he remains.

Remember

I will remember,
No matter if the places where I have been
Will fade away into oblivion.
I will remember,
Skies are grey and no one's to be seen
In corners where I have been.

I've been searching, here today, for the light
The one was promised, guided, shining bright.
The essence of me, disregarded untruly
By a mind that forgot despairingly
About love.

What do I live for? I ask myself the question.
An answer I await in my reminiscence
For there's no further loss in my possession
Than that of my heart, lost on the fence,
Troubled, hurting in the rain of hesitance
Trembling feebly in the puddles. Yet remembrance
Is nigh, I feel it, I breathe it, I swear
That heartache won't end until I share
The lies that I have kept, away,
Hidden in a tiny heart-shaped sepulcher.
Locked in the depths of darkness-ever
Stuck from finding out the truth, its way.

But I will remember.

My key, I lost, there was no second chance
I forgot the reasons why in this dying trance.
But I discovered light
Among the depths, into the night,
I fell through, apart,
Shreds of everything I kept
By giving winds, away swept
Revealed anew
The whole of my heart.
My heart
Its beat
Its warmth
Its call
Its whisper
Its promise
Fulfilled.

I remember.
I came, I saw, and I forgot.
But the pain which I had brought
Was now a lesson learned.

Thank you.

Dancing With Birth, Life And Death

It's not just a phase, is it?
Fleeting, fugacious, ephemeral... all words that depict limits, an end, implying a beginning. Where do we start, where do we end? To this, we fantasise about the dance of life and death. The slow waltz moving through gardens, wealds and marshes. The tango of tragedy inspiring the phantasm of such love that unites two people and only expands dreamily, revered, as they are separated. The quickstep set off by the emergence of a drop of sweat, the momentary ceasing of the heart, then a black trigger pulled back and fin; the curtain falls and the audience leaves behind popcorn, empty cups and straws. Desolace. This show will take place again, and crowds will again assemble and dissolve. There are tides of blood, after all. Whether we can see it or not, we dance together in shallow waters, splashing here and there the eerie.

What life is, I don't know. But the end is death... when the music stops, the steps cease, the couple becomes a statuette on display, and gently or not, they decay. When did they start? Not at life, but at birth - the first movement, that first smile, the first slice and glance. The dance itself is life. It started with our first breath, our first step, and ended with our last of both. Romantic, is it not?

Before, that last step, the end, death, was deemed an existentialist problem. You can't escape it, yet for some crazy absurd reason, we are lead to believe that we can keep on dancing forever. To some extent, this is true, because death has an opposite in birth - when they dance, they face each other - so life has no such end because it has no such opposite. Why then would we have a fear of death? Life doesn't end even if death happens... Is this because life never began (and so cannot end)? Birth results in death, yes. Rebirth results in death encore? Following the same logic, it would. Such thinking leads me to believe in the possibility of past lives, if life is one continuum. But life is not the line. Can I say what it is? If I were to say it's the space it would be excluding the continuum itself which makes this paradoxical, a yes and no question/answer. Neither. Or both.

So my birth has occurred, which means my death will one day occur. This can only be considered an existentialist problem if this was somehow thought to be avoidable. Things pass on, nature goes through cycles. We grow up, we grow old. Up down. Left right. Action reaction. Circles. Are we in the middle? Or the outside? Both or neither? Or all? This search for answers is out of fear. It feels scary. The possibility, the worry... the climax, the fall. All will pass through this gate and many other gates that are the same, until they decide to not take the same path, but take one path.

What is life?
A guitar melody. A choir of voices singing in unison a message.
There is the dancing.
The dance floor of the world.
Everyone stops dancing one moment then begin another dance.
Each step stops and starts. A moment of silence, then the heart beats, a moment of silence.
Is life this cycle?
Or is this simply the way our making is made ephemeral, unable to be attached to, fleeting? All our dreams, our aspirations, our lies arrive and depart, always in that order. And the space in which this occurs we call life, and it never leaves because it never came. Somehow, we are just here, becoming aware of the changes going on around us, and the lack of change within, but not because there should be change, but because there can be no change to life itself. Space is empty, space is clear, and its filling cannot be sustained because space cannot be filled. So then, I ask what is the point? There is none, because the space cannot be filled, as much significance and meaning as I would like to place on the journey, the experience, there really is none, because it's ephemeral, invented and therefore a lie. But life, is true, for it is unchangeable. This makes it real. And the meanings, the thoughts, the importance... are the different steps we make in our dances. Either which way our feet, our slender bodies, our hands move, dance happens, and we call it different things - jive, cha cha, Macarena. The differences are how we define the dance, which has no significance, even if we attribute it. If we cannot make any changes, why can we? But because changes don't last, what makes us think that we can make changes? Whichever way we move, little or more, we dance. Metaphor aside, this is life. The dance that is never will be and never has been.

Can I understand it? No.
I'm not the dancer, doing the dancing. I am the dance, because I am always here. You may say you hate dancing, or you may love it. But is either true? You are the dancing, and this whole text makes no sense, or maybe it makes perfect sense. Regardless, watching my steps keeps me not from dancing.

La Fugacité

Whisper tenderly in my ear
Your plan on how to cross the bridge
Tell me without a trace of fear
Why the world's painted in this tinge
Of lost, of man, of dashing hope
Too few, when hurt, hold on to heart
Their only hand, onto the rope
From whence they came, back to the start.
This said with tears streaming down cheeks
The prayer to escape your shade
Will save you from the pain which seeks
The end of what will one day fade
Anyway.

The World As A Symbol

Embryo,
There'll come a moment when you'll grow.
Here's hoping you don't end up shattering into a million pieces.

I wish to know what life is without me. I can use the world as a symbol, because I am not of the world.

Nightingale Street

Growing up, I lived in an apartment building on Nightingale Street. I was on the second storey, excluding the road/ground level which was considered as a storey in itself but not actually called a storey. My young body was small, and through it I saw a world much bigger. The road was much larger than it appears to me now, at least in photographs. I had to take many steps to get to the other side where there was a small store that served as our dairy. It was quite a mission, not in the difficulty, but in the responsibility of it being assigned to me, to take the 50,000 lei note from my mother's hand and go downstairs, across the asphalt street into the store to buy a Coca-Cola and a Mirinda. Then I made my return journey with the change. It took less than five minutes, but I had completed my errand.

Nightingale Street was small. It connected two other streets and ran parallel to a larger, longer, more traveled road. The sidewalks held ample room for two people to walk side-by-side. More recently, they (whoever that may be) installed parking spaces in front of the buildings, which our family used when we got a car. This left only room for one car to actually travel through the street at one time. I imagine it would have been even more difficult in the winter with the snow. The street looked different in summer compared to winter. In summer, you could see the shoddy repairwork that was hastily or improperly done on the roads. Bitumen spots covered random places, somehow like mosquito bites, together with a myriad of cracks and other potholes, from wee to big. As a child, these features are part of the landscape - I saw nothing wrong with them, they were just there - irrelevant and included. Come winter, a blanket of snow would just about cover the whole street, which is why they had to send in snowploughs and a roster for locals to do manual shoveling of snow. Generally, the street itself would be clear enough for cars to pass through. By that I mean there was a layer of muddy stamped down snow that coated the way for vehicles to travel to work, that is, if their engines weren't frostbitten at 7am in the morning. The sidewalks were also snowed on, as one would expect, but they were also manually cleared by the shovels of middle-aged men with warm coats and fur hats. If the snow got too wet and mushy, footprints of gumboots and thick shoes were visible. At times, when the conditions were right, sheets of ice would form, which would provide good entertainment for children like me to skate on with the neighbour or with some friends I had made at the playground two streets away. Older people at times fell and scattered their groceries here on the ice. The few trees that interrupted the sidewalk to the right of the entrance to our set of apartments were covered in a white mantle all winter. They simply lay there, warmed by the cold, an odd oxymoron, because they were preserved until spring when they would bloom in their natural magnificence. The grassy garden areas between the sidewalk and the apartment building itself, while naturally green and alive in summer, now was tucked away in hibernation, perfectly white except for spots of yellow which neighbourhood strays decided to paint on the landscape. Then there was the occasional sign from heaven that winged children delivered in the snow.

During the warmer part of the year, the aforementioned trees would bear fantastically green leaves, an assortment which would change to warmer colors during autumn when they would carpet the ground, no one to clean them up but the children who kicked them away and awed at their slow dance with gravity. The farthest tree along gave us chestnuts, free to pick. If I were to get one, it would be off the ground because it would have fallen. I wasn't tall enough to climb, but my brother and his friend from the apartment vis-a-vis ours were. They climbed up, exploring the crevices, the spaces between the branches and the view from close to the summit. At one point they may have shaken the tree, resulting in chestnut rain. They're supposed to taste nice. I think I tried them once but I can't recall the taste so likely it didn't make a very good impression on me. At least not a lasting one, and I'm usually one to remember smell and taste.

Going the other way towards the end of the street we didn't live on were more apartment blocks. One of them held a dentist which I went to once or twice, probably just before I moved to New Zealand. In between the two apartment blocks on our side of the street, each four storeys high, lay a rubbish dump where stray dogs used to rummage through. I didn't like going past there, out of fear. There were also some tramps and/or gypsies who did the same thing (rummaging), and I was scared of them too, but they may also have repelled other people with their stench. The lack of hygiene puts people off. By the rubbish dump there was also a concrete space which now probably is a car park. But it used to simply be a space where friends, brothers and sisters played catch or ran around deceptively aimlessly. The other side of the road also held a four-storey apartment block, and then in front of our block lay a much taller ten-storey block, which had, understandably, its own elevator. Generic would be one way to put it, but the whole street from memory had an entrenched quality, almost fixed in concrete, as if those buildings would always remain there, even though they looked unappealing and impersonal from the outside.

I never quite got the significance of why the street was named after a Nightingale. If we were to be correct in translating from the Romanian, literally the street belongs to the Nightingale, and I don't remember any nocturnal songs being sung outside. Maybe it was named after a person. Maybe not. The place, though, has evolved over time, and just as my own vision has changed with age, so has that place. The cracks that I did not notice before, I do see now, and the amount of them, metaphoric and otherwise, leave me with a sentiment of sadness - that my childhood home isn't really being cared for. I still have my memories though and while I don't hold on to them, I am aware that changes happen. Nothing lasts forever and that's the way it is.

Victim Of Circumstance

Just like a dream, life is not what it seems. What happens when you go to high school in your first trimester, and you know no one and are finding it difficult to make friends because the others label you based on how you behave? What happens if one of those early days you feel belittled, emotionally crushed because who you hoped you would be did not turn out to be the reality that others saw when they looked at you? What about if on that same day, you feel deprived and lonely, on the brink of tears as you walk across a busy intersection, facing the world with an ephemeral visage, when a car speeds from the road ahead and smashes into another car only a few metres away from your little body? How stricken do you feel when you hear the sound of metal clashing, of glass shattering and scattering, of a baby suddenly bursting out crying? How do you feel when for the first few seconds after the shocking accident, your tongue numbs and your expression whitens as you look at the wreckage? And then what of the baby who wants reassurance that he or she is alive? What happens when you walk away, because the weight of the day's prison sentence leaves you unable to help because you think you might do more harm than good? Would you say life sucks? Jokingly, I might have, but I never came to the conclusion that, I would learn four years later, Veronica Mars came to when commenting on Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man". Her words, "Life's a bitch until you die," spoken like a philosophy to be adopted and lived by as a sort of life motto, a proof that there is a reason for the madness that life sucks, because it sucks. This pseudo-logic did not occur to me in such a formulated and cynical format, not only because I did not know what cynical meant, but because I still had expectations of how my life would turn out. After all, I purposely chose to go to a good public high school, mine being a 'college', despite the large distance that I had to cover with a bus each day. I ventured it was worth more to go to a place where it appeared that academics were valued highly, because that's where I would fit. I was brainy, smart, intelligent, a brainbox. I knew answers to questions in class, not because I went home everyday and did homework and extra study for five hours - I don't think I've ever done that. My tool, which others mistook for my secret, was my ear. I listened, because in class I was brought up with the idea that you were meant to listen, absorb information. So I did. Others, probably brought up in different types of cages and regimes, zoned in and out. Because my prowess allowed me to excel, even in the reputable academic environment of my high school, I had a goal to strive for, to be the top. I had come to school to learn, so that's just what I did.

But academics was certainly not the biggest lesson I would learn. My parents stressed that it was imperative for me to do well, meaning academically, and me being a good little boy did as they said, though not directly because they said it. Their influence on my values went past academics, but performance at an academic level was a strong core of those imprints. I soon found out, however, that academics was not of the highest priority to other students, which made it difficult for me to bond with others. I was timid, I didn't really know how to get along with people. Awkwardness was an idea that was previously alien to me but somehow entered my consciousness and vocabulary, and sort of then became an excuse to try relate to other people, sometimes by lying about myself. The magnifying glass I can now place on my high school experience shows me that I didn't know how to make friends and my unwillingness to go out of my boundaries slightly halted the development of my social skills beforehand. When it was time to attend my 20-minute-away by bus school, it was clear that the social world is something I would become a member of, warts and all.

My English teacher in my first year, Year 9, came to me one lunchtime. I was sitting down on the wooden steps, alone with my sandwich, looking at the library, not knowing if I really was allowed to go in there and scared to ask for fear of rejection. I may have been on those steps because once the bell would ring, probably more than twenty minutes away, I would be ready to enter class, the door being just a metre behind me. I sat and gnawed and chewed and swallowed. She came to me, maybe she sat down next to me. Already having answered questions in her class, in her and the pupils' eyes, I was 'good at English', so she knew I had my academics sorted out. If my memory persists, she asked me how I was doing. Don't remember what I replied. She then may have asked me about friends, and I said I didn't have any. She introduced me to the actual concept, then, that high school was half-academics, half-social. There was an element in this experience I never consciously concentrated on. I never had to until then, because I always found somebody to bond with, at least superficially, to fulfill my friendship 'needs'. In high school, the rules of the game had changed, because the other students weren't willing to give me a chance. Judgment had set in - you make your friends by finding common things between each other. As a shy boy, I never got to the stage of sharing what I liked. Assumptions were made that I studied a lot, so I was a nerd, a geek, whatever. No one knew me, no one cared to know me, nobody knew themselves. Some of this realisation came to me at that time. I behaved a certain way around my classmates, and like a missile shield they were in defensive mode because they felt I fired at them by not bending to a status quo. I acted different to them, I got different marks, I talked differently. So people treated me differently - what else could I expect? This made me an outcast and within the first few days of this discovery, I went home and I cried. Simple: I hated myself and I wanted to change to be accepted because back then, I was nobody. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to be known, to have friends, to laugh out loud and to do the things the other kids were doing. I wanted to belong, so I had to change. I thought all I then had to do was change my behavior, an experiment which failed within the end of that first year at high school. I didn't know how to act like someone else. I didn't know how to add new imprints into my behavior, even though subconsciously I was doing it all the time. Unwilling to make that conscious decision, I had surrendered partly to the idea that I could not change. But it was more like a step of procrastination, because I felt that if I knew how to change, then I could change. So the process of figuring out the how was the aim I had set myself, though not in those words.

My arrival from intermediate into the much bigger pond of fish that was high school made me more aware of my behavior. Hints were dropped during childhood, by my cousin, by friends, by my mother and father, at times even by the mirror. But the bombs came in 2005, when the people around me were old enough to use labels that actually dealt my self-esteem some serious damage. They were not wise enough to understand what they were really doing, but they were able to use them so they could achieve their unconscious goal of separation. I acted differently. That didn't make me less of a person, but I was sure made to feel that way. I remember once I was in science, and the weapon that everyone used on me hadn't been used for some time - which gave me an opportunity to recharge myself. It thus came to be quite a memorable blow when I was again labeled that way when we were making phones out of tin cans and string. I was paired with some guy that was quieter than the norm. He spoke into the tin, and his words traveled through our white string into my tin can. At the time I was smiling, having fun, child fun. He asked me a question and through that stealthily dropped his bomb. I quickly replied with a negative answer, but the shock waves of the blast went through me. My 'no' was almost a tremor. I felt ashamed for the rest of the day, my innocence gone.

It's true that people are allowed to ask questions, but I did not recognise that at the time. To me, it was painful to be asked questions about who you are that were marginalising. It was not 'who are you?', but 'are you...' and they didn't know any better. Neither did I.

But I came through. At one point I wanted to be a victim, I wanted to be pitied. I thought it might gain me favour, morale, but nothing like that can make you whole. High school, especially at the beginning, was hard. It's hard to be told by people around you that you aren't enough. It's hard when you believe them. It's hard when you think illusions are real, and when they do too. But suffering is a great teacher. One way, or another, life is the greatest teacher. It will teach you exactly what you need, in the best way possible. You are allowed to object, to resist, but you only would if you were scared, if you believed that there was another way. This method creates friction, pain, and its discomfort then becomes your teaching method for the lesson that life tried to teach you in the first place. One way, or another, life teaches you what you need to know. How can I possibly say then, that life sucks? I can't say it and speak the truth. Veronica Mars had her own circumstances which she had to deal with, and in her pain and confusion, she made her conclusion. "Life's a bitch until you die." She believed it, and in her representative power as a human being, it came to be her filter through which she saw her experience. You may believe it too, which is why life hurts you and you feel victimised. After all, so long as life is a bitch, the bitch has to live up to her name. You'll still learn, but in an unpleasant way, until you discover that there is a much more effective and authentic path you can take. As students, the best thing to do is learn. Then we teach. It is with hope then, that I recommend learning truth before attempting to teach it, because once truth is learned, life will teach it through you, for the benefit of all.

A Glimpse From Above

High up in the air, she floats. She's looking down at the world, the little worker ants in their presentable suits carrying suitcases filled with information. Swarms of them flock into the high rise buildings which other ants built by carrying small materials from other premises and arranging them in an orderly fashion. Oh, they're all artists. She's one too, but today she's dreaming. From above, she observes masterpieces being given meaning and usage. And as she sees this, she's watching the greater masterpiece at work, being painted, and she's giving meaning to the strokes of wisdom and inspiration, the intricate brushwork, the careful attention, the scintillating glint in eyes. Watch as the blinking of a neon light flashes in corneas, in irises, in pupils. Happiness... is but a glint in their eyes. She smiles as she realises that ants can be happy, even if only for a moment before the sparkle is erased by the shadow of the incoming puppeteers. They loom over the ants, glaring at them to do their work, not to think, but to produce, to build, to erect. And as the massive stick prods the ground near them, they scatter at lightning speed in a rush, heads down, thumbs up, zombies. The rise of the dead - troubled sleep - makes her frown in confusion. She, herself, is but a marionette, but today she knows it which is why she's high. And any moment now, the balloon will pop, her heart will sink, and she'll fall once more into the symbolism of ants. But for her, an imprint from her sight, will remain and she will stir. This sliver of a memory, casts doubt over the shadows she is in, not because she's getting lost, but because the light is showing her the way out, for light dispels darkness. Or more correctly, light dispels the illusion of darkness.

She begins her journey of liberty.

Rêve(lation)

All alone then, I had to find some meaning
All alone I, sat down and cried.
All alone I, never found that meaning,
In the center of the pain I held inside.

I ask myself, why, I do what I do.

Outside my mind there's places I've never been
And walking in those worlds I'd never be seen
For people are sleeping, people are blind
In circles they run, out of their mind.

This dream we think we're living
Crosses worlds that are ephemeral.
We try to find its meaning
But we are sleepwalkers in peril.

Oh, where are we going
But the same places again
That we have never left...
When we walk and we are not awake
We're lost in our own space
Getting to each and every race
To win
Nothing.
N o t h i n g.

But we are determined to see
And so we shall
And the walls will crumble
And the seas will flood
And the winds will gust
And the world will fall
And our dream will end
And we'll wake up
And smile.

Such A Desire

I'm going on the path of feelings once more, in the hall of exploration. It's like I've got a bridge almost pouring within out towards the screen, my canvas. So this feeling that I want to express shall cross this bridge and be communicated. That's right, grow legs and walk. Or slither.

I've met many people in my life, and I shall yet meet more. There's people that stand out though, for some reason. One of them arouses a very strange feeling within me. I'm not sure if I can get it to cross the bridge but here I am trying to lure it. I want it revealed. I wonder if this sentiment is a response to who they are, who I am, or the image that I have of them, because there is a difference between the first two and the last. Who we are is the same. But I would like to know if how I feel is due to the recognition of myself, maybe a hidden untouched part of me, within the other person, or if it an attraction of a different kind? How is this related to me? I've been trying to guess, and so I make the call now to receive an answer. I won't know the reason for the feeling until I'm ready to, and that's fine, but what the feeling actually is... I'd like to know that. Just because I don't know what to do with it. Some would say... just feel it. It is a feeling, after all. I feel feelings. But people act on feelings. I don't want to do that, I want to act on what I know, which is sure - and thus the decisions made are based on a solid unbreakable foundation. Feelings to me are more of a puzzle piece, ready to be placed in the right spot under the glass pane on the coffee table. They are like directions on a map, they tell me where I could go, but my going should be based on my knowledge of what I'm going there for.

Have I tempted you to cross the bridge? I sound like a devil... why do I need to tempt things? I don't, that's an illusion. So the bridge is set in place. It might come straight onto the canvas, but it first has to pass through my mind, which I am un-tunneling. I might not see the answer. The bridge is to a feeling, so I will feel it and I'll know the direction it's going. It is within.

Calligraphy

Sometime during my fourth year of school in Romania, my teacher noticed that I had changed my handwriting. Her expression, tone and repetition of this a couple of times throughout that year brought to my attention her disapproval of me changing the way I wrote. Perhaps it was the way I wrote the 'r's or maybe my copying the handwriting of a colleague of mine who I admired because the way she wrote was similar, but still more personal than the standard taught in schools. The way we were taught was cursive script. Initially, the paper we used was not simply lined like refill or in 1B5 notebooks today; instead we used paper that followed the subsequent pattern:

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Note that the spaces between each horizontal line, dotted or not, are meant to be the same size.
The handwriting had to be set between those sets of lines, in a specific way. This was a sort of guideline - think of it like training wheels when you first learn to ride your bike. You always started writing a part of a letter on the lower continuous black line and most letters would have to then fit between that one and the continuous one above it. However, we were taught to not actually touch that line but to instead leave a small gap, probably for aesthetic reasons. Capital letters were written in the same fashion but were supposed to take up the space from the starting line to just under the dotted line above the upper black line. Some lower-case letters like f, l, t, h, k were treated like capital letters in the sense that their extra length had to be accounted for. So the length of the 't' would stretch out almost to the top dotted line. Letters like g, j and y which had 'tails' could have those 'tails' reach down and touch the bottom dotted line. It's quite simple, but I suppose it does take some getting used to. As for what the letters actually look like, they are joined together at one point or another if they belong in the same word. Letters like v, w, l, h and r have little curls within them, which I suppose adds an element of style because it gives the writing a more refined feel. For v and w, the curls look like little pig tails pinned onto the ends of the letters. It does look pleasant if done well, but writing like this takes more effort and time than the script I use now. When you're taking notes in a lecture, there's no time to make perfect curls or to formulate a good curve for the s. So I wonder what the point is of learning such 'refined' handwriting if it is not going to be used later on in classes in that way? Maybe it gave us students an appreciation of handwriting and what it can do to the content to make it more visually pleasing (and thus maybe more persuasive?). Each person adds their own little twang to it of course, which reminds me that some people's writing was quite dissimilar to the standard taught in the sense that it was much less careful, much less neat. Those people would have gotten lower marks for that.

I tried to change mine probably because it wasn't the best and I wanted it to be. I had a look at the handwriting of some girls that were in my class and I was impressed by their ability to make it look aesthetically clean, no matter what they wrote. So, me being a child that wanted to show clean work, copied the little differences in the way they did their curls (maybe they made theirs bigger) and how they positioned their letters all standing up straighter than the slanting slightly-to-the-right norm that we were taught. It's possibly the same type of xeroxing that I did much more recently when I started dotting my i's with small pretty circles instead of butch dots. It was much cleaner, but I became slightly mad about it and made every letter much more circular so the spaces in the writing became more noticeable. How did this had an effect on what I was writing? Not sure, but I personally did notice I took more care in my writing than before. I wanted a cleaner image, likely.

So was this whole process all about image? The way you write can give away quite a lot of things about how you see yourself, or so I have heard on television from a person that studied people's handwriting. In that sense, your handwriting is like a mirror, reflecting things that you may not want to admit about who you think you are. Word processing has taken away part of this vision since you no longer are writing, but typing, but some may argue that the font you choose is also revealing. Deciphering handwriting however can be a difficult if you don't know what each little feature or difference can suggest about the writer.

Maybe when we learn how to write, the fears and aspirations we adopt at that time are shown to us despite our efforts to conceal them or run away. For a child, learning how to write is an important step in learning to communicate with the rest of the world. I had a 'traumatic' experience with this step that has remained tucked away in my mind, hardly resurfacing until now. In my first year of school, we learned the alphabet. We practiced writing letters individually, then words with those letters and finally sentences that emphasised the usage of the letter we happened to be looking at on the day. This practicing was done in a pink A4 workbook which had four pictures at the back, one of which was a close-up of Snow White, with her black hair and a hair band which maybe was red, or white, or blue. The pages were lined as shown above but there were pictures also within so it didn't look too daunting. At school, we mostly used pencil, never pen. We used refillable ink-pens more regularly in the years to come, but at our level, pencils were necessary because often we made mistakes, mostly aesthetic ones I imagine. I was under the impression (possibly influenced by the strictness of the Romanian school system) that our books had to be kept neat and tidy. One day, while the class worked on the letter O, capital and lower-case combined, I somehow managed to make a smudgy mess in the middle of the page, probably from rubbing a mistake out with a cheap eraser because the higher quality ones were too expensive to afford (on the subject of money, a year or so later I got a more expensive mechanical pencil which wowed me because I never had to sharpen it and could just add 0.7 lead on demand and it would actually write well). Our teacher was coming around to check that we did our work and as she came to check each person individually, the class was silent, each pupil awaiting judgment. Just think of it - awaiting JUDGMENT. It was a serious case then, for me, because I was petrified by my smudge on the page. Trying to fix it by rubbing it out worsened it - I actually created a small hole, which of course added to my tension. When the teacher came around in her aura of perfume - i.e. the judgment moments - I remember her finger pressing down near the smudge as she was assessing what I had done and how well I did it. I looked down at this time, shoulders maybe hunched, scared. She asked me what happened there, her nail indicating the (black) hole. I might have stammered an answer and she may have given me a reply but I was still ashamed when she moved on.

At 18 now, I can smile and laugh about the insignificance of what happened, but ten or more years ago, that haunted me for a while. The focus with school was so much on the result... and fear was what led many people, including me, to strive for the best. Yes, I did enjoy the self-satisfaction of getting a question right and being told in front of the class that my writing piece was the best, but I would argue that it was not those moments of success that kept me going through the system for those four years at school but the dread of punishment, of getting something wrong, of BEING wrong. Such pressure to not fail... I'm glad I was fortunate to experience what education was like in another part of the world.

The Little Boy On Both Sides Of The Door

Naked are you? Your fingers are clutching down on the keys of the piano like a foothold. Why are you trying to anchor yourself amidst such a flood? You know you'll drown. Don't you worry, you don't have to go with the flow, no matter where the waters lead. There's a spirit in you, a fire, a focus that's inextinguishable and yet here you are, trying to force the world around to stop changing by fixing yourself in one spot.

You are not gravity. You're not.

But you don't need to be. Surrender and you shall be set free. You can swim, but you don't need to unless you let the waters take you. Where they go is where you are.

And here is where the key turns inside the lock and the door lies shut. You know, I probably closed that door myself unconsciously because I feared what would be on the other side. I thought it'd demolish me. Somewhere on my side of the door there's a scared little boy with tears in his eyes. He looks at me all the time, and whenever I am near the door begins uttering a cry - when I touch the key he moves his little body forward, ready to jump and hold on to me, and his expression turns grave. He doesn't want it open. He wants to stay there in his corner, safe with his headless teddy bear. I don't know what to do, because when he cries, I cry. I feel his pain, every chord that strikes within him I feel. I am stuck in this dark room, key in the lock. I want to open the door, but the little boy's fear grips me right before I bring myself to turn the handle and I am trapped. I cannot move, for fear that the boy will perish and thus that I will perish. He doesn't want to fall, he doesn't want his teddy bear to leave him. He doesn't want me to abandon him, but I know that I can't take him with me. I know what is beyond the door, but I am finding it difficult to remember as I am in the clouds, the evaporation of the little boy's tears, with teddy bear heads floating around me. I must break through. I must turn the key, turn the door handle and open the door, then step out.

On the other side, there is another little boy standing. He's smiling. There are no corners here, no shadows to hide under, no walls to lean on, no ceiling to cower under. There is total freedom, something which I cannot understand.

Who am I? If on this side of the door I am a coward, a fool, a scared little boy, then who could I possibly be on the other side?

There, I am whole.

In The Evening When It Rains

In the evening when it rains
It gives us hope that tomorrow
Will be a brighter day.

In the evening when it rains
We remember that same sorrow
When we lost our way.

In November in the cold outside
We cross the frozen river
And we pray our feet hold fast.

In November in the cold outside
One snowflake makes us shiver
And we feel our breath at last.

At the peak of glory we stand tall
We have our heads held high
But our hearts grow fonder of home.

At the peak of glory we stand tall
In light we bathe the sky
For as birds thoughtlessly we roam.

To us the heavens send a hand
To hold when to ourselves we die
And no longer can reach beyond.

To us the heavens send a hand
To realise our hands untied
For miracles in life to happen.

In the evening when it rains
We remember that same sorrow
When we lost our way.

In the evening when it rains
It gives us hope that tomorrow
Will be a brighter day.

Not A Rose

Même si elle paraît belle, ceci n'est pas une rose. Et même si elle pourrait être une rose, c'est juste une representation, une couche de sens avec laquelle on peint son monde.

440

Does it matter for the heart who it loves?

Look at me, talking about love as if I even know what it is.
Some say you must have broken your heart
Before you know what true love is.
But isn't love always true?

Sympathy
The world's my little place to come and crawl into.
It's my little cave where the rays won't hit me.
But it's dark.
It always will be where there are walls
Where there are pits into which I can fall.
And I can cry
I can swim the rivers in my tears
I can make an ocean and disappear
Beneath the waves I'll lie asleep
Until I drown.

And even then, I'll hear this song
I'll dream about a day that's gone.
I'll mourn my loss of life and light
And my turning towards night.
I'll reminisce on times I tried
I'll stare ahead, refuse to fight
Refuse to give up my place of safety
My own humanity
My own protection from the sea
Of my own sadness.
I refuse to let the world tell me who I am.
For not even it knows what it is
Because it isn't even there.

What will be
When you will not love me?
What will be
If you leave from my life
I'll feel like a star fallen into an abyss.
I still won't know who I am
Who to call, who to replace you with.

My white thoughts, not made so by the snow outside
But by the colour of the flag I hold up.
I cannot charge into a war of passions
Because I cannot call it art and speak truth
And all I want is to speak truth, to be real
To be who I am.
Is it a tragedy?
When did this become two things?
When did being become a question?
And why?
Across this bridge I walk with my surrendering flag high
Aware of the ditch that I cross,
The fissure in the landscape I had tried so hard to close.
My palms, wounded, now hold on to the ropes along the sides
And my feet sway on the planks.
They may give way
And I may fall into the fissure
And die.
I close my eyes. Who is it that sits beneath the tree at the end?
The tree I cannot see, the tree from which I breathe.
Is it her? Character? A she? No, a tree, or what we may call it.
Branches, roots, leaves, a home for many
And the representation of character
With its shadow being the reputation that hides away always from the sun.

What did I write?

An Affair Of The Heart

Every night I'll be with you.
Do you love her? Do you love her?
Every day I dream of you.
Do you love me? Do you love me?

And so it begins, this month of April 2010, with the lyrics of a Korean song playing from my MP3, on my computer, on Youtube and consequently in my head. In addition, I find myself with that unfamiliar and bizarre feeling that occurs after noon on the first of the month so is not an April Fool's joke. I say 'that' feeling because it reminds me of how other people feel at times, but it is unfamiliar to me, just as affairs of the heart are. Questions. It's a little bit scary. It's awareness of anxiousness. It's stomach-churning. It's looking through a glass pane and seeing blurred images that come in and out of focus. It's odd. It's brain chemistry. But there's pressure, too. To act, to do, to be like, to charge, to change. It is because of this that I ask the drive - are you real, or are you pretending to be?

There was a greeting, simple and warm. A different language, one I could understand being spoken, and another being heard. 50 minutes. Then descending three steps, a little walking followed by climbing about a dozen more steps, then through a known labyrinth - a great metaphor - to pressing a button a couple of times and a light turning on. Up we go. Ink, a stapler and some paper later, further we fall. The empty place that beckons our arrival is quiet. On chairs, joined paper in front, a meeting occurs and there is talking. Two voices, then a third incidentally appears and flees. Speech about God, about what is spoken, about why it is spoken, about words and their meanings and their worth to be kept. Arms crossed, mouths open and shut, open heart(s). Light. Switch off, an apology sent but not wholly meant so I made a mental note to redeem by buying lunch for the one to whom I was apologising to. Steps on a footpath, gray. A meeting, followed by an opening of doors and a challenge of the mind to channel its knowledge into a tattoo on the lined paper. Less than 50 minutes. Then I walk, across more paths and accompanied. Up the stairs, to the left then straight ahead, a triumphant union, (re)introductions. Migration. Chatter, laughter, reservation, walking away. I remain, I reseat. More chatter, more laughter.

Then a question spoken with a smile for an answer and the appearance of this feeling I talked about at the start. It seems to be an affair of the heart, one new in its intensity. A 'la-la-la' in my head. At this point, the doors were open and I felt, maybe not in these same words, that hiding visibly was an imperfect exercise in pretending. So to the question, I gave a smile to the person who asked it, an extension of a brother's hand, of thanks. Laughter following was the cause of a mask feebly arranged, not really meant to cover anything but the ego of which I am letting go. Then another question and a piece of advice. Then a headlock. Warmth within extending out. Such a sentiment in my steps as I walk to the bus; remaining on the bus as songs play with my feelings as a child with building blocks, making up a structure, then tearing it down, marveling at the spectacle. It is not defined, however, for this affair of the heart has inspired me until now, to the writing of these words that you are undoubtedly reading. Thanks for going on my journey and sharing this moment with me. Creation is beautiful - it is true. One does not follow the other, they are the same. And so are we.

So then, this affair of the heart... I do not comprehend it. If it is meaningless, then it's an illusion and it will fade. If its essence is real, it will shine through.

Here I am then, typing this, but once I leave there will only be left an imprint of my emotion, for you to interpret.