Vingt

Aujourd'hui, je me
trouve plus conscient qu'hier,
et je suis le même.

Essayant De Le Voir Comme Il Est

Je t'écris, quelqu'un de toi. Je suis éspece d'automne, ayant hâte du printemps. C'est comme on y s'attend: les arbres sont de plus en plus dépourvus de feuilles. Les gens à l'exterieur marchent de leur gré, avec les feuilles tombant du ciel autour d'eux. Ils jouent de l'escrime avec leurs buts, toujours à l'avance ou dans leurs mains, au même temps que quoi que ce soit qui s'arrive, s'arrive au fond, en périphérie. Je faisait partie de ce jeu, jusqu'à ce que je me sois blessé et j'ai dû faire un pas en arrière. Je vois pas le monde; j'écoute une rue avec les yeux, et le rythme paraît une nuance de trottoir. Voilà le poème d'hier.

Sois comme on est.
Quoi que ce soit que tu cherches
Il ne l'a pas, ile ne garde pas ton bonheur.
Mais on est prêt,
Tu vois que, malgré que tu ne sais rien,
Quoi que ce soit que tu ne connais pas,
N'empêche pas la verité.

Tu penses que tu le connais,
Mais ta peur te montre quelque chose d'autre.
Tu apportes ton visage,
Joues avec sa masque, ton jouet,
La problème se voit
Quand tu te fais profond,
Et après, tu sentis la verité,
que c'est pas comme là,
qu'il est doué et gardé innocent
Lorsque tu te trouves désespéré,
dévalué, diminué.

On chante le même refrain.
«Tu ne sais pas»
«Tu penses que tu es special,
Mais c'est juste un sentiment banal,
une risque carnale,
problème seulement cérébral.»
Tu es comme lui,
Mais pas quand tu te fais vert
de tout ce qu'il éprouve,
A travers des yeux colorés,
imparfaits, aveuglés.

Passe une pensée à ton âme
Qui veut que vous vous connaissiez.
Ne cherche pas l'amour,
Voire le sens que tu prends pour ça,
Et reste heureux
Sans lui, bien que sache qu'il est.
Pas ce que tu as fait de lui.
Il est. Il juste est.
Laisse l'éspace clair, propre.

Pensées

Parmi les pensées,
les pensées,
fleurs belles -
rien ne s'oppose;
Parmi elles,
la vie morose,
la vie extraite
dingue, sourire
dingue, sentiment
étrange.

J'ai peur que tu
me trouveras
parmi mes pensées,
dupe, décédé,
Une peinture inachevé
manquant des touches
finales;
sans pensées,
sans pensées.

Trop de temps;
je jure que notre rêve
je revais seul.
A notre foi,
je croyais, sûr -
folle erreure,
folle chanson,
fausse beauté
encombrée de fleurs.

Celles du Mal,
pas fleuries;
sauf les pensées
qui me reprochent,
qui me chantent
leur refrain-conseil:
Renonce-y.

Une perte, d'une partie
dont j'étais, perdu
arrêté avant d'être resolu,
trop d'espoirs flous,
l'orage après nous -
Du trou
à l'intérieur,
où sont plantées
les pensées,
les pensées.

Tous Les Lampadaires

Tous les lampadaires,
brillants,
sont juste comme les moments,
passant
devant moi;

donc j'ai sauté
dans le taxi
et j'ai payé
mon prix;
voilà,
je connais
ma destination,
mais je n'suis pas
là, dans les rues.




"Street Lights"
de Kanye West
(traduit)

Ent In This Moment

Oui.
Je voudrais commencer avec ça. Because
the allowing makes way for what cannot be seen,
yet will be; what is, is.

Demain, dans un recoin d'un lieu inconnu,
quelque chose s'arrivera.
It will become the precursor to the written word, spoken by battled pathways, upon journeyed pipelines from whence the tears of solemn seeking ambled.
At first, terrified.
but then - triumphant in its trek
now tesselating towards tomorrow's today.

Try.
Follow the path, three doors down, instructions written on the other side of the panelling that lines these walls; beyond these corridors lie lies; and here, ushering new existence, stillness carries out the weaving of the fabric of life, majestic in sound, incomprehensible in reality, yet existent nonetheless, uninvited but inviting as a sweet dew to the soul's morning herbe.

I shiver, and here it rains. Il pleut de l'âme, because what else could sheen so brightly in the moonlit circumference of the prayer.
And it glides - outwardly touching within, explained nowhere, but witnessed everywhere and remembered anywhere here. Dans ce moment.

Ce moment. Ent, a tree root's knot in a bowl of
glass, fathered hymns,
praise, honour and grace,
ce moment, ent-ire worlds aloud,
in tie are worlds allowed,
and I, our world's a loud
memetic colouring book.

En Arrière

Chaque partie de moi, chacun on voit,
Chacun on trouve dans mes éspoirs,
Chacun on cherche dedans ma paume,
Dessous de la peau que je ne peux pas appeler
la mienne.

Mais voilà, on cherche sans entraves
Jusqu'au jour qu'on peut découvrir
Le sourire de mes bras, et leur verité,
Leur appel à l'âme, à la vie étrange,
oubliée.

Ça sent comme l'herb divin, le déjà trouvé.
Et puis, gardant l'histoire de mes échanges,
Je choisis l'autre option, la seule
Lorsqu'on se regarde en face, grâce à ce qu'on
ne peut pas voir.

J'ai photocopié mes émotions sur ma paume
Afin d'être capable de lire ce que je sens
quand je me cherche pour l'avenir.

C'est ma main, que je laisse
Me faire entendre, tandis que
Mes yeux s'occupent du reste, sauf,
Bien sûr, le bien-être de mon oeil
dedans.

La Peur d'Être Faux

Je me trouve souvent entre plusieurs mondes,
assis, quelquefois accroupi tenant fermement
les genoux à ma poitrine, regardant entre eux
comme s'ils étaient des grilles d'une balustrade
sur laquelle je pourrais m'appuyer; et entre eux,
je verrais en bas, ce qui se trouve en face à moi,
ma peur, amplifiée et avec sa force renouvelée,
un sourire mécanique qui rappelle la folie
sur un visage des visages, renvoyant
un fac-similé.

Inbetween No Man's Land

Un enfant tient au gaz d'échappement. Il le respire et le gaz voyage à travers son cerveau aux fins minuscules de rue, de monde, d'endroit connu et de lieu imaginaire. C'est le chocolat chaud qui frappe les nuages, et la pensule avec laquelle on mange la soupe.

And if by any chance one would listen to words as if they were drenched and leaked off the page into the estuary of someone's palm, maybe that someone close by who had auditory nerves enfleshed into their fingertips, one would realise that sense is not made by the chorus of the crowd but by the imagery of the spark that desires to make. But it can't make what it wants, only what it must. However, it can only make what it must when it is what it wants. The first part of the first statement is then not true, and we have an argument where logic takes a seat and watches bored in a corner on a fold-out chair. Shenanigans. So far, the lines have been blurred little, but the sense has not been made. Or has it? Do you get it yet? As you sit in your chair, are you comprehending that what I am writing here is not what I am writing here? And can you also see that no one is writing, that it's all been done, thought, processed, dried, revered, clasped, probed and pieced before you even sat down? Can you see I am being self-conscious? Can you really see anything?

Et nous arrivons ici avec beaucoup de temps pour réflechir et penser à tout ce que ne fait rien. Désolé si je semble existentialiste. Je viens d'être étonné par la guerre entre moi et moi-même, encore. Encore, ça survit. Mais aujourd'hui je me rends compte que c'est bizarre. Ce n'est pas naturel. Ce conflit... c'est tout dans mon esprit, avec des aspects mis en lumière de temps en temps dans mon monde.

This place is dark. It sucks. The corner shadows of the mind in which fear rests restless seem to be static to the ephemeral attempts to think them out. Glorious syntax, will you please unfurl? I don't like praying to doorways. So can there not be so much inbetween? Because it's just so darn confusing. Clarity, please turn on the light. I know you're in the room somewhere and just too obvious to see. I want to see you now, c'est-à-dire, I want to see. Properly. Truly.

In light.
En lumière.

It all comes back to the man in the mirror. I fight and blame someone else and then learn to forgive them and myself. And it all circles back to me. Ultimately though, the biggest fight I can have is with myself, my ego. Against nothing.

And because this doesn't make sense, I am watching it dissolve into the light.

Viens

This lack, this lack I feel is like nothing that is real. It wants me to be free to be enslaved. It wants something? How does it want something when it isn't something real? Twist not, knots. Preen some feathers further away from distraction, into solitude. Crayons, landslide, epitome, sustenance, spelling mistakes with the arrows of ink. Emotion.

Compris? Moi, non plus. Le point? Aucun. Surprise!

I have said before, there is no gap here. I have continued to perceive one, for I have thought it served me, but it is increasingly dawning on me that there is no gap and there is no need for a gap. A gap is a void, and a void is empty. Why would we need such an illusion when what we would have it filled with is here all along, untouched? I don't have an answer because there is none, as there isn't supposed to be - remember, it is a void. Voids are empty, therefore as unwelcome as they might be, they are still barren and desolate. And I am not. So I do not belong there, but where love is.

So love, I invite you. You are shining your light and I am beginning more and more to see it. I want this miracle, and I have it. Love, come.

Viens. Mes bras sont ouverts, et mon coeur est le tien.

Adieu

One day, we will say
We used to be okay
Before all of this happened.
It's tiring now
Those dreams we fought for
Will never come true
As we thought they would.
They never do

Everybody loses something
Somebody sings about it
Everybody fights for nothing
Somebody cries about it
Nobody lifts their gaze
Anybody can ignore
Nobody remembers grace
Everybody smiles no more.

Adieu, mon feu, adieu,
Personne ne peut entendre
Rien ne peut surprendre
Ceux qui se détournent de tout.

Adieu, mes yeux, adieu,
La vie morose vous attend
Si vous restez endormis
Lorsqu'il pleut... adieu, adieu.

Will anybody be somebody true,
Will somebody bring anybody through?
Will everybody cease sleepwalking
When there's nobody else left talking?

Am I just a simple step away
From falling off the edge?
Is this wind that makes me sway
About to predicate revenge?

Oh it's sweet
Oh so sweet,
So bitter, bitter, bitter sweet.
My last adieu
Shall be from me
And in its symphony
I will be set free.

Vague Vagues

1) Live the Life You Want
Emotion. Such a thing courses through my veins under the deceptively persuasive guise of lifeblood. It surges from my aortic pump into places of other biological import and teaches them shades of shared sentiment: la tristesse, la colère, la honte, la peur, or a viable concoction consisting of any combo of the previous and the unmentioned so that, on demand, when the command center utters its instructions, the expansive plethora of feelings can dip into its colors and manifest a condition under which each organ can play in an orchestral manner. This rich culture is further enriched by long sentences, symbolic of their journey, but also of their ephemerality. That decisive punctuation mark, little in size, is a segment of finality. Its presence is telling. It is defiant and seemingly otherworldly. It ceases, it ends and as such it is feared. It is a doorknob which can, when turned, open the door for emotion to enter. In it comes. Out it goes. Personne ne comprend. Nobody. It is with this apparent caveat that I ponder emotion in vague vagues. The road behind me was paved with good intentions, with the silent hope that there would be something ahead, and voilà. I never wanted to go to hell. I forget where I came from, but I made a wrong turn somewhere I can't go back to. No loading a previously saved game.

2) Corners
Nobody looks at me. I walked on, giving in to clichés. I played my cards with subtlety as to not give away my game but I created an image for the other players to look at. Call it my poker face, sans the sexual undertone introduced by Lady Gaga, or maybe just a little of that dressing, for influence my behavior it did. This image, which glues all the players together, which builds them up when they are down, worked for a while, when thoughts could be manipulated. But things have changed and I don't have the same cards in my hands. I can't play the same way with the different circumstances. I can change my tactics, but... I want to stop playing, really. You could mistake my jeu de cartes as a metaphor for life, but I precisely mean it to be an ironic symbol for the absence of made-up rules. Language, socialisation, is all a game with apparent winners or losers. But nobody looks at me. I sometimes think of myself as a winner, walking down the street, music in my ears. When I play the loser, I walk slower, head down, to the lament of a sad song that I feel is attempting to capture my sentiment. Life is not a music video. There's nobody watching each one but the people that make them, with their stories, so it's all in their heads. No one else cares. Everybody is too concerned with their own card games . So there's really no reason to lie in the corner, hunched, seemingly protected by the two walls that join behind. There might be a singer crying and validating somebody's abandonment, but they don't know, they aren't aware. Disillusionment is not revolutionary. I wasn't going to do anything very impressive actually, but attention is something we give and receive. The balance is ever-present and unchanging. This is why nobody looks at me. I don't like to look at them and when I do, I don't always want them to look back at me because, just maybe, they might see truth in my eyes, sign/sneer, and turn away. In those eyes, I might see myself, but there would be no place for me to turn, cornered.

3) The Silence of Those Who Lie
Deception plays its part and li(n)es are cast in the waters, baiting the restlessly foolish, begging them to fall into the net and believe. Losers... they'll want to be winners later which means that there will be more losers and then we'll have a food chain. But you know, it's all fake. There's no meaning anywhere, no significance that we can point to and say "This absolutely means something." In God, we do not trust. In ourselves, we have no faith. In nothing, do we believe. In nothing, we do believe. When it's dark, we turn away, avoiding what is not there, because we think it is there. And we lie about it. We say we are strong, we are brave, we are wonderful, we are powerful, we are free. We mean something, we are more, yet we call each other less. We play with meaning like it's something when it's nothing. And while we play the game, we are silent.















Notice the irony?

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.

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.

Ephemeral

Ce soir, je me suis rendu compte d'une chose.
Days go by, and I seem to have a desire to enjoy most.
Mais, je m'attends aux jours que je sais que je ne les aimerai pas.
And such a cycle goes on and on and on and on.
Jusqu'à je le remarque.
I wonder if it is my thinking that causes such fluctuation.
On serait d'accord avec moi.
There are thoughts which work their way around my consciousness.
Elles viennent de mon passé.
But is it really my own past?
Je ne vois que les choses qui n'existent plus.
The possibility of this seems to be rather null.
Cependant, je peux la reconnaître comme un paradoxe.
I see all things around me and know them to only be imprints upon my mind.
J'ai appris.
For usage in need.
J'ai essayé d'oublier.
But it is not the way.
Je dois désapprendre.
And I must make the journey back.

The light at the end of the tunnel is most certainly not an oncoming train, lest I somehow believe it is. No, the light is a reminder. Of what I am, of who I am. My journey through the tunnel is ephemeral, for soon I am to realise that I am here, light, and that the tunnel was merely an illusion, never having been there.

Foreign Place, Foreign Face

Unfamiliar voices with familiar accents, a worthwhile combination I am presented on the sixth floor. Climbing up the stairwell, I dared eye the ground down there. Incognito faces walk towards points on an unseen horizon, a place where I could have been going. At the receptionist, the lady had a stern face, cold, almost as if she was forced to be welcoming, but calm, as if she was really nice just having difficulty speaking English. A foreign face in a foreign place, her and me, foreign to each other too.

Seriously, I felt like a child in a loose crowd of adults going their own way. It was a kind of out-of-place experience, a feeling that I think will dissipate as I actually join this world. Mental snapshot, with descriptions, in no particular order:

1) Girls behind a concrete column that probably held the building up so that it would not collapse and cause a scene. They are talking what sounds like politics, in common English, fluent. Something about Iraq? Having an opinion on what should happen with some people?
2) Sex. Joking. Bald man talks to a woman at a table in what I thought was French but turned out to be English in a French accent. Makes sense, since this is the French Languages office. I expected more French, the natal language the receptionist spoke but chose instead to adhere to the norm and speak English in her European accent. Cool with me :)
3) There, in the bookshelf by the bald man and the woman, a variety of thick Le Robert are aligned.

All the aforementioned made me feel like a child yet to attain the level of expertise and intellect that the university seemed to require. Did I feel inferior? No, just uncultured. This was a think tank with a reputation that had its own gravity and momentum.

Despite this sentiment, I did what I came here for - to enrol for French. And I did - after getting lost for a few minutes trying to find the Arts Office.