I i, I

Who am I?

I start everything with that, whether I leave a space for it or not, but that's where it all begins. From there stems reinforcement and building blocks of some structure I would not mess with, lest I feel afraid to press backspace and erase all evidence of the mistakes I've made. So, before I give the answer, let me leave another world and come back more courageous.

Seeing for the First Time

I've left the ghost behind
at the entrance to the void.
Now
I amble away
from the park bench
to the moon,
which I can reach because
I don't believe in distance.
The moon is here,
wherever I am.
Isn't that wonderful?

I always refer to myself as a capital letter, that's how I was taught English. But I reckon I'm actually an i, not an I. An I is a colonnade, holding up what is above, stories from rooms and roomfuls of semantics. An I is a vertical bridge to heaven, crossed by a little work of art that no one really knows by name, nor by author, but by distant recognition. An I is the world of safekeeping, but a bar in the windowless prison of mind, behind which all secrets are stashed away. An I is the shadow of a larger I, which is the shadow of an even larger I, big in presence. The I is the pole around which sense turns and imitates. Yet this isn't me, because although language believes I am capable of being capital, majestic, purposeful, I am incomplete as of yet, an i.

i am the symbolic gesture of a man who's looking across a gap to something of his kindred that is out of his reach though not out of his consciousness. i am the pedestal upon which floats some crystal ball of meaning. i am the angel grounded with the halo suspended in the air above him, lighting his surroundings as a sun, as yet untouchable. i am that which appears in situations and in warriors and in kisses and in rain. i am forgiving, willing to see beyond the space that seems to separate what has been believed lost from what appears to struggle to keep together. i am writing something somewhere here, sometime, with my purpose imagined, though inexplicably seized as reality. i am nobody, touching the eternal. i am everybody. i am somebody, too, a pez dispenser, a severed giant, a slope ready to welcome a boulder. i am even, these words.

Language may have taken a leap to signpost reality. I is inclusive. i am not, as evidenced by the gap. I is higher, dominant; i, incomplete. Line and a dot, more code, more secrets. I is representative of wholeness, identity with all. i but pretends, aspires, yet is nothing. Language has given me the impression that I is the embodiment of totality, while i am fragmented. According to the rules, i am I though. So I have come masked in this existence, standing tall, the bearer of responsibility. But really, i am frailer, unsure, supposedly something that is, as yet, unfinished. But I am to assume the completed form, to show my invulnerability, immutability, the self that stands centered around which sentences orbit and semantics gravitate.

I am all, so then i must be in there somewhere too. Now there are two of me, the me of now, and the me of anything but now: past, future, all other tenses but the present. Everything to i is relative then, because what occurs is never the whole picture, just details, pixels, morsels, bits. But I has everything, together, connected in all ways, full, wholesome. With this known, the realisation dawns on me, that i don't know who i am. i could be whoever, whatever, because I am everything. As such, i have a double-identity, the I and i, though one is inclusive of the other. The question of who am I thus ought to refer to the i, because I already know the answer. The i represents something, has some place, occupies some space. I was wondering what its meaning would be, but now I am not so worried, having already the answer to everything in me. Perhaps the i just is one path, this path taken now, to the discovery of everything. i am concerned with what will be and what has happened before, where i will go, but I only experience it as now, and now, here, all is known. So all problems, fears, come from the i trying to be I, a next to nothing trying to be everything and failing, being limited. Yet I can never fail, and so i find my purpose when i meet with I now.

Just stay here, now, I tell i.
i respond to I. I i, I.

Afterthought

Horizontally, they play the keys on the piano
together, never how we used to be. I am
waiting on my bed - no. I am not waiting.
I thought I saw the little words, I read them -
no. I skipped some. Never yours. Never mine.
Planned our future, blueprints for my lie,
and unfurled it lies next to me, in your spot.
I look now and see that there's nothing there.
There's relief, there's an unencumbering, then
there's the question of the space to be filled.
You were never meant to be here, you were not
the one. Funny how I held on, clipped to a wisp
from a thought, in the hush of an angel's wingbeat,
yelling out at echoes. Tipsy, burned clean,
we stand not hand in hand but keys apart,
in the same symphony, notes for another heart.

Faith To Let Be, To See, Really

Can you imagine, how it feels, the day you decide to walk on by, past excuses, past the little cowards of encouragement, through the wispy veil of fear, and out into the light? There, where the rain reminds you of rebirth and not the gloom of past days kept sickeningly frozen, you'd finally see me. Not with your eyes, but with your breath. Not with your ears, but with the thousandths of inches of spaces in between your freckles. You'll realise that death parted us not, but that we forgot to laugh our puerile confusion away. I'm smiling as I write this. I remember what it was like, before we lost ourselves to who we weren't. Funny moment. Funny timelessness. Inoubliable, yet it passed and the skies felt grey when drops dropped from it. What happened?
What happened to us?

I am here, in the sentiment of the day, experiencing fullness to the rim yet patiently waiting to overflow; for you, to come beyond the doors. To smile. A genuine regard never looks at something, but beyond it. When you look him in the eyes, you but gaze into me. You hate him. And you fight for him because you want him close to you, you want to prolong the pain. Just days ago, you willed peace, and it was given you, the feeling that you are. And you still are. What happened that made you look away from the mirror? Did you see a glint in his eyes, a fabled attraction, the hallucinatory guise of attack, about to pounce? Were you scared? Were you doubtful of his trust in you, or yours in him?

This is a crisis of faith. You and the magical window. I talk about reflections, them being everywhere. Sometimes you look and see them, then a shiny surface again scares you. Because you don't see yourself in it.

But you're in them, I know this, yet it makes you want to run aground, push back the ocean so you can hide away from it. Fear isn't real. What you are afraid of, this enemy that you perceive you are, is not there. But you hate him. That's what it sounds like. But if you looked not into his eyes but beyond them, you'd find yourself there, but without the timorous visage.

You don't trust him because you don't see you're him. You lose faith in God because you forget He's there. You choose not to listen. You choose not to see. You choose not to be who you are, because, love scares you. You are so petrified of being hurt by what cannot hurt. You stone man, you can walk because your feet are not frozen. You can sing because your tongue is not still. You can speak because your breath has motion.

It's not any of these things that makes you alive, though. You know.

Faith. And Love. And Joy. And Harmony. And Peace. Sweet Peace. It is all here, where we are.
Let me show you.

Taste

Reprieve; a guided hand knows where the land rears and where the seas part. It knows nowhere, although it extends from a place so vast and lost in space; that is where he can be found.

He ground the last of the coffee as if they had been the first coffee beans exported from Brazil. Fresh off the boat, they exploded under the crushing incising of the titanium blades, attached to a raging, screaming motor by a middle-aged Chinese worker in a factory. Fine powder went into a Corphala mug and it lay there, tepid and dry. Coffee. Someone's salary. Someone's morning pick-me-up-(and-stay-with-me-until-work-finishes). Not his. His was for someone else who needed the caffeine to stay awake. Orget (Orjay, for anglophiles) slept just fine and could now greet the day with someone else's drug. He poured the boiling water into the mug and watched the steam snake its way to just before his nostril vacuum. Still working properly. And with all the sheer momentum of the blades in the grinder and the suck of his lungs, he grinned last, before the unflattering glob of salivation collapsed onto the surface of the black, black sea - his present for the manager, his man-ager.

Your Beautiful

The fragrance of your smile
The womb of your indifference
The flight of stairs for a mile
The whole lack of penitence.

The peace in your heart
The marshmallow gaze
The presence from the start
The most familiar haze.

The riddling laughter
The broken lies
The prose right after
The sudden ties.

The four lines
The feather
The two signs
Together.

The she
The you
The me
The true.

Your face
Your pupil
Your space
Your beautiful.

Release

The past is gone and today I wake up and feel freer than the day before. My day is not burdened by what happened last night, by the expectations that I would have held on to or by the easier-said-than-done task of keeping everybody happy. Those mental schematics fell through the shallow floor into the nothingness they came out of. I could have tried to control how the night went but I knew I was out of my league and doing that would have created more stress and worry. And so, we started off with so-and-so number of people and slowly they all went their separate but clustered ways. And I don't resent them for it, although the past 'me' would have felt very beaten and ashamed and let down. One could take it as a metaphor for the life experience, but then again one could take any part of the whole and see in it reflected the whole. No surprises there.

This morning I woke up and I am still here. I realise I am. And the frail defenses against the enemies of no one have been taken down.

I figure that anyone reading this blog, likely someone that knows me over someone that doesn't, would not particularly understand what I am talking about, or where I come from. The words paint a picture that I have not so far been able to see from another point of view but my own. To me, it is sometimes clear, sometimes deliberately not. To others... I don't know. This is 'my' space, and if all the writing were to disappear from the site, I would still remain.

The Way Beyond The Walk

I hear the rain pulling out the rift of space
between my facial features and my feeling
of abandonment. It dries up the pale light
of peace. Some corpse lies on a table alone,
undergoing instructions to shrivel. Sand
remains remain to remind one is yet free.

Remember the voice of silence, yelling "Free
yourself!" Now I have given it more thought space;
see I have drawn with a mental stick in the sand
my aspirations. These schematics, feeling
has kept firm and unbent. Now that I am alone,
I can exhume them to be burned by the light.

Friendships, relationships, secrets in the light
of truth, their funeral is nigh. Let me free
also my buried heart, a symbol left alone
far longer than desired. Amidst found space,
I gather from below the surface of feeling
like I understand, a feather kept by sand.

I used it to write down names, scribblings in sand,
of those who I held dear. Carved, when met by light,
they still shine, resplendently touching, feeling,
setting their etched presence and nuances free.
Perhaps in my voyage, I may roam in space
for them. Maybe not. Maybe I journey alone.

Yet this path is too well-traveled - the alone
eventually find it, don't they? Breathe. Sand
parts and the windswept realms greet me with the space
to find my way. My luggage gone, I trip light.
I am not even burdened by want to be free
and so, I rest in an embrace of feeling.

Ever, I could not encapsulate my feeling
into expressions where I was left alone.
Now, I reach beyond them to where being free
is but the way beyond the walk in the sand
of mind. Joined are the granules, in purest light,
permeating the dunes on the shores of space.

I am free of any bounding feeling
That in space, in rain, I am held alone.
In the wet sand, I but follow the light.

We Are

Love, it travels by everywhere,
Reaching us where we are most,
In the heart
In the mind.

I'd digress if I wasn't being honest
When I say I care.

I am learning how to speak from my heart,
Finding out that there are simple ways
To unite those pieces fallen apart
In love.

And for this to occur, there must be peace
There must be acceptance and truth,
There must be the things that are already there
For they have never gone anywhere.

And love, love, it never disappears
For it is more than what meets the eyes,
More than a box of chocolates, more than a surprise,
It's more than what makes it up
Because it's whole.

This sentiment, it yearns to expand
For it holds its holy place in all the land
In all the land
Where it flows, it transforms,
Where it breathes, it seethes,
Where it springs, it knows its way
To a brightest day,
Today.

And it's all around, in every space,
Upon every face,
There is the light of grace
Through which we see.

Are we not lucky?

We are free.
We are love.
In many attitudes, forms and formlessness, we burgeon
And touch each other's hearts with our own.
Whether we cry out in pain or in joy
It is love that we employ;
That which we call upon, we already have
And so we are reminded.

Are we blessed? We are.

We are.

We are.

In 21 Minutes

21 minutes until the 22nd hour of the 12th of May, 2010. Look at all these pixels - see how they are perceived as letters, as words, as coherent sentences, as information to be understood, shared, transformed, transferred, translated, transubstantiated even. When the time reaches a certain combination of pixels, this post will end.

The words of today were guided by trust. They were spoken to be heard, and they were. I was met with faces, with smiles, with a hug at one point. I knew I did not force them to occur. And I have learned not to derive meaning from them but let their significance be told from within instead of from without. Yes, they were humbling, reassuring even. They were more honest, I feel. In my previous game of forming expectations, I had trampled upon the basic feat of friendship - space. Space to let the other people grow, instead of imposing a framework upon them that boxes them in a certain way, like a handicap. Those aren't friendships. But today, I see friendship as unity. Despite the surface paraphernalia and the miscellaneous gesturing, there is an open connection through which smiles emerge and relationships blossom and manifest emotions and support. Do the forms mean anything? I can assign them one, I am capable. But they themselves do not come programmed. Maybe we should let them be, instead of attributing them with ephemeral import where there is none. One can place nothing in nothing, but it won't be something, it will still be nothing.

Amidst this world devoid of meaning, I find there is light where I am, light that I had overlooked. And this light cannot be encapsulated by pixels on the screen. But it's there; not as a mystical ideal, not as a magical energy ball, not as fiction, not as a character from Death Note, but as it is. Objective, I might not seem. Subjective, I may. Cela ne fait rien. Whatever I say comes from here. We can argue, debate, refute. Mais...

"I am light. I am one too strong to fight."

Alignment

You see now?

I see now.
I complicated the whole thing myself by fragmenting it into tiny little pieces and putting them back together. Of course they fit, I treated it like a puzzle, but they were never apart anyway. You can't fix what ain't broken, the saying is right. If it's not broken, there is no need to fix. I didn't need to be fixed either. I needed my space, I needed to see the bigger picture. Voila, I got a glimpse of totality. It's nothing to chase, it's already here. It's simply a matter of alignment. Reality, with what is. They are already aligned, which is what confused me before, but the point is for me to realise that they are one and that there is no elsewhere, for one must be all, which is why we are alone. It's already there, all of it in place.
I heard a story today that I've been wondering about for a while. I didn't know how to react, I may have made some remarks to express my desire, my approval of this story being told. But come now, space. It is here you are, where I am, what I am, who I am. I trust. This is the way. To let be, what is. In my initial silent struggle for an answer, I though the world was on my shoulders, that I was special, that I had some idea that needed to be expressed through me. But I was misguided by my ego. There is no such thing, no weight. There is freedom, responsibility - but no burden. It is love, it is will. Answers are given as they are received. When means nothing because it always is now. What I have is what I am, and neither subtracts from the other. There is no fear, for when I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, there is light.

C'est parfait.

Space

There is space in everything.





It is a silence that we know.








It is the foundation on which rests our beliefs, our forms, our emotions, our thoughts.






Transcend this. Go within.

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.