Vingt

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

Closure

Even though there's less than a lip in between,
I can clearly see where you end, I begin
to wait for symbols but the fibres are thin,
and I measure more than I'd like to have seen
in the distance in between

your words, laundry-pinned to dry in my sun,
hanging from the moment ago they were spun
in drenching new-birth, concatenating with mine
to form the meaning I'd been meaning to sign
in the distance in between

us, and what has happened, what could never be,
there was nothing woven where nothing's to see
and I crane my neck, reading in front of me
the results of what I asked for, honesty
in the distance in between

the self that I aligned myself with, and you
expelling the code that puzzles me through
the silences when we meet, our rendez-vous
from a language I speak to get to what's true
in the distance in between

the vocal chambers that reside in bodies
picking up signals from closer melodies
that sound out help from minds not at ease
like mine, a poet ambling in memories
in the distance in between

where I've done too much searching for your smile,
ghosts have passed a lonelier road in denial
of their release, who I'd joined up with, all the while
talking, yelling, mouthing verbs and nouns, guile
in the distance in between

that I'm trying to overlook even here,
sounding out various prayers to an ear
I imagine is yours, wherever you hear
the fibres telling you that I am near
in the distance in between

where really there's a bridge you laid the instant
when the strings I tugged began their descent
into my sun-deprived consciousness, sent
from the warmth I recalled as an infant
in the distance in between.

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.

Your Isle Of Peace

The start of every life is the birth where we commence to listen and remember. The end is that death that follows the birth. We thus experience something in between, and call it life, because we have lost our faith in the ability to know what was before and what is beyond, both of which are not part of the past nor the respective future, but of the present, that gift which keeps on giving because we ask it to. We are reminded that there is little power in our projection or our memories compared to the moment that we live in now, it being eternal.

Change happens. Street lights light up near evening and cease when the sun catches up. A friend waves from the bus as it wheels away in the same direction where you are going; from the footpath you can see their smile passing. The television delivers a short melody to announce its being turned on, and another before it slumbers on Standby. The comment you wrote on Facebook moves its way down the page as it gives way under the weight of Farmville and Mafia Wars notifications. Smiles :) are seen and left as the eye moves right along the row. In quick succession, cars drive on the street in front of your house as you remain watching from the window. The song you're listening to finishes and then another begins. Hair grows longer and escapes when severed. Pikachu faints because it was poisoned by a Weedle. Your birthday is celebrated with balloons, cake(s), candles, presents, chairs, a table, maybe alcohol, dancing, laughter, chatter, gossip, a spill, two arms holding, clinking, cheering. The clean-up is left up to the restaurant crew or your parents. Your day's one of joy. You are older, officially, and you deem yourself ready to step up and push further the brackets of your horizon, revealing more of what you want: more sunlight, more clouds, more hearts, more voices, more happiness. You feel you can fit more in because today is yours. Take it. Take it.

But don't hold on. Are you not enjoying it because you do not want it to go away? To leave you, to never return? Are you holding on? Stop. Live now, and do not clutch the fears that you are projecting into the future based on a past. Live your life.

Your fingers, wrap them not around an object lest you crush it under the pressure of your dread. I know you want to hold on, to not lose. But objects fall away, they fulfill a use, a purpose, then are discarded, for another purpose. Buildings, systems, grow in size and scope and crumble one day after their birth. With birth, death follows. A beginning, end. And it all happens within the eternal. No, nothing does not last forever, nothing cannot be. There is no thing that we can hold on to because once we hold on, we let go at some point.

Such is the lesson that we need to learn, that the world is impermanent. It changes constantly - thus the only constant is change. And this change, this movement, this process, is a gift. It is your present. Your isle of peace, wherein you can open your heart and cherish life for what it is. It is. Words start and end, and such is not life for it cannot be spoken. You live.