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.

The Work Of Air Upon Ink

(By not defining poetry,
I can make man sane, with the arch of a brow
by pen, my mark made mine by
possession,
an ugly weaning of the crepuscule
and synthesis
of words, concepts and other ordures from the rebel's dictionary.)
I can kiss the rain, because lips are
everywhere, perfectly positioned
to fall unto mine,
a sweet deluge weeping for the loving touch
of my pen;
is it here,
ticking streaks upside stretched
cut throat
basting on the widened alleyways of my
grin right now, between one sensational lip and
the other limb, erect
to fool the folds
and cracks of that eager smile,
eager to sip the ink, curdled vomit
passing soon, drip,
dripping wasted life, life I could have given,
out of the corners of the mouth
that produced the kiss of the tempest,
in my choking voice?

Attraversiamo

I couldn't compare this year to a kiss from a rose because I've never been kissed, particularly not so sensually or invigoratingly. A year ago nearly, I started this blog, this space of expression, ushered by an idea from a friend, one who walks by me. I wanted to write, so this, finally, was that opportunity to put something out there and have it reflected back and not disappear into the nether of the rubbish bin. About anything, about something, about nothingness itself, I wrote, experimentally, experientially, discovering that writing was a means of communication and connection, of courage and unity and the exploration of emotion, thought. It's a canvas, on which I can either paint an infantile abstract piece, or be blessed with something closer to art that's a window into my soul. So I can see it. So you can see it. And from the statistics that Blogger collects regarding my blog, it's not been a very widely-accessed experience, which I accept. Thus I can say that this space resembles more a spring in solitude than a photographed fountain in the centre of Rome, with statues in dynamic positions and coins carpeting the bottom. Looking for love, looking for the eternal, looking for happiness, that is what I had in mind, and each post, then, was my coin, my wish, my prayer, this being the 125th.

I began the year without much knowledge of where I was going, except to university, which was to be dreaded and revered, and therefore not very helpful as a goal seeing as it could be anything I made it out to be. Life was in my hands after high school, though I was to realise later that it was not perched warmly in my palms but coursing through the veins in my fingers, and like the blood there, it wasn't in my control. I wanted to know more about myself, so I went on and began a journey of self-discovery. Fears, shame, guilt, stress, all emotions that I had felt before, would come at my door and I was supposed to open it for them. I had some new unwelcome guests too, such as jealousy, desperation, insanity, heartbreak. I'd seen them in movies before and in the lives of those around me, but oh, I did not expect them to come caroling at my doorstep, and yet life did guide them there. Hesitantly, I let them in, then at various times kicked them out, then after pacing back and forth in the hallway, I opened the door again, and they walked back in, temptation hand in hand with itself, so pleased to see me, and later to lure me with its sex. Beyond being host to this cauldron of negativity, I had been blessed with signposts everywhere I looked, telling me what I needed to do to entertain the guests or to be a better host. Friendships formed, friendships strengthened, friendships stilled and weathered the teacup storm that started when clouds gathered.

I started university in March. Stressed, I experienced a sense of loneliness that I had thought had been buried back in Year 9. It was a bitter, alcoholic aloneness: addictive because it placed upon me thoughts I did not want to think but which I ultimately scooped up again from the sands of time and built a crumbling mound I'd pretend was a castle. Suddenly, the world had opened up for me, and I did not see myself in it. The tempest had begun, trying to find my shelter before it was too late. But I wasn't quite getting to that place of safety anytime soon. I don't think I was meant to get to that ideal place at all, and every pocket of sunshine I could find, I basked in half-heartedly, aware the rain would come back in again and I'd get wet. I changed my clothes, my approach, several times, but that wasn't going to stop the weather. So, instead of racing away from the eye, I was instead guided towards it. The centre. Where the demons lay together and fornicated. I received "A Course In Miracles" in the mail. I thought to do the course, it wouldn't hurt to find some answers that the introduction promised. It specifically said I didn't need to believe each day's lesson, just follow it. With that guarantee, I went for it. Spiritual awakening beckoned.

I don't remember what I thought it would be, but this was not it. The course emphasised completion, devotion, courage, presence, gratitude, all which have taken turns to teach me this year about life, about what I had missed, about what I have held in my past like an idol to commit suicide over. But it was not just about learning, it was also about experience. Suffering was tearing me apart below the surface, and habitually, I would try to understand the shit out of it and then it would make some fleeting sense and I'd be happy, until it stopped making sense. What I learned was that I could not, could not, could not, understand it all. And if I couldn't solve my problems, then, woah, there would be pain, content to suck on my life like it came out of my teat to nourish this cute, pudgy, infested, destructive baby. My mentality took a serious beating, and I had to question everything, what people meant to me, what I meant to myself, what I was doing, whether I was hurting people, whether I was who I thought I was. The perfect list of ingredients for overthinking, and that's exactly where it lead me. Thought. So much of it. So much of it unnecessary, because it was unable to answer those questions with certainty.

Certainty, then, came from elsewhere. The course lead me to God, or the universe, or Life, or whatever else you want to call what you cannot call anything. I was to have faith in Him, as I had consciously never had faith in anyone or anything before. Here was my life, on a platter that I'd chewed the silver from in my overthinking. Here it was, for God's taking. I have to surrender it completely, for the decision to have a transformative effect. I have let go of many things, but there still are some that I yet hold on to, still fears, lies, things I am ashamed of, things that burden my heaven and make me confuse it with hell. I am confident that I will let go of all of those, simply because I am willing. When and how, I don't know, but I do still have until sometime in early April 2011, when I am scheduled to complete the course. Past that, je ne sais pas encore. There are still lessons to be learned. Yet this is an appropriate time to reflect, as I have learned enough to witness a change. I don't know how old I am, mentally. I don't know whether I am gay, or straight, or bi, or a, or b, or c. I feel a sense of resentment towards being packed into a labelled cardboard box to be looked upon and segregated into some portion of interpretation. I feel it's detrimental to discovering reality. I don't know what specifically I am supposed to do. But I know that all the answers I need to know, will be given when they are needed, and it is in that promise that I trust. I can't rush everything, nor can I slow it down or numb myself from feeling pain so I can feel just joy. They are mutually exclusive by definition, but underlying them, there can either be unconsciousness, or the peace of consciousness, not both, always one. It comes down to the decision, whether I want the truth, or whether I want deception. Where I feel safe and secure is the criteria on which I base that choice.

The thought philosophy has dominated this period of time since the birth of this blog. I am trying to figure life out. While I watched others go on with their lives, content, taking part in joys and games and at times, their own soul-seeking, I removed myself from the stream of mindlessness that had driven me before so that I could prepare well for an adult life of doing what I was supposed to do. Quite frankly, it comes down to what I want in life, and I knew there had to be more than just chasing pleasure in a game, or a girl, or porn, though I do recognise they have their roles to play. With this realisation, I wanted the truth, I wanted what lay underneath the forms and things that we as people would involve ourselves in as if we were dolls in a house full of props. From situations, I wanted to go beyond to reason, to the mechanics of depth and creativity. I expected an intricate but clear machine; I found nothingness exemplified. Because, really, soul-searching had lead me to a skeleton of myself - dead in form, or at least, dying, ephemeral, but in essence, well, untouched by anything, invulnerable. Perhaps there is a better metaphor for that. I have touched that depth and its beauty is like a well of openness and disregard for difference. And it's really when I let go of thinking that that place is reached. The moment of experience is over and then I open my eyes from meditation and look on the world differently, as if it were all okay, even if there was fighting and politics and advertising and gore and poverty and apathy. For a brief glimpse, I do not even register the suffering, as if it was gone, and it mattered not. Then I slowly scooped it back in, because I thought I had to, as if it were my responsibility as a human being to take on the pain of others when I had some respite. I copy-pasted instead of select-deleted. Then I released back the tide, and that was the back-and-forth experience of finding peace, because it went to and fro. I want to say peace is winning, but the truth is peace isn't fighting, so that would be a moot statement.

I have been blessed this year, despite the war of worlds and words in my mind. Perhaps when one agrees to find themselves and agrees to confront their past with no weapons, just forgiveness, one is greeted with help from previously thought-of-as-unlikely places. Each situation has been and is a lesson. Each person is a brother. And underneath my strict mold of the world, that mental construct I foolishly wore as a protective helmet, I am a brother, too. In that spirit of oneness in which everything real is, I am. This lesson, I found difficult to digest, especially when there were those around me who were very different outwardly, who had different goals, approaches, behaviors. More often than I would like to admit, but I do here anyway, my ego has played the part of a victim, ever the attacked, ever the one who is hurt. Other times, my ego was the conqueror, dealing blows to other egos. Yet behind these masks, I am to learn that we are all the same. This is a glorious truth, but one I know not if I can impart but merely point to, one I yet bring to the world because I still believe there are exceptions to, even though there are not. I have talked with friends, at times nearing a point of desperation, and in those moments of vulnerability was revealed the river of love I had been searching for elsewhere, in the wrong places. In case you wonder, I talked about behavior, personalities, hopes, fears, pain, suffering, guilt. Identity too. Things I would normally stray away from but was needing answers to. And friends were happy to steer my vessel in the right direction, whether they were aware of it or not. That's another interesting thing that's happened this year, I've gone under the radar and achieved so much personal growth, without many people noticing. Help, signposts, have come from close friends to strangers to strange situations to music and literature. I figure if I am willing to give myself to life so that it can use me for whatever it wills, then it would point and guide me in the right direction, and if I deviate from the path, it would come and show me the way back after a pep talk and a realisation or two. But I don't want to create a tornado or some other dramatic turn of events. I want to quietly find peace and then radiate it through my impersona so that those surround me may find their own lives more pleasant and enlightening, wherever they are on their own journeys.

Ultimately, I want to be loved, but I also want to give love, as I have before. Giving and receiving is the same thing. In the spirit of unconditional love, I would learn that love knows no boundaries, no definitions, no traffic lights nor walls. I expected at the beginning, foolishly, for someone to tell me that they loved me unconditionally, and then I would impart all my pachyderm belongings onto their ass and I would be a free mule alongside them. Bull. Yes, others can love you if you don't love yourself, but you cannot know it unless you love yourself in some way, at least a tiny bit, somehow, tucked away beneath layers of difficulty. This year has taught me that I can tell you nothing about love as you may want to hear it. I have never been with anyone intimately, so I cannot give any stories of romance or consuming bodily passion. Yet what I know of love, is that if it really is love, that is, if it is without reserve, then all it is is a recognition of yourself. You are love. And so am I. I am writing these words but language cannot encompass such completion, wholeness. From memory, I don't think I've felt it wholeheartedly. But I want to. And it will come when it will come, but I know it will come now.

Love is everything, and there's nothing else. Love is the word that I use, but I use it loosely. I like love. It sort of symbolises peace and contentment and fulfillment and joy all in one. Perhaps it's not very focused in my mind, but I don't hold on to it. I find myself saying 'true love' now instead of love because of all the changes to the term, not that adding 'true' makes it more true, it's just easier for me to know what I mean. Like I said though, I can't tell you anything about it, though I've written quite a bit on it. Perhaps it's me pointing to it, for me, for you. Perhaps it's my romantic mind, or my secretive desire to express emotion in a world that doesn't value it to the extent that I see it, especially coming from someone of my gender.

I am grateful for so many things, so many people, some that know themselves, some that may not yet. I appreciate you, for sharing your life with me by reading this. Everything really, even the 'bad' stuff, for it came up and showed me where I needed to change. The puzzle pieces fit perfectly, even if it all looked like a mess on the floor when I began. Now it's beginning to look like what it was meant to look like, life. I feel like I am right where I need to be, and I have faith in the gentle light of guidance that I am going where I need to go, home.

Attraversiamo.

Mote Of Life

Unfinished writing on a half
written page of a half-
filled book of words
that would mean something
if sentences would
complete,
paragraphs would
end,
chapters would
close,
verses would
flow
down

further

down a falling wave,
suspended continuity,
forgotten serenity,

down
further to

a whitewash of text
that doesn't really make any sense
but it keeps gurgled suspense
that extends
outwards
towards

Down Through The Water

On a sailboat, I sprint for the purpose of my life. I run faster than I can, outrunning the pursuing thoughts with their wood-splintering weapons. I speed my way past the glare of onlookers, past my friends who wave blank regards. Past them, I see my fear, exploding with excitement. What I never did was stop to look, to awe and be terrified. No potty on the seas. The sea is my potty and, ironically, I have indigestion. I transcend my walls and go where no fear has ever been before.

Why does my writing sound like this? Self-conscious, self-aware (sometimes), self-concerned... it's embodied my insecurity for me. If I don't look at myself - my writing by extension - I feel I don't make sense, or that anything else I write doesn't matter because it doesn't directly include me. Me, me, me, me. Selfishness is with me on a sailboat. Let's drown. I will survive.

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.

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.

Second Week

The second week of university has come to a close a few hours ago - the weekdays at least. The weekend is still ahead, a time for reflection, relaxation and rest. I've gotten more used to the university experience now, so I feel more comfortable with it. Tutorials were interesting and interactive and the psychology lab was short and sweet. A highlight among these was today's English tutorial. We were asked to write for seven minutes without thinking. To spark off this journey into the known unknown, the tutor wrote on the board "It's funny the things we remember..." I started off writing about Commander Keen, the game I used to play in childhood, then went through a discussion which features computer comparisons, a trophy cabinet, a question in French, followed soon by an expressive question about the journey I take during life, having been through so much, yet so little, and heading somewhere, but not knowing the destination. The degree does not matter, for it is nonexistent.

What a question. Following the writing down, some of us were asked/invited to read out a piece or all of what they wrote. People around me intentionally (I think) did not make eye contact with the tutor, but I did not deviate, something he noted. I read out what I wrote, and as I did so, I felt my face warm, partly at the idea that I was sharing something personal, partly at the triumph that I was sharing something that came from behind the 'protective' veil of thoughts and warnings. At one point in the middle I think I got a chuckle, but once I was finished I looked up, I don't remember how many clapped out of the dozen+ people that followed the tutor's example. Victory? Pourquoi pas. But it is not a war, death is not the aim. He commented on my expressiveness and how the discourse came out from within me. He said something like it sounded like a novel. Cool.

About not remembering the applause. This has occurred times before. When I have won an award and I have been congratulated, the procedure that follows is clapping. The most I've gotten was during last year's awarding of the highest academic prize offered by my high school. I remember it very faintly, possibly because I received the majority of it as my name was announced and I moved onto the stage. I think there was whistling too, but I was nervous. Heart was beating, I could feel it, sentimentally visible within my body. Blood was pumping, rushing throughout my body. Maybe then that the memory of the experience was erased partly or adjusted in order to prevent trauma or shock? En tout cas, I enjoyed the moment. Few months on, I think back. What does it mean? That's the question that I asked in my writing. That is the question that I am asking? What is the point?