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| february 2003 |
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| Dance | 12:07am friday, 28th february |
Rhythm, run down my leg
and make my feet dance like
someone lit my toes on fire.
I want to dance wildly with
the rain pouring down, with
thunder crashing like huge
cymbals made of sky and earth.
Let the world fall down all
around me, crumbling down
into heaps of crushed concrete:
I'm possessed by the beat,
and nothing's going to smother
my savage groove. Nothing.
And when I die, the rhythm's
going to carry me up the
stairway in the clouds, and I'll
trip the light fantastic through
them pearly gates, dancing
in the streets of paradise —
dancing to remember, dancing
to forget, like a fire in the sky
licking up the cosmic beat.
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| Simple | 12:12am thursday, 27th february |
I imagine that life is not as hard as all that. I think it is very simple, in fact; we just complicate things as we go on — like that tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive. You know what I mean by simple: knock and it will be opened, ask and you shall receive; or if you need a non-Christian wise man to tell you, how about in Zen Buddhism: when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep. It was that simple when we were children, I believe (for most of us, at least). We hadn't had time to muck with the works, at that point — and we most certainly would, later. I think it is no mistake that religions favor being of a childlike spirit to be saved or enlightened or whatnot. They are perhaps saying that we can have that again, the simplicity that life really is, if only we would let it be. To live uncomplicated, an honest life.
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| Night or Dawn? | 1:12am tuesday, 25th february |
I imagine that dawn shines the brightest when it follows the darkest of nights. What shall we remember, then, the night or the dawn? Surely, both may be retained, but I think one or the other would have prominence in our heart. When I, for instance, finally emerged from the pit of my madness, I wished not to recall it at that time. I wanted to move on, look to the future — fulfill some of the potential I had had before the whole row began, and some new potential I had acquired from my experiences within the pit. It took me a long time before I wanted to recall anything of that past psychosis (note that I recovered in 1997, but this journal first appeared in 2001). The dawn, for me, is better remembered.
I have not always been so, I think. I think that night had more fascination for me at certain points in my life. It is not the case now, though: I cannot cling on to that cold, dark mother any more; let light, instead, cast its rays through me the whole way, that nothing need be secret anymore; dawn has warmed the bones of my soul, and I am ready if another night should ever fall upon me.
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| Down and Up | 2:35am monday, 24th february |
There are terrors of night no hand may comfort, no heart calm.
There are joys of day no sorrow will kill, no suffering conquer.
There are those who believe not in such things, and so, live neither.
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| In the Dreaming 2 | 1:44am saturday, 22nd february |
In the dreaming, I went so far into the future I saw the beginning of it all.
In the dreaming, soundless angels (burning with light) tip the world over, and see what spills out.
In the dreaming, I have imagined myself the king of a dead world, ruler only of the tears I shed.
In the dreaming, I have looked into the eye of Oblivion, and I saw the place time goes when it runs out.
In the dreaming, there is a starlit room where one can hear the silver gears of the universe turning.
In the dreaming, there is an unnamed question that lies just below the skin of all I see, something no one ever asks.
In the dreaming, the drift of Heaven's breeze took me up into forever: I'm still there, flying.
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| Split Mind | 12:01am friday, 21st february |
I still feel it: I am a divided man. The term "schizophrenia" is apt for the condition with which I was diagnosed, those years ago; it is from the Greek skhizein "split" + phren "mind". Usually my condition is in a quiescent state, when I am working or among people in general I am basically a normal person. But when I am alone... the little cartoons sometimes still float around in my mind's eye: Rosanna Arquette, the Archangel Michael, Jesus Christ, even the part of me that is "split" from my "main consciousness". I talk to them like they existed, though it is much better than it was, back when — I know on some level they are merely imagination, while in my truly mad times, they had taken over. That is the state of my mind: split into the part that is me and the part that has broken off, displaying spirits to me in quiet minutes alone.
There is nothing to be done about this, I think. It stays hidden from view, as it only comes when no one else is around. It is not distressing, really — the phenomenon has been with me so long I have put it down as old hat, par for the course. Looking at me, you would never know that I routinely talk to angels in my spare time. But no, the other world has no permanent place for me anymore — I am here, now, just as I am, for I am as whole as I need to be, even if for some fleet moments I visit the dreams of my past.
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| Now | 12:03am thursday, 20th february |
Bare your mind and air your dreams,
pour them out your thinking streams:
nothing comes of buried things:
leap a trust on prayer's wing.
Moments slip uncounted, on;
what will be when we are gone?
Time to mark the world our notch,
not to fade as seconds watch.
Courage comes if we are bold,
take to open from our fold:
now to breathe of honest air:
go the yard, for life is there.
This is just forever's hint;
are we just what life imprints?
We before this light to dim,
pen to stroke, these seas outswim.
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| Wonder | 1:01am tuesday, 18th february |
I wonder in the daylight hours of the things spoken in the darkness. In the dream that is my life, there flower quiet things: things I remember that the grand shade of night could not erase when it lifted up from the face of the world, lifted to reveal the new and ancient dawn. I understand — at a depth I knew not I had — some secrets of the hush, intonations of a distant vision that only a whisper can tell. Where have I been, that I conceive of the undertones of creation in vague poetries of logic? Who am I that I speak the language of the waking through the drawl of sleep? Or have I never traveled, merely run in place for one thousand wasted miles, on a quest to look for something that I never lost? I wonder.
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| Windows | 1:26am monday, 17th february |
We are each born, and the world is new to all of us then. We live for a time, and then all of us will die: we only have this window to experience and express ourselves. I think it may be important to realize that even the greatest philosophers, the greatest artists, the greatest scientists had only the window of their lives to view the world and whatever they could of it. The things that last past their years, they all have in common that the chord they strike speaks to the point that people all as they have ever been, whatever cultures they reside in, whatever they know in their living, that human beings are human beings. We are born, we live, we die.
This window of our lives, the years are first long and never pass, and then as we progress toward the end, they get shorter and shorter.... Let us stop and wonder as everyone has always wondered, let us be as everyone has always been. Look around you and see that these people whom you have only seen pictures of, from a distant corner of the world that you will never personally see: these are brothers and sisters of the highest order. We all have hearts that break, we all smile at small joys. We all are born, and the world is new. We all live for a time, and then we will die. These windows we have — they open to the same world outside.
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| Seek | 7:32pm saturday, 15th february |
O, what have I done with my life? How many sins to count?
I think there are secrets about myself even I do not know.
I peer at life through a broken halo, stumbling over hope.
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| Temporary | 12:08am friday, 14th february |
Life, for however many years we experience it, is a temporary thing. Many religions agree on the point, I think the Emergency Broadcast System said it best, "This is a test. This is only a test." That's how I personally feel about the subject, at any rate, that there is a more permanent thing that follows for us. It is not, however, an excuse to shirk our living with vague fantasies that we need only wait for an eternal bliss to come. I was taught before I saw the movie Dead Poets Society the phrase, "carpe diem" — seize the day. However much there would be joy within the gates of Heaven, I wish for a long life, to accomplish all that I can in my days.
The urgent hours pass by so very quickly at this time in my wondering. I feel like I have no time, and yet I spend my spare minutes a vegetable in front of the TV set. I just work, eat, and sleep. In this temporary condition called life, I feel it more and more as the moments progress inevitably on: it is a short time we live, merely a prolonged inhale before we let out our breaths in eternity. Another quote comes to mind, now, just one line from another movie (the rest of it was so-so); from Serendipity: "The ancient Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died, 'Did he have passion?'" What will they say about me? About you?
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| Prophets | 12:13am thursday, 13th february |
I think most of us would never know that the end is coming until it was actually upon us (if it ever does come at all). If something like an Old Testament prophet were to be born in this present day, wailing in the streets of New York City, "Repent, for the end is near! Repent, for the end is near!", not only would people not believe him, I think that in those particular streets, no one would even notice him. Par for the course, nothing at all out of the ordinary. Until, of course, the end actually did come, and then we'd all be screwed — we were, after all, fairly warned, and we didn't listen. The Bible does tell us how to tell the difference between true and false prophets: what a true prophet tells us is going to happen does happen: a true prophecy implies a true prophet. Makes sense, I guess. Still, though, a lot of us wear some thick armor around such subjects; I think even if a real prophet were to appear, so very few of us would ever recognize him... or, perhaps, even want to.
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| Dream of War | 1:02am tuesday, 11th february |
In the dream of the wars to be fought,
there are heroes that wait to be bought,
there are cowards that think to escape,
and the no-ones that stand against fate.
(When the night buries day in its tomb,
and the hour it strikes like a doom,
can the courage that shined in the light
then outfire the darkness's bite?)
O that hopelessness pass with the morn,
that the valiant steer true through the storm,
that a candle to burn through the night
be a voice that gives hearts second sight:
When the warrior winds blow again,
we must wield us a mightier pen:
of the sword we may die, but alive,
we can give more to life than survive.
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| Mental Page 2 | 1:59am monday, 10th february |
The page facing this page, in the book The World's Religions, as you can see. From that same mental institution, natch:
Oh, man, what was I thinking? Names of friends have once again been whited out (to protect the innocent, as it were).
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| Expect... | 1:01am saturday, 8th february |
Expect the unexpected. I always loved that paradoxical phrase: expect what you don't expect, what you can't expect. I once thought that was the only rule to the Game of Life; I hadn't thought it through clearly enough. The unexpected is surely in short supply, I think, in most lives — the humdrum is surely the norm of existence, n'est-ce pas? The phrase is most likely pulled out only for special occasions, as when a Fun House has been specifically created to surprise and titillate at every turn of the corner. Expect the expected: no, it doesn't have the same interesting turn of phrase, but that is the rule of the everyday. But perhaps it is not a bad thing.
As young children (if I remember correctly), we were in constant discovery of the new and novel, and our first steps upon the face of this world spoke of that expectation. The world was one big miracle, one huge kaleidoscope of many new colors. We got used to it, though. It's a good thing, if you care to look at it in at least one way: if we were completely surprised every minute of our lives, we'd never get anything done. In this world of change, knowledge comes when something holds still enough for us to measure it. A world where only the unexpected happened each and every day would be a bewildering place. We all grow up (some sooner than others).
I cannot constantly expect the unexpected — that would prove exhausting, I think, on the edge of my seat for all the livelong day. It's a good thing I don't have to. The commons of experience is square with what I know, and I expect gravity will keep my feet planted on the ground.
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| It Is Easy | 12:01am friday, 7th february |
It is easy to say, when you're not hurting, that the suffering will pass.
It is easy to promise the sun and the moon when you have nothing of your own to give.
It is easy to think no one understands, and sometimes hard to prove you wrong (even if it's not true).
It is easy to have potential when you're never pressed to prove that you have it.
It is easy to wear faith like a hat, just for show, subject to be blown off by any stiff wind.
It is easy to love someone at a distance, when you've airbrushed away every blemish in the image you have of them.
It is easy to ask why and never think to try and answer it.
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| Best Of 6 | 12:15am thursday, 6th february |
The following are what I believe to be the best of my efforts from November of 2002 through January of 2003:
Night and Day - A poem of the two and their brief meeting.
Recollection 5 - One of the more curious effects of my past madness.
Dreamers... - Dream with me.
Where You Go - That place where you may yet find yourself.
Remember Me - Some things to carry with you that I may give.
Imagining - A sijo about two blinks and their outcomes.
Sweet Nothings - Some little things scattered through my mind.
A Prayer (Thanks) - Thanks to the One above.
Myths - Of a flower in the darkness.
Essence - Sometimes it is a good time to be alive.
Between the Lines - A poem that rhymes the word it would disguise.
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| Circle | 12:01am wednesday, 5th february |
Dawn in its solemn calling recalls the stories of day...
In rhythms of change walk on the numberless footsteps of the world.
Then night lets go of every feature, the faceless dark forgets.
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| Recollection 8 | 4:18am tuesday, 4th february |
So, what was the deal with Rosanna Arquette? There were times when there was three of her in my head, simultaneously, in different forms (one of which, if I recall correctly, was Divine Wisdom — figure that one). I was convinced that she and I shared a destiny somehow. I have no idea why. Yes, she was pretty, but there were prettier; I guess it says most that Peter Gabriel, whom I respect highly, went out with her for the better part of ten years. Pretty sure that it wouldn't have lasted that long if it were just on the basis of her looks — but really, I only knew of that relationship well after she was such an integral part of my madness. She invaded my waking world as well as my dreams; I thought she was Juliet to my Romeo; I thought she was the Devil's daughter; I thought she was a prophetess of the Lord; I really don't know why — why her?
I guess that's the thing about madness: it doesn't have to make sense. There is, of course, no reason to believe that she is of divine calling, just as there is no reason to believe that I am of divine calling. Rosanna Arquette. How long were you with me, tormenting me at times, inspiring me at others? I wonder just how well the crafting of my mind compared to the real deal. No, I guess I'll never know what the thing with her actually was, just that some imprint is still there, her midnight waltz through the center of my desire. Even if it wasn't her.
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| I Dream... | 3:01am monday, 3rd february |
I dream of night that lasts beyond the end of my days. I dream of day that has no beginning. I dream of skies that scatter past the horizon. I dream of seas that no one has ever sailed. I dream of philosophies that no one dares to comprehend. I dream of poetry that rhymes with unknown fantasy. I dream of music that flows from undiscovered beauty. I dream of life that has never known suffering. I dream of death that is only an illusion of the end. I dream of love, and this is the strongest of all: I dream of love that never knew why, only that it has always been, and always will be.
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| There, Time | 1:01am saturday, 1st february |
Time is oft a wanderer, with
no clear path it follows, until
it knows not how far it has
traveled, and it has quite lost
itself in its meandering. No
mystery, I think, that time
is so of no mind, it is those
structures in it (of import and
discipline) that cause one to
wonder at the workings of
the world as it walks on. If
one were to trace the purposes
of the world, I think it would
produce a sculpture of such
dizzying angles that to glance
it would be halfway to madness.
When we are at a crossroads,
time abandons us, and in one
desperate step we stumble
into the paths of eternity.
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