When the world is sick
and cough syrup tastes foul
I wonder
What happened to the days
when we believed in Mary Poppins
and a spoonful of sugar
could save us all
When the world is sick
and cough syrup tastes foul
I wonder
What happened to the days
when we believed in Mary Poppins
and a spoonful of sugar
could save us all
Stealing my gravity
in sunlit memories
that echo through the snowstorm
like veggies in my soup.
[Penned out during the power outage.]
Let no concept of time disturb me.
There is a kitten, or so he likes to think himself, snuggled deep within the blankets on my lap. Curled to me as much for warmth as I to him.
Shadows waltz around candlelight to quiet renditions of Leonard Cohen on the lucky-to-be-charged MP3 player and an old speaker saved just for this purpose. Their steps cover our living room in mid-atmosphere of a town wide blackout. Each sound separate from the silence under a growing blanket of unnaturally natural dark.
My sister sleeps in bundled quilts, stretched out over office and lawn chairs. The Siamese waits for her to still, gauging her body heat for his own comfort. Husband of mine is also sleeping, his form a bed for the other kitties, their eyes and ears moving frantically to catch the latest storm gossip rattling our windows.
It’s cold but I feel warmer here in the dark than I have in a long time. I haven’t felt so at peace beneath candlelight since an eight year old me spent dark nights beneath the warm glow trying to decipher fantastical stories in my grandfather’s too still home. It was as if the air around me was stagnant, only alive in the flicker flames though we had plenty of power.
Even then, I am reminded, I was a dreamer.
A word dreamer.
Now I enjoy the same moments with my patch quilt family and tell stories all my own.

Temple moths bravedancing firelight and filtered shadows between eaves
hawk like in their rain drop world
Daring wing tips turned up against the edge of night
to slice through perfumed currents
Breaking only to rest against the home warmth
listening to the river song in their air
Strong enough to carry the universe
and gentle still to lull the dragon’s sleep
Peaceful in epic wonderment
the threads of the universe collecting in thrice silken webs
Before parting again to take flight on dust glittered wings
- To Casey for sharing his musings
Could have done a long over due ‘Writerly Week’ tonight but since I’ve only just begun to have time again I think I’ll wait till next time and make a proper list of what I’ve been up to. :) In the mean time, here’s some miscellaneous thing that jumped out of my skull. Haven’t posted something like this in awhile so pardon the quality and give it a read.
My inspiration was something I said, something along the lines of:
When I can get out from beneath this self-clutter…
I am here.
Beneath the scars of a cluttered past and the rotten covered strawberries of her romance. Beneath our silver pedigree and crimson charm. Beneath cardboard courthouses, paper sins, and quarters in a jar.
Between window bars and shattered glass. Between one soft voice and wish upon a comet. Between the polka dots and an empty casket- both speaking for the presence they would always never hold. Between abrasion and comfort, and blood upon the wall.
Beneath dancing shadows and moon layered masks. Beneath the billiard tables and brittle bones, the blue green glow of double stained glass, greasy food, and filthy hands.
Between one-hundred blankets and the rock hard floor. Between book dust and burning candles, the impression and the act. Between the pavement and the night caressing silent steps.
Between vodka and coffee. Beneath hay and horse shit. Between skin and the blade. Beneath the scabs- I am here!
Beneath the words, beyond the wisdom. Within the meaning and above the drama.
I am here.
Waiting for you.
And what am I doing…
This blank bit of virtual paper is starring back at me asking that same question. It waits with a quiet persistence trapped so vividly in the nothing of infinite possibility. It know that- eventually, I will arrive at the answer.
Even if I myself don’t know it at the time.
My mind is filled with memories tonight. Little streams of thought that build and collect in the cracks of my everything. Dreams once dreamt long before I had a world to build them on, stories written in my soul before I could spell, and old energy burning in my bones- figments of a phantom feeling beyond all named sensations.
Little glimpses haunt me, calling me to know but staying just beyond my reach, thrumming with the same pull that tugs the tide high towards the moon and away again. It hurts like a single sip of water in the desert. I can’t control it. Can’t contain it. Can’t summon it at will.
But I can write it.
This beautiful story written with existence.
Expressed only by living.
Because of your choices I made the choice…
Because of your choices I made the choice…
Because of your choices I made the choice…
Because of your choices…
It’s happening again.
This feeling I can’t control.
Heart pounding. Fingers itching. Thoughts flowing.
Anticipation claims me.
I can feel it taking control like the mysteries of the full moon over the unsuspecting werewolf.
My core is moving, wanting, waiting, but not for long.
Because…
I have found a pen.
Good evening.
It’s beautiful right now. The air heavy with impending darkness as the sun just beyond my sight begins to set. It’s still light out but it’s that strange mix of night and day when the kitties become alert and most humans are just growing tired. The world clock winding down on one side and up on another, leaving me pleasantly out of sync to witness the merge.
The grass is cool but not damp. The sky all one color, fading from one shade to the next as easily as watercolors on a canvas. A few lone birds peck the ground, picking at what remains of an earlier lunch before nesting, once more, in our roof.
The cat in my lap, warm with clover bright eyes, is telling me one thing. A promise spoken in the silence of his presence: The words will come easily tonight.
They will flow like thin paint tilted along the fine edge of gravity, covering all within reach in patterns, swirls, and splatters of predictable unpredictability. More than bright and dark they will whisper screams of the mute grays between. Cloying, tinting, and twisting what lies beyond the mirror and it’s reflection…
Words.
They are merely words.
Letters and syllable strung together haphazardly like rain tossing in the wind, occasionally illuminated by the flash of lightning and punctuated with thunder. They might rumble and roar, rattling windows, or hiss like droplets hitting the puddle. Meaningless save for the beauty in the nature of it… but for every drop the hits the puddle there is a ring of happenstance that follows soon after and for ever window that shakes there is a child hiding beneath the covers.
Yes. They are words.
Merely words.
Until they are used to say something of importance.
Then they are my words.
Sliver of a thought: If you could write a letter to your inner child what would it say?
Dear Me,
It’s all wrong isn’t it? It feels wrong but they all act like it’s right… You’re scared aren’t you? It feels so scary but they act like it’s perfectly safe. You don’t want to sit next to her but she’ll yell if you don’t… if you inch to the edge of your seat because you’re afraid to be in her reach… if you clasp the seat belt because we missed another stop sign on a quiet street.
Little girls shouldn’t be playing pool with old men in bars on school nights. Little girls shouldn’t be stealing money to buy something to eat. Little girls shouldn’t be left home alone… or blamed for what happens to their parents… or what their parents do.
You’re alone but you’re not. The trees talk to you and the rain sings you to sleep. Darkness caresses your cheek in the lonely night as silence screams in vain that something is missing. Can you feel it? Can you hear it? Can’t you make it stop?
Yes, yes, and no.
But you’ll try. Someday when you get the power. Someday when you get a taste of love. Someday when the loneliness becomes too much and then the abandoned will do the abandoning.
It’s a cruel cycle hell bent on continuing. Not through you but in the very air you breath- a phantom of the past dancing in every step you take. You’re still scared and it’s still wrong but now that you know what love is… now that you know what life is, it will be alright.
Prayers get answered, little one. No one will know it better than you. Not right away but your life will be a practice of patience- silently bidding your time until the world sweeps you off your feet. You’ll remember all the times you curled up in bed and tried to be unborn and then you were reborn. You’ll remember all the times you wished for a family and then you were gifted with more than you dared to hope for. You’ll remember all the times you wished to tell your story…
And then you’ll read this letter and know another prayer is in the process of being answered.
I feel like I should be writing right now but I’m not. My body is sitting here typing but me- I’m walking through a bright gray place with colorless paintings and blank mirrors covering the walls. I don’t much understand it myself but that’s all there is to it.
There is a doorway without a door that stands between one side of this house- and it does seem no bigger than a house, and the other but both sides look exactly the same. Detailess squares- the walls, the floor, the doorway, and the decorations. They all have four sides. They all lack color.
I’m walking around and… I don’t see anything. There’s no where to go but in aimless circles like a lazy fly in summer heat.
i carry a box of words in my pocket
neat and tidy in their square confinement
stirring like smoke in lightless corners
breathing deep the magic beyond the void
they question and crow at the nature of their pointed world
built within the tranquil delicacy of pen to page
strong as stone and more fragile than the spider’s web
clawing at my senses with ephemeral curiousity
tearing through the empty spaces in my mind
leaving no broken ridge or plot hole ungrazed
as ravenous children through the candy store
running and eating- filled only by their hunger
beautiful and ugly, marvelous and terrible
as precious as sand and equal in number
glinting bold beneath the golden sun’s gaze
and glowing holy under at the feet of an imperfect moon
these are my words
carefully kept in a box well guarded
without a lid, without walls
because the universe just isn’t big enough
I’m not even sure I’d classify this as a poem or just a random assortment of words… it’s hard to tell the difference with me sometimes. :) Maybe it’s not very good but I still said what I said and that makes me happy.

My veins are buzzing. Logic fuzzing. The rules of plausibility blurring together. The pen meets the paper as the teller to story, all on a night neither dark nor stormy.
Can you feel my heart beating life into these words? See my blood upon the page? Do you hear my shadow’s dance rhythmically tapping away at the insides of your skull?
Well, do you?
If you can’t then you need not feel harder. You need not look harder, nor listen with more rapt attention. If I haven’t caught you in the web so deeply woven in both word and soul then I need to try harder, crack my chest open wider, and shake my head faster until the grey goop between my ears is twitching and all the little neurotransmitters are firing off in all the necessary directions.
Words are more than just letters printed and tried be they digitalized or penned in pretty script. They’re more than just tools of a language meant to be spoken and thunk. They’re more than just- just!
They are the very relief of expression.
A breath outward and a step in the sand. Tasting the sun on your tongue and feeling the green in the grass. Words are all these things and more.
Every song sung must first be written even if the lyrics never reach the paper. Instrumentals are composed in a language of beats, strings, and notes. Every tree that grows must follow the instructions penned so significantly in every single length of genetic code or be at a loss of a composition all together.
As fire burns and stars shine, even the indomitable elements are little to us without language of the universe. The wind blows and we don’t see it but we still find, know, accept, feel, and everything else it. Without words, even the unspoken sort, the wind wouldn’t even be a concept. A concept wouldn’t be a concept!
Even nothing must become nothing through the expression of nothing.
So, let me sit with you now, the pen in my mind and ink boiling away in my veins. Let me bring my story to life within you. Let me tell it and yell it, and shout it from the rooftops. Let me dance it and sing it, and paint it and string it.
For the love of the universe let me express it.
Because I am a writer and that’s what I do. :)
~Writer’s block- you’ve got nothing on this tender heart.~
Lilting whispers- the music behind the memory. It calls me like the sun calls specks of dust from between the bookshelves. A delicate mixture of old and new found only in the quiet moments where counted time cannot reach me.
I remember.
A gentle darkness resides in everything. Sinking into the carpet and crawling up the walls with thin, grasping, tendrils. They gather and sleep behind corner bound cobwebs. Dreaming dreams only shadows keep.
It smells old here. Like once loved books- the reader long gone, and relics of another life. Bones, stones, and vases. Paintings and poetry. Rough hewn textures and the after-scent of sweet, sweet tobacco.
A jade horse upon the mantle piece and a chest of rosin wood carved in half a thousand beautiful stories. Little golden boxes with curling feet, hollowed out for secret treasures and simple presents. Maps of the far east and turning tides, fantastical places beyond my perceptions.
Touches from a world outside these molding walls, yet no place could be more comforting to me in the wee hours between night and day.
Sitting in the corner, knees drawn up tight with salty tracks weaving their way down her face. The banging gets louder. Her heart flutters like a weak in a steal trap and she can’t help the broken sob that escapes her with each hollow thud on the door.
“Why?”
It’s impossible not to ask. Impossible not to hope it will make everything all better.
No one is there but the voiceless sentiment of children long before:
What will happen cannot be stopped, little one.
They will come for you.
Take you and break you.
Torment you and bruise you.
They will wreck your heart and spit on the remains.
No. What will happen cannot be stopped.
But you can still survive.
“Why?”
Because someone has to be the voice of hope.
Related to the post ‘Why?’
There is a little girl inside of me.
I don’t know how old she is but sometimes I can hear her crying out.
Sometimes she asks the world to hate her because that’s all she’s ever been taught…
Sometimes she asks the world to love her because that’s all she really wants.
Sometimes she goes ‘La, la, la. I can’t hear you!’ to make the monsters go away…
Sometimes she sings and hums so they can’t get their way.
Sometimes she’s screaming so loud it echos here and there…
And sometimes she’s so quiet I forget she’s really there.
Sometimes she asks me why they broke her…
And sometimes she curses who they were.
Sometimes all she can do is remember…
When all I want to do is forget.
Because sometimes she is me…
And sometimes I am her.
Sometimes.
Flying is just falling with wings.
The leaps you make and the cliffs you take, it all depends on how you see it when your foot first leaves solid ground.
The thrill of the dive or the fear of the crash?
The burn and roll of air over your shoulders or the tender passion ripping through your every muscle?
The song of adrenalin that thrums through your core or the gut churning flip when the world turns on it’s end?
Flying is just falling with wings.
It’s up to you whether or not you open them and take flight upon the wind.
The pen in my hand is my sword.
The music in my ears is my shield.
The man in my heart is my balance.
Add that to each new breath I take
And I am invincible.
Kei was so inspired by my bit of creative writing before this (click here to view) that she made some awesome art for it. She left enough room to write out the bit on it but methinks I might have to re-center it and such. Click the image to see the full-readable size. Share as you wish but please leave the copyright notice on the side. :)
It’s so awesome! Thank you, Kei! I’m probably going to redo the words in Pnet but it’s still so cool. For this I owe you some fanfiction!
She sits before me like a mirror, the phases of the moon written in her face.
“Why?”
One word. A question so simple- so necessary and yet so impossible to answer.
“I don’t understand. Can you explain it to me?”
No, but do I really have to say that?
“Please?”
We stare at each other for a long moment, her into me and I into her. Our eyes are so much the same- each flicker of fire, each shadow of doubt, rays of happiness, and question without resolve.
“Why did things go so wrong?”
Why couldn’t you have asked when? I know the when. I even know a good deal of the how, but the why…
“Why us? Them? Me?” She withdrew into herself. I knew the motion well.
Why indeed. Why can’t you ask something else?
“Why can’t you answer me?” Her innocent voice left, leaving a more shrill and desperate sound to echo back at me.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Because I was there too.”
She stared at me in shock and I reached out to touch her face.
My fingers met the cool glass of the mirror and we shared the same tear sliding down our face- whispering the single most important thing we would never understand.
“Why?”
She sat with her back to the cold stone of the fire place, white hair framing her already pale face with a ghostly hue. The sleeves of her robe bunched up around her arms making the fact that she was still so small all that more obvious to those of us who overlooked it every time she battled by our side and it was hard- impossibly hard not to look her in the eyes to see what you could find. They drew your questions from you like venom from a wound, first pulling them to the surface with the odd coloring and uneven tints and then tearing them from you and out into the open by her gentle will.
“What… what are you?”
‘Is this hesitation really mine?’
She smiled at me, the quirk in her lips beginning before the words even left my mouth. It was a weak little smile, composed entirely of the childish features that betrayed and lied about her true age all in the same motion.
“What am I?” A chuckled bubbled up from her chest- it’s sound sincere even as it nearly caused me to miss the wisdom that tore through her facade. “I am a child.”
I opened my mouth to object, that hadn’t been what I meant, but she was faster than I and it was clear that there was no turning back now.
“I am a mother- in some sense and a daughter in just the same.” Her eyes twinkled with the open riddle. “I am a lover to one, a friend to some, and a perceived threat to many. I am a fighter and a runner. A brave coward. A princess, and a commoner in every sense of the words. I am a liar with the truth and a seer blinded by the turns of my own fate.
“I am fire. A flame forever burning as it dies down to the lonely embers of the night. I cast both both shadows and light, give as I destroy. I am the choice forever in the making, never truly standing on one path or another. The footstep constantly left behind at my actions and the blood coursing through the veins of an angry mob.”
She stood, wavering carefully as she leaned back against the stones for balance. The battle had taken it’s toll from all of us but as she spoke she seemed to gain strength even at the cost of her words. “I am so many, many things but none of them are as important or inconsequential as this.” She pointed a shaking finger at herself. “What I am is the circle forever turning, the stars forever burning, and the new day constantly being reborn in myself. I am not yet who I want to be but what I am is the choices I make to get there.”
There was fire in her eyes, not angry, but brazen. Ready to pursue the battle anew and with greater vigor even as she continued to shake.
“I am me. I don’t know who I am yet but I know what I will become to be who I want to be.”
I cleared my throat, seeking to ask even more questions though she’d neatly sidestepped the one I’d thought most important. “You really seem to care about the difference between who and what you are, don’t you?”
She smirked, a little more color coming into her face at the action and her eyes dimming down to more human-like hues. “Wouldn’t you? If you were constantly being tested by people who both coveted and despised you for whatever they thought you to be wouldn’t you care deeply for the one thing they overlooked? The one thing you had to yourself- that no others bothered to make claim on?” Her smile grew and she whispered. “I certainly do.”
“Is that why you… ?” I let the thought hang. There were no words in me to finish it though I desperately wanted to know.
“Yes.” Her reply was simple where the question was not. “That is why I stand between the paths- there is no one for someone of my nature and there forever shall I remain. Perhaps you’ll come join me someday when you can answer your own questions with the same conviction from which you ask them.”
I nodded without another word on my lips.
The next day she disappeared into the fray, found neither dead nor alive amidst the battle but immortal within this ever fighting child’s heart.
When each light I turn off on my way out becomes a hiding place for people who weren’t there before…
When I frantically lock the door behind me though I’m the last person there…
When I startle at each sound the silence makes…
When the fluttering of moths around the street light becomes shadows on the ground…
When I sit out in the open just to see everything around me…
When the music isn’t loud enough to drown out the things that aren’t…
When my Mp3 player becomes my only protection, a weapon against the quandaries of my mind…
…what am I afraid of?
If you don’t know me, and I mean really, really know me this post will definitely confuse you on a few different levels. This isn’t creative writing. There is no real attempt on my part to bring forth proper writing style- hell, you’re lucky I even spell checked this thing since that’s more for your convenience than mine. This is just me taking my perception of something I know a lot of others won’t get, pulling together all the words I have, and throwing them at this virtual paper.
It’s something of a spiritual thing for me and probably nothing and everything like it sounds. Nevertheless, whether you understand it or not, feel free to read and comment though I can’t promise I’ll answer any questions on this one unless you’re familiar with what I mean by any sentence containing the word ‘wings’.
No, I don’t feel any need to clarify that or anything else but if you’re a regular reader then that’s what you love about me so I feel no need to do anything different.
That one pivotal moment when all the threads of fate came together before my very eyes to show me the clay to which this form was bound in. Soft and giving, easily torn and yet just as easily remolded. Never truly destroyed but instead renewed with each new shape it takes.
I could see it as you see these words, simple and true.
I was the clay from which these threads strayed.
Many fear the great moment after this moment, this realization- the one where we are pulled from our clay for the remolding as our threads are strewn across the nexus and rewound in another time and place. It is unfounded, the fear, and that in itself gives them even more reason to be afraid of it- the great unknown. There are so many questions we are not permitted to ask if only for the lack of one who will answer them. Questions like; what lies after the unbinding? Is there any after? Does it hurt? Does it hold no feeling at all?
That is only a brush of the anxiety- the smallest bit that we can understand and pull into the minds within our clay. Few reasons that spawn more with every passing worry.
I can’t say I’ve ever shared that fear but not for lack of self-preservation. Perhaps this shape of mine is too young? Perhaps instead of naivety- it’s what I knew that kept me here?
Yes. That sounds more accurate.
There were times, dark and desperate, when I brought that second moment to my doorstep- reaching for it against the will of the threads and shearing through the clay of my shell with a needle like delicacy born in uncertainty. Even then, I did not fear it. I feared making a choice I couldn’t go back on- as most tend to be. I feared the disappointment I would find in others, those here and the others I wouldn’t escape. Most of all- I feared the moment after the second moment, the moment that none fear for they never think to make it that far.
I feared what I knew.
Of all the silly things.
No, I have never feared the second moment when all things are rendered apart and resewn. It wasn’t/isn’t in my nature. True, I had feared it for others, my loved ones most especially, but for a purely selfish reason- they are mine and I would miss them greatly. Grief is a river of loss I know all to well and have no intention of returning to any time soon.
More to the present though, I was not to have that second moment, nor, by proxy, was I to have the third. I was still in the one before either, the moment of the greatest knowing I’ve ever to experience.
It was in that moment, as we sped along through the darkness, that I knew everything about the girl within the girl- a smooth crone behind the wrinkled child. Pain lacing down my neck and spine I looked to her and saw the wings unfolding- mine and hers, as in that one pivotal moment we became whole once more and she allowed us to remember.
We are here.
We are here now.
This is where we are supposed to be, right now, and despite it all- how the threads of others effect my own, the choice lay in the human half of myself for this one moment. I had only to think it and it would be done. The ones who had taken our memory had finally given this back, this choice to move one way or another. To continue or start anew.
Nevertheless, as I was the only one to ever yearn for it, the choice weighed heaviest on my clay shoulders. The conscious self that so often acts in ignorance.
Even a moment, a single, special, fragile fragment of time can change everything endlessly and as the knowing, the remembering, and being flowed into me I too was changed.
I live in the clay. She moves the clay. From us, through us, and binding us together the threads of fate flow. Following them all I saw what I needed to see- what the artist sees when she steps back from the tapestry and the scribe from her novel.
I had touched the universe.
In the short period of time it’s been within this lump of clay, the spark that is uniquely me has touched thousands if not more. With each path I took I crossed the path of another, each of us altering the others and continuing on to do the same to another and another until all of our threads are wound so tight we make the spool that is the world full of life and living.
I looked to those around me, to these precious people I call my own, and saw a thread from each of them in return to my own- something I had been born without and denied long since my first heart’s beat. A connection. A two way connection. Love.
Yes, my time here was up in the sense that my presence was no longer mandatory. I had served my term and fulfilled the goals she had set before us. If I chose to leave in that moment others would pick up where my threads left off, crossing the paths that needed to be crossed, and marking the ways that need be marked for others- perhaps my new form in freshly molded clay. The universe would fill the gap that I would leave behind and we would be free to move on to our next great walk.
It was okay to let go.
It is this knowing that changed me in that moment.
It set me free.
I would not be a disappointment to myself, to others- here or there. I wouldn’t be leaving reparable damage in my wake and I would be making a choice I was given, a choice I had earned but even as I looked about my clay self in that strange peripheri of hers/ours I saw once more those true connections and I couldn’t look away.
Whereas I had impacted the whole world- it too had impacted me.
My soul is my soul. Split down the core as she/we have always been. Like all clay- I’ve yearned to be whole once more, to claim my true shape for what it is and fly with her but in that moment, that single moment that changed everything, her and I grew closer for the fact that a part of me was no longer her’s alone. Where before I had seen chains, keeping me to the clay and away from my true self I now saw fragile silken strings that could hardly keep me from floating away and I held the scissors in my fumbling human hands.
My choice was made.
We were staying.
Apart. Together. United over an abyss that was no longer empty.
She is me as I am her. We have an eternity to rejoin. Till then the gap is fill with souls as precious as butterflies in the spring and I refuse to leave them even if it means I have to wait a little while before finding my own wings.
In that moment, that one moment, I held death as she held me- tenderly wrapped in each other’s arms…
And I decided to live.
A freefallen thought caught in the wave length of mind-
Spotted and stripped and clawed at but not yet ready to shine.
What be-mused writings/urges force these words from my pen but the most carnal of heart held desires-
The pleasure derived from self expression.
-
Take this from me and I shall wilt and rot from the inside out like the tortured bloom on the unending vine-
Imprisoned in the darkest basement far from her shining sun.
I am not meant to be in a world without art-
Be it paint, prose, music, or thunder.
-
Moon night and moon day, say a soft prayer for the weeping-
Though their tears fall unappreciated to those they are given to:
The father with no time for his son-
And the mother who drinks before her daughter.
-
Both damning the next generation in one way-
But providing fodder for the be-mused in another.
Even tears must have their uses-
After all.
Don’t even both asking me where this came from, seriously. I have no idea. I think it’s something that’s been building at the edges of my mind for some while now but I can’t be certain. It’s like candlelight reflected on dark waters, distorted in essence but still shining through with such beauty that I couldn’t help but be drawn to it. I think I was actually in a poetry mood but I ended up writing this instead. Don’t expect it to be very good.
I am the creature of star dust and names, my heart a bridge between worlds and my wings the mask that lights the way. Can you see me as me or truly me, the child behind the eyes? Threads coming undone and secrets losing grasp. Heart stops beating, memories fleeting, the story never told.
I am the writer who will remain… should my heart withstand the flames.
Smoke stained trees and ash stained earth. Naught remains the same but the child
that never was. She dances in the havoc, the great void stretching out before her like a darkened spotlight to the only stage in the universe. Silence is her music as she skips and twirls, a smile of bliss and sadness pulling harshly at her face. She knows not what has happened, what has been, nor what will be. She’s lucky to know the present.
The world is her muse as the moon reaches down to touch her pale sun neglected skin, this is her daylight, her first day kissed by a touch of night as she breaths in the poison left over from humanity, society, and conformity as if it were the sweetest scent and to her- it is.
The old world remains in places no longer long forgotten for none now remain to have remembered them in the first place. Buildings crumble and creak, cement and iron no match against the patient war lord known as time as he watches over her, knowing without knowing that history is often rewritten in the worst of ways.
Still the little girl dances. Her white smock all stained with soot spinning in the rust laden wind as she giggles and hums. She knows no expected potential, no lies, no truths, nor life and death. She merely is- a fresh new beginning only appearing at the end of the world.
If only they had listened, the people of days gone by, the people of the time before the void. If only they had let little children like her be, to dance and prance and sing without reason instead of taking them and shaping them into the greedy struggling creatures that were often and unknowingly cultivated.
Had they let them be, to truly be, the end would not be so near- never so dear, a new beginning as dirt stained light amid the shrouded rubble. She knows not of them, like all things, she never will. They are over and gone, a dark chapter never to be retold but as none now remain to tell the tale- she too is doomed, someday, to make the same mistakes.
If only a story teller had remained.
This feels very dark,… and very… grammatically screwed, for lack of a better phrase (trust me I tried for a whole minute to find one but grammatically screwed just kind of stuck).
I suppose this is my muse trying to twist her way out in a new form and I feel the need to explore it more thoroughly, so- methinks I shall have to draw a picture for this one. I’ll try to post it when I’m done.
It has been a busy month. I wish I could say I’m sorry I haven’t blogged, that I feel bad and every day I don’t post I cringe- it would have been the the truth but…
I decided to relax. I’m not going to let this feeling snowball.
That said I’m not even going to both with an update right now. :) I just don’t feel like it. I worked hard this week and it’s about 5 am right now.
Good things in life right now: Hunny, wedding, wedding dress, Kaiyou, the return of a best friend in my life, anime, writing, finishing writing, starting writing, blogging, chat, patient friends, patient readers, randomness, inhaler, soy sauce, sisterhood, love, questions, Keiyou drawing pictures for me, Cheetos, story telling.
Not so good: Homework, time, work but not the work, not being able to adult-nap Keiyou, not having time to tweak my website, not being able to blog, time, time, time, asthma.
And now for some Taoism…
Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name.
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great.-Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25, the first part.
My Tao of Today
Stories mysteriously formed.
Born of all worlds- mundane and fantastical.
They come from a place deep within, the uncharted waters of my soul.
The craft alone is a constant.
In the hands of the writer it is alive and ever moving, squirming, and becoming something else.
Becoming everything anything, something, and nothing.
There is no way to pin it down with the words I use to catch glimpses of this magick.
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it writing.
My Hunny gave me my Valentine’s day gift early. He’s as bad as I am about that. When we buy something for the other it’s like we can’t wait to give it to the other. :) I love him so much. He gave me the album “An Ancient Muse” from Loreena McKennitt and “Afterglow” from Sarah McLachlan. *squeals in delight*. I have variant musical taste but I’ve been waiting for these two for a long time. Well, to be more precise some of the particular songs on them.
Anyways, below you will find a sudden burst of inspiration that hit me in the head between reading an anime character’s description and listening to some of my new tunes.
The song is in his bones now. As old as the earth and as cold as the ocean. As wild as the wind and as warm as the flame’s first kiss.
The magickal storm has broken and he dances in celebration.
The rhythm is ancient and primal, known to no one but those who chance upon it. Branches move and sway, leaves clatter in the wind. Mother nature adding her own chorus to this ritual of movement and sound. Still, he hums. The sound light and unbroken, a single string of song that only he can comprehend.
It moves through him.
The boy turns and turns. Spinning faster until he feel unsteady and begins to tilt on this axis untapped energy. He is free here- in this place of constant movement. Nothing can tether him down or touch him in this world of turns and tunes. He opens his arms wider to catch the passing wind as it both cools and chills his fevered flesh.
His legs give way and he falls. His back hitting the soft green grass with a ‘shush’ of air hissing and blades bending beneath him. His chest rises and falls and the midday sun gently sooths him. He can feel his heart throbbing- badump, badump, badump.
The wind is leaving now, not dead, merely moving onto the next dancer and the trees fall into silence all around. The storm has passed but the magick remains tense in the soundless air. All is silent aside from the steady ‘badump’ of his heart. A smile tugs the corners of his lips almost painfully and he sighs.
His breathing slower now he begins to hum again. The simplistic music of a simple child, strong enough to summon a storm, and sweet enough to banish all trace.
She was born under a Sagittarian sky. A winter sky. An early sky.
It’s far too early.
This world was meant to be a different place, under a different sky.
She was to come and bring hope to a place and a people who were ready to accept it but instead she finds herself in a world on the brink. Sitting on the cliffs between an unimaginable void of self destruction or the precipice of something new, a world just about to open their eyes and begin accepting one another and all things as they truly are.
Instead she was born into this world. Under this sky. Too early.
Instead she was born eyes open into a blind world with blind ways. The people here are so used to stumbling that when one walks straight they are known as the outsider. So, in turn it is she who sees that feels the most blind amongst her peers, stumbling over their well worn paths without escape.
This land is strange and these are not her ways. To watch as others look on day in and day out, from sunset to sunrise, and the crossing of the moon across their sky. They watch and have the ability to see so much but they do nothing. Accept nothing. Let the nothing consume them until it is so full it becomes a something much more powerful than that which the human mind can comprehend.
False wordings and worded falsehoods. These often unknowingly forked tongues speak a language she can’t seem to master and in her soul she is thankful but in her heart is sad. Without language she can’t communicate, can’t help them, can’t reach out, cannot awaken. She is lonely to be born so soon under this ever darkening sky. No others are here and at the same time- they are. They are here and she knows it. She sees them and gathers them but they do not know it.
They have blinked but the eyes are not yet open, the sun of this sky too burned down for them to see properly.
This world is not yet her world. It is a cruel world with cruel ways that make her bones ache and her soul quake in despair. Children’s tears for rain and industrial smog for cloud cover, this is the normal forecast of the day. They breath in chemicals willingly and only money can push those with power into caring about how many more years their world will last and wether or not their grandchildren will see the dawn of a new day and if the rainforest will have been a mere story of the old.
But it’s alright. Let them continue their ways under their sky. Let the moon rise and fall in their time so that it might end and be done with. All the sooner our sky can rise. All the sooner we will be ready for the hope. All the sooner she can awaken the sleepers.
She is not the only one.
The sleepers sleep to protect themselves from the radioactive hatred of this world. They too have come here early but in a different perception of the word. Everyone is much too early. No one should be born under this sky. This is not our world. Our world is meant to be a place of peace and coexistence with so much more than just ourselves. To be wide eyed and awakened, lively and free.
As it stands this sky can be meant for no one. No one should have to accept this for what it is.
She was not yet meant to be, this new child. A being meant to lay in wait until this world was ready for her, ready for the birth of a new sky, ready to love and accept one another. No, she is much too early, but alas, time is running out. This sky is fading and the new one is not yet on the horizon. The sleepers must awaken, they must awaken and hold back the doom until their is a new sky to live under else all shall fall into the ever growing nothingness.
Let the sleepers awaken under this dark sunrise. May there be just enough light left to hold you over until our moon crosses into the future sky.
To be a writer is to be of many minds it seems. I can move easily and flawlessly from one to another. My speech and dialect can change at the drop of a hat along with my passions, fears, and motivations. I will have many names and faces, pasts, and presents.
I need not be one person at any one moment for I can be many. I can be an entire world if I so desire it and wield my pen skillfully enough. I can be as dark as I desire with no consequences, creating plot holes and road blocks for the others or I can be a person of light. Solving the problems and making timely decisions.
I can be the hero, the fallen, or the villain. I can be any gender or none. I can be a child, adult, an elder, or even the dead. I can kill myself over and over again only to be reborn in another form with the next sentence.
I am my characters and they are me. I haven’t experienced first hand a lot of the things they have but through them I can travel this world or a world of my own creation. I can know what it’s like to stand against all odds or to buckle under pressure. I can go on adventures of sit in a single paragraph slowly revealing information word by word while keeping you in utterly infuriating suspense.
I am a writer. My pen gives me something similar to multiple personality disorder and I enjoy every minute of it. I don’t think I could stand to be stuck within one mind, one body, one world, or one life. I want to experience it all and that’s what keeps me clicking away at the keyboard.
Where have all the heroes gone? The true under dogs, the rebels, the weaklings, and the invisible? The ones you’d pick last to bet on? The only ones who will step up to the plate in the end?
When did we suddenly need to be ‘super’ to fight against all odds and stand for what we believe in? When did we suddenly need cool gadgets and wacky costumes to prove our moral value?
When did bad guys suddenly need to be obvious? More so- when did we decide exactly what a bad guy looks like? From the raccoon mask and crazy grin to the modern turban and a funny accent? How did we fall so far that we need the bad guys to explain their plans in order for us to understand?
When did we decide that we were the good guys and everyone else was bad? And when did we decide that there were only two sides? In fact- when did we decide that we even had to be on a side at all?!
When did black and white become black and white? Are they really that obvious or are true darkness and light more subtle? When the frail man with a kind smile singing the praise of his god suddenly starts molesting children- doesn’t that seem just a little more than grey? What about when mere school children start taking guns to school and waging a war of their own?
Are they just trying to redraw the border? Rediscover it? Or are the sides only an illusion now? A product of our society because we know no other way? Is making them obvious just our way of placating ourselves because we really don’t have a clue what’s right and wrong anymore?
When did mothers start beating that which they brought into the world? When did fathers start beating mothers they love? When did we start calling the homeless: bums but become willing to pay the five cents a day to an organization that may have no merit to feed people in a country we’ve never heard of?
When did we stop caring that our children ‘experiment’ a little with this and that because experimenting is ‘normal’? When will we stop being hypocrites, liars, verbal abusers, and just about everything else that is said to make us human? If that’s true why the hell would we even want to be human in the first place?!
When did we start having to protect people from themselves? Protect them from protecting themselves?
Where did all the heroes go? Where, and when, and why? I only ask because the hour is late, the problem obvious, and the borders drawn. Now is the time for a hero.
So where are they?
Are we even worth saving? Or is it our turn to step up before it’s too late?
I feel good today. Part of me wants to get up, blare some music, and go dance randomly in the middle of the living room singing nonsense. I would too if hunny weren’t sleeping.
It’s a strange feeling the universe. All that energy all connected yet presented in different forms, to feel it you merely need to acknowledge it. There is beauty in the vibrations of the solar system, theologians of old called them the song of the spheres. A great wave of tiny movements and vibrations between energy and matter that coexist in all things keeping our known world together.
Stars burn distantly in the night sky. Many already burnt up before their light even reaches our eyes like the memory of a deceased love one. Going on even after, their light reaching out for us merely to delight our humanity.
We breath and our breath, CO2, becomes the breath of trees and their breath comes ours again as Oxygen. Beautiful symphony, working in harmony. Our of all the things we humans have manages to screw up we still breath into the trees and they still breath into us. Universal laws overcome all man made things in the end.
When what we call the world- civilization, law, government, and our way of life, has ended and many things lay in ruins the earth will still go on. If we set off the nukes (or get hit by an asteroid) and everyone dies either as a result of the explosion or the latter radiation the earth will still be there. She will eventually heal herself and some bit of bacteria in a pool of murky water may yet start human life over again to repeat the same mistakes.
If the earth freezes or floods from us destroying the atmosphere or global warming- yes, we will die but the earth will continue on. Either as a block of ice or consistent ocean front property she will survive and refresh herself. With no humans things may eventually even back out and alas ‘civilization’ may yet begin again in the murky pool.
No matter what we do the earth will still be here in one form or another. We are merely parasites she allows to live here. Some people say the earth can take care of it’s self. They’re right. She can, but in the end if we do nothing it will be us who die. Our race, our world. If you care nothing for yourselves than do nothing. If you care nothing for the earth fine, she doesn’t need you obviously.
If you do care for both yourself and the earth than do something. Don’t wait for the government to do it. We are all people. We all live here, and we can all die here if we don’t act. Politicians are people just like us, abet richer and more privileged. We have to take action too. We can just sit around and wait for them. Mother earth certainly won’t wait for us.