750 Words- Day #8 (11/19/2010) Compilations from the Past

crashing waves turn white from blue,
crunched and crisp the morning sings
of sugar sand and turquoise water;
the jaded refuse of a winter infuriated.

the streets ahead are paved with ocean,
ghastly white like solemn snow flowers
frozen and trapped in a glass jar.
that face reflects star-strewn summer nights
from the darkest lake's perfect reflection.

------------------------------------

She chases her shadow
across wadded sheets.
The whole room washed in blue,
even my mind-
in your absence.

Wherever she lands,
she pretends she was meant to be.

-------------------------------------

Decomposed and unfocused. A scattered blathering mess of incomprehensible nonsense. Too analytical, less feelings. All we can see is what we feel, so we immediately try to understand it. Feeling seems like something that can (and should) be bypassed, rather than something that should be experienced and left to its own whim- let it stay a mysterious creature with great, dark power. What does analysis do but soil all that is good?

Why is it that certain atmospheres are more conducive to creativity? If creativity is truly in our heads, why would physical environment be a determining factor in its' ability to flourish? Because nothing is purely from our minds.

Our minds are influenced by all that we see, the real and unreal. But we must see the real in order to see the unreal, and in this comparison (which produces one occurrence as unreal), reality must be analyzed and processed in such a way that it filters the mind upside-down.

...But isn't reality always upside-down? We all see different things. A slinky, a coil, a circle, shiny, amusing, annoying... In this vein of thinking, every thought, real and unreal, would have the potential of being unique. If each individual crafts his own interpretation of things based on unique experience, doesn't that mean every persons' filter is entirely constructed by unique occurrences? And then wouldn't our minds produce entirely unique thoughts?

That's the rub of it. Two people may have very different experiences and interpretations and still arrive at the same thoughts.

Isn't that truth? Isn't "truth" universally accepted concepts of how to interpret reality? How to properly construct reality based on commonly perceived insights?

It's funny how performing a specific action, smelling a certain smell, feeling a familiar feeling can totally recreate past scenes before you in your mind...

This place in which we currently live seems so base until you consider that time and perception (and truth- if truth is just a series of perceptions?) are constantly changing. The jingle of a kitty's collar, the buzz of a heater, the sound of this pen and the sliding of my fingers on paper, the pale green glow shadowed over ink, the feeling in the air... all these factors change from one moment to the next, and our minds change with the landscape.

Is stagnation of mind then a desirable trait? Are we truly ever done learning? Maybe there are stable, core pillars of existence, unspoken truths, and the rest is up for interpretation and constant re-evaluation- just to make sure interpretation is keeping up with experience. These things need to be monitored, and certain ideas need to remain fluid...

Brain breaks open
into side of skull.
Thoughts, dreams leak-
catastrophic accident of
brain mess soaked
into the floor.

Thoughts inhabit the walls,
sink into the carpet,
crawl into nearby flesh-
Dreams carry on the wind,
searching for a worthy or
unsuspecting recipient.

The brain mess becomes
a world mess and the universe is
forever contaminated by
our mental excrement.

Thoughts are a disease if they produce a shifting truth.

(It's just not practical to keep parts of yourself from yourself.)

-----------------------------------------

Psychosomatic.

The brain can do crazy, oppressive things to itself.

I wonder how often our brains restrict us from feelings or sensations that would naturally occur. But what would occur naturally without having been perceived by (and thus filtered through) our brains? All that exists to us is our perception. Existence is filtered, reality is skewed- there is no constant.

A skewed reality is all there is- but that doesn't mean it can't be pleasant!

-----------------------------------------

A broken canyon lingers on the horizon.
Melting air wave houses disintegrate into
a tidal wave of black smoke-
exploding into
the darkest burning night,
shot down by
the cruelest bleeding sun.

----------------------------------------

I love when cats look at you and lick their lips. It's like they're plotting something, or see a fish in your place.

I only change it when it hurts. It’s a countdown to reclamation, not ecstacy.

Today: Home Sick in a Snuggie with a Puppy

Today: Tie Dye and Beads

Today: Patchy Jacket c. 1970

750 Words- Day #7 (11/15/2010) Compilations from the Past

I remember my life in photos.

I ran toward the sun and almost touched the flame- If I can make it come, why can't I make it change? I needed it before I even knew I needed it.

None alone in this world. Slipping is actually climbing. Limitless potential. Internalize this. Loved endlessly. Valued unconditionally. Internalize this.

---

The barking circulation of mildewed air,

The tantalizing sound of regret

Stretches into a smoking hole of empty shadow-

Hoping we all go up in flames.

I lay half hidden in mesh thicket, suffocating.

Something is harbored and hidden in autumn's sunless haze.

---

It's hard to untangle something with no discernible start or end.

Rushing tides won't rush fast enough-

just a slow jarring pace of tension,

quick bursts of rapid fire, metallic ice

Time moves irregular, broken beats,

The lack of fluidity bites my reddened skin.

Everything is leaning most irregularly.

---

So cold, the snow burns

The gate creaks a creeping bellow

Hearing movements inside reverberate outside and in again.

The present (is) moves(ing) backwards (forward) as the past (is moving) moves forwards (backward).

You chose what to fill your mind with.

---

Reminders, open flame,

about a rose without a name.

The silence comes and silence goes,

Creeping now, the sign of foes.

---

The tremendous faith of fellow sojourners is mind boggling. The intricate manipulations which unknowingly (unwillingly) create our formal existence (whether abstaining from some deeper truth or not...) The ink runs too candidly in a current state of closed of malignance. This precious incarnation was far altered. Can't listen to my soul in front of anyone else.

It's an encapsulated waste, this flesh extraction of pure metallic insight!...The ache comes not from the extraction, but from the relocation. Ground up and aching, this roof cannot stand a solid foot- the solidness comes not so much from arbitrary endeavors but from the escalated prospect of such in our minds.

Intravenus tiger lily petals falling like rain plugged from the sky. The mystic fortification is all and more than it needs to be. Freedom is relative, and the senses dictate far more than we perceive.

These words are cryptic because they need to be. The one eyed leery bug has resurfaced and I cannot allocate enough energy to the purpose of it's well being. The well being of another far too often impinges on my present state of well being.

---

Wish I had that Grandma's quaint kitchen, warm with the smell of fresh pastries and sweetness lingering in the air. Everything warm, unthreatening, enveloping. A room with frilly pink kitchen knick knacks and colorful potpourri. A fabulous old vanity with a pristine ballerina dancing atop golden flames. The bed would be the best part- a vast expanse of soft lavender blankets and cloudlike quilt of cream. Pillows turned up, sheets turned down- the kiss of dried fig lips strangely soft on my cheek, the scent of ocean mixed with ageless wisdom and baby powder. The click of a silently glowing lamp. Maybe graced with a fantastic story about princes and dragons in faraway lands. When the door closes I know that there is only light on the other side of it. I am filled with warmth, and bear the solid glow of unconditional love. This is my eternal dream.

---

The grit and the smoke stings my eyes like winking half tangerines in a midsummer black-out. Is everything in this moment, or just a lie? Hard to sit alone. That's why the ink stops (starts?) flowing. Honest moments mean processing which means immense pain (not sure whether I can withstand it's force...) Isn't it the truth that we're all afraid of ourselves? We're all afraid of what life can be, what it might become. Hopeful, but afraid.

Will reality ever show it's shining, burrowed head to those with bleeding eyes? Everything is red. We cannot see but for sleet and storm. Can we stand to dodge barbed bullets chasing us through a freshly burnt forest for much longer? Is not every second a precious waking breath, which might at any moment escape us?

Do you see so much the past that it obscures the future?

---

Tobacco caught in a spiderweb

Gold light streaming onto chest of hidden secrets,

Fingers so cold, blue lips graze unkempt skin.

Millions of tiny pictures, like dead leaves rotting in a winter slush.

Burping smoke- streaming tar- bleeding ash.

But the truth is, these moments have been given to me beautifully and freely.

750 Words- Day #6 (11/13/2010) Compilations from the Past

Ideas that spread pages like warm marmalade under the summer sun. Growing silently in a strange rain of muddled reflections, she swooped sideways to find that it was only ever herself all along. The page flutters with a spectre demon wing beat- the chaos makes me cry. Meticulous, mechanical, rudimentary lines of chaos tangled red and blue.

I can see the thousand me's through other peoples' eyes. Your perception of their perception of you. Feeling the need to detach my internal self from the external world. Believing a lie would destroy me; is it right to have to wait to live?

My heart beats with the sky
and this invisible tether ties me
to all I've ever wanted to leave behind.
The pastel feathers floating on a sea of
tranquil blue cool my face in the
stretching arms of a southern breeze.
I want to remain untouched and untainted
underneath the lush undertow brush
of an oasis undiscovered.

All the moments I wished to be
submerged in the waves, under
effervescence, no self
but bubbles-
where the sea glows nothing
but navy-black and trees are
green and crumbling at the center
of the world.

----------------------------------------------

Fingers tracing Merlot rimmed
with cherry wine nail lacquer and
too-big earrings that framed a face
of tireless searching, worn ambition,
over-extended arms.
Arms reaching out to who now-
the question penetrated her deepest
consciousness with a worrying ache,
relentless and insincere.
Dim lights shadowing crevices of
youth now vanished and
irretrievable.
Still reaching, she chuckled quietly
in the golden particle light
of her cozy recollection,
clutching the glass stem as if
it could bring her back.

---------------------------------------------

The pages are clean and smooth
with birth, thriving on creation; possibility-
like the waterfall where
submerged beneath the waves I felt
the pressure of one single raindrop
and the further down I went
the less I felt the rain.

--------------------------------------------

That distant purple glow
faint on the curling edges of the day
a streaming black snake
wet with liquid concrete and strewn
with the smallest, drowning yellow leaves.

The sad grey trees outside my window
whisper soft echoes to the howling moon
The breeze of autumn warms like amber
on the tip of a honey-drenched spoon.

Water gushes from a tin roof built
too low to shelter humbled faces
Left in the mildewed afterthought of
an eternal torrent grace (the light bounces off in a dark bronze glitter.)

Electricity curls my toes in
new and exotic ways
I'm not sure I enjoy.
Black hair flies through
electrified air particles
The back arches in irregular,
tender patters beyond the
bitter with a sparkle of pink putrid-
The retribution of never having done
the wrong or right thing is painful.

Truly these shades do become
brighter- the night lingers on
like an effervescent aqua lung
tattooed on my brain.

-------------------------------------------

Silver speckled granite streets stretch on with
sideways cracks of childhood.
Lingering echoes from empty tin cans and
piles of feathers litter the path
we once walked.

Love the smell of wet summer asphalt
(and how it looks like a black river, glistening beneath a golden light specter.)

---------------------------------------------

A tunnel leads to no where and
more follow suit. The road leads to
no where and the sun follows suit.
This path, these places, those houses,
that establishment- they all lead
us back to exactly where we started from.

You will live to tell the moral of your own demise.
The solution may be just as easy as
the question appears NOT to be.
The endless static might burst forth
for only one moment on
a vicious mountain top.

--------------------------------------------

Drudging the stars-
there is something in the air.
If exhaling this breath means
the monotony continues-
may it be forever stifled.
If the reckless chaos of this
tree split in two (white heat lightning)
is always lasting, I might
awaken as a ghost.
Even if I didn't, there would be
no way of telling whose body I inhabit.
The seams are paper thin,
cookie cutter highlighter,
red mattress axe marks.
The mirrors see what is behind and inside,
but ahead is only fog and smoke.
Tricky light propels me into
an ether realm of majestic solitude,
a silence so penetrating my
eyeballs stick to their lashes for
want of companionship.
Solace comes once more.

Today: The Frumpy Artisan

Today: Office Hobo

750 Words- Day #5 (11/11/2010)

Oh, this thing again. Another day and night aided and unaided by some substance far elusive and yet attainable only briefly to me. The night cried in horror, reacting to the silent statues looming in the corner of a forgotten red brick mansion. The stairs were winding ever slowly to a precipice of ice and soot, a longstanding and forelorn testament to an era and peoples outdated.

One day we will all be faces in the sand, bricks in one ancient building crumbling to the ground, demolished for the sake of progress. We will all leave our legacies to the hands of the status quo- our determinations now mean nothing when placed in the hands of fate. Fate is not always (and not often) kind to us in our inadequacies and urges for sublimation. We are limited by the fruitless utterances of an unheard crowd sometime in the future and not perceivable to us now. The normal rules need not apply in the wake of such extreme, relentless mediocrity.

The drone of civilization will wax and wane and our bodies will wither to dust as the world passes over us. The clouds will not weep for such microscopic, insipid creatures- only we, in our minds' eye, will behold or feel any glimmer of remorse. Once those days are forgotten and we too are nothing but worm food, the buildings, people and ideals of the world will change. We will not be part of this. We will not be part of anything then, to come, or still in progress- only now.

A building standing 2 on top of 2 multiplied by 4 and reduced by 6, a building with no beams or stable structure, just gelatinous matter unable to shatter. Unable to withstand the test of time, only one brick left to fall in the wake of so many who have already exuded their eloquence in a most persuasive manner. That persuasion, our mannerisms- all fallible and fleeting. We do not listen, and the world does not stop. All that is certain is the mundane reality of the here and now, the itch and scamper of feelings we consider insufficient to fill our emotional gasps.

Wishing that words meant something in the scheme of numbers, the game of life, the rule of the mighty and oppression of the strongest. Strangers affiliate with nothing more that glimpses of their own selves, and my self wonders relentlessly whether or not "strangers" actually exist- whether we are all one, or whether we are all separate. The tribal communities of ancient North/Latin America would ascribe to the belief that we are all one people (or perhaps followers of the Bahai/humanist/unitarian universalist faith)- that we are all on the same path and comprised of the same matter- thus bonded forever in our eternal struggle for that supreme life.

Distractions come and distractions go, but there is really no conceivable way of envisioning a world of equals, family, blood-bound seekers of the same ultimate existence. It is pointless to define "life" because life is not perceived, imagined, dreamed of or experienced the same way for any two beings. Every dream is ultimately for what? Success? Success in life, love, happiness, money, health? Every dream is merely for life to continue unhindered, for nothing to come along and shake our roots with the sudden taste of exoticism. For no romance to wake us from the dreary banality we come to trust and love.

The cold bites down and with it a succession of urges- constant need for companionship, acceptance, stability and trust. The cold is warm when warm is cold and as I've said before opposites meet opposites in the same way. They always strive to convey some semblance of difference when it is in fact that desire to portray difference (when there is none) that connects them all.

Dreams of fatal wounds and college party scenes, elusive to me in the quest for a quiet home. Prowling neighborhoods and backyards, going door to door looking for that "match." That ideal YES in terms of domestic appreciation and stability. Why is stability always linked so closely with domesticity? Can we not be wild and chaotic, free and erring, and at the same time stable in this cacophonous core? Is there only one means to an end, and yet so many means and only one end? It seems the only thing left to consider is whether or not "the end" is really the same for us all, or whether it depends upon the means with which we achieve that end...(and the beginning and middle, for that matter)

Today: Vintage dress c. 1960's

750 Words- Day #4 (11/10/2010)

Truth be told, I've tried my best- until this point, but where am I now? A comfortable glimmer of domesticity, a house with 2.5 animals and 2 roommates, a salary and benefits, yet still unfulfilled. Maybe trying isn't what I should be doing- rather DOING and less trying. The only problem is focusing that energy- that seemingly pointless ramble and subconscious fuzz into some practical, executable idea. Ideas are easy to create and so hard to execute. There seems to be nothing in this world not worth the effort. And yet effort is so straining, and the effort to live daily in this "domestic harmony" is effort enough to make me want to sleep forever.

It all comes down to what you get out of it. I get stability and financial security. Yet what can really be stable in an environment of stagnation and constant doubt? I miss out on willing and new companionship, spontaneity, fulfillment of a restless and youthful soul. I want to see the world and this microcosm of existence is apparently not enough. I want to write and paint and teach and learn, and this corporate slavery is dwindling my creative capacity and ability/desire to yearn for more.

Autocorrect, autofix, spell check like a good little girl or boy. Expect the world, machinery, mindless drones to fix your mistakes- when in reality they might be making things worse. Restricting a natural impulse to create and use artistic license- to manipulate normality in order to fulfill an inner desire for something more than what already exists.

I remember as a child hopping on one leg, rubbing my tummy and blabbering nonsense while spinning in circles in a random location- just for the novel idea what I might be the first person to do that succession of actions in that exact place. To be unique. I would sit on the bus going to school and look out the window at the mundane banality of it all- the same old man mowing his lawn at the same time, the same woman sitting on a lounge chair with her tanning spray, the same little dog chasing the mailman- hoping one of them would for once do something new.

Is it that we are afraid of "the new"? Or that we are so terribly happy with "the known?" I would get so sad thinking about the world and exploration- that there was nothing else to geographically chart or discover, that I had been born in an era when knowledge was all-encompassing and readily available without any sort of struggle or sense of reward. I wanted to discover things, be unique- find a new language, continent, species. I wanted to do whatever it took to be "the first" at anything. But everything has already been done, every possible thought written down, every acre explored.

At least, that's what they want us to think. What is far less often considered is that as the world and society transform, so too do our subconscious urges, or thoughts, and our actions. Why should we not think of unique ideas when faced with the real possibility of recreational space travel, robot uprisings, cyber-human integration? Did not the Greeks think up unique ideas on government, art, and leisure when faced with the ability to actually consider and encounter these new ideals of society? Encounters and experiences constantly transform as the world progresses (or regresses, based on personal opinion), so why should thought not follow suit?

Always beat the world to the kick- always surmise possibilities and future advances before their physical instatement. This is not premonitory- this is common sense, intuition and a knack for imagining the uncanny. If we are all trapped in this mindset that everything which will ever be discovered, created or thought already has- what is the point of progressing with a creative, abstract-oriented mind in this world? We must keep believing in the unknown, in the impossible and re-imagining the possible- for that might be what ultimately helps us find ourselves.

Every second is new and with each new second comes new possibilities which transform and reinvent our lives and state of consciousness. Maybe I am the first person to sit in this exact spot, with this exact cup of coffee and these exact fingers thinking and typing these words. Maybe that is unique and fulfilling enough. Clinging to the past moment is only stifling inner potential, while seeking out and actively envisioning a new world latent with new ideals will produce an evolved and fulfilled consciousness.

750 Words- Day #3 (11/9/2010)

Directionless, I seem to be. Dreams of climbing and falling, discussing my past only to anticipate when the person analyzing will tell me. Dreams of college, missing having purpose, missing having something I'd always rather be doing. Wishing I could fast forward or backward to somewhere other than this stagnant abyss of motionless repetition. Dreams of climbing towers laden with trash, window filled bathrooms and windowless rooms. Women in purple blouses with sashes and white pearls, smiling as a tornado eats me up. Dreams that prefer life over something else- dreams that feed off of life as if it were a mere puppet in the portrayal of our dreams. I see fields of purple, blue, mountains soaring as far as the eye can see in velvet hills.

woman in purple with pearls

trees near the river- tons of tree swings
teacher in love with- had wife
department store, hiding,
ran outside- beautiful landscape of rolling hills with flowers
he commented on the beauty of the distance,
i comment on the beauty of the bluish purple flower in my hands
1950's city- running through to find a way up the mountains
(which surround the city)
old hotel, running up winding attic stairs littered with
old toys, trash
go into closet room with little girl clothing
try to steal some, use restroom
find myself on bottom floor with glass all around,
everyone can see toilet

at new college, sitting on the ground with friends, telling
them I have to take one more class to pass. With Wyatt,
he's an ass, looking for a roommate but everyone has one.
go to ham center- huge cafeteria- trying to find prof johnson's
phone number- he ends up being right there, sitting
with Jeff. Prof Johnson is happy to see me, says he's
not doing well, takes me by the hand to talk to me outside
Jeff protests, I am numb and say I am not doing well either
crying because out of college and directionless

suddenly in huge auditorium- presented analysis of my thesis,
says it's abstract, bland, brainless. I am outraged
and don't recognize any of the students

How can I write and still have something left to line my brain? How can I produce new words every day without taking something from my subconscious? Or is it adding something? Is there ever a point where adding becomes taking away, or vice versa? The dreams that keep me awake at night and asleep during the day are manifestations of an active brain with no outlet for expression. I want to paint and no one will encourage it. They will encourage it but not pursue it with me. Everyone says "just write a novel!" as if the creation of a work of art is something just budding inside of me, waiting to rear it's beautiful or ugly head at any moment. And maybe this is the case, but it takes some coaxing of my own interior to produce anything on the exterior which reflects this true "orm." I've read more than ever in the last 4 weeks, thousands of pages, and have written only thousands of words.

How can one write who does not read? How can one read who does not write? See, the riddle doesn't work in the latter case. Does reading really take my attention, my creative essence, and simply apply it to an external form which is easy for me to take in because it does not require effort besides reception? With writing there must be a conception, a laborious birth through effort, strength, diligence and at the same time it must be free and unrestrained- and then a final production. The most daunting idea is the reception of others. How words, once taken from the brain and translated on paper from thought, can be interpreted by others when those initial thoughts are already so abstract? Lisa Allen Poe, that was my father's nickname for me- clearly I am abstract and my words unintelligible.

Another piece of last nights' dream state just came back to me- being asked by someone next to me about my familial relations. Describing my father's behavior and attributes, misgivings and errors. Seeing sympathy in the form of sad eyes and furrowed brows around me after just one sliver of the equation was revealed. Then the question of my Mother, and the deep breath which ensued- with knowing eyes around me which did not even require that I continue.

750 Words- Day #2 (11/8/2010)

We all work to stay busy and stay busy to work, when the weather outside and the demands of the world are what tear us apart from our dreams. Even when there is nothing to write about- no birds singing, no teardrops falling or stories to watch on the television- there's still something inside that urges us forward. Maybe it's fear, fear of stopping, fear of what stopping would do to us. Fear of stagnation, death, the darkness.

Maybe it's only fear that keeps us moving forward. We've deluded ourselves with this idea that it is hope from which we feed, when perhaps it is really just the fear or being hopeless. There is nothing which we cannot fear and there is nothing for which we can truly hope- besides the sanctity and preservation of our own mental and physical bodies. But hope is fear is hope and fear is all that exists.

The blank planet is rustling mindlessly to the tune of an unheard drum. The sound of exhalation and completion far eluding us in what we consider to be the masterpieces of life. A masterpiece is merely something that surpasses other pieces. We are all judging ourselves, our work, our lives against mediocrity, there is no standard but the ones we set for ourselves based on our experiences and our environment. A flawed environment would then produce a flawed being, and who can develop or exist in anything not flawed? There is excitement which punctures these moments of fear and hopelessness, excitement for the fact that maybe this mundane existence is enough. Maybe this is just a dream, but it is a dream in which we must live, and that has to be enough.

Somewhere between life and death, hope and fear, flaws and perfection- we must live and somehow find not only sustenance of body but also satisfaction of mind. How can we be truly happy in a flawed system, when we must live in the grey? How can we be truly happy when we cannot create color- when color goes against everything this world purports? How long will it take for our minds to understand, for our bodies to wither into nothing and realize that is all there has been all along? A dream of peace is merely a delusion of hope which conflicts with the reality of fear, pain, and death. Peace and love are attainable only if we are not distracted (as I just was) by the trivialities of a lifeless, loveless system.

I can't do it, we can't do it, but we must. There is nowhere but up and up is down and down is all around us. The sky weeps and the trees grow from their nurturing tears. The same vein which carved a well for sorrow also carves the well for joy. Isn't it really the case that yes and no, up and down, are irrelevant- that all existent in this world IS the grey- the in between, the NOW? The present as we know it is the only moment, but it is also the past and future for every moment is passed and about to pass. Spontaneity and the ground shakes. Irreverence and the world quakes. We are trapped in a system and yet it is this system that allows us to break it. If we have nothing to struggle against; what would be the point? If there were no down there would be no up, and without any perception of down there is nothing to hold inside ourselves but a stagnant belief in moderation.

Moderation in life is what we all strive for, and yet it is those moments of exceptional pain and joy that define our lives. It is those memories we truly remember. Yet, if we seek to only make each moment exceptional, there is no center to compare these instances to. There must be moderation peaked with pain, with joy, in order for there to be any stability in ourselves and in this world. There cannot be a world in which everything good and bad exists all the time, and yet that seems to be the world we live in.

Offspring of fear and pain, hope and joy, we are all striving to find balance punctuated by self fulfillment in whatever form that might take. It takes me long and hard moments of thought to even imagine that fulfillment might be possible, yet stagnation is impossible for that would end simply in darkness. And in a world of darkness, we must fight and continue to create color.

750 Words- Day #1 (11/7/2010)

Winter is approaching and the cold makes me feel so vulnerable. It's like the chill outside burrows into my heart and pierces my brain with rays of shattering ice. The brain stops operating when ice paralyzes; dreams, hopes, desires, thoughts- all muddled by this insipid ice. The cold is one thing I appreciate at night. It gives slumber to my fantasies and transforms them into something alive- something greater than me. I always wondered if dreams were created by me or were the creators OF me. Life, dreams, hopes- these things are all fuel and yet they are unavailable when you seek them out.

Nothing is certain in a world that's always moving, a brain that's always working and changing (I wish I could say evolving but sometimes the nature of thought seems counterproductive), people and bodies, warmth and darkness always churning and transforming into nothing tangible. Nothing to hold onto, nothing to rely on when the world is spinning most ferociously and the ground beneath our feet quakes as if an imminent disaster is always approaching. There are times when I think the world is one cruel joke; a test in willpower- a test to see if willpower even exists. The thought that will and individuality- the characters of a unique organism- are all merely productions of a changing world and our adaptations to those changes. Is nothing wholly self created? Or is everything?

The answers will never be found, and that is the most frustrating thought of them all. That we strive and fight, muscle, bone, sinew and nails, grinding to the beat of an agitated world, a world in which no answers will ever exist. It's all theory. Life, existence, dreams, myself- theories. Nothing tangible, nothing certain. Words are just words that are also transitory- these thoughts I commit to paper (or in this case a virtual white box) will mean nothing to me in ten minutes. These thoughts will evolve or devolve and then what is left? What is that central core that all of us seek to improve? There is no center, and if there is- it cannot hold.

Magma, fire, raining bullets of ice and shards of glass- the end is the only thing certain. Birth may be a mistake and so may be death- but the only certainty is that both will happen to each and every one of us. The matter we fill the "between" with is what we hold to be important- and yet this matter is constantly being redefined, regretted, held back in order to contain and preserve the matter of the world around us. We cannot be objective, we can only sit idly by and pretend that our words and thoughts mean something. That we as individuals have power. In reality, we are powerless, and thoughts and actions mean nothing more than a ripple over the water. We breathe the air that urges us forward, backward- anywhere from here. We are constantly in motion with the Earth and we too, as the Earth, will never stop until we rest. However long that takes, whatever insights we think we have produced, whatever enlightenment we imagine to have found- these are all merely shadow puppets filling our brains so we don't go insane.

The only certainty is the uncertain, and the only light is in shadow. Grey, mauve, putrid yellow-green, the in-between colors, thoughts, images and flickers of hope. We are grey, each and every one of us- just waiting and striving to fill ourselves with color when color is merely a part of our imaginations. The foundation of all children's stories, the thoughts that produce "the self" are all imposed, confining, restricted products of the world's collective (and masochistic) imagination. When leaves blow from a tree, so too each "soul," each imagined "self" falls to the ground and crumbles from the power of a thoughtless breeze. The world does not think- only we do- and our thoughts too are imbued with the senselessness of the wind. Like a giant tornado ripping towards us at Mache speed, the external body is tight and solid, yet the core is a collapsed cacophony and the worlds' screams and lost hopes.

Fifty more words, but whatever I say is immaterial. What happens when that time is up? Will it have a neat and tidy conclusion? Or will we all be left standing on the verge of a giant chasm, waiting to tear and rip at every thought and dream we have ever deluded ourselves with?