I look to the fireplace. I should destroy these. Some other time, that's what they are. Some other time that is lost.
I don't, though. I can't. It would be like destroying part of me, cutting it out of my soul, feeding it to the flames. Your flames consumed me enough. I am not strong enough for trying this again.
Heaven.
There is a darkness. Can you feel it?
Omnipresence of
Something, some force.
The hands, reaching up from the sides of the bed
When you're half-sleeping, like a skeleton aching to be free of its skin
Pulling you down,
Down,
Down.
Sometimes, you might fight it, and
Awaken,
Gasping and full of fear.
Sometimes, you cannot resist it, and
Your resentment grows
In the darkest corners of your soul.
Hell.
All roads lead towards it, and are paved with good intentions.
Home.
They say that it's where the heart is,
but everything I've ever loved is behind some other door.
All of these decorations
All of these ornamentations
All of these distractions
We box them up, four walls, top them off with a ceiling,
There's no place like it.
Illum.
Er war unser Taxifahrer an diesem Tag. Ständig fing er an den merkwürdigsten Zeitpunkten Gespräche mit wildfremden Menschen an.
Ich rauchte eine Zigarette und beobachtete, wie die Bäume an uns vorbeizogen, während ich ihre Hand hielt, als sie ihren Kopf auf meine Schulter legte.
"Wo soll es hingehen? Da ich der schnellste Taxifahrer dieser Hemisphäre bin, kann ich euch für einen kleinen Zuschlag schneller ans Ziel bringen" sagte er. Dann stellte er sich vor: "Ich heiße übrigens Thomas, und ihr beiden scheint etwas anders als meine üblichen Kunden zu sein."
"Anders?" er schluckte den Köder. Ich schnippte meine Asche aus der gesprungenen Scheibe. Wenigstens ließ Thomas uns rauchen. Heutzutage erlauben das nur noch die wenigsten Taxis.
"Nun, zuallererst seid ihr verliebt, was an sich schon ungewöhnlich genug ist. Aber da ist noch etwas anderes. Besonders bei dir." Er zeigte im Rückspiegel auf sie, wobei er die Glasfläche leicht berührte und den Spiegel drehte, sodass ich sein Gesicht nicht mehr so gut sehen konnte.
"Ich habe ein Angebot für dich“, fuhr er fort. "Ich werde dir beweisen, dass ich der schnellste Taxifahrer bin, den du jemals hattest, und wenn du unzufrieden bist, wenn wir ankommen, wo auch immer du hinwillst, ist die Fahrt umsonst. Wenn du allerdings zufrieden bist, bezahlst du das Doppelte. Haben wir einen Deal?"
ILY.
So, sitting on a balcony in Paris, I asked her to marry me for the first time, not really expecting an answer, not really surprised or disappointed or sad when she said no. I knew inside myself that there'd be other opportunities for all of that, and that it was merely a token representation that paled in comparison to the true nature of my ties with her.
143
143
143
143
143
143
143
143
Imagination.
I don't think that falling in love with someone really qualifies as a special power. Anybody can do that.
Index 4.
She looks down at me, placing her hand on top of my head.
"The thing is, as every parent learns,
that the child will never be as disappointing to the parents as the parents will be to the child."
I don't really understand.
Life.
Has Life Gotten Boring?
Have you compromised too many of The Good Things in favor of stability?
Do you miss the days of reckless abandon where consequences were irrelevant?
Has your love life taken a turn for the mundane, and you'd like to recapture something mad, passionate, and extraordinary?
Perhaps you, like many others, have found life to be little more than an endless series of repeated motions. Spending hours every day in traffic only for the great reward of an entire day lost to the cardboard and cheap carpet of a cubicle environment can wear anyone down, especially when days blur into weeks, and weeks blur into years, and at the end of the road, you have nothing to show for all of your efforts. Many people find themselves wondering:
Where did all the time go?
Are you one of these people?
It doesn't have to be this way!
We can help you gain back all of those feelings and experiences that you thought you'd given up or lost forever!
gniroB nettoG efiL saH?
ytilibats fo rovaf ni sgnihT dooG ehT fo ynam oot desimorpmoc uoy evaH?
tnavelerri erew secneuqesnoc erehw nodnaba sselkcer fo syad eht ssim uoy oD?
yranidroartxe dna ,etanoissap ,dam gnihtemos erutpacer ot ekil d'uoy dna ,enadnum eht rof nrut a nekat efil evol ruoy saH?
noitamrofnI eroM
.yawyna ,ecived eht desu ylerar I .moordeb eht fo tuo enohpelet eht gnipeek fo tniop a ti edam I ecnis ,ti rewsna ot nehctik eht sdrawot yaw ym edam I ,gnitsised fo ngis tuohtiw gnir ot deunitnoc ti nehW .ti derongi I ,lausu sa dna ,gnar enohp ehT
.tey ffo gniog erew enon tub ,daeh ym fo edisni pu gnigrahc erew slleb mralA ?reilrae pu nekow I t'ndah yhW .xelpmoc tnemtrapa eht yb dedivorp retaw toh fo ylppus sseldne ylgnimees eht tsuahxe ot hguone gnol rof gninnur neeb dah ti taht dezilaer dna retaw eht ffo nrut ot revo dehcaer ,roolf moorhtab ym emoceb dah taht ssyba eht otni teprac deggolretaw eht hguorht deppets I
.roolf eht ni elddup elbadimrof ytterp a etaerc ot hguone gnol rof os gniod neeb dah yltnerappa dna moorhtab eht ni knis eht fo egde eht revo gninnur saw retaw eht taht saw gninrom taht pu ekow I nehw deciton I taht gniht tsrif ehT
Lightlessness.
Is there truly a darkness in our souls, or just a lack of lightness?
Listen.
Half the world's asleep
It can burn, or it can freeze.
You're here w/ me
At least in part: A memory.
Where the bed's still warm
Revolutions come, the conquered gone
So the world can sleep,
Cradled in the frozen deep.
In the winter cold we are
Sleeping all the days away.
Not all things bought are also sold
...listen!
I don't hear anything.
shh
hlysnan
I still can't hear it.
How can't you? It's everywhere!
Memo.
Weak at the knees
What do they intend to do to me?
If I wait another year, and
Fall hostage to my fears:
I may not be able to see you
In the dark, ever again,
I need
A hand to guide me
I need
Something to fill this emptiness
I wanted
Something that could only begin
When I slept.
But with you, and of you,
I dream.
Trying to save you;
This could kill me.
With a blank stare, paper thin, and
Just as pale,
I could search forever.
or you,
You could save me from myself.
Mist.
01001110 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110011 01110000 01101001 01110010 01100001 01100011 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00100000 01110011 01101101 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100001
How many years have passed?
Echoes penetrate the cavernous recesses of doubt. They fly silently by night with this inquiry, waiting, watching, growing restless. Somewhere on a sandy shore, beneath
Autumn's trees and a cooling wind, these echoes take root, thrive, and blossom, fed by teardrops. The song they sing, a moan of the lost.
A Lapse Of Memory
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101101 01100001 01100111 01101001 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110
Mortals.
And summer sun with striking reminders of a cold country where rain would soak us to the core:
And so we are:
Following the beaten paths of the author before us, the father who resides in heaven (or, perhaps, and in a blasphemous and conspiring tone, hell), the savior who is covered with the ink stains of a propaganda machine, the holy spirits (ahem, with the addition of liquors and brandies to taste):
You wanted to kiss me then? I wonder, hard set to bite the left corner of the lower lip out of concentration and slash or determination, you wanted to put your mouth on mine, press lips, seal ourselves into a moment that alone could stand forever or compared to many others, go unnoticed?
It was our choice, I tell myself, to walk the paths that placed us here again. We're chipping at the concrete wall between our homes, some south-of-urban Shakespearean tragedy in the making; but isn't this our choice?
As if our souls were bound by the pen, or the knife, or perhaps worse, the electronic mail or the keyboard. Like shackles on our ankles it holds our attention span for one more day, hoping for a new movement, hoping this will be the day that we find courage or a bashful secret or both, and wishing that today the past would go away for good and we could touch, breathe, sweat, cry, and fuck without this bittersweet remorse.
Perhaps today is that other day, and a new day, washed by torrents of sky weeping, the water and the life pour together, and you and me... I daresay we may connect these points again.
We are mortals, bound.
Moth.
I wrote it so you'd look, and you did.
So you'd have a reason to hate, to love, to doubt, to assume, to believe, to disbelieve, to carry a grudge, to forgive, to approach, and to recede.
And you did.
Maybe it's the truth. Maybe it's a lie. Maybe it's a trap, you've fallen into it, now you think you know why it's all so circular, and maybe you're right.
It's what you expect, isn't it, to read? About monuments falling, or being constructed, or being destroyed. About a moment or two that you didn't want to forget or that you can't get out of your head. Or both.
Because nothing ever changes, and everything is always the same. You make a decision and wish that you'd made the other. An option is given and you second-guess your judgment, always looking over the fence for a better answer.
For the yin, the yang. The black, the white. The waking, the sleeping. The living, the dead. The gods, the devils. The day, the night.
We've lost the borders, the gray scale, the drowsy, the comatose, the imps and the pixies, the twilight and the dawn. They're all somewhere, lost in neverland, because you always wanted it to be one extreme or the other.
But nothing matters, extreme or otherwise, in the end. Because it's just what you wanted to see it as, to read it as, to look into it as; it's how you considered yourself5, after all, sitting on the fence, and had nothing to do with any other factors but your own success and maladies, your own afflictions and triumphs, your own scar tissue that you nurse from within.
We live in fear of death, so fascinating nonetheless, and in doing so we forget to live. A death in the past, or the future, and an urge to examine it in all of its facets, creating a death in the present. Leaving the dead to rot in the streets because we're too afraid to scrape them up and we're too preoccupied to dig them a fitting grave. That way, everyone can see them, and they can watch the various stages of decay from inside their homes, warm, dry. Pretty smelling. That way, we never have to let them go, because everyone expects, you expect, we all know that it must be there tomorrow, and when the system is predictable, there's no reason to stop believing, there's no motivation to doubt what you've always thought was truth.
So keep reading, because I will give you a reason to hate, to love, to doubt, to assume, to believe, to disbelieve, to carry a grudge, to forgive, to approach, and to recede.
And you will.
Nephilim.
those who cause others to fall
You find yourself doing stupid things like waiting. You tell yourself that if you wait long enough, that the lyrics will come, or that there'll be a letter, or that someone you're forgetting about will return to remind you of what it is that you lost.
Be cautious where you tread,
Be 'ware of careless thoughts inside your head
Notes.
"It's been years and years," I said, and I'm not sure why I said that, since it had really only been hours.
"Everything is relative, remember? Years are like seconds if you're looking at things from above."
She told me that, and drew a heart on the glass with her fingertips. The strange thing about the heart was that is glowed brightly, like a red neon light, but even brighter than that, really.
I wondered which the greater price to pay was: not being able to forget, or not being able to remember. Both ways left you feeling a little lost, with a little part of you broken that you couldn't repair, for one reason or another.
Nurture.
nurture nature nurture nature
Your energy
Channel it into
Me
What is expected? What has occurred?
You wrote that you'd be the best to me that you could be
forever and ever, so maybe that's what you're up to.
Maybe the best that you can be is not being at all,
and that's why you stopped responding, months ago.
Things change, they grow.
Inside of us,
or sometimes,
outside of us.
There are times when we weed them out.
Sometimes other people
weed them out for us,
no matter what desire is buried,
how deeply rooted;
the past is fertile when it lies in our hearts.
I cried for you.
I should have told you why, then,
but I was afraid.
Now, I'm not afraid. And
I know, it's never too late, though
sometimes,
it is too far.
The gulf is wide, the chasm deep, and
I can only reach half of the way across it,
towards you.
Panegyric.
the smell of warm pavement
steam rising
rain
clouds
humidity,
sand in my ears.
the warmth of sunburned skin
hair across your face
long drives through the swamp
swarms of mosquitoes around the lights
hotel room doors
blue plastic cups
cheap wine, cigarette ashes
carbonation
bloodshot saltwater eyes,
sticky skin.
kisses and afternoon showers at the docks down on the beach
splinters
9.2736184954957037525164160739902
also see: Encomiastic
Phantoms.
01. Det er noe som gjemmer seg i veggen, og det venter til du nesten sover før det starter å klore seg vei ut. (There's something hiding in the walls, and it's going to wait until you're almost asleep before it starts scratching to get out.)
02. Når du slår av lyset, kommer de ut fra under sengen og venter på at du skal sette føttene dine på gulvet så de kan ta fra deg sjelen din. La derfor lyset stå på. (When you turn out the lights, they come out from under the bed and wait for you to put your feet on the floor, so they can take your soul away from you. So lea
ve the lights on.)
03. Det er noe i kjelleren. (There's something in the basement.)
REF: CHARLIE THE GHOST
04. Når strømmen går, er det mest sannsynlig ikke i kjelleren mer. Når stearinlysene slukkes er det mest sannsynlig bak deg. (When the power goes out, it's probably not in the basement anymore. When the candles go out, it's probably behind you.)
05. Når du leker med Ouija-brettet lar du de komme inn. (When you play with the Ouija board, you're letting them in.)
06. I blant er de mellom putene i sofaen. De strekker seg etter lommene dine når du er distrahert og drar ut tingene dine, siden de prøver å stjele livet ditt fra deg, - bit for bit. (Sometimes, they're in between the cushions of the couch. They reach into your pockets when you're distracted and pull things out of them, because they are trying to steal your life away, bit by bit.)
07. De ser på deg mens du sover. (They watch you sleep.)
REF: THE PEEPING MAN
08. Katter, hunder og beiber kan se de gå rundt i rommet med deg. Spesielt katter. (Cats, dogs, and babies can see them walking around the room with you. Especially cats.)
09. De samler seg i luften, i skyene rundt deg, og der venter de. De flokker seg til hjørnene hvor det er mørkt, hvor nattelyset ikke rekker, i skyggen ved sengekanten, og der venter de. (They gather in the sky, in the clouds above you, and they wait. They congregate in the corners, where it's dark, where the night-light doesn't quite reach, in the shadows of the bedposts, and they wait.)
10. Lydene du hører er ikke huset som rører seg, rørene som knitrer eller temperaturforskjellene som får glasset til å sprekke - de kommer inn gjennom veggene, og i blant drar de. De samler flere av sine egne til tilbakekomsten. (The noises you hear aren't the house settling, or the pipes, or the temperature difference making the glass pop - they're coming through the walls, and sometimes they are leaving. To gather more of their kind for the return trip.)
... Infensus Phasmatis.
Prophecy.
On this day, many futures will change.
It's weird how things happen.
You wake up and you stumble out of bed. You almost fall over as you're overstepping the clutter of clothing from another drunken night that litters the pathway leading towards the toilet. You're standing in front of the mirror rubbing the crud out of your eyes when you notice a beautiful, naked woman sitting in your bathtub, smoking a cigarette, buried up to her chin in bubbles. One of her arms is dangling over the side of the basin as the cigarette slowly burns its way towards her fingertips. She's painted her nails black, but the paint has been chipped away. You notice that she has very slender fingers, and that she holds her cigarette like an actor, or a hand model. Her eyes are closed, and you're thinking that maybe she is sleeping, or that maybe she is dead, or maybe she isn't even there at all and you're still asleep and dreaming. It happened like that to me.