If only I could make music notes into words.

I can use words.

My fingers are not adapted to music.

They don’t realize he’s alive

No one understands

This is my home.

I’m coming home.

Am I home?

My heart is in my chest, but

In a different way than it normally is.

It is heavy,

I am heavy-hearted.

I am sad.

I realize that what I’m writing is not bestseller material.

At all.

Oh well.

I’ll keep writing anyway.

Maybe something will come of it

Who knows.

I am tired.

I am hungry.

Such mindless, useless details

But maybe someone will pay for this

Somewhere down the line.

Is that what I am now?

Scratching for money, seeking cash

When I don’t really need it?

What do I want money for?

Security?

That means nothing.

Savings?

I suppose.

Later on.

Paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs.

Not every sentence is a paragraph, children,

But some paragraphs are sentences.

Aïe.

I’m all shivery.

I miss you.

Yes, you, no, not you – you.

You know who I’m talking about.

The one I want to be with forever and ever.

You are always here, You know that.

You aren’t always here.

I love capital letters.

You can’t tell who I’m talking about, can you.

No, you can’t.

I know.

I know what I’m saying,

Which is a relief,

Because sometimes I really don’t.

Sometimes I really have no idea of what I’m saying

Or what I mean

Or what I want

Or what I need

Or anything like that.

No trust, no certainty

Damned if I do

Damned if I don’t

So do I just try?

But there is no try.

I do what I don’t want to do

And I don’t do what I want to do

But that isn’t always the case.

Why is life full of whys and buts?

There is not nearly enough bass on this laptop.

It’s painful listening to U2 with no bass.

No foundation.

I have a foundation, a base –

I also have a bass. Hee.

They’re not the same person at all,

Which is a good thing in the end.

But oh, I am lonely,

And I am cold,

And you are not here,

But You are.

I’m rambling.

You can probably tell.

There are three yous in this musing –

You, you and you.

Do you know who you are?

Do you know who I am?

Goodbye – you can keep this suit of lights

I’ll be up with the sun

I’m not coming down

I’m not coming down

I’m not coming down

‘Cause I’m already gone

Felt that way all along

Lyrics to Major Tom (Coming Home) are (c) Shiny Toy Guns. Lyrics to Gone are (c) U2.

Rain on me, oh wash the tears away
Water falling from the clouds,
Waterfall from soaking cotton
Gray and dripping, cool and calming
Trembling goosebumps with bright breezes
Salt stinging as the rain falls from my face
Cold, soft – look at the inkblots
What do you see?  What do they mean?
Think, Rorschach – let the black ink
Seep through the neurons, depolarized thought
Feel the pen slide over the nerves, 
Know the difference between
Blots of ink and ink blotted by water
Whether salted or sweet,
From the eternal sky or the window to the soul
Cold rain and warm tears,
Ink sliding from the silver pen,
Reflecting the grey clouds,
The steely heartbreak
Feel the stomach turn, as the Earth turns
On its axis – do you have one?
What is your axis – where do you turn?
And how?  What angle?
The angle of your pen?
The angle of the letters?
Your life is crooked, bent, slanted
Bend in the wind, bend in the rain
The wind blows, and the rain falls
Spine bends, life ends, slant your way through time
Can’t go straight, can’t stop moving
Walking on a tightrope, a tightrope made,
Woven of tears, ink, clouds and rain
Transitory, ethereal, slippery, smooth
How to weave threads of thought
Into context – into rain and tears
The ink, the liquid thought, bridge the
Gap existing between denotation and connotation
Dendrites woven through clouds
Ink woven through rain
Definition is denotation
Connotation is metaphor
Context is all, isn’t it?
Context is almost all?
Context is not all.
Without life, there is no context
Without life or context, there is no point
A point, a line, two dimensions
Only existing in the ideal
The ideal – not the perfect, but 
Based on ideas and principles
A principled man.
Principles written in ink, woven of the 
Same thread we walk on, for do we not
Walk on our principles?
Balance on our principles
Balance on words and thoughts
Balance on tears and love
Love, woven of different thread
Woven of fluffy clouds, cleansing rain
Sun shining, make a rainbow
See the meeting of pain and pleasure
Sorrow and ecstasy, fruit and stone,
Flesh and bone, life inherent
In this woven thread, sewing us together
Or this woven rope, binding us alone
Cut the rope, free the thoughts
Sew the distilled rope into the cloth
Of your life with the silver, slanted pen
Fingers as needles, threaded with nerves
Slipping the iridescent thought-thread
Through the cloth, the clothing
That you wear, choosing to wear the clothes you’ve stitched together – 
Experiences, cut to patterns of time
Sewn together with thoughts
The cloth is the experience
The pattern is the time
The thread is the thoughts
Got it?  Understand?
You sew your clothes, you make your life,
Wear the clothes, however they fit
Stained with blood, washed in tears
Stained with tears, washed with blood
Red or white, red and white
Cleanliness is bloodiness
Drenched in blood like it is rain
Wash your clothing, rinse them out
Inkblots of blood
Blood is life – blood is ink
If blood is ink, blood is woven into 
The thread, the clothing
Blood – pain, pleasure.
Death, birth, life.
You are yourself the clothes
You are sewing yourself together
Live is blood.
Your clothes are life.
Bloody finger-needles, poking and prodding
Inkblots of blood staining the cloth
You sew to yourself
You sew yourself
And yet sometimes it doesn’t hurt
The scars and stains are washed away
Stand in the rain, let it cleanse 
Feel the dried blood, the old life
Slip away among the clouds
Slide down the thread, drop off the rope
Fall onto the earth, water and blood
Blood and water, dripping from you
Everything a blur, you sew without thinking
It’s almost comic.
But why laugh?  Why cry?
The Earth is far below, or you would step
Off.  Where is the other end of the rope
Attached?  To what are you holding on?
Nothing to hold onto, let the rain come down.

I tied myself with wire

To let the horses run free

Playing with the fire

Till the fire played with me

The stone was semi-precious

We were barely conscious

Two souls too smart to be

In the realm of certainty

Even on our wedding day

We set ourselves on fire

Oh God, do not deny her

It's not if I believe in love

But if love believes in me

Oh, believe in me

At the moment of surrender

I folded to my knees

I did not notice the passers-by

And they did not notice me

I've been in every black hole

At the altar of the dark star

My body's now a begging bowl

That's begging to get back

Begging to get back to my heart

To the rhythm of my soul 

To the rhythm of unconsciousness

To the rhythm that yearns 

To be released from control

I was punching in the numbers

At the ATM machine

I could in the reflection

A face staring back at me

At the moment of surrender

A vision over visibility 

I did not notice the passers-by

And they did not notice me

I was speeding on the subway

Through the stations of the cross

Every eye looking every other way

Counting down till the pain would stop

At the moment of surrender

A vision over visibility

I did not notice the passers-by

And they did not notice me

Moment of Surrender, © U2, 2009: No Line on the Horizon

Here I start anew.  En ce moment, je commence.  What do I start?  De quoi agis-je?

I will take my world and convey it: its winds, its seasons, its scents, its self.  There is where I am, but where is here?

Here is where the wind blows diesel exhaust into your nose, cigarette smoke into your hair, Thai spices onto your tongue.  Here is where it shifts the dying leaves one day, one breeze closer to winter, and amuses itself by scattering and regrouping those who have  already given up their lease along the cobbled, indifferent sidewalks.

Here is where the wind slips delicately over the smooth wood of the benches, pushed along by the dusty roofs of cars that pass by.  The wind blows even when no car will run and my hands will never thaw, to remain clutched around my pen's silver petroleum-based form forever.

Hardly a romantic start to the end of the beginning, but that it is such could not be disputed: when will the day come when I will not sit on this bench at all, when to see a car pass would disturb the sense of society, when the wind will blow the leaves into the hair of the walkers and cyclists, going home to a house which will not be livable when the winter rolls in, the wind bringing the snow in feet, not inches?

But this is a start to an end of an end: le début d'une fin d'une fin.  Blood will flow and wind will blow et j'espère que je me sauve.  To be close to those we love is to at once let ourselves be blown in the wind and to stand like a rock against it, for if one chooses the wind of the change they desire, to stand in that wind is to not change at all.

So is this the start of the end of the end, or is it the end of the start of the end, or even the end of the start of the end?   

Who knows, who cares; it will go whether or not we do, for the wind cannot stop the wind, and the leaves are falling.

My friend recently challenged me to a "Seven Deadly Sins" quiz, the idea taken from Fullmetal Alchemist. Here is my response.

"The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin."

----Romans 7: 14b-25


This applies to every single one of the seven, all of which I am guilty of: lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, pride, greed, and envy.