I remember quite clearly, as it was only a few days ago, the message from my brother: “she passed away so please make prayer for her.” Would said prayers lack sincerity as she was as anonymous to me as the passersby at a café? I felt little remorse, and as such a little more shame, but neither was sufficient to permit me to dwell on ill thoughts. Rather, I was awakened, especially around the company of others, of the memory of living itself. It seemed that the pulsation of an alternate universe reverberated in my own, and there was no equation fit to solve neither its causes nor its results. It was simply an observation.

The thoughts were simple and subtle: she is dead. She is no more. She will never be again. That was her end. I almost imagined the bluish lips of the corpse that would stain my memory had I seen her at the funeral, but even then, the memory of what would have been is rarely ever imprinted. I might forget this event one day. What I cannot forget is that she is one of mine, a lasting human from my generation. I am one of many cousins, twenty-seven from both parents’ sides, and as long as I have lived (for I have lived a full life even at twenty-one), she is the first, both close to me and part of me, that has passed. I have known of people from schools and distant friendships that have parted, but no family member. It is a strange thing to hold family so important when she was so distant nevertheless. (Perhaps, to accommodate all subjectivities, I should mention that I am distant to others as well.)

There are other words I must mention, words that will not leave because they are true. She was family. She was a compatriot, kin, and people. She was something not to be trusted or even something in which to believe, since she was as she was. Whether or not I spread the canon of my former country, she was a national of my first nation. Though the thread bares in this transfigured relationship, it is a thread made more apparent by its disintegration. Most obvious, though, is her absence. To know that something is no longer has the presence in the mind, in memory, and only substantiates the notion of the dimension that is time.

She was family, though, was she not? My father’s second-oldest sister’s eldest daughter, who would have soon turned twenty-eight, was no less my cousin than the few I still talk to several times a year. Genetically, she and I shared much in common. In fact, I would owe her more than I would to my closest friends by virtue of socially-driven, cultural values that dictate the family unit. The thing which has little meaning to me is still with a context I cannot simply drive out. I was born unto this society and its lexicon of terms that are more for use than meager reference. I am but another word in a dictionary driven by the same linguistic logic as any non-allegorical list of words.

***

I have thought of her family as well, and what their reaction must be. It is not of simple sympathy, and upon her birth they were borne unto a duality and a dialogue. She was ill all her life, not necessarily suffering but bearing an inability to cognate as well as others. This mental disability left her as a child, more or less, but with social reputation she was treated well (mostly)—as an adult. She was in fact seven years my senior. I will be older than her in a decade, if one’s age ends with one’s death.

Though her family was supportive and by no means treated her as if though she was a curse upon them, I do think of the most sickening of thoughts: they must feel both sorrow and relief. It is not an evil thought, and they are not evil people. This notion incurs an ugly feeling, but nevertheless one of nature—she was, in a sense, a standstill of human life. She was, if one could be so cruel as to metaphorically denominate a human, a picture of the struggle. She could not grow mentally. She was affected by poor physiology. Her life was not expected to last too long, and we would be “fortunate” if she did. But in her life, the life of the single image of a human, she had great needs. Her environment had to make an exception for her. Does ours not do so for us?

***

My memories of her are fond and empathetic. She would often sit and imaginatively wave her fingers in succession, as if though playing a glissando on five keys, small enough for her petite hands. She would smile as she did so, unaware of the few curious glances, none of which lasted long. Suddenly she would stop playing Mozart and put her hands in her lap. Much like the tears of a person in woe, her smile would subside, and a sour, stern expression would roll across her face.

I sat a few feet from her once, and she looked at me and almost angrily, she commanded me:

“Kameez neechay kar.” [Pull down your shirt.]

Yes ma’am, was all I thought—one should revere elders, even if they are cousins who never communicate. The South from the United States was the same as the North of Pakistan (perchance I will describe the similarities and differences of Dixie v. Punjabi manners).

***

I have little else to discuss, other than the things I already know. I realize now that much of knowledge is not a new thing discovered, but embedded in us. We are born into a world of logic and there is only evidence to suggest that. The world ends with us, we are sure of that. Existentially, there is of course no world without us. However, that world peculiarly has its own rules, rules we must follow. The world does not follow us. These rules of gravity and heat are arbitrary to the most honest of thinkers, but valid nonetheless, and there is something to be learned from these Laws. They are always discussing with each other how to not overstep one another. More importantly, they are always deeply concerned with keeping equilibrium. It is an issue in science, as well as metaphysics, that this world always attempts to maintain balance. It is strange and occurs for no reason, but the reason is in being itself. We might blend the two definitions of reason into one:

(to) reason: v. To deduce or explain the causes and being of a given entity

reason: n. The meaning of something, usually the logic of the existence of something

As we combine these two definitions, we are in a crux where the verb and noun are one. Something is now positive and negative at the same time. This is the ultimate state of being, not because it is better or stronger or bigger, but because it is honest. It is true. There is no definition to this state of being, because it cannot be explained away through cheap observations and equations. Verily, this state of being occurs through experience alone, though this sort of phenomenology is not an ascetic pursuit.

Gravity is an entity we have most fruitfully experienced, and yet it is easily dismissed as a dull, disassociated concept, when in fact, there are few things as true as gravity! It is without description, and its resolve has no struggle. It is a force, something that might never be explained, but something that is ubiquitously perceived. Though there may be further value in analysis, there is plenty of worth in that it is. Its adjectives are a substitute for experience and for phenomenal affection.

Perhaps these sensations are a result of all these experiences of the past few months—even the past year one could say. All the philosophy and literature and travelling have culminated in the death of the cousin I barely knew. I have found the beauty of things in their being, and that there is a worth in being itself. The material and the immaterial are not different. In fact, materiality exists first, then its essence takes upon immateriality. What else is in this world other than the material? It is all in our mind that anything is worth more than it is, and it is both grotesque and inhuman to think a number might be assigned as a value. The value might coincide with existence, but it never occurs first. In being there is peace, and that the things that exist are worth more than the things that do not. In such a view existence has the highest worth of all.

There is worth in being itself.

***

As for the notion of becoming, I might need a different set of experiences to establish any sort of clause, but with the affection of worth and being, I cannot say I am driven to discuss such things.

“I am that I am.”

As implied, I would write a Eulogy for my cousin, but I would do no justice. Verily, there is one piece so light in its narrative, it is humorous.

“You do look, my son, in a moved sort.

As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yeah, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pagent faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.—Sir, I am vexxt.

Bear with my weakness, my old brain is troubled:

Be not disturb’d with my infirity:

If you be pleased, retire into my cell,

And there repose: a turn or two I’ll walk,

To still my beating mind.”

In memory of Maria, my cousin.

The issue isn’t of the cowboy, but my interpretation at that young age, and the divide between the cultural history of America and of Pakistan. In America, we have our cowboy, a lone figure in an isolated country and history. In Pakistan, a young nation, where Partition protesters still purchase chat and chanay and samosa in the streets, the culture is not isolated. I dare not go into the Subcontinent’s rich history, but we have our figures. We have the romantic maharaja and the courageous sapai, the last of our kind, the products of our rich culture, before the arrival of the British. Suits will never compare to shalwar kameez.

I remember asking my mother, who, I didn’t realize at the time, was learning as much about America as I was, what the cowboys in Pakistan were like. Little did I know, we did not have herders like America. We did not have the same way to deal with cattle. We actually had byproducts of the previously dominant Hindu culture, as well as the Islamic perspective, as to what a cow was. A cow in America goes “moo.” A cow in Pakistan provides sustenance. These are the first things that come to mind to a child of each respective culture.

How can a person, who is so new to a place, regardless of her intelligence, explain that things aren’t the same everywhere? How can a person explain the difference of histories to a child, who expects so much, whose optimism is not corrupted with a realist’s view? I cannot explain with great detail or great analysis how two cultures have fused into one “me.” There are decisive moments where the divide was more obvious, but I did not realize, and by the the time I did, it was a form of racism.

9/11. Dhal chaval. Skin color. Somf. Skin color. Gora.

It hasn’t always been a defense of Pakistan against Americans. It’s worked both ways. Perhaps I’m tired of fighting, and even though I think cultural artifacts are important in identifying a location as well as responding to a locale’s needs, such as climate, resources, and religious context, but as far as the individual goes (the individual subject and variable being me), I don’t entail a culture. I might pursue a micro-culture, like following Arsenal or being an architect, but underneath is the experience that derives reasons for both and from both. It seems identity comes from experience as well as context. In essence, identity is the dialogue of experience and context.

fin.

In the film The History Boys, Hector constantly alludes to literature, culture, and the arts, as he is a General Studies teacher at the grammar school. When the boys go for a field trip at a local monastery, he joyously proclaims, “Pass the parcel. That’s sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That’s the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.”

When going through my friends’ tumblrs, I realized the allegorical relationship between his quotation and the usage of blogs, especially the “permalink” functions available on many of them.

It’s interesting to think of the knowledge in each blog post, especially in tumblr, where uploads tend to be references rather than original work. This knowledge is so easily transferred by simple clicking, yet the notion of disseminating information in this way is stunning. We literally take this piece of information and pass it on. We admire it for a few moments, or even a few days. Perhaps we will look back on it later, but we hold it for as long as we need, and then we pass it by simply relinking it. It’s a brilliant concept that by “saving” it on our own domain, we have given it to another. Once it becomes a part of us, it can then become a part of another. Another blogger. A friend. A family member. It is ours to take only because it will be given.

And perhaps, this system of finding and sharing retrains us to think, consciously or subconsciously, that we find not for ourselves only, but for others. In this way, our “selves” are part of others–we are them, because we work and find for them, by them, with them.

Maybe intense blogging and interest gathering will be the true future of social networking. Tumblring has far more depth and clarity than posting information to a Facebook wall. I see much more pertinent conversations as a result of the former rather than the latter.

You might think about it next time you blog, that the community is information, and that you are simply playing a game where you give and receive equally.

But of course, that’s way more useful than the professional animation and modeling software that Autodesk gives away to students. (I got the student discount on CS4 by the way.) I don’t give a damn about the great diagrams and layouts CS4 will help me with, I can do that stuff by hand. I can’t script a tessellating structure whose governing trigonometric functions I can manipulate by moving a slider. (Yes, yes, Grasshopper is cool.)

Here’s a picture of the help page.

And here is the text:

Problem 1

I would like to begin by stating that you have not reviewed the case I brought forth a month ago. Since then, I have been unable to use the very expensive software I ordered from you. I feel that I might have been better off pirating it as my friends told me I should do.

Problem 2

I downloaded a trial version of Adobe CS4 Design Premium last December. The trial ran out, and I decided I needed to own it, so I purchased it in late January. At this point, I had opened CS4, and it informed me that my trial had run out. Since I ordered a physical copy of CS4, I uninstalled CS4, and then I reinstalled it with the disc. I then realized I didn’t have a serial number since I had to prove my academic eligibility, so I started using the trial version from the physical CS4. Of course, it didn’t open, because my registry keys retained that information. So I got my serial number from Adobe, as you can see, and I could not find a way to enter it, so I uninstalled CS4 once again, and I reinstalled it, providing the serial number. Everything installed, but when I opened up programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, the program informed me that my license had expired. My license is not finite, as I paid a good 400 dollars for it, and provided my information to your corporation.

So, an issue that should have been addressed over 3 weeks ago (as you promised), now has left me stranded for the past month. I would really like to use this software, and if you don’t help me this time, I swear to you that I will help every student at my institution (all 18,000+ of them) get a bootlegged version of CS4, and I’ll even start selling copies of the hacked version. It’s ridiculous that I even have to pay for this nonsensical software (Autodesk gives most of its software away for free to students) that can’t even deal with registry keys correctly. Seriously, is it that hard to write an if statement to check the previous registries and override them? Or are you afraid that PirateBay is going to find a way to hack that? Seriously, get a real CS degree and figure it out. You can do LivePaint, I’m sure you can figure out elementary registry coding issues. But perhaps it’s harder than I expect.

Wait–I still paid 400 dollars for your shit. Figure it out, or I’m going to personally find a way to tank your stock.

Note: Do not take this personally whoever reads this. This is aimed at the programmers/managers who can’t figure out simpleton problems.

she sent two of the lowest and weakest of her army’s footsoldiers out to greet the wanderer. they said, “to reach the princess you must go through us,” and they hefted their spears and advanced on the would-be suitor. but the suitor, without a word, leapt high over the soldiers’ heads and, as their eyes goggled, laid a hand upon each of the soldiers’ heads and slammed them roughly together. the soldiers fell in a heap at the wanderer’s feet, but already the suitor had begun striding toward the palace.

watching secretly from a high balcony, the princess let out a small gasp that creative minds, had they been eavesdropping, might have mistaken for a moan. the princess’s heart pounded, and something potent and dangerous burned in her chest and shook her legs. the princess beheld as the wanderer’s form crept across the twilit hills toward her castle, and she called for her servants.

–From auntie pixelante‘s the princess is in another castle.

Auntie Pixelante is a game design blog, and I found this piece (which you should read after you beat Braid) after carefully researching the brilliance of Jonathan Blow’s Braid. It is a platform based action game that closely follows the Super Mario Bros. archetype. It was easily the best game in 2008, and all you Gears of War losers can go to hell. Braid was a masterpiece that was a milestone in game design–not because of beautiful textures as a result of technically extravagant light mapping, but because it used a bunch of computer hardware to create an unforgettable experience.

I will pose the question: what happened to the experience in video games? Why do our couches consume our feeble bodies whose presence is barely discerned by the blue and white ambiance generated by a corporate and worthlessly masculine game? Better yet, why don’t we play games that make us think? Why does it have to be a shooter or a sports game that gives us a glimmer of feeling and resolve? Why don’t we break the shell of our gaming, at any level, and open ourselves to think: can a game be enjoyable, challenging, and thought provoking?

Looking at Braid

Braid does all of this. Its masterful art direction, courtesy of David Hellman, informs us of the importance of a game environment, while relishing in the simple 2d platforming world. It makes the visuals in the original Mario Bros. games look like kids play. We see beautiful illustrations, obvious illustrations, and illustrations conceived in balance, light, and color. It’s what happens when you take an entire wing from the Louvre and control a sprite that transcends each frame into a deeper story.

Speaking of which.

No game, and more likely, no story in any medium did so well in terms of simplicity and depth. The game itself is a narrative of gaming in general–why do we pursue what we pursue? Is the game about consummating the end, or the conflict before? After completing the game (which is extremely inexpensive and literally a ripoff for Blow), one realizes that our conception of gaming is backwards. One could further that argument to what we expect from any story or journey.

We always assume that the whole point of a story is the end. It doesn’t matter what happens in between, right? Apparently, as one can see the stunning garbage strewn across the marquees. Yet, we never understand that without light, there can be no dark. Similarly, without conflict there can be no resolution. In a sense, we need to be more consumed by the conflict. Pick the fight, and finish it, even though you know you don’t want to. That’s why multiplayer games are so effective. No fight can finish as long as the highest level is not achieved–and that is why pro gaming developed, and why there is no end. You might be the best one year, but there is another season where higher powers have set forth your title for contention.

If conflict is the primary motive of experience, then we should consider what conflict really  means. Does it mean things are wrong? Does it mean that we need to correct something? No shit. Here’s a deeper question: how should we turn conflict into production?

Architecture and Conflict

We take a stance. What kind of buildings are we designing? What are we attempting to do in our parti or our programmatic resolutions? Our studio instructors say there is a story to be made of the design process, but they don’t tell us how. What we must do is define the problem, however, the problem is not something we answer so quickly. Perhaps what we can do is have the entire building be the problem. Let it encompass it. Let the building make the user experience the context and the constraints, and only then will we have a story. This story we pursue, however, works just like most architectural design decisions–on multiple scales. There must be the story of the human inside the building–why do I walk through this long, tunnel, where pathways branch off, and I must examine? (promenade) why is the floor angled like the street? (site context) why are the windows on that wall full height, except for that small one near the ceiling, is that the bathroom? (interior-exterior relationship). We can make our users question, and once they ask those questions, they will be more intrigued to go in and experience that space. Our job as designers is to cohesively string those relationships together and create something that makes them constantly want to understand more. We must force our individual ideas to connect in several ways, in infinite ways, so there seems to be more to consummate. Nothing should be as it seems. Everything must be ready to change with further experience. The building must morph in experience because of use.

Bringing It Together

There is something to be said of the conflict and the path to consummation. Is it about winning? Of course it is. However, once we win, there is nothing left to experience. We have reaped our fruits and eaten them. The taste can only last so long. We must continue the experience in some way.

Biologically speaking, life is one of the most interesting games. Not only does the status quo constantly change, but the protagonist transfers quite often. A human is rarely ever the protagonist for his or her whole life. We learn, we grow up. We find someone, we work to keep that someone. We marry that someone.

We have sex (maybe for the first time), and anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours later, we have inseminated or been inseminated by that person. We take days to culture, or we repeat the previous step. We are pregnant, or we aid in pregnancy. A new life is born. We teach our child/we learn, we grow up. We give that child morals and principles to better himself or herself/we find someone, we work to keep that someone. We give advice to that child in the most critical of times, when we know he or she will be leaving to start his or her own story soon/we marry that someone.

I simplify the story. I never mention death or disease, or divorce for that matter. I have made the story ideal, but it is not ideal. It is difficult. It requires work.

What we need to know is that work is all there is. There’s nothing like basking in the green field listening, hearing the grass dance with the wind–unless we wake up an hour late, rush to work with a coffee stain spilled during the commute, get chewed out to the point of self-reflection, and come back to see our kids not be our kids. Truly, there is nothing more powerful or enjoyable than being consumed by the process of our work–we enjoy it as much as it enjoys us.

I should still note that there is nothing wrong with taking a break (such as pontificating on a blog).

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

As I try to copy and paste the entire poem, this line is the only one that gets posted. I don’t notice it, so I consider inserting the most important stanza instead. Still, only this line appears as I paste. It details that the woes in La Belle Dame are ubiquitous to many types, the greats, the not so greats, the princes and the paupers. For Keats, it’s from the perspective of a knight. (Damn Romanticist.)

What is it about this poem that we think we understand, yet we are still frustrated behind a mist of ambiguity, wondering if this really is about romance exclusively?

Of course it’s not. I’ll regurgitate for you the real meaning of the poem so you can save yourself a trip to SparkNotes. The poem is actually about artistic inspiration, and the woes of the writer as he/she cannot control that inspiration. It’s especially coincidental that Keats, easily one of the greatest Romanticist poets, if not the greatest all together, only lived to be 25. 25? Imagine the world that would have been had he stuck around. Perhaps he would have completely eclipsed Donne, but it’s not a matter of what would have been. What did happen is that Keats never had to worry about losing his inspiration. He didn’t live to be old enough. That’s a generalization, since there’s no average for when an artist washes out, and many wash out well before 25.

I wonder about this sort of inspiration and if it only pertains to art, specifically, the kind created in fervor and a spree of good talent. Would Kerouac have thought of this with his kickwriting style? I’m not sure I can answer the thoughts of one who has passed away, but we must think–is it only about art, this inspiration?

I don’t view my work as an art, and perhaps there is no such thing as art, that is, in the way art is commonly perceived. The more I pursue architecture, the more I realize that its artistic component is no less logical than its technical side. A beautifully shaded Egyptian style section is more easily noticed than a brilliant structural system, but the ability to hand draft that section is somehow (usually) disconnected from the process of structural stability. Does great engineering require a sort of artistic inspiration in that case? Just like the composition of the section cut that outlines the embedded space?

Here’s a question of right and wrong, though one should never argue with a dead man (or should one?). Was Keats “right” in worrying over artistic inspiration (which I will now refer to as inspiration in general)? Should we dote on the inevitable demise of our spree, or should we focus on the task at hand, and in our shortsightedness perhaps be lost in the midst of other creations and progress? I ask questions of how to plan something that is random and even the greatest psychologists cannot definitively predict when inspiration will come and go.

I would like to think that we need to be both speculative and engrossed. The long-term and the short-term work hand in hand. What’s worked for me recently is to work, and work like there is no tomorrow. However, the long term requires a sense of process, a series of planning. One has to brand him- or herself. Find a way to do things that are successful, a method that still has room for improvement, but still has foundations malleable to progress. It is this sense of process, consistent and thoughtful in both content and execution, that can lead to a successful creator of any sorts. For example, one who engineers can focus on a type of engineering. Not only structural, but steel structures. Not only steel, but post and beam. Not only post and beam, but high-rise structures that are sustainable and open to development. When one focuses one’s concentration, that person can become entrenched in his/her work, yet still provide for that niche.

The only problem is that most people don’t have a niche, and specifically humans must have one more ingredient: patience. Patience is integral to remaining consistent as well as responsive to criticism. It’s important that our work is at least worthy of criticism–there is nothing worse than not even being worth the notion.

Inspiration, it seems, can be manufactured, and many bullshit artists would tend to disagree. Inspiration, I have found, is borne from the ego. We still have to make sure our egos are in the right place. That, however, is a discourse that requires another blog entry entirely.

And if you were wondering why I chose La Belle Dame to write this piece, it’s not only my main entry point into the discourse of creative inspiration, but it’s also (arguably) the most important poem in the English language. It is about poetry in the English language, after all.

[untitled]

Not all things that are ideal yield their desired effect.

Does that make the chase less worthwhile?

Perhaps so, unless the chase is the goal itself.

What is it, when one cries yet feels nothing?

Will some specialist cure it out of fear,

Or appreciate it as a sign, that, though nothing may be achieved,

It could be far worse?

What else is there to think lying in the arms of a mother

Who does not know her son, as he fears for her the knowledge of the night?

I do not know my grandmother, not in this life of hers,

But I hope to know her ghost in the next.

I could graph her life, create an expedition,

And publish my results. It would be so scientific.

If I still care, then it is not for the national bestseller icon,

But rather for the truth that is my nana, your bibi ji,

And see that culture is the embodiment of life,

And in its immersion, there is reality without equivocation.

Why should the historians be the only ones deemed qualified

To look upon the past? There is no regret in appreciation,

And all these modern couples should know better–

Even more so, the couple seekers.

I want to know the era

When the boys are there for the girls,

And these young ladies so carelessly and easily

Make their lovers feel so important.

Maybe those that wish for another age

Simply want to change their own.

Those that want to be someone else

Desire to change themselves for better.

And a few, just a handful, will change

As a result for the other.

Why quantify at all, when the answers are all there?

HH09

“not so brutal when you put it against a blue sky in october, is it?

“that’s what I thought.”

[huffs, turns, walks away. exeunt all]

Site context

intervention

He’s documenting on an experience, and in that he encompasses a major concept in the philosophy of writing, that the writer, in virtue of documentation, never experiences, but is always outside the subject matter. That is not to say the writer does not have bias; in fact, the writer completes the bias, capturing the fleeting image of impression, the act carrying the feeling, rather than the feeling encompassing the act. There is something to say when a writer does not exhibit emotion in words, and rather actions. The passersby are intellectuals, amongst the immense design of things (to bring Willa Cather into the picture). Don’t actions speak louder than the verbalization of emotions?

I only introduce T.S. Eliot in order to justify my own document (-ary? -ation?). I wrote this a while back, high school or freshman year of college, and I arbitrarily assigned myself the task of writing what I mistook for an epic. Really, it was just a long-ass poem. I added Part 4 my freshman year to add more resolve. I almost crashed Word.

Enjoy.

The Living Day from the Eastern-Bound H.H.

Part I

As the overhead lamp has been carved into shade,

All enemies must have to be met to be paid

For the crimes of both days and both times

As your shepherd at this hour climbs.

So you think, so I perceive

My reason to so quickly leave.

Let the hero start at his home,

As I begin such a tome.

There’s this peace when I wash dishes

That allows me to think through wishes

I’d never have had before – done,

But nonetheless my thoughts were won.

By what else, than the memory of your nights

So gently gifted to me?  I see them in lights

Present all year, not the single

One, oh you know, the cold jingle.

It becomes obscene; so, make way, make haste

For an epic standing on your doormat’s waste

While you sip and gulp away, masking

Importance by walking and basking

What truth you held essential

To this product’s birth referential

Of irrelevant imposition, a great fight

For the screaming’s and interpretation’s fight!

Forget not the likes and fields covered

In the burning of trees that only hovered –

Yes, admittance requires saying only you were fooled

Into thinking such fires could be so quickly cooled.

The desperation on which you blame – nay, assume me

Will never be in your times of thinness through thee,

In repentance’s grace, as humankind speaks

With One Voice which smells the reeks

Of painfully slow and broken galleys

In your torn books’ valleys

Of your true greatest fear…

Your lies are but mere

Until some moron acts upon such vile things

And stuff.  Only then can such that spirit which brings

Us all a hereditary calm of silence;

And I turn back, with more compliance

Like this sponge absorbing water, soap, the unclean

And still so right, and make you all glean

Before the honors of fates and gods

And still receiving little courteous nods.

While I still take it.  I still take it

And simply receive the title to fake it.

Of course, blindness can never be affirmed

Unless you read by touch.  Even then, those that wormed

My life away from me without knowing my life

Might have chosen my clothes, food, wife.

And of course, my struggles and this quick strife.

Well, it’s not quick, it’s my life, and like this sponge,

I can only be stone and dry unless the plunge

Is taken, met, made into a life, my battle

Which shakes my existential foundations to rattle

Before my fire should die

And cause a broken lie

To ask for a hope.  Here’s a hope, there’s a hope,

But always remembering to use my soap.

The pain I have earned

Are from the lessons I have learned.

Part II

Here is where I wake up again,

And a mask made is the one I feign.

I always give better than I take,

Which explains this internal so fake.

A crime it is, nonetheless, for all adhering,

This shockwave that sends us fearing

Into the delight of another debate,

Furthering our hate.

One cleanses to release the aches of rest;

We do not want to inaction to infest.

It is where we rise as Apollo has wheeled

Across our sky, across this field

Which I defended with such ridden angst.

Verily, it was Apollo, I, that rose the ranks

And became what I woke up to become.

It becomes true for me – not for some.

Here where all roads lie, I cannot mar vision

For others.  If it becomes so, it is their decision.

Would some mistake in death or life make such

As I drive wheels across for which I ache so much?

It’s the back road I take, whether it becomes the main

Or the lost, I follow what I can to ease my bane.

This bane, however, is not poison that would

Penetrate my deepest neighborhood.

No, it’s not like that at all.

For there to be a rise, there must be a fall.

But which was first?  The demise or

The elevation at best of lies for

Our own progression.  Oh, the things for which worry

Does take hold, does take sacrifice.  It becomes a hurry

To feel the way I do now as I enter white walls

And see these blood ridden dolls

That wish nothing but sleep.  By midday, however,

They nudge awake their eyes and become clever,

Smart enough to take on what I give:

To defy death in an all they live,

To listen when no one can hear,

To stand by and release your peer,

To believe as if faith were alone,

To describe as artists can hone,

To write with conviction and taste of red,

To look in a pair of eyes and see the dead.

To finish what they have started.

Here, here I see where I have parted

From the likes of the great, from the voices of empires –

Is this where I was meant?  To be crowned with such liars?

It’s madness I see, it’s madness I commit!

Calm… calm I must be.  I should sit

And grate my meal and commune

Since I’ll return to chaos just as soon

As I begun such a day.  When I face this five

Times a week, I know this life as I am alive.

Such an existence they called,

And some hearing this are appalled –

Perfection.  Every hex that forms into one unity

Of encumbrance, of crosses burdened in impunity,

Together come unto the crossroads of this very existence.

What rex would now apply a resistance?

Only kings of hearts and queens of loss;

And then those who simply gloss

The truth for fun,

Thereby putting it to a gun.

For the truth is in greatness, and mocking a god

Is death by the brightest rod.

For now, work is resting.

All that waits is the home of testing.

Part III

Arriving at the rest unwelcome

Is my fate at its sum

Upon the rise of a familiar shadow in night.

Of course it’s night – it’s the hour in which I write,

Think the life’s problems and her solutions

As music fades in her humble dilutions.

In the forsaken weariness and regret,

I must win this recurrent bet

Of zero to one –

One to run,

Run, run, run away in a distance gone

Far away from my own front lawn.

I run into this place as if

I ran into a court, the plaintiff

Of discourses formerly known to purge

My only truth:  the ending dirge.

I call my story.

For all the glory

And here the hearth would be coldest;

And now the pendulum would be boldest

So as to charge the fields of contentment with dissent

Of the hypocrite’s reasons to arbitrarily regret

For a crime not committed, not condoned in the analects

I created for each of my persona, for each of their sects

That define the indefinite

And everlastingly implicit

For the day I started far too late

Leaves me weak and insatiate

For discipline of fate and the everyday relief

Under every Athenian olive tree leaf.

No gift from no divine somehow became antithetical

Until constantly the warrior kept finding his reticle

Turn every friend, mother, brother, and teacher into the wrong enemy

As every republic soon took care after another, until the hegemony

Knew no reason why it did not know,

Why there was no sorrow to show;

What is good for one man must be good for all, so it’s true

That the help once advised is become used in the lieu

Of the common sense, treatise, and freedoms of the Men inherent

To the very fabric of Men themselves, the Men who did parent

At one time truth to be told

Morals that never grew old

Until the bitterness of competition

Required a quite constant repetition

Of jealousy contained, kept with the reaches

Of actions’ brutal and irrational breaches.

No such protection exists for Man until he would earn this shield

Left in lost fortresses, left on top of buttresses, maintained in a weald

Free of fire, free of cultivation, and free of all truths made new

From the ones that did not come quite to

The benefits of the only mutation I’d ever known.

By the God of Time, this is what is meant to be alone.

Never fitted with Vulcan’s raiment,

I nakedly face the Titanic clamant

Not in the skies or the stars, or west of the world,

Or even in the modern mountains left uncurled,

Or in the restless quantities so vast in the Selion,

Or the ironic jungle left to courage’s rebellion,

Or even the skin, the crust, the peeling of the world as it comes home;

This is such a secret left undusted in the history, left unlearned of the tome

That precedes fear and hold nothing dear

And gives death nothing but a mere,

Soft glance,

A chance,

For something better to result in nothing left untainted.

Too many times the heart was too fainted

For the trekking through the gates Tartarian,

Far into the core of plasma and magma marrying,

Into the appearance not held until, until,

Until it is too late to be still

Well enough to read the Bible required blood to read,

And to believe the faith requiring truth to accede

With nothing and everything in the cosmic apparition

Of the politic innate to the inevitable partition

Leaving the heart, the heart so marred

To leave condition, to fall apart

Into the cycle left cold, dead, and dying

To want such a life, to be trying

Of the fate in every man, the gift of mortality,

And to write his own conclusive finality

Of the journey never meant for him,

Never meant to have lived in a whim

Of no reason,

Of every treason,

Of never wanting a life at all,

Of existing in a state of such appall,

Of fighting the oblivion in the beauty of Men,

Of never picking up the truth in every pen,

Of always falling, down and down again,

Of rarely ever seeing the brilliance reign

Of this very strife

Of her every life

Of the days meant to be had

Of the fears that led to nothing bad

Of the boundaries resilient

Of not needing to be prescient

Of the future in store,

Of giving up everything ever hope for

Of leaving the tablet alone to God,

Now to enter one’s own laud

With nothing short of a smile,

And everything more than the while

To forgive one’s self,

The spiritual pelf

Envied by none, endeavored by all

And at least there in the last Hall

For any snowed and bleeding sword

To finally embrace of the one Lord

Praised, believed, held so sublime,

Only believed by one soul at a time.

Now we can see and can believe

In the flight of fear, and can relieve

Our consciences from the apprehension –

Lies conceived are lies held in tension,

But together we provide comfort, and alone,

Well, alone, we find strength, should we be in the zone

Of true consciousness, rebelliousness, resistance,

Youthfulness, wisdom, and sheer pestilence

To a society unfulfilling, of course, that have emptied it

Of all the good deed and cleverness with wit

Accomplishing the dreams of children unborn.

These, however, are children without scorn,

Ones truly alive, aside from the cynicism,

Yet with no constraining mysticism

Conjured for a short-term resolve,

An answer born in dissolve

To an absolute searching

For absolution lurching

In the sink, the school, the house,

The child, the teacher, the spouse,

And all encompassed in the final series

Of established, of a long life with wearies

That stretch beyond any – and mine –

Imagination.  More like tine,

Than a rose, we find it by touch and feeling,

Not by a gentle and, possibly, careful peeling

Of layers as if though this life were a book

Taken by masters, the bishops, the rook,

For a final assault on the king

That simply couldn’t bring

The life back into a life forgotten,

The anecdote of the rotten

Smell of oblivion.  Scriptures pass,

And Scriptures come, but it is the completion

We must see, the picture in frame, no deletion

Of the details that paint in every color,

Even those that appear duller,

For we must see all to practice,

Quite painful like a desert cactus,

We must see nothing to believe,

Like a passenger not received,

And become not one mind,

Or body, or soul, but find

Ourselves in one entity, ready,

For the growth so solemnly steady.

We rise, and we fall,

Like humans, greatest of all

That lived to die, that lived to hate,

And lived to do what makes them great.

From stones to iron, from steel to lightning

And the world still brightening,

We will have a hope, and should all the world implode,

Scatter, and leave no book or trace, the code

Of hope will stand in the hearts of beings far and wide,

Never to, like us in bitterness, collide.

We are dead, and we are alive,

But nothing will keep us in the jive

Of treason to deepest good,

Melted into the softest wood

And fallen from the thousand branches out of our hearts.

That one story, that one victory, is all our part.

Deep inside us, there is always good.

And to do good, eventually, we would.

Over again, without fear, over again,

With absolutely nothing to gain.

This, my friends, is the Lord in every heart

And He, always present, would never be apart

In the tenet to always have the gates open to –

Well, you would know; wouldn’t you?

Part IV

Were the answer not obvious initially,

The truth must come out provincially

Into the hearts of the readers, of the seekers,

And of the lovers, the last I call meeker

From disappointment, for they should know best,

That the gates of love are nothing more than a pest,

Since life is not as beautiful if we can provide ourselves with rest.

In the end of despair and the beginning of fear,

In the sheer gain of doubt and to hide with a leer

The remarks we wished never came before –

But my friend, we have, and will evermore.

It becomes the true warrior, nay,

The poet? – not the kind that brings dismay,

But, the one who proclaims in terra pax,

Who has picked and hacked all those locks

We feared in childhood and mocked in maturity.

There is no real proof for our aloof surety,

Other than that a voice still speaks,

Always will, and will ring through peaks,

And hillsides, towers and bridges,

Forests and rivers, and the ridges

Will not fault in a quake, but break the armor

Of the enemy, and we will not spill blood for

The sake of it, but will call on the protest of Fate,

Yes, that enigma we found easy to loathe and hate,

Now believed to be an ally.

No, fool, we have to rely

On nothing but ourselves.

In this arena, he delves,

She creates,

We berate,

I insinuate,

You tirade,

And the Enlightened One finds.

This is the meaning of humankind.

I’m architecture. I’m literature. I’m a loser, so why don’t you kill me.

I won’t leave you empty-handed. How ’bout a thousand words? Two thousand? Any more terrible cliches?

This is what we call a diptych. It’s cool. Informative, even.

I’ll add one more. It was at school. It didn’t belong there. But it became a part of it.

"these feelings won't go away. they've been knocking me sideways."