Saturday, June 22, 2013

Home

We all seek it, but few of us ever find it.

Where is it? For a few, or perhaps many of us, does it even exist? What is it, really?

Where we are, or where we want to go? Where we stay, or where we left? A lifetime left behind, or the memories to come?

But what if, you've never stayed in one place long enough to ever call it home?

You're moved and shaken by circumstances not of your own doing, uprooted just as you're finding your feet, your place, your way in the microcosm of your surrounds.

You feel no sense of loyalty to any one place. You're a drifter, so to speak.

When people ask where you're from, you don't know how to respond.

You never loved the place you left. Yet you simply couldn't like where you arrived. So you look to different shores, but wonder if you'll find what you're looking for.

Then again, how can you find what you're looking for, when you don't know what it is that you're looking for?

When you've never experienced it? When you've never known it?

The one constant in an ever-changing world. A comfort found nowhere else. An asylum in times of crisis. A strength amidst fragility. A warmth in the cold. A light in the darkness.

A place you belong.

But where?

Friday, June 21, 2013

Hello darkness, my old friend

It's been a while.

Good to be back.

In other news:

LA and San Diego, here I come.

27/07 - 19/12



Sunday, March 31, 2013

Ulysses

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1842

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought


This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Friday, February 01, 2013

Comfort in pain

When you're so used to it, it's all you know.

You crave it. You can't live without it.

It's all you want. It's all you need.

Life seemingly has no purpose without it.

You hurt, you bleed, you scream, just to feel alive.

What's the point of living, then, if you can't feel alive? When it isn't pervading nearly every aspect of your existence?

It marks phases in your life. Periods when it was all you felt. When it was all your lived for. When it was all that kept you going.

Sometimes it burns like a dull, persistent ache in the background, other times like the hottest fires of hell.

But you like it.

You like the pain.

The hurt. The scars. The flashbacks. The raw emotions. The full weight of the invisible, silent turmoil as it comes crashing down on your consciousness.

You take it all in, soaking it up like there's no tomorrow.

Happiness feels like something's missing. "This is the real deal," you tell yourself.

"It hurts. So bad. But I like it."

It's comfort. In pain.

And you wouldn't have it any other way.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A Steady Rain: A Poem

A steady rain
Controlled melancholy
Which no-one deigns
But weathers bravely.

The rhythm beats
The sensation stings
Cold becomes heat
As the heavy nails cling.

The footsteps prod
The judgement wears on
It is but a façade
That they had all drawn.

Grace under the glare
Of an incessant doubt
Respite lies somewhere
In the far-off drought.

A steady rain
Who's to blame?
As resolve was slain
It was ne'er the same.