Wonders

A familiar musical motif from the soundtrack of a favourite or childhood film.

A song that harkens back to a time long gone, or a culture you wished you knew.

A picture of a landscape that makes you feel small, yet on top of the world. The wanderlust that ensues.

The little wonders that take your breath away. That transport you far, far away. That remind you of all that is good in the world, in spite of what's going on in it, or even in your own personal world. That make life worth living when the drudgery of the everyday weighs you down.

The little wonders that make you smile. That make you happy.

Memories

"The only reason everyone holds on to memories so tightly, is because they are the only things that don't change when everything and everyone else does."

Memories. They're all we have.

Of things that once were. Of different times. Of different people.

We cling on to them, like a hope that never comes. When reality gets too much, we escape into our memories. We go back in time and relive the moments we treasure so much. The fleeting moments in time when we felt joy; when we laughed; when we were at peace; when, in one of those rare instances, we felt truly happy.

We close our eyes and tell ourselves to stay strong. But the memories haunt us, stubborn and persistent. That's when the line between a happy memory and a nightmare becomes blurred. Where does it start and where does it end?

But like the world turns, things change. And memories are all we have left.

A wistful recollection of times that, looking back, seemed as though you were living in a dream. A window into the past that can never be reconciled with the present reality.

The people; the places; the sights; the sounds; the sensations; the emotions. They're all but gone now.

You don't know who those people are now. You don't recognise the place anymore. You don't remember your feelings any longer.

You're crushed. Your memories of those things make it even worse.

Now, the only evidence of their existence lies in the recesses of our mind; faint recordings of life looped over and over again in our mind's eye, until one day the tape wears out and can no longer be played back. Then, they're gone forever, like they never happened. Time goes by, and old memories are forgotten as newer ones take over.

Those people never existed. Those places were never visited. Those emotions were never felt.

You won't even realise that everything used to be different.

As age takes its toll on the physiology of the human brain, our memories fade away into blank nothingness. A silent but malignant force that nobody can ever see coming.

We forget everything; how it used to be, how it all changed, and that it even existed.

Life itself fades before our very eyes.

And no power in the world can save it.

Run

It's in their flaws, that you truly see a person for who they are.

It's the parts of them the rest of the world doesn't get to see. The parts of them they hide, knowing nobody will like what they see should they be unveiled to the world.

Appearances are deceiving.

You don't know me.

You don't know who I really am.

You can't tell my public face apart from my private self.

You don't know me.

And perhaps you never will.

So what do you do?

You run.

From things. To things.

When that's all you've ever done in your life.

Run.

Hiding: A Poem

It's a mask I wear
A truth I hide
It's a word unspoken
A look concealed.

It's the smile I wear
The laugh I fake
It's the doubt cast aside
The sorrow in silence.

It's where I go
Where fear lies
It's where I succumb
Where catharsis awaits.

It's to the dawn
To reluctant beginnings
It's to the end
To the new world order.

Tabula Rasa

Blank. Simple. New. Clean. Bright. Malleable. Changeable.

The greatest asset a single living entity can hold. Yet also, the greatest danger.

The possibilities are infinite.

But once a path has been chosen, there can be no turning back.

We all start out as tabulae rasae: wide-eyed, innocent, full of hope and endless potential as we arrive screaming and helpless into the world.

But then, worlds collide; values, beliefs, words and actions clash and intermingle, sometimes with supreme success; other times with horrifying, harrowing consequences.

We scream and cheer with joy, giddy with the good luck that fate bestowed upon us. And we gasp, cry out, turn and run as we witness the horror of the failed courtship that morphs before our very eyes into a dance with death.

Two paths that couldn't be more divergent.

Like a parasite that invades a host, the corruption that corrodes your conscience slowly but surely eats you alive, gradually and exponentially building to a fatal crescendo where choices, fate and destiny brutally collide, with a violence that shatters the worlds of those that hold you near and dear.

You wish you could undo all the damage that's been done. You wish there was a way, way back.

You wish you could wipe the slate clean, and start over.

But you can't.

It's broken. Forever.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

By Alan Seeger

1917

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

From the USS Midway Musuem

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?

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

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.