learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 21

(Ωmega, from We Soon Be Nigh!, 2012)

Replica (on Loop)

In a cave. In a swell. In a dark and secret fold in the earth where one can yell and scream as loud as they wish and give it their all is swallowed whole and taken from them. Where you can lose yourself. Lose a part of you that is dying and in need of renewal. There's fragile things along the cave walls and there for you to grab and throw deeper into the cave. You can hear the sound of porcelain shatter into a million and sprinkle down into powder. You can burn the world a new down there. You can forget all your troubles. You can be swallowed whole yourself and eventually you throw yourself into the mess of darkness and uncertainty, -and be forgotten, destroyed, shattered, and lost yourself.

But unlike your yells and unlike those fragile things you threw into the darkness your body and mind will not produce a sound. It is almost sad that they don't, giving no satisfaction in destruction. But that is exactly it, nothing is being destroyed, just renewed. Your bones crunch and crack, your flesh is tore and ripped, the sound of bones breaking resonate internally and your nerves are burning with pain. You shake and you see white flashes as your face smacks against a solid rock wall, which is just darkness against darkness -an invisible wall. Eventually your body, lifeless in its decent, comes to a rest upon the jagged rocks below. You call for help but only the echo in your mind swirls around and eventually fades to nothing. You are high from the pain your body is feeling, you are lost for the darkness that is absolute and all around. Your flesh is burning and your thoughts are distracted by the pain occurring throughout.

No angels come to rescue you. No guiding light from the world above shine on your hopeless mess. Instead you get up and crawl out of the cave. Each step you crawl hurts like hell and you laugh at how ridiculous this all is. You keep pushing yourself further and further until you no longer hear the drops of cave sweat falling from the ceiling above. The sound of a jungle surrounds you, the softness of soil meets your dirty hands and though it is completely dark and there might be tigers or panthers or other things that can very much kill you you feel relieved, perhaps even safe. You have the strength to walk again and so you walk. Brushing against you is the softness of leaves and branches. You wonder where your body is taking you and realize it doesn't matter, -for you are in a jungle in the middle of the night, surrounded by the calls of nocturnal creatures and the howling wind. Your feet are shoeless, your legs are pantless. You are naked and your gentiles are vulnerable to things that can catch or poke them. You realize you have the strength to run and so you run. And by some sort of miracle you run and you run freely without hitting something hard and something that could stop you. And though your feet laid bare there is no pain in the peddles and twigs. The dry blood on your flesh and the open wounds give you strength, they tell your body that any pain your endure now is a joke, is a half-ass excuse, is only just the tip, to what you have gone through, that you can perhaps survive just about anything because you have survived just about everything. Bullets could come flying at you, they can even hit you, they matter not to you now. That panther can come roaring out of the bush and it could grab you with its teeth and tare you apart, -it matters not to you now. You run, your face is smiling, and you are laughing again.

Isn't it ridiculous, isn't it amazing, aren't the gods crazy, and aren't the cosmos and everything in-between absolutely absurd and amazing and beautiful and fucking grand, great, and puzzling? A grain of sand on a beach. A drop of rain in a hurricane. A brick in New York. A leaf in a forest. A key in all of the music there ever was (past, present, and future). A comma in every written word. An "uh" in every talk. A cancer cell, a particle of light, a single-cell organism, an earthworm, a flake of dust, a woody cell, a pigment, a pixel, a dot, a sample, a clone, a cry, a river, a bend, a wind, a word, a thought, a feeling, a place, a history, a nothing, and everything. All fading, all folding, all going away and coming back, blowing, touching, rolling with the tide, in and out as the moon comes closer as the moon moves farther away, away, away. Until...Until...And then...and Afterall...Is Said. Is Done. Undone. With Vengeance. The Return of. pt. II. pt. III.

The sky above / The clouds rolling by / In patches of gray and grayest blue / A white and rainy dreariness / Rolling by / Just / Rolling by

On repeat. Endless. Endlessly. Rolling by. In time-lapse. In slow-motion. In a still. In a moment. Everything lost and everything found. Slowly coming to an end and then a deep breath in and a final exhale. Ahhhhhh....

Infinity and Beyond

(Workers Disappear in Stanley Park in the Summer of 11')

The times are a'definitely a'changing. And so Wildly Beau-Billy goes into a drunken fist-throwing rage screaming about the apocalypse and his sister's second child. We were wild and wilder then but the times have changed and who we are today are ugly adults of what we once were: ugly kids.

-When was the last time you cried?

-I'm not sure if I was crying sad tears or just tears of pain but it was definitely in the summer.

-What made you cry?

-I felt like the doctor was cutting my umbilical cord. I came screaming into this world and I swear I remember being born and being content in my mother's womb. As soon as that fucker cuts that connection with you and your mother it's over you're stuck with this world, -there's no going back.

-So what happened this summer?

-What?

-This. Summer. What made your eyes swell up out of pain?

-Oh. I felt something being shivered from me by someone else's hands. It was after the funnest week ever and when it came to the end, that end that just had to happen I was driving home from the airport and came home to a household that was suddenly quiet and abandoned. It was all too obvious that something was definitely missing and it wasn't something I couldn't put my finger on I knew damn-fuckin' well what was missing. The feeling of lost is like being free from a day job for an entire week in the summer and the weather is just perfect, I mean PUR-RR-Fect, and you're having one adventure after another and you are in a state of absolute carefree-ness and then you have to go back to work, it starts to rain and get colder, no one is around anymore to hang out when you finish work, and you realize you're broke and broken and summer is over. So I was in my empty bed and I felt this well inside of me press hard against the cavity of my body it forced my eyes to swell up and cry. Not bitch tears, I wasn't sobbing my whole was just dealing with this intense feeling. It was how I imagined my father crying, some heavy shit just happened and his eyes would more or less bleed tears out.

-And this was the last time you "more or less" cried?

-As far as I can remember, yes.

-Did you feel any better afterwards?

-Probably not, but I feel like I have some dark well of sadness and shit inside of me that would prefer if I cry. In crying you release some steam, you let it all out. I remember when I was much younger I would let it all build up inside of me and then just release it. It was like eating a lot of food for months without taking a poop and you have the urge to go number two but you don't let yourself do it. Weeks go by and you're practically sweating it out and then when you can't take it anymore you still hold it in. Gofers and Turtleheads. And then when you pass that threshold and you are now in the space which is Infinity and Beyond you release it. It comes raining down and by then what is pouring from your eyes aren't sad tears but painful tears. And the feeling felt like a weight being lifted from your shoulders having lived a significant amount of time with it pushing you down. I can't remember the last time I did that and I feel like some damn rock got lounged in the pipe that lets it all out.

-So what chu sayin'?

-I secretly want to cry like a small child. Cry uncontrollably and with no sense of reason or rationality.

-But you can't because of this theoretical rock that is lounged in your theoretical pipe of emotions.

-E x a c t l y.

WWB told stories but most of all he told strange predictions that always turned true. All of a sudden his eyes would roll back at any second and his voice would grow deeper and slower as he told you of his foresight. Hauntingly, his altered voice would narrate a tale of soontocome. It would be sometimes hours, days, weeks, and even years (which were the most troubling since you were waiting for something to happen for a long time,anticipating and it was always when you were relaxed about it when it would strike) before the predictions came into actualization.

-Watch Out!

-What do you mean? Why are your eyes rolled back? Why are you talking that way?

-It will come to you when you least expect it. It will strike you when you are down. It will bring you even further down and you will swear you feel the heat of the hell below. And when you reach that threshold you will continue down and when you finally reach Infinity and Beyond it will disappear. As if waking upon a dream you will return to normal, but this normal is suddenly renewed, you are relieved, gaining another chance, a new lease at life. Everything will taste sweeter and what you have is suddenly rendered precious. We all need to be renewed.

[faints and falls to ground and starts to shake violently]

-WWB. You alright? What just happened? Stop shaking like that! You're scaring us!

-MOTHERRRRRRRR! NO! NO! STOP MOTHER! NOOOOOOOO!

[wakes up and stands up on his feet, looks around, and says:]

-Why do you all have that look on your face?

The bike ride home was haunting. I couldn't shake what was shaken from his words as the street lights passed by I felt as if hovering above my former self. What is going on? My world was now a strange dark place and even the comforts of home were robbed of their safety. My bed felt colder than before and as the cat crawled up to my feet and my eyes felt heavy I escaped. Leaving one world behind and entering another. What a strange feeling lingered on the end of my tongue before becoming tasteless. I was asleep.

EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED TODAY. HOW I FELT. WHAT I DID. ARE ALL BEING DECONSTRUCTED AND RENDERED INERT BEFORE BEING PLACED BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM.

(All while I sleep deeply of tropical adventures and a place called Kokomo, that's where I wanted to go.)

A faint light glows in the darkness before becoming brilliance like a thousand suns. Within the glow is a face, it is too bright to see any features but my mind knows it is a face, one of the first abilities we learn as new borns. I try to peer through the brightness willing to go blind to see but still nothing but pain. Something draws me to this vague face, I feel its gaze upon me and yet I struggle to realize it. My voice calls out but it seems does not acknowledge me. It continues to glow too brightly for me to see it. It continues to stare, watching me struggle to look into it. All I want to is see it, it is so bright, it makes me go crazy, I feel the sanity bleeding from my eyes in a warm ooze. I have a fever. And before I overheat from its glow it disappears. Just. Like. That. A flash, a fart in the wind - gone.

This brings us up to speed where we are now. Waiting and occupying our time as if we are doing something greater than waiting but that is exactly what we are doing. The time spent between represents the void that is being filled but the void is still a void and still very much a canyon, a valley, a grand lower plane. And as the rain spits upon the window and as the cars swoosh by on slick surfaces the sky above is painted a gray dull that can't seem to quit nor change for an entire day. Why if moments like dull rainy weather only lasted for half an hour, that they'd come and go like the sunset. Would we romanticized them then, and what would become of the sunset if it were to stay a brilliant red, orange, yellow, and pink for days on in and never change? Like a beautiful moment on repeat, some minimal piece by Philip Glass repeating over and over with moment made exactly the same replaced over and over. Like each great moment of life replaced over and over. And whether you want that moment to last, whether you are trying to hold on to this light, oh so brilliant light, it will be replaced and it will move on just as the sunsets and Philip Glass arpeggios. A dance, a furious cycle, an endless ending, or the final hour of The Return of the King. Where mercy is meaningless and the beginning and ending are forgotten and all you have is the middle. To look at your future before you with squinting eyes for it is far too bright and far too grand. Over time you become desensitized and the light is now easier on the eyes and what you see fits the phrase, "It is what it is". What then? No more Trouble or trouble, no more distraction, no more no more, just this. And what is this, I ponder, what we have, in our hands, before us now, standing, sitting, waiting, but not waiting, and hovering through time above its former self. What do we have, baby, what do you not, and everything in-between and all around. To infinity and beyond.

-We got something now, we really got it.

-What is it?

-I don't know but we got it. That's. All. That. Matters.

[The world grows dark and then bright and dark again and bright and it continues into infinity]

Learning To Love Yourself (More) pt. 20

(Kevin on the Fire Escape, 2011)

Nothing Is.

If it doesn't matter it won't happen.

Before you is the air of your life and it is in reach of your hands. You can grab it if you wish but something is stopping you. You can't quite move and even your voice doesn't seem to want to speak. You're not frozen but are completely still as if something cut the connection from your brain to your hands and vocal cords. If you search deep within yourself you know what may be the cause of this but you care not too acknowledge it.

Like a shadow it has been following you for almost eternity. Over the years it has been growing stronger as you push it further away from you and your thoughts. Not letting it enter and ruin a good mood as you push on. But it follows you and it knows where you live and it knows who you are seeing. And worst of all, it wants to meet them all, it wants to interrupt a perfect evening party with close friends or that special someone walking naked into an intimate setting and completely ruin the mood. It will if you let it. And that's the whole thing, you have been fighting it forever. You haven't won but you haven't lost and perhaps you will never rid yourself of it. But this is not the end nor do you have much reason to fall to its power.

Your doubts, your fear of rejection, and its permanence in your condition are obstacles but taken on a case-to-case approach you can push on and you can conquer them. You may not win every time but you most certainly won't lose either. The air of your life is in front of you, you are sitting down with your hands on your knees and looking forward. You are thinking of running and you are think of getting up but you're not sure what is ahead. You try hard to focus your eyes well enough to see vague objects and the edge of the horizon but they are just blurs (you must go closer to see them to see for sure). The phrase, "Leap of Fate", in this case is more of a marathon of fate, and fate isn't some divine manuscript but your own will and your own destiny. And though you may feel powerless at times and though it may be too much and that you have too little these are just illusions. Your mind plays tricks on you. Your heart does too.

Your bum feels light after you lift up from your seat. Your fists grab the air before you and swing down towards the earth violently. Your legs begin to pace forward graduating at speed as a crawl turns to a walk turns to a light then medium jog and the jog turns to a galloping run. Something fires off in your mind as if there is something life-threatening scary behind you and you run like you are running from the devil himself. But there is no fear in your heart as you push yourself you're just running crazy. The wind starts to scream by your ears. Your breath becomes hard and your legs light. And soon that horizon starts to take shape. You are having a moment of clarity. Things such as failure, doubt, and regret are non-existent for now. The feeling is good, at an utmost positive and the reality is: Nothing Can Stop You.

Carry on, burn your legs and grab that air. Look all around you, your movement makes this world and makes it possible. Without you there is nothing. Never forget that. Nothing is the opposite of you.

ARTBOMB

Tomorrow I will be having a piece up for sale in an Auction, ArtBomb. It is done through email but if you wish to participate you can do it directly, here.

ArtBomb is project curated by Andrea Carson, publisher of View on Canadian Art, link, which serves as a need-to-know blog on what's really going on with Canadian Art.

The bidding begins at 6am on January 11th, 2012, and ends at 11pm. Now Is Your Chance. Chance. Chance.

(now dance)

I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Curling up in a ball I imagine myself like Sputnik readying itself for a voyage beyond anything imaginable at the time. I will be shot toward the heavens at extreme velocity and I will meet the point in which nothing man-made has ever surpass and I will surpass it. Passing that point I move on and until I reach infinity. And though my body will fail me before I arrive to the end of the universe I will die knowing my body was on its way there. The words, "On Its Way There" linger in the silence of space as I float on.

In the deep of the night I cannot think and my mind lingers into cycles of endless dialogue. The person on the other end of my mental conversation is always me but who it represents always changes. Tonight and like nights before it is the same person. Cycling over my head what steps I will take next, the words I will speak, what questions to be asked. All of this stirs to the point where it upsets my natural sleep cycle and I listen to ambient music until sleep finally does arrive. Until then I talk and talk and share my thoughts and listen to this person which is myself but is someone completely different share theirs. I turn and turn until my head starts to itch and I feel lonely knowing the moon is too far and too obscure to see. Did you know I wanted to share its sight in fullness and shine with someone else I ask myself. Did you know I wanted to replace myself alone with its site for one in which I share it with someone else? Perhaps not, those words though thought and said were all within my mind.

The wall stays and I rest my bottom on its top and dangle my legs off. I can see the ground and I can see the grass which is greener on the other side. I do not leave my post nor do I retreat behind the wall. Instead I just wait and watch the horizon. What I wait for is probably someone but who I'm never too sure of. In the past it has taken on the form of many and ultimately they had failed just as much as I failed on them. Where I rest now is not a shear drop nor a painful one I just simply can't move from my spot. If one were brave enough one could give me a push or grab my hand and pull be down. I watch the sun set and the night take over. Here, in my mind, I can see the moon. There is no smog nor an ominous cloud to obscure it. I am out in the country and running free. Of course I am just sleeping and what wonderful sleep it be. But the truth remains I am still sitting idle on that wall which rises not much nor too little and I feel too comfortable doing so. The worst part of it is that I can't help it, as if my buttock has turned to brick. All I want to do is tear it down and split and crumble the brick. All I want to do is escape, to disappear, to forget, will a brick come flying at my head and bam, I forget, I really did forget.

The moon sings, "Not Until The Time Is Just-A Right, (Tonight-Tonight), Not Until the Time Is Just-A Right!".

(Tonight-Tonight)

Long Long Long

(Coconut Palms, 2011)

Long, without looking at a dictionary is extensive, on-going, and sometimes appearing endless. When used for longing, the feeling which comes from a withdrawal of something pleasing and favorable. To miss is to long?

Belong, without looking at a dictionary is to be apart of, to be joined by something else and to be one element that is connected to another and be rightfully placed. When you remove "Be" from belong you have long and when you think of missing something, and missing something you felt you belong with, than that separated notion of "be-long" is now just long missing be.

Being, without looking at a dictionary is to exist as something, as simple as that you simply just are. To be or not to be. That really is the question.

So we have longing, belonging, and being. And in this context I understand this notion of longing, the lack of being and the lack of belonging. But to break down "long" even more it is a adjustive that describes distance and to long is to have distance from something and the idiom is what is associated with long distance is to notice the distance -to know your position to what you are comparing it to. And commonly it is act that comes from noticing something is lacking and missing. This thing whether far away physically or far away emotionally is baring some distance, long distance.

The top of the lower half of the building I live in is far from actually being a ship with a bridge that extends to an island but I cannot help but always think of it this way. Standing between the island and the ship I look up to a midnight sky and search for a moon. I find nothing but small points of bright light. These points aren't stars but man-made from construction sites high in the sky (the heavens) and passing airplanes. Above is a thick foggy cloud that is diluted and more milky than that of a nimbus cloud in consistency. Perhaps the moon is there in its imperfect fullness but this milky cloud doesn't have any concentrated illuminance and shows no sign of hiding anything but darkness and faintly glowing stars. And in this night it feels as if the moon simply does not exist where I am. Elsewhere and especially in places with little or none light population the moon is there, but here where I stand in-between an imaginary island and an imaginary ship it does not exists.

My memory remembers a time with a moon in the same location but it was of a different time that is clearly separated from this current moment. For some reason my memory holds the consistency of a dream in comparison to what is happening before me. And perhaps this moment feels more or less like the dream and the memory is the one that is real. And then I am caught between the two, what is real and what is not between a not ship and a not island and where a moon very much should be isn't but where my memory tells me it is.

I reach a point where I hear a voice telling me what the world is. I trust this voice and yet I know it isn't always right. But it is the most right thing I know and so it is I follow it as my primary understanding of the world around me. Usually I am not aware of its existence but right now in a quagmire I questioning it. And when you question your notion of reality and the constant voice of reason that exists within you the grounds that you stand on are not as solid as you think. And what is solid what is not and value itself from one thing to another and what the thing is and concept that makes a thing that particular thing are all rendered without color, density, mass, or reflection. They are all indiscernible and meaningless.

On longing to extend outwards and to bridge and yet never make it there and left in a quagmire that is neither being or not being and is simply is a state of missing. Where the moon should be is not and where my mind tells me is neither, my thoughts float up and take me with it to heights too high and frightening to look down. All because I can't place a moon in the midnight sky and all because I want to see it and perhaps it was the very thing ground this world to the next. I seem to have misplaced it somewhere. I long for it to return.

Luna

(In a Trance, 2011)

This wall will fall. And when it does I hope it takes everything with it. The people surrounding it will be engulfed in smoke and will lose touch of security and find themselves naked. The world will seem new and although only just a simply wall fell everything will be completely different. In the time of leaping horses and raining frogs we carry the burdens of yesterday. To which and to why is a question beyond our understanding. The modes of survival have made us and form the very reason why we are standing today. But what I propose is an alternative in which we abandoned any form of safety and where we set ourselves free of any security. Let the wall fall, let our voices return to us as if we were reborn. And perhaps that is exactly what it is, to be reborn for not a chapter to be simply turned but a completely new book to be made before our waking eyes. I grow mad with furious each and everyday I let myself place another brick on the wall. And as I look up the tower I had made around my body I see a faint light of the day. I want fire I want the mightiest of guns to come smashing it all down. I want to cry for a moment as I watch all that I had made in careful measurements and exactness to be rendered into rumble and for rumble to be turned to dust and dust to float and flutter far away.

The oceans turn and the tides come in and roll away what was left behind. The moon hovers above and I am taken to a time when palm leaves cut the silence of the evening with a dance of the coming of wind. The world is not complete darkness but it is very close to it. All the traces of humans are gone as I sit before an ocean swell. The ripples covered darkness tipped with moonlight and everything around me would be fine if I disappeared. I dig my bare feet into the soft moist sand and watch the approaching tide come closer. The air is hot almost sticky and the taste of sea gathers in my mouth. Many memories roll pass me and I remember them all being alone; sharing a moment with the moon; and being under its power. The clouds roll by and pass the full moon. In an instant they are illuminated like ground glass before a bright light and the bridge between reality and dreams is blurred and obscured. That's what it is, the moon, a bridge between one world to another.

On somedays I am surprised to see the moon high above. I can't help but feel like the only one that sees it there in the bright and clear sky. It followed me outside of a dream-like scene and is there to watch over me. Its hovering presence is there to remind me that my reality isn't any more real than the night before. Its glow is absent and yet it still holds some power over me. Confused I sit and reevaluate my memories. If it wasn't for photographs I'd lose touch with what happened in this world and what was a dream. A collection photographs with a white sphere hovering in the sky, clouds in blur, and little of the moon's surface detail gather dusts in a box somewhere in storage. I used to be obsessed with capturing the moon many years ago and I wonder what has changed. Perhaps after many failed attempted I gave up. That I came to realization that there are somethings that I cannot capture with any device but my memory. And rather than scrambling to retain as much detail as I can of a moment I should let it pass by as I enjoy it to its fullest. The grip in my hand eases and eventually lets go and the memory passes by floating, drifting, hovering away. Without a goodbye and without a look back it disappears. All I am left with is a feeling and a sequence of events that slowly dissipates from my recollection.

There are somethings I never want to forget -things that are so beautiful they seem to make the everyday feel unreal. There are moments that capture the soul that hold the power to take the individual away from whatever it is he or she is doing and leave (without a second thought). Like a flute with magical powers we can be lured into a moment just as a the moth flutters to the light. And perhaps it is that we have been waiting for that very moment to arrive and when it happens you could be sure as hell we will not let it pass without us being caught in its storm.

The full moon approaches and I wonder if this moment which is before me now will also be like the memories of all full moons, watching it alone and isolated somewhere on earth and somewhere high above floating amongst the clouds. The stars tinkle and the glow of the moon bridges the gap between one reality to another. And when the sun comes burning through the darkness it will all be over. Or will it.

The wall is still standing but for how long I am uncertain. Perhaps something will appear from the darkness and take the form of a wrecking ball. They will, "OH YEAH" their way through to the other side. And as they make their grand entrance what their face look like, will they be a stranger or friend, will they be happy or sad, or nothing at all. The words, "Take me away to a moony full and await the days to come..." appear on a single brick which has escaped total destruction.