In the Ether Between

Splendid nothing echoing down the endless entropy
Static stars cast like failed gambles
Shadows sleeping like drunks on the sidewalk
Heat that pools in the afternoon -
Too heavy to hold itself aloft -
Treacle thick, golden,
Baking weight;
The city that hangs like a forlorn teen
Food nights and beery afternoons;
And every so often a rape or murder to remind us.
Pretend unknowns -
Souls that have forgotten
Trapped as they are in the
Flesh in the
Clothes in the
Names in the
Memories
Howling out for
Clearer definition.
The forever to remember us as
Broken pixels -
Tap the screen to get them unstuck.
The materialists got the upper hand and
We swoon like a love-struck mark
Sighing at the con-man's every well-delivered word.

Undo

Undo the constraints of skin,
Let the universe expire
And my heart beat bloody in
Your palms,
So then we might know
Once and for all
If it is real.
Or,
If this evening should dip
Into yet another grin of
Silence,
And the skin grow over the teeth,
And the tongue dry up,
And the blood bloom deep in the throat
Of all our nodding
So that the machinations can continue,
And the constraints can hold:

Then let your eyes be like ellipses
That lead to a better version
Of us.

Lessons from the elderly

The little girl is two, maybe younger.  She has olive skin and dark, serious eyes that lock intently on the world and its great variety of things which dance and tumble about before her in all their newness.

She peers over her seat at an elderly woman, who smiles back sweetly.  They play games for a while - the child's absorbing eyes concentrating on the woman's pale skin, wrinkled kindly with age, like old tree bark.

It comes time to go. The woman says good-bye and waves her hand, clapping it like a clamshell.  The girl gazes back ponderously, clinging to the seat, uncertain of the gesture.

The bus stops and the woman steps down onto the sidewalk; the child watches her, silently mouthing this new word, this new sound, 'Bye.'

She mumbles, trying out the one-hand clap, motioning it at the now empty seat. An empty clamshell mouthing silence.

She murmurs it again.

'Bye... Bye... Bye...'

Excerpt from an old notebook.

Writing is like staring at a wall for hours upon hours, trying to decide what to paint it, then suddenly realising you can just knock the whole thing down and extend the room.

The Bold Fantastic

Sweetest dreams of the bold fantastic
Deepest breaths of the purest air
Longest strides 'pon the sidewalk asphalt
Clearest view of the path ahead
Strongest love for the daring cosmic
Freest laugh of the human fare
Mine's a hunger for the wildest beauty
Mine is joy for the living rare

Corporate Poetry

The terror of the evening -
Faux-friends falling in fallow fawnings all around;
The consequences cavernous
And shivering like too much air-conditioning;
Echoes of your ego reflected in the eyes
Of every hopeful
Clutching at pamphlets
Just a little too tight;
The meritocracy of dead-eyed double speak;
The language of impotence;
Corporate poetry.

Retrospectively intuited,
You are never wrong.

Catching, catching - a disease, a plague of ego.

Outside the temple,
I opened my mouth and spoke in tongues,
Feverishly babbling the sounds of saviour,
Hiding my truth in the folds of ones and zeroes
That made up the cadence of my voice.

A hysteria of fervent idealism.

The prophecy struck, though,
For the confidants fell down in holy terror, holy awe,
And were converted by the purity of my reason.

Nanotech minds;
Spurious fragments of thinking
Hooked on thin awareness and
Skittish absolutions:
You are everywhere at once,
And nowhere completely.

The more things change, the more things change.

Change is scary. Change is good. Change is hard work. Change is bad. Change is necessary. Most of all - change is inevitable, because change is growth.

It's 1999 and I'm in high school at the library for history class.  Suddenly, the class-clown leaps up and loudly proclaims, "Eureka!  Everybody can stop looking - I've found the meaning of life!"  All heads turn to him.  He looks down to the open book held in one hand and says, "LIFE: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death."  With a smug grin he snaps the dictionary shut, sits back down, stretches his arms out behind his head and leans back on his chair, satisfied.

Nothing is ever still, even when the appearance says otherwise. It only takes a bit of perspective to remember that we are, in fact, hurtling through space at thousands of kilometres per hour; that our hearts are beating at so many thrusts per second; that blood is pumping; stars are dying; cells are dividing; time is flowing; breath is being inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

But these aren’t really changes. They are the definition of constancy. They are predictably changeless in their relentless changing. Knowing this is inimitable for detaching yourself from a situation in the hope of gaining a broader view, and fucking useless for gleaning insight into the same.

It is perspective vs. perception.

It's 2001 and I'm in my final year of high school.  I am having an affair with my best friend's long-term girlfriend.  It's the first girl I will ever love, but not the last.  It's one of those rare moments when we are alone together and not having an argument over whether she'll decide to leave her boyfriend for me - whether she'll make a change.  

I am driving past a field of flowers and I slow down, pull over the car and tell her to get out as I do the same.  I walk around to her side and tell her to look at the field.  I say, "In five, ten, fifteen and thirty years from now - this field will still be here.  These flowers will still grow and die.  We will be older and different, but this will still exist - everything will still exist - it has existed for millions of years before us, and will continue, for millions of years without us.  This, whatever this is, between us, is fleeting in comparison to that."

We actively try to change so many aspects of ourselves - to get better jobs, to improve our skills, to cut our bad habits, to grow, to succeed, to be smarter, to be better, to be more compassionate. To resist change is to stagnate, and to stagnate is to die - there is a spark of immortal consciousness in all of us that primitively understands this; and yet, the majority of us resist change fiercely, knowingly, unconsciously and more, with deliberate inconsistently. 

I want to change, but I want you to stay the same or; I want you to change, but I want to stay the same or; I want us both to change, but I don't want you to change if it conflicts with my change, because I Love You, and what if Your change excludes me? 

Or worse: I don’t want us to change.

It’s 2005; you are seventeen and finish school with less-than-favourable grades as a result of a senior year spent partying.  With the hope of giving you a greater perspective of yourself, your parents present you with a surprise graduation gift – a holiday in America.  In the months abroad, you begin to wonder if your life thus far has been defined by the common perception that you are beautiful, and desired.  You begin to understand the nature of change.

You stop wearing makeup, you stop wearing mini-skirts; you do not try to hide your beauty, but deliberately do not emphasise it.  You break ties with former friends and resolve to become a teacher, to dedicate your life to helping others.  You excel at university and promise yourself that you will never let your desire to be desired affect you again.  

Consciously and unconsciously, change thrums like the beat of a slave drum at every level of human life - occurs without us really knowing that it's happening. 

We can shape it, but we can't control it. 

But the conscious changes we enact are more interesting, because these are the aspects which both separate and connect us - from the minute changes we strive for in our personal habits, to the broader changes we wish for on a global scale: conscious change occurs because we WANT to change. 

It is 2006; You are a fresh eighteen and standing at the front counter preparing stock for the evening.  I come around the corner, punch in the code and enter and see you and stop.

Change is infinite; is constant in its constancy. Before you, there were women that I loved so deeply that I honestly believed I would never love anyone else. 

But that changed – I met you. 

It is 2007; I have just turned twenty-three and you are still eighteen.  We have dinner and wine in the tacky kitchen of my studio apartment.  We have been dating for several months, and I already know that I love you.  

You get drunk quickly, and as I stand outside on my steps, smoking a cigarette, you confess, "I feel like you have this idea in your head of who I am that is wrong."  You look at me, that spark of confused desperation so evident in your face, and say, "I'm scared I'm going to let you down."

What we think about, what we ponder, what we desire, what we imagine: these are the blueprints around which change takes shape. 

These desires may never be anything more than unconscious whispers we strive to ignore. Or, they might bloom to consume us, forcing us to actively create the change we seek. 

It is 2008; I am twenty-four and You are twenty.  We are driving back from my friend’s house and You are furious because You just found out that I have started smoking again, despite my telling You that I had quit.  I pull the car over on the side of an expanse of cement because I can’t tolerate Your icy silence.  Slowly, and with great deliberation, you say: “Denis: we’re going to be together for a long time – I want My future to be with You.  But if you keep smoking, then at some point You’re going to die before me and I will have to keep living for a long time afterwards!” You turn to face me, that spark of disbelieving exasperation so evident in your eyes.  “I’m Mongolian!  My great-grandmother is one hundred this year!  Am I supposed to live five, ten, thirty years after you’re gone?”

Change is a verb; it is active: to Change is to be involved. Change is a noun; it is a thing that exists: Change is tangible. Change is an active tangibility; it is alive.

It’s 2010; I am twenty-six and you are twenty-two, and you come round to see me - the first time since your European jaunt with the new French boyfriend.  After wine and food we sit on the back deck and I listen to you talk optimistically about all the changes in your life.  You glance upon the surface of something deep like a medieval knight seeking only to wound.  I want you to be the you you were, so I turn the topic – I want to kill.  I tell you about my friend’s wedding, describe how nice it was, and how we all got drunk and danced and then I walked home in the rain wishing for nothing else in this universe but that you were there also (but I fail to mention this last part).  

I take a risk and tell you then about how I imagined our wedding.  You cock your head and scrunch your face and say, “Really?” as if the thought had never crossed your mind.

The most honest you'll ever be with your lover is when you're on the edge of sleep. In our final weeks together those were my islands of refuge as the expansive ocean of change climbed up the shores of our continental love and sucked it all back under. 

It is 2009, early, around 1 am, only a few weeks before The End; you stir from your sleep - I am already awake; skinny from anxiety and haggard from lack of REM. You are the last woman I loved, but not the last I will love.  You roll into me and hold your warm flesh against mine, press your bare breasts into my body and I almost start to cry because you don't really touch me anymore when you are awake.

With your eyes closed, you begin to talk, and I still don't know if you knew what you said, but I remember every word:  "I was dreaming of you.  I was... running, across a field... and as I ran I was... turning into a balloon filled with... helium, and I began to float.  And you were chasing me... jumping and waving and trying to hold onto my feet... but I just kept floating up, and up, and up...”

We all reach points in our life where it is no longer okay to expect that the old excuses will continue protecting us from choices we know are causing stagnation. At these points, change changes from a noun to a verb and we recognize that we can make the choice to change. At these points we recognize that it’s no longer okay to say, “I’m just not a morning person,” or; “I know I should quit but I can’t help it,” or; “I don’t know what to do with my life!”

Or worse: “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

It's 2011 and that field I once romantically pointed out to a girl I used to love has long since been cleared and paved and now has an industrial warehouse sitting on top of it, and the girl I once loved now lives in London.  

Things change. 

I stand on the front balcony of the beautifully restored Queenslander I live in smoking a cigarette.  

Some things don't change. 

It's a wintery Saturday night - and the slope of the hill provides a clear view of angular tin roofs receding to a distant cityscape poking amber holes in the purply atmosphere.  All my housemates are out, and, despite the commonalities I still find within myself - the habits, the thought-processes, the questions, the familiar frustrations - the outer shell of the life I now live has changed considerably from the one I used to know.  How did I get here?  Did I choose this?

Somewhere deep inside me stirs the longing for something I once had - for a moment of shared truth with someone whom I know and knows me in the pits of my soul.  I put the cigarette to my lips, reach into my pocket and pull out my phone to call you.

But I won't. 

What I will do instead is read back through our old text messages, our emails, our facebook conversations.  I will search your name in email accounts that I no longer use and read four year old, two-sentence correspondences synchronising times and places where we would meet that no longer mean anything, but at one point in time meant more than everything.  I will do this actively, consciously and knowingly aware of the heartache that it will cause, and that things have changed, and it won't change any thing.  I will do this because I want to communicate not with the you now, but the you then - the you who loved me and who I loved, and with whom communication was constant foreplay.   I will do this because I can't talk to you now, because we both speak different languages; because despite my best efforts, I just cannot find that place where we intersect any more.  Because you changed, and I didn't.  Because I could not find a way to understand your change, even as I sought my own.  Because your change was a verb, and mine was a noun.

Change is the thing we get back from a teller when we’ve handed them too much for something we wish to purchase. In this manner, it is also commonly referred to as shrapnel: fragments of a bomb, shell, or other object thrown out by an explosion.

It's 2008 on Christmas Eve and I suddenly am sick to the pit of my stomach with the notion that you will leave me soon.  I can't explain it, and curse myself for such negative thoughts - blame it on the fact that we are a hundred kilometres apart at this time of year.  At midnight, you call me, drunk, stumbling back from the pub with Him and with that spark of wilful obliviousness so evident in your voice say, "Merry Christmas baby!  I loooovveee you!  You know - I loooveee you so much and right now, right now I'm with J---,” (who’s J---?!) “And I know that he wants to sleep with me, and you know, if I didn't love you so much, I would actually consider it - but I am so in love with you, that I won't do it - isn't that nice to know?  I mean, that we can be tempted by something but have the strength of love to resist it? That’s what love means, right?"

Our selves are slaves to our perceptions, our perceptions are slaves to our habits, and our habits are slaves to our selves. Where do we make the incision? Where do we make the change? 

To change our habits, we must detach ourselves from our selves – from our perceptions and from our desires. But this will only give us perspective – and by that I mean it will only give us the ability to see our lives in the grander scheme of existence, which is utterly beautiful, and utterly useless unless you wish to regard your life with the same benign objectivity as that of a flower in a passing field.

Two nights later, the ex-girlfriend of my old best friend from high school comes over.  We're both back in our old stomping ground visiting our parents for Christmas.  That night, we kiss.  A kiss - a drunken, stupid, meaningless kiss with the weight of a black hole tied to the taste of it.  

Despite my instincts, I do not tell you about it.  I do not tell you about it even when, only a month or so later, the silence begins.  In fact, I will not tell you about it until close to the end of the year, when you are already in France, and long after we have already ended.  

For years I will wonder if telling you sooner would have changed anything.

It’s five days after that – New Year’s Eve, now the New Year of 2009.  You get drunk early and pass-out in my bed.  When I join you hours later, Your facebook is open on my computer and I read the conversation you had with Him.

Change occurs when you stop wanting the things you used to want and most distinctly does not occur when you continue wanting the same things you always wanted.

It is sometime after, and I say, “I will never love anyone as I did you.”  

You say, “You have always said that.”