Spring Comes Early to the Valley of Dust

I was walking back from my friend's place through New Farm last night and I was a little bit drunk and I started really wanting a cigarette. I quit more than a month ago now, and it's the first real craving I've had. Anyway, I became fixated on it and started debating as to whether I should buy a packet... you know, for JUST ONE. Heh.

But then I realised that the issue wasn't that I wanted a cigarette, it was that I was focussed on this issue as if it were a constant - as though it were an established and stable, concrete thing - my wanting of it, which is nonsense, because nothing is static in life, and as soon as I realised that my longing was transient, it disappeared and I became really happy. And then I had this thought, which tipped me into ecstatic joy and sent me running through the park and swinging off tree branches:-

We are each of us riding the razor's edge of time like surfers on a wave which has come from nothing, and is going to nothing. Though we may feel as if we are separated by age & distance & sex & country & class & religion & an almost infinite array of perceptions, we are bound by the truth of each fresh moment born spontaneously and inconvertibly in our awarenesses; it only exists as we exist to witness it, and we share it, on a deeply personal and individual realm, with each and every other living and non-living thing on this planet, at exactly the same time, at exactly the same instant.

The world, not just your perception of it, but my perception, his perception, her perception, its perception - EVERYTHING, is created afresh every, single, fraction of an instant. It didn't exist before you stepped into it, and it doesn't exist once you leave it. We are flying a space shuttle through an axiom of pure existence.

Aimless Insanity

My first film...



(:>={

In other news - been writing a new song. Have a killer chorus worked out and a really catchy hook, but I can't seem to find words for the verse. It's driving me a little bit crazy. Jorge Borges wrote that anyone can lose their mind if they are unable to forget something. So, if you had a coke advertisement stuck in your mind on repeat; it wouldn't be long before you'd be that guy walking down the street talking to yourself. Naturally, his words were more eloquent than my primitive paraphrasing, but the point is, I've been really feeling that statement for the last few days with this song.

Hope all's well in your world.

-P.P.

An Open Letter

It was the warmth in you which first attracted me.
It was the kind of thing which I always wanted to be close to,
Because the night was so very cold without it.
I remember an evening,
Walking with you, on the way back from the cinema;
Hands interlocked
When such a thing was still new to us,
And we were talking about everything;
And I was falling ever deeper in love with you
With every sidled glance that I could steal.

That was when it was still easy,
Back when there was no fear of what you might think of me if I told you a secret.
Or more importantly,
What I might think of you.
We knew there would be an understanding,
Because we both wanted it.

That changed though, over time.
I don't know why, now;
But it became very important, what you thought of me.
And I began to place conditions on our love.

I've thought about all the angles,
And I honestly believe that the reason that I still break down at night
When I am alone,
Is because I know that I was wrong.
Even though all the evidence may say otherwise,
You were always more honest with me,
Because you embraced your demons,
Where I just pretended that I didn't have any.
And your parents loved me for it,
It made me easy to get along with;
But I haven't learned much in the past few years,
Other than how to not chase my dreams
And cultivate anxiety in a petrie dish.

You left a few hours ago,
You're gone to the other side of the world.
And I didn't want to write this any more,
Didn't really want to give it over to foreign eyes,
Because it seems so cliche and obscure,
And makes me feel like a failure.
As if there isn't enough heart break in the world that
I think it would matter for me to reveal mine.
Revelling in self-pity like an old junkie reading a Burroughs novel.

But the truth is
It helps.
And so then I guess it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks,
Because if I can start to face my demons here,
And call them out like I used to,
Maybe I can remember how to be brave,
And one day,
When I can stand to be near you and not want to cut my heart out at the same time,
I won't feel like I failed Love with you,
And I'll be confident and strong enough to know
That it's okay we're not together
And it's okay that I was wrong.