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.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
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.
(:>={
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.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
A Singularity Complex
When all the universe comes crashing back into a single, sucking density;
There at least, we will be whole again.
There at least, we will be whole again.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
A Return to the Familiar
The details of this evening are as follows.
A 25 year old male, quasi-drunk on scotch and water, 16 cigarettes down and finding any excuse not to finish marking the pile of assignments which sits in a disorderly heap on his bed preoccupies himself with fanciful imaginings of a hypothetical romance he's uncertain to the extent of which lies in actual reality.
Thus begins a debate as to the nature of reality.
If reality is an observable fiction which relies upon competing forces in order to determine creation and chaos, then what powers those forces? It would appear to this male that if it is a force of perception, his imaginings are not to be deterred - the mere examining of a thread of thought pushes it squarely into the light of creation, and can thus be used as a stencil from which to fill the colours of his desire. Of course, his thoughts are not the solely determining factors as to whether the romance will sew unto the threads of a reality and pursue a current in livable fiction, but he also knows that in previous circumstances, they generally tend to.
He wonders briefly why this is, then puts it down to luck.
Luck that natural genetics instigate a pleasant living portrait which most others like to view. and luck that he has had the fortune to find life so far mostly amusing, which animates said features in an agreeable manner.
He is sitting on a couch, considering his options when suddenly, he becomes extraordinarily tired with the whole conundrum.
Conversation, desire, want, lack and sex - for what use? The ricocheting communications cause a cacophany of confusion which set the world to rumbling and eventually leave a very sooty mark upon a slate which would be clean if it were not for these amblings. Of course, the point of all this is to learn a lesson, and from the lesson future generations may cleave their own meat to let grow fetid with the maggots of discontent.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
It occurs to the male that his thoughts are particularly cynical. To what extent, he wonders, are they influenced by outside factors? Religious and/or spiritual indoctrinations as to the reliability of thought and the necessity of control spring instantly to mind, which in turn becomes a debate as to how one may assume the arrogance of emptiness in a world which demands engagement.
In all of this, he realises, he has no understanding left.
A 25 year old male, quasi-drunk on scotch and water, 16 cigarettes down and finding any excuse not to finish marking the pile of assignments which sits in a disorderly heap on his bed preoccupies himself with fanciful imaginings of a hypothetical romance he's uncertain to the extent of which lies in actual reality.
Thus begins a debate as to the nature of reality.
If reality is an observable fiction which relies upon competing forces in order to determine creation and chaos, then what powers those forces? It would appear to this male that if it is a force of perception, his imaginings are not to be deterred - the mere examining of a thread of thought pushes it squarely into the light of creation, and can thus be used as a stencil from which to fill the colours of his desire. Of course, his thoughts are not the solely determining factors as to whether the romance will sew unto the threads of a reality and pursue a current in livable fiction, but he also knows that in previous circumstances, they generally tend to.
He wonders briefly why this is, then puts it down to luck.
Luck that natural genetics instigate a pleasant living portrait which most others like to view. and luck that he has had the fortune to find life so far mostly amusing, which animates said features in an agreeable manner.
He is sitting on a couch, considering his options when suddenly, he becomes extraordinarily tired with the whole conundrum.
Conversation, desire, want, lack and sex - for what use? The ricocheting communications cause a cacophany of confusion which set the world to rumbling and eventually leave a very sooty mark upon a slate which would be clean if it were not for these amblings. Of course, the point of all this is to learn a lesson, and from the lesson future generations may cleave their own meat to let grow fetid with the maggots of discontent.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
It occurs to the male that his thoughts are particularly cynical. To what extent, he wonders, are they influenced by outside factors? Religious and/or spiritual indoctrinations as to the reliability of thought and the necessity of control spring instantly to mind, which in turn becomes a debate as to how one may assume the arrogance of emptiness in a world which demands engagement.
In all of this, he realises, he has no understanding left.
Monday, 26 March 2007
I Slaked My Thirst With Memories
Sceptically, I lay down upon the ivory earth and waited for the baking heat of the white sands to swallow up my mind. With fingers blistered and peeling, I dug out a small hollow, at first perhaps just for something to drive away the demons, and then with an intensity forged by a cold, rageless passion; a physical embodiment of my secret joke - if the ground would not take me in spirit, then I would force an entrance, storm that sacred vessel as a last act of despair, a knight sullied with sins, atrophied with anguish and desperate to reclaim his rightful honour of atonement by storming the castle which made him, slaying those that would not forgive. And so I would be too! If I must die here in the desert, then I will at least have a burial. And perhaps the burning sands might slake my thirst, as some things which burn for so long eventually feel cool and cold. And those that would be angry with me for dying would not see my naked bones grotesque and embarrassed for lack of skin; they would not see anything at all.
Like a worm burrowing into the stomach of a dog, my failing body writhed with a peculiar reilsh, eyelids encrusted and bleary; swollen tongue rubbing sand into the sores of my gums until I had dug out no more than a helmut of a hole; and then tears, stupid, pointless tears, energy that might extend my life, the final fluids of my body gone; now dry like a teetotaller's liquor cabinet, like God's humour and me, with the white sands glowing pink as the restless sun gave birth to a thankless night of nevermores.
I bowed my head down and licked the last of the salty fluid from my cheeks. Words and visions filled me and at once my cracked and broken voice spilled out like light on that very first day - I was sick with it, like a drunk who held it in his guts for too long and now must purge whether he want it or no - all that I was and all that I am went forth from me as a gush of sound, a fissure in time from whence possibilities spring forth, and tiny whispers pooled there in that hole like inky dreams glassy with the reflection of self, rising, rising, overflowing and seeking exit on the wind, trying to find the moon and stars and someone else, somewhere else to make solid of their sorrow; but I cupped my hands and held them close, tipped them back into my hollow and continued, carefully, so carefully; for the Truth is a delicate thing.
The moon scraped her bloated self across the night and dawn reshaped the land. I lay there, still - whispering my faithless life until my throat bled and I was suddenly empty, finished.
Resting my sore head on the softly swirling sounds of my desert halo, I knew then that I was free. All these things which had kept me, all these infiltrations of serpentine magnitude vesseled up in my heart and held as Hell holds Satan - they were gone; they were thoughts and actions and certainly, they were pain; but it was debris never cleared, dead tissue not amputated for the simple sake of vanity and an overzealous concept of belonging to it! It was a folly of life not given over and not given up!
I should have died then. I should have melted into time as a mournful shadow which holds its liquid only in the weight of others, and to whom day is known as a resentment of light, and night is held as a Hell of sweeping indefinition. But I didn't die. I didn't perish, I didn't fall and I didn't fail. I lived.
I stood up from my rockpool of sorrow and left my abused shell of a body blank and unstaring beside. I felt the wind blow through me and tasted the history and wisdom in it's existence.
I pondered what to be next.
Like a worm burrowing into the stomach of a dog, my failing body writhed with a peculiar reilsh, eyelids encrusted and bleary; swollen tongue rubbing sand into the sores of my gums until I had dug out no more than a helmut of a hole; and then tears, stupid, pointless tears, energy that might extend my life, the final fluids of my body gone; now dry like a teetotaller's liquor cabinet, like God's humour and me, with the white sands glowing pink as the restless sun gave birth to a thankless night of nevermores.
I bowed my head down and licked the last of the salty fluid from my cheeks. Words and visions filled me and at once my cracked and broken voice spilled out like light on that very first day - I was sick with it, like a drunk who held it in his guts for too long and now must purge whether he want it or no - all that I was and all that I am went forth from me as a gush of sound, a fissure in time from whence possibilities spring forth, and tiny whispers pooled there in that hole like inky dreams glassy with the reflection of self, rising, rising, overflowing and seeking exit on the wind, trying to find the moon and stars and someone else, somewhere else to make solid of their sorrow; but I cupped my hands and held them close, tipped them back into my hollow and continued, carefully, so carefully; for the Truth is a delicate thing.
The moon scraped her bloated self across the night and dawn reshaped the land. I lay there, still - whispering my faithless life until my throat bled and I was suddenly empty, finished.
Resting my sore head on the softly swirling sounds of my desert halo, I knew then that I was free. All these things which had kept me, all these infiltrations of serpentine magnitude vesseled up in my heart and held as Hell holds Satan - they were gone; they were thoughts and actions and certainly, they were pain; but it was debris never cleared, dead tissue not amputated for the simple sake of vanity and an overzealous concept of belonging to it! It was a folly of life not given over and not given up!
I should have died then. I should have melted into time as a mournful shadow which holds its liquid only in the weight of others, and to whom day is known as a resentment of light, and night is held as a Hell of sweeping indefinition. But I didn't die. I didn't perish, I didn't fall and I didn't fail. I lived.
I stood up from my rockpool of sorrow and left my abused shell of a body blank and unstaring beside. I felt the wind blow through me and tasted the history and wisdom in it's existence.
I pondered what to be next.
Sunday, 25 March 2007
Did You See What People Do?
We get it right, we get it wrong,
We move along, we move along,
We sing our songs and hide our heat,
And o'er Heaven's guise we weep,
For standards that we cannot keep
Coagulate in colours deep within
Our sleeping chest of sorrows;
So spurning on the empty morrow,
And burning what we cannot borrow
We bow along to touch what follows first,
An empty and beholden thirst
For vengeance in our sacred curse -
Callous and contrary verse
Used to steal our neighbour's purse
And spelled upon the altar;
We cannot falter!
We cannot fall!
We cannot fail or He'll damn us all!
And sick with fear we'll favour
Two dimensional behaviour
And believe our only saviour
Lives in lines between the words.
We move along, we move along,
We sing our songs and hide our heat,
And o'er Heaven's guise we weep,
For standards that we cannot keep
Coagulate in colours deep within
Our sleeping chest of sorrows;
So spurning on the empty morrow,
And burning what we cannot borrow
We bow along to touch what follows first,
An empty and beholden thirst
For vengeance in our sacred curse -
Callous and contrary verse
Used to steal our neighbour's purse
And spelled upon the altar;
We cannot falter!
We cannot fall!
We cannot fail or He'll damn us all!
And sick with fear we'll favour
Two dimensional behaviour
And believe our only saviour
Lives in lines between the words.
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