Green Dreams

Waking driftings, nothing holding me down. Just a blur, just a passing frown. Green dreams of my children’s eyes. An imagine that makes me want to drop to my knees. Some thoughts are so big you cant think them. Some dreams are so crisp overcast glow, then burn your eyes. Then shine like ravens in battlefield skies. Dead ends are so mystifying to us, aren’t they? We always love to see that cliff or wall. But sometimes all I want to see is what lies behind it. What is it in me that drives such flagellation of other lives when all I have is now. Maybe it is in such that I allow myself to see what I hid from myself in my heart.

Pan en, then… Is that enough? Do we need more? Pan en pain, pan en tears, pan en silver light’s caresses. Theos en pan.

How can I turn wrong in such purity? Then why still fear my maturity? I guess that’s the lesson in these green dreams. Fear is not in my heart. The skies are overcast but wrap around us like angels wings. How can any of this be real when it feels so easy, so right. Just like in dreams when nothing seems to connect, and no one seems to notice, least of all the dreamer. What is the lesson if not that its very disconnected flow is a sacred Chao. What level do we perceive from? The Chao is a unique snowflake in Chaos blizzards dance. And oh how it dances and flows to its own beautiful music. Some can see past Chao and its twins, with grids of majesty and tearful power. Sometimes I can see the fragments spinning in my life and just accept them as they are. They still glint from the light source, for all fragments shine. Lost nows. It is these that we hold on to so tightly that we cut ourselves. Nows that can never be lost but in our hearts. When we despair of the break from now, and the pattern it follows. Will its edges be jagged or smooth? Will they be sharp or course? Gentle or hard?

But what, then, is this but window dressing? Would we scoff at The Three Graces if placed in the window of a Burger King? Would Monet’s fire be any less if placed in a rough hewn frame? Why do we dance so in the frames of our lives… All still shines from the soft sweet light at its center…

All I wonder about now… am I falling into it, or away from it? Do fragments spin away? Or past?

Time will tell… Time will tell.

Twisted and Melting

I should be working, but there really isn't much to do. I guess that means I'm waiting, thats something I was never very good at. I am waiting on many tiers today, but some have fallen. Its an odd thing looking back on the last few months and seeing all the shifting, dancing lights. They say change is the only thing that stays the same. What nonsense.

But somehow still I feel my moving, its like my heart is a dancing amorphous mass. I've learned so much about myself.

I've been,.. hesitant. There is past that creeps in on my mind and speaks caution. But there is present that argues valor. Twisted like fine soft serve ice cream. And while it melts, fighting each other for winters kiss, I notice myself wondering off. I'll not get involved. I don't want to be. Better to just let it melt, and be true.

I'm watching way to closely. I know. But I feel like a man lost in a cold dark cell, with just a single ray creeping in the bars to comfort me. How can I help but watch so closely? Under such radiance, the rest of the world seems to fade to a dull gray. I yield and yield to it. What ever it takes.

I'm trying not to get involved in these little plays.

I'm getting better at it.

Clouds

Sometimes I can see it. Uncounted lights, floating in black space. Each light is different, some dance and caper, joyous and uncontained. Others are slow and quiet, winking to deep rhythms of the ancients. The colors are all gold, and all perfectly the same. But you can tell ones glow apart from another, like different memories of the same place. I claim to see it.

That's my first lie.

I can only imagine one or two, maybe ten or even a hundred. But they stretch on forever. Absolutely endless, and forever. Moving in 4 dimensions, there is no end to the Clouds. They reach out to each other with filaments of the finest silk thread. Even the thickest strands look like they would blow away on the breeze, but they stand so strong. So strong some can never be broken, strong as the lights themselves. Strong enough to circumvent time. Each plus is rebounded. Each flash is answered, but never the same way. Energy moves around the Clouds, building and releasing. Each Starsoul touches these pulses and changes it, makes it it's own.

That's my second lie.

Its all one thing, Light, putting on a show. Each can change the plus of life, but they are all the same thing. Memories of memories. Their cores are one. Trace each nexus back to its beginning. It is shared by all. But the Dance of Souls is oh so beautiful to watch. Slowly at first, I can see some of it. Faster and faster I comprehend the shifts, the flickers and the pulses. Soon its like a buzzing sound, but in pictures. Sometimes I even see this little me. I watch myself reach out and touch other Lights. I feel myself in the cloud.

That's my third lie.

I can feel the cloud. All of it, every last photon. But not myself in it. There is nothing to feel. I can only see myself from elsewhere in the Cloud. Then its not me feeling anymore. Seeing is one thing, watching the connections, sighing and singing. Its another thing to feel the pixel that is me. I've yet to find myself in the Cloud, but I'm not actually looking. I'm just this little bulb, abandoned and trapped among countless others.

That's my forth lie.

I am not the pixel on the giant TV screen. I am the electricity that runs through it. I am that which makes it glow every so brightly. Just as every charged electron has its moment of radiance, we get to express our move in the Dance of Souls. Just as every charged electron has to return to the power station, we all get to go home. But the power remains on. And the show must go on.

Low grey Clouds on a rainy Sunday afternoon, watched from warm in bed out a frosted window. That is maybe all there is, Clouds.

Doorways

I stand at a doorway, should I enter? Truth awaits on the other side, but some truths are best left in mist and shadow. Is it better to know? Knowing brings so much, really seeing, really feeling, its so different. Have you heard about a song before? Its not the same as sitting down, putting on the headphones and really listening. Being swept away by its melodies. Are the words at all meaningful next to the power of the True form?

But maybe I don't want to hear this song. I prefer the one I have now.. its peaceful and lovely and absolutely breathtaking. I wont change the channel, just yet.. just yet.

Taken

I don’t know how to feel. Your perfect, your taken. Should I be sad that I most likely never see you again? Should I be happy that your out there? That there are a million just like you. Goodness you had me entranced tonight.

Its okay, after the passing of the past, after the dispelling of Nuria’s enchantment, thank you for showing me magic is real. Curse you for showing me such magic and then walking away. I’m sorry, that’s not fair of me. Its just my loneliness speaking, its just your eyes dancing in my minds eye.

Today I turn 23. Can you imagine? Why do I still feel like a child? Today I swear I stand unashamed. Today I am calling out my demons. Come stand and show your cards. I am a man grown, full of love and a need to be close to a woman. I want to hold you in my arms, and kiss you gently, and send you to the edge of madness, send you to the edge of sanity, go with you to the extreme of pleasure. Today I am unashamed. I stand up for my right to love and be loved. The days of fear and loathing are past.

But.. your taken.. such a shame. I can say is, that man is a lucky man. Does he even know? Its amazing how I can’t get away with anything anymore. I complain that I feel isolated, and the next night there is 12 people over. I say goodbye to Nuria, and who is this angel at my door?

I’m not mad, I think I’m happy. I’m very happy. Its just a sign, but it’s a powerful one. I can’t help these feelings, I always have them, but today I am unashamed. I am 23, and a man, and full of desire. I need to hold, I need to love, I need.

Such Chill

Its weird that you can still hurt me from your frozen thrown where you rule your kingdom of ice. Why would I want apart of that world? I know, ice can be beautiful in its sweet sorrow. We want to comfort it and try and warm it up, but it knows it will just melt. Better to be away, back in your ice caves. But I still feel sad. But you know the honest thing? I feel sad for you, not for the loss of you.

You finally got what you feared, expected and invented along the way. Weird huh? In the end you were dragging it out of me. So what else is there to say? I just showed you the truth and you made it about insults and pain. I showed you a crossroads and you picked this path without a second thought.

Nuria, I said a prayer to your gods for you. I asked them to take good care of you, and bring you the happiness you couldn't take from me or so many others. What else can I do with someone so lost in their own madness? I tried everything else. But I'm done selling myself short, your not worth the bother. I cant change you against your will. I cant love anyone who wont let me. I cant love someone who doesn't love themselves. I cant even respect you because you don't respect your self. You limit yourself with your assumptions.

Nuria, beloved, goodbye.

I know I wasn't the best I could have been, but I tried my hardest, start to finish. Can you say that?

Driver, Oh Driver

I would like to get off this ride. Maybe I never want it to end. Where did I go? How do I just do things and just watch? Sometimes I feel like I'm just watching, like someone else is the real pilot. I'm just hanging on the back of the plane, watching the air move past. Feeling as it rushes over me, touching with spectral tendrils. I know this happens, it doesn't bother me, I don't even know who's talking right now. Is it the One? Or the Me? I guess it's how you define 'me'. I've lost my dictionary, I just knows what feels right. And when it doesn't. I hid so far away, all night. Who did I send out on point then? Someone has to drive this crazy train.

Truth is a bar of a Starsoul. When it is gift wrapped in a soft cloth and given as a offering, it will always be pure. We simply react to its blinding light through our little red glasses. We all wear dozens of them at a time, each a slightly different color. They dance in our eyes and we do not see them. Sometimes the brilliance is blinding, so we let our glass grow cloudy. Sometimes the aurora will dance in colors we cant see, even through the clearest glass. But rarely do we see all the spectrum of the radiance at once. Its always wise to never trust your lenses, and I have. But it will cost. Today it will, but this is just the steps along the way.

Cookie

Fortune cookies. The name is a bit misleading. Anyone who has every opened up one of these communiqué carrying confections would agree, they predict little and often make even less sense. Maybe they should be called Wisdom Cookies. Thinking about them like that, they aren't so laughable anymore. Maybe that how their supposed to be thought of. I’ve seen some that made me stop and think. I’ve seen some that made me feel better. I’ve seen some that had two semi-conflicting messages inside. I’ve seen some with many words which meant little. I've seen only one that took my breath away. It just had two words. Two words that sum up the most important aspect of life, something that so many may never understand.

Accept

yourself.

It looks so small there on the paper, so insignificant. Its so easy to hide, like its a little secret. But inside these two words are perhaps the simplest and most difficult, easiest and hardest thing one can ever do. So much in so few words. Imagine living without trying to justify every action, without trying to excuse every fault, without trying to hide every blemish, without judgments, without embarrassments, without fear, without shame. Imagine living with a noble heart and a strength. Imagine just living. So much in two words. So much in a cookie.

Trade winds

The things that come out of my mouth. My god, if only I would listen to myself. Does it make me a hypocrite to preach the things that I can't practice? To tell someone that its easy to overcome things that I myself shy away from? No, that's not fair... I sometimes am filled with fear and doubt, but rarely do I let it cripple me like it used to. Do I just show a path that I too am on? I'm moving slowly, but I'm on my way home. You may beat me there, my dear, you may. But its no race, we all move at our own pace.

No, its okay. Words are easy, actions are hard. That's why actions speak so much louder, they have such power. Words are not but wind. But think of all that the winds can do. It may push my little dream boat to Elysium. Is that the destination? I just don't know. But I can tell you this, my dear, it's our destiny. All the currents push toward the tower, but we'll never know until we hall anchor and sail. Why do we fear the reefs and whirlpools? Its written in the stars, my dear, it is. If only we would raise our eyes from the horizon, and look to the stars.

Actual Fantasy

I live in a world of fantasies, how terribly normal they are.  Nothing holds me back besides my own thoughts.  Always battling with my thoughts, my expectations, my wishes.  Who am I fighting?  I'm fighting on both sides, its a civil war, with Artillery.  Just tossing mindless bombs, uncaring where they land, knowing that it doesn't really matter, in the end I will hit something important and cause yet another halt.  It was once said, all wars are civil.  At once it is the greatest truth and worst sick joke the world has ever seen, depeneding on the meaning.  All wars are civil because all wars are with oneself, projected outward, or worse still, focused inward.  But no war is civil.  All wars are horrible things, with no true winner, and oh so many losers... Losers without number, mothers weeping alone in dark places, fathers with dead eyes, brothers with heavy hearts, sisters with warm silent tears, and yourself.  Inside we are all of these things.  So imagine the destruction of a war turned inward.  Imagine being on both sides of a war, imagine every blow to be one to your soul.

I'm done standing in my own way.  I'm done with these wars of our fathers.  There is in this world such a thing as nonlinear shift in any system.  We see it all the time, where logic and structure brake down.  Sometimes its at the ends and beginnings, sometimes just at random places.  The moment before change, great change, feels much like any other, normal, boring, unimportant.  The second before the spark ignites a twig, sets off a branch, lights a tree, burns a forest.  Such a small place in time and space, such a small thing, and even before it is a small thing, even before it is, it was nothing.  Just another peaceful moment in a forest, the birds singing, the flowers embracing the sun with out a care.  Just another moment like so many others.

There needs to be no progression; that is a system I look for in nature.  Its what I seek so that's what I find.  What else would I see if I got out of the way?  What else would I see if "I" got out of the way?  Where does fantasy end and reality begin?  Can you point to a place and say "Here, this is it."?  I can't, just as I see the world I see past the world, because I am in my perception of the world.  My perception is the world.  So why do I perceive a world of linier expansion?  Easy, because I expect to see it, so the better question is why do I perceive a world of liner expansion?  Its a long and boring answer, and maybe its not worth going into.  Why give it all more energy then it already steals, quick and silent and so seductive.  The best question of all is why not stop?

Secrets are best when shared.  This is not a contradiction.

The war is done.  This moment needs no deflection, no conflict.  It can be that easy.

The Golden Leaves of Silver.

They press in everywhere, heavy with ghosts and shadows under the bright, bright sun.  I don't want to be here.  Please may I leave?  I could take it all up to this, but these golden leaves of silver bring a real pain, a real weight to my heart.  Is it so hard for you sometimes I wonder?  I don't know who's fate is worse, yours or mine.  To feel to strongly or to not feel nothing.  Which hell would I choose?  Is it better to protect all and lose, to win every battle and lose the war?  No, I guess its not...

But I can't help feeling jealous.  A fools desire.  But as they say, the grass is always greener...

Did you see the moon tonight?  I did, it was so beautiful, a perfect crescent moon.  The kind of moon that the Muslims must have been so enchanted with.  I could imagine it over a cold and quite desert.  A thousand pricks of light, bleeding light, falling down to a windswept earth.  Silver dust, everything silver in her pale radiance.  A quiet place without the heavy golden leaves.  Would you like to be there with me?  Its not a hard thing to do, just look up and see it as I do.  Feel the sand beneath your toes, hear the mumbling Jinn on the winds, the glowing sky.  Can you smell the dust?  Can you feel the warm gusts air, the blazing heat of day just past?  Can you count the craters on the her perfectly imperfect face above?  Close your eyes and really see.  I'm standing in a valley of sandstone, the horizon a striped reminder of a sunset, frozen in cold stone.

I think you can.  I think I don't feel so alone anymore, because I know your close.  As close as we'll ever be... ouch.  It was going so well until I found that thought.  Or did it find me?  Why do I insist on doing this to myself?

Back again, for the last time.

Its all so familiar, fragments everywhere.  The day I got my first copy of WarCraft III, and I stayed up all night playing it here.  Then when I went to bed my brother sat down and played while I slept.  That was back before he changed, before the world changed him.  But not really, even then he was detached.  It had already started.  Funny, being in this place reminds me of the tales of how differently we see it here.

            Its been a decade.  How old was I?  13.  Christ.  Was I really?  How young I was then.  How… different.  I’ve changed much and more, but this place has remained the same.  Always the same.  Its so comforting to be here, I’ve lived here longer then anywhere else.  And its going away.  How sad, yet how joyful.  Its truly our past, and we should not fight its passing.

            That girl, who I tried to preach to from battle.net.  How did I work up the balls?  The things religion do to people.  What have you done to me?  And then she beats me at my own game, father an apologist, better equipped to shoot me down.  What a night that was.  I never really did talk to her again, not really.  Back again, for the last time.  That’s far in the past.  I never want to be so sure again, I never want to be so separate.  Will you forgive me?

            And even drowning in the past, I push back the veil a little bit each day.  Never have I seen the desert from the sky.  Its so dark out here, every star a blazing torch.  But its so different too, the skies have grown the same.  The city moved in.  Weird how it can affect the feeling of this place so.  What to do tomorrow I wonder?

            The old days on EverQuest, way back in the day.  WhiteWind and Jonze, Grindle and Fattious Ribsticker, and my friend who’s surname I stole and didn’t even remember his first.  Kasseopea, the bard.  Dozer, the paladin.  Smallwind and Roaringwind, Haeo and Haeoeo.  The day I flipped on the guild and gquit.  It didn’t last long.  That’s when I started Smallwind.  That was here too.  I couldn’t spell for shit back then.  How did they ever put up with me?

            What a weird trip its been here.  Life is a little bit crazy when it hits you all again.  I will miss this place, the last shreds of my childhood going away.

My Nuria

Why didn't see it sooner?  I saw, and I saw, much and more.  But it wasn't all of it.  I called you, my luminous one, I made you real.  Nothing fills me with more hope, nothing fills me with more terror.  How can this be?  The things that go unnoticed in my life, what are they up to?  They listen, its clear to me they listen.  They are the rats in the walls of the castle, the little bird on a branch in the woods.  They are also the maker and the destroyer, gods and men.  How careful I must be...

          I forgive you, my bright one, for it was not your fault.  It was my own expression returned, and I welcome it home again.  What else can I do with it?  My children are always welcome at my table.  Did I reach out in pain?  What did I release to myself?  The balance was lost, so long did I sit on one side.  I choose suffering, why?  Time and time again, why?

          Is it so easy to play that part?  Yes, so easy.  Its always around, just tap into it.  Is it so easy to connect with it?  We all carry it along.  Is it interesting?  Oh yes, ever so much so.  I was never bored, not once.  Maybe you don't believe that, but its true.  Nuria, you have been the most stimulating thing to ever happen to me.  Is it a good thing?  In the end, I can see the good in you.  Thank you for every minute.  Dreams come true.  What am I dreaming?  Is it worth it?  Yes, a thousand times yes.  Living is the justification for life, and its true for all children, the good and the bad alike.  We treat them all as treasures.  They are all treasures.

          There was always some balance, there are the good times with the bad.  There is more, there is room.  Is that what feels so good about suffering?  The room for love?  True and simple, practiced, not professed?  All things in balance, maybe I fell off.  So here is the clean page before me, what do I write?  What do I say to the mouse, sitting in my house?  Its time to make this right, to tell your story, and to tell of hope.  We always have hope, I will remind you of that.  They will be listening.

          Come, sit by the fire and be at peace.  There is soft music and slow dancing.  A great bird roasting in the kitchen.  The snow falls out the window, and the sun fades.  But here its comfortable, warm and safe.  You can close your eyes and hear the fire crackling, you can smell the cold, and the wood, and the food.  Welcome home my child.

Emptiness Dancing

For want of a comma, I was lost.  Or was I?  How do I stop from seeing what I think I see? How many negatives were there?  One or two?  Sometimes its so hard to understand.  Is there another way?  I wish there was another way...

When trying to surpass words, when using simple imagery to invoke a reaction, do we still fall in the same trap?  How does a man in China see the world?  Will he understand something if I say it?  Its hard to say how much local culture really does change the way people think.  I can't even imagine how different things must have been for him growing up, how much does it change him?

I feel like he may see what I see.  But its weird I somehow feel like I may not get to find out. How would I get to China to see this thing?  Its a boat that would put the arc to shame, in the middle of Shanghai, filled with nothing but a dream.  Our guided dream.  I will play just my small part.  But do we dream the same?  The details change from person to person, but the core remains the same.  It will be enough.  Besides there's nothing to miss.  We don't have a story to tell.  Its just our silly guided dream.

Still, it will be pretty no matter what.  Maybe in the end thats the point.

The Grand Mirror

I could have been upset that I was back in Santa Barbara today, but I wasn't.  I just couldn't muster the indignation properly to get well and worked up.  The truth is I cheated; I didn't try that hard.  There is a patch along the 101 that runs right next to the beach, far out in the mists sit two islands.  I don't know their names.  What I do know, they are miles on a side, just far enough away to be hazy in the mist dancing along the top of the ocean.  Large mountains run along the spine of these fog shrouded giants, dwarfing even the cliffs that tower over my head.

In-between here and there reside six or seven mammoth oil rigs.  They remind me of bugs, twisted, hard things, walking on spindly legs.  They rest under the suns harsh glare, folded up and dark.  They seem so close in the daylight.  So peaceful, restful.  At night they glow with a yellow light, a perfect pride of walkers.  I could just imagine them skittering a few hundred yards every now and then, when no one was watching all that hard.  When everyone on the road has something better on their minds, when they look without seeing... The giant bugs scoot down to a new place, ready to drop their long mouths to uncharted depths.  Always in search of something, hungry and relentless.  But they are kind in my mind, intense and intent.  Single-minded.

But for now they are sleeping, and the sun is shinning.  The sky was so blue, so bright.  The whole sky its self was pulsing with light.  Reflecting it all was the grand mirror, so claim I could see the sky in it.  The sky and the water one and the same, the lost horizon.  It was just bright blue along the edges of my sight.  It reminded me of a picture I only ever read about, which makes its impact somehow the larger.  I wonder what it may look like, making it so easily remembered.  Would the image its self be unnoticed or forgotten?

It was a picture of the sky and the ocean, made like a map.  It displayed the world as a column of fluid, at varying pressures.  It showed how you could start on the bottom of the ocean and just keep swimming to the sky.  There is no real difference, its mostly the same stuff, just not so close together up in the sky.  There is a place at the edge of our atmosphere that is almost space, but still has some air in it.  Its a boarder that I never thought about, and I don't think many people do.  The edge of space as a place.  A real place that you could go and feel the edge, and say, "This is it, the end of life.  Out there is cold space, but right here is earth".  It was always just a thought concept, but now I could imagine going there and thinking of the enormity of that spot.  It should be no different then the other side, where the water meets rock, but it is.  Some how its so final.

But is there really a other side?  The cold water meets solid rock, again its the same thing.  Its all about the same thing, under the same pressure, just one shifts a bit and the other doesn't.  But without a disturbing presence, most of that boundary is just as still as the other, dead still.  The water lies stagnate, barely moving, while the rock lies more still.  But even the rocks are moving a little bit.  Its all the same stuff thing, under different pressure.  Just like life.

My life is like that chart, and I'm somewhere in the middle.  It could have been easy to be upset at being stuck here for hours, but its a nice place to be.  Its not what I wanted to do today, but there's no sense if fighting it.  Its a perfectly fine place to be, and I'm happy here.  Its good to just go with the flow of things, to really just be okay with what's going on.  Someone once wrote, "How do you know this is a experience that you should be having?  Because your having it."  There's always something to see, if we only open our eyes.  There's always something to hear, if we only listen.  There's always something to say, if only we'd try.  It amazes me how much of my suffering is in my own head, my little story.

My little bullshit story.  Every now and then I catch myself thinking of how wrong, because I was so sure I knew what the I was talking about.  Or how unfair something was, how I was wronged.  My sad little me story.  But then I really think about it, and I see that the facts were simple.  They just were, what ever it is, in anything, facts are neutral.  Then I added my little judgments on it all, "This is that, that is this, and this is what should be."  What am I upset about, the facts or the story?  Just the story.  So why not tell a new one?

I would rather be right then happy sometimes, its scary...  Like I would rather be at home right now, and its wrong that I'm here so I will be pissy.  What if I am here because its a beautiful day for a drive, and that was that?

It could be...