Bleeding out our Reflections

some things i must hold onto forever else they slip out of my hands forever.

i have a sarcasm towards my own schizophrenia. i think maybe sanity is just a knack for irony. “okay, this time, i won’t listen to the voices.”

complex thoughts are a luxury.
so if you do away with that luxury, what do you have?
will you miss anything?
why do you miss it?

i am coming from where i am coming from. yes.

i can only mention how things seem to me and from there garner some kind of moral support.

if your so-called spiritual practice only causes you further ego, stop it.

it’s not that i’m a skeptic or a jaded realist, i’m just a better con man than an idealist.

i think it is important to lay yourself out quite plainly in the sunlit ground for all to see. but i find that so hard and troubling. i challenge you. i mean, what will you lay out for all to see? and why those things? why not everything? do certain things evoke deeper inner qualities that might reveal the whole? why think in terms of this ‘whole’?

if you TRULY LISTEN you might be able to avoid a few stupid things.

“this is a writing that may or may not bear any weight on things, and that’s fine, take it as it is, thanks.”
1. for me, i am not interested in affecting your heart. i do not want to get your heart involved, or your head involved, or your body involved. i do not seek to change you in any way through my writing. if anything, that might be some kind of dangerous hubris. i am scared that even right now i am seeking out your approval. so what is my mission then, in writing, or for that matter, in this small piece? we are here together, if only briefly. somehow i have sought you out and have found you here before me. we are looking into each other. peeking, if you will. and although you are a vagary i expect certain things from you that i might not know of now. the circumstances are ripe, and i love you.

2. please do not applaud, ever, well at least not here. it sours the drive and creates a dichotomy that is a bit scary. i am in the process of forgetting myself and when that clap clap reaches my ears i remember myself again and it’s tragic. so when you see my writing or overhear my voice take it as us walking down the street. we walk. we talk. we don’t need to walk our talk, that is unnecessary. i’ll take you as you are. i’m not totally sure but i know that’s something that matters. and i also know there’s more, somewhere.

3. the music of we and us is mesmerizing. but like i always note to myself, i am walking alone. tom said ‘it’s like my head stays still and worlds pass by that i see’. but it’s beyond me. in more ways than one. i ain’t interested in those hackneyed ideas of selflessness and compassion. they’ve been murdered to death by over-excitement and lack of consideration. when i say ‘i walk alone’ i mean a good place to find cozy sanctuary from the rain is one’s own subterranean church. i confide in myself and confess to myself. and when i say ‘it’s beyond me’ i mean i don’t understand myself and/or i don’t understand at all. in many ways i think that’s better than having a grip on things. do i really have to know everything? do you? do you really have to know what you’re doing? what will it give you? in the long run? ultimately? if you know what you’re doing these days and what it means to you and what purpose it has in the greater scheme of things and why it needs to be done and what it means to others what the hell will that knowledge which you consider to be so important bear upon the moment of your death-breath? or for that matter, the moment that you go to sleep and watch the many comprehensions and decomprehensions of your entire day unfold as if like nothing? to what extent have you deconstructed everything that you know? and when did that happen? why and how?

4. and what does it mean to deconstruct oneself anyway? is it even necessary? just take a sip of your coffee. didn’t i say i didn’t want to change you? where the hell will all these questions get you but somewhere else from where we started? i doubt i’ve changed you. i can’t. i am unable to. i am unable to change myself! in more ways than one. am i changeable? what will change? i am my own contemplation. it’s an ironic oxymoron.

5. i am sorry to have kept you at an arm’s distance but even when i hug you i’m not sure if i’m touching you. and that saddens me. how long will we have to keep this up? my issues with intimacy must come to an end at some point, i admit, it is getting old. but intimacy is itself a metaphor for the deeper relationship i am developing with that cosmic wonder that has become now so bland. i want you to know what it is like to be me because that means that you will know what it is like to be it because it is in the relationship between two things that we might understand it. fuck it.

6. i am moving on today. today is my unseen proclamation to the world that i make whilst concentrating on my fingertips and ideas. this proclamation is that i will forget everything i am about. in more ways than one. and i will bow to the ground to whatever comes. whatever that means. today i am discovering what it means to be more than honest.

so i’m leaving for viet nam this evening. what does that say about time and space, i’m not sure. i hope we’re all alive and well. here’s some writing.

i am only a man who is trying to get honest with himself
and if you do not see that
and you only see the poetry of this
then you will have missed everything i am trying to do.

i am painting myself into my own painting.
i am pointing myself out to myself.

i don’t have big words for you, i mean, it’s only me.

all these things about me, eventually i must begin saying about you.

the contours of the mystery are more interesting than the mystery.

although i have not seen you for a week it will take me a month to get used to the new you.

please learn to look for me here, in my writing…i love…

if it can be boxed in than it isn’t worth talking about.if it is asking for conclusion than it isn’t worth it. if it does not account for its own mystery than it’s boring.

i do not propagate world views because it requires a snobbishness i am no longer capable of. a world view is scary because it dominates conversation and reconfigures it to its own ends. therefore, i am constantly asking myself, “am i victim to a world view?” i try to stay at the point where things are still culminating and try not to stray from there.

i consistently give up on thoughts that do no call beyond themselves. i constantly throw aside philosophies that are self-centered enough to pretend they have the answers. i am suspicious of words that know themselves too well. i am wary of anything that does not facilitate the fierce open-ended curiosity.and as far as the universe is concerned i am content if nothing is decided.

this sentence has an excruciating awareness of how it will end.

there’s some music we like. and. there’s some music we don’t like…that’s something we all understand.

i am in a constant state of departure.

i’ll take you farther than i take my writing.

i handcraft my ideas. they’re homemade.

learn to be okay with being just another face in the crowd.

my only hope, as of now, is to live long enough to see how the lives of my friends turn out.

some people pretend that they’re writing poetry but in reality they’re just writing sentences. i tell no lies here in my writing. i am writing sentences. and that is that.

A SYMPHONY OF WRITINGS ON WRITING
1. i know it’s tragic but i must come clean: i force myself into conundrums that, although are aware of themselves as such, are speaking of things quite beyond themselves for fun. and it isn’t all meaningless.

2. language is too loaded these days. so i’m checking out of here.

3. i go in and out of subtlety and candidness.
i go in and out of being straightforward and comical.

4. i explore words to their very end.
i explore grammar to its very end.
i explore meaning to its very end.
i explore nothing to its very end

5. can we forget this conversation about language and move on?
“ah, the arrival of fatigue is a good sign of greater things than what is here at present.”

6. if i succeed in writing a language that is accessible to the common person but tricky enough that it speaks of hidden depths than i will be satisfied on some level. the sad thing is i think that i may never be satisfied in that realm.

7. i have mopped myself into one corner of the room.
it’s time to take the dirt from out of my pocket and make things interesting again.

To create a language that is founded from a language that already exists so that this new language is totally accessible to the ‘user’ and thus it is transmittable yet also has the ability to defy the conventions of the ‘built-off-of’ language. This new language is a child of the first because it abides by the same modes of grammar yet the meaning it hopes to convey is not possible through the mother tongue and thus the child must be imbued with qualities the mother did not have at first. For meaning, in a sense, comes from the father, and this is something the child inherits. but the modes of walking and conducting oneself are taught to the child by the mother, for she is the one who walks the child along, and teaches it how to speak. But this new language must arise from the dead and can only be seen after the child has mourned its father and mother and laid them to rest. the child must be willing to walk its own gait and make its own claims. and this is the child’s world.

if i am constantly dealing with things on their own terms and contexts then when will i step out and make my own context and terms? or maybe this very alienation is itself my own terms. no, i am willing to paint more and more. things can be imbued. throw dirt at the sun.

i write advice to myself.

how much do you have invested in this version of yourself?

“this is titled blank spots”: i don’t think I’m able to make lasting significant impacts so i will sit back and not do so. i have heard that over time if you are silent and patient that your knowledge will come to a deeper completeness and maybe you will actually make a significant impact. but i have also heard that when your heart and knowledge are full you don’t think of making a significant impact..

you tell me that you don’t care what others think of you.
but this very ‘non-caring’ is a joke to me.
when will you stop pretending?

you need to know WHEN and HOW to give of yourself. it’s a sensitive thing.

please call my bluff.

i do myself in.

we live in an etcetera society.

i write in hopes and maybe trust that you will not make any conclusions about it.

i am in no hurry to show you my inklings. but once you enter this castle that is still flowering i ask you to take your time. i have not been totally careful nor have i been totally careless.

I. i am not you. you dance in ways unknown to me. keeping to myselfness I glimpse outward finding at heart’s grasp: you. unclothed, naked, disgusting. call to me, and you will find a hurried puff-puff and an ever-anxietous self-scrutiny that causes backaches all around. And when I finally sit down, and exert my final gasp into you (this very finale) -> i am scared, cold, tired, and at best, bereft: a huddled mass unknown even to my own eyes who claim to see clearly. i exert no tears. i claim no aims. i coax no news. i present no notes. i orchestrate no cities. i flabbergast no caged birds. instead, i find you again, in new form, in new creases, in new focuses, in offset byways and misty rushing waters. you, who once disgusted me, i glare at with hidden merriment. my disdain does not recede but at least my respect increases. and my latest piercing into myself thus becomes at best a maybe impassioned compassionate gesture. yet i refuse to have not seen you. i want you. in a way unknown to you. you are not me. yet you have gotten hints of me. and I you. Yet the full splendor of your hidden contortions can fool none, and the least, me…For there is more. You reveal to me movements as moments. Moments that encapsulate heaven-esque reverie on gold platter. But it ain’t that simple. We are not symbiotic, harmonic and least of all, melodic. I am the blackboard you scratch with fingernails in the morning to wake you yet you fail to acknowledge it. I am the twisting vines that slightly beautify the pillars of your homestead. Care for me not and I will grow ever deeper into you and out of your control. Will you let this kind of power release? It is not something you can resist. You cannot cry out for love and harmony, or universal beauties, or heavenly profundities. They are the desert I rain on in midnight. Instead think less of me, sidestep me, lower your eyes away from me, look to your friend instead of me, and thus will i grow unknown to you as a weed grows clawing up the sides of your fence and only appears in full encroachment when you finally see it for what it is: a weed. But is that really what it is? Do I not also harvest the colonies of aphids under my warm arms? Bah!……But I am not forgetting you. For I say, likewise you! whom I so forcefully gaze deep into. Likewise it is you! You look upward to seek the truth of your own contemplations yet there is nothing there. Have you strolled out open armed with pale face in fear before the starry night? Isn’t that your only salvation? hmph. Either way you only get foggy skies. How shall you interpret it? If you were a fish in a pond would you run after my bait? Or would you wallow with bright eyes in lazy non-adventure? Let me tell you: if you take the bait, the gourmet dish you become will have its tastiness. Or the fishbowl you inhabit will have its glory days in vibrant colorful splendor. Life will, at the least, be full. Yet we carry on. Whether or not you satiate your hunger or not, that is unimportant. Don’t you think?…….For, the contours of your magic are not unknown to me. They call to me. For that reason, I seek both to strangle you and to shake your hand, and maybe, even to embrace you. But strangely, an embrace that aches to kill you. This is seemingly contradictory turned morbid, maybe? Pah! Question not the perils of your voyage through these creaking seasons but rather quest onward embracing your impending collapse.

II. Ach! the glory to speak of is not worth noting! This is quagmire central with no quagmire! and I ache to let you know.

III. Ah…and this collapse…how can I even begin to speak of it? For it foretells the beginning of a new beginning. *gasp!* must i be forced to speak plainly? no, i am of the night, and though you tend to wait for the day i will still remain in the shade. For although I love the heat I seek not the light, and instead appreciate the warmth of my blanket. so what do you want from me? to solve a conundrum i myself poised? … need i tell you that the metaphorical city is crumbling in on itself? we stand together on the street sides, on the sidewalks: with few expectations yet fear still creeps in. What is this fear? It is real, alive, pulsing, and engendering. It speaks. Yet it is bound to be faceless. The minute it is fallen, you have fallen, and with it, the street has fallen, and with it, the streetlights are falling, and with it, the buildings are falling, and with it, the city is collapsing. It is all collapsing. Into itself. And you cannot sit and watch it pass for you are with it. Within an incessant unending toppling can you rise from the flames? Can rocks be tossed up a cascading waterfall? Think not of this. I fill my cup with water in the midst of chaos.

IV. Now come! let us partake of the storm. Clasp my hand and we shall depart before we arrive. Forging through a storm whose raindrops slice totality, where do you fit in this? The tempest has no fear but is itself the song of rage. Your barreling soaked body is victim to the unquellable cascades and yet your hearts entrails are to surf the very things that slice you. Raindrops. Please do not make that hurried jump and think that you are one of these pretty drops! No, you are the forever victim on cruise. I am the ghost that leads you through the metaphors. Look! the rain does not abate. you have strolled from a sulking dreary city to an ominous billowing monster that doesn’t let up! Feel the permeating momentum of water on your skin. through your skin. cascading your skin. seeping into your skin. you are spongelike. You are become the storm. You are river of dew. The streams are overflowing. The valleys are brimming. The hills are submerging. The buildings are gurgling. The mountains are drowning. The earth is a bubble about to burst. I ask you again, where do you fit in this? Weren’t you once in that drizzle about to seep into the very vestiges of concrete reality? And now look at you. A mere teardrop on the edge of cosmic liquid sphere. oh Forget it. Just splash water drops in your face and wake up. I’ll have to deal with you elsewhere. Pop!

V. Oh. Do i now sound stern to you? Ouch? Come, fly into my arms as I outstretch them, my friend, may you find your comforts here!…and you will only find my fading hologram barely felt. Fly through me and you are in the mist of fog. Rushing, sweating, neck twisting, calling out forlorn. Your sorrow, exemplified by the ocean of floating dewdrops that so clouds your attempted hurried heart, is known and felt by all. But let me tell you. It is this exact sadness that will save you. It will envelop you and then cascade you. And when you finally step sulking out of the haze into those leaf colored hills with your wrist brushing against your soaking cheeks and your eyes glued to the ground you will miss the sympathetic gazes of your fellow (masses) reaching out with knowing from the hills. Sadness is a wind that blows through everyone’s heart. And yes, I see you too.

VI. But you are not scott-free, at least, not with me. hah. for i must bring out another fact for you: “when everything comes crashing down on you, there is only you.”Hear this and let it strike you.

VII. And here you find yourself finally standing forward, despite a city crumbled, a bubble bursted, and a fog transpired. All the facts have been laid bare. Naked before you. And have you, yourself, asked any important questions in the midst? I mean, do you have instantaneous courage? Are you laid bare? Are you naked? Are you really standing? Or only listening? (Conned by this pitiful man’s words.) If you are standing, you will see the true hidden worthlessness of most of this. Allow me to say why. There is a fire. Whose gleaming heart is partly lonely, but mostly fearsome bloody rancorous alive. Although small at first glance, burning in the great forest. As you step closer you see that you are but a menial percentage of this gargantuan red-orange beast. It sings. Reaching its thousand arms over your head. Calling out over your very mind and churning the ends of beginnings. Yes, you are standing before it but it is also truly your Master. The churning love of the burning heat of the calling forth of the dangerous sliding of the ethereal warming mornings of the deadly heat. Sensational, no? Baleful scenery that scratches up the bottom of your insides. You thought you were standing before it but it also crawls up from within you. Like a sword being sheathed. what does it mean? what does it mean? I am crying out with you also. I did not say that it was not beyond my control. I cannot quell fires that know nothing beyond themselves. Do you see what I mean now? This is truly what it is, a metaphor that aching, etches and basks. I mean, this metaphor is lava waiting to burst from the seams of our very earth bottom ground up our insides. And as I pick it up to show it to you it scorches my palms and I must let go. I apologize. I am a poor attempt: an ash tray.

VIII. And yet it isn’t all just candy. there is some import, if you please. I am entering discovery also, I may have forgotten to tell you. But equally, if not more so, I want to dance with and against you. To twirl you, yet, in essence, to untwirl you until you are raw before me, and catching fire. I want to choke you until your gasp for air is honest.

IX. Yet something tells me there is more at work here. and it’s working on me. Sometimes I cannot open my eyes without fear of disintegration. but this must be finished. so i will finish it.

X. i say good bye to happy endings. i’m not much for farewells but at least at times i know what i am calling for. and i ask you now to know what lies crawling there as well. Are we invoking our nightmares to face them in the dead night? Aren’t deep fears always accompanied by those things which are irresistible? Fear IS irresistible. It is the metaphor.