Smoking Starlight

Watching souls drift into the verse.

I wrote this line this weekend. I was really quite raucously drunk, but it was reasonable since my best friend was visiting from way out of town. After a roller-coaster of a week I welcomed the break. We had a great dinner, which was mostly liquid. I was absorbing the positive vibes of a guy I met, he’s HIV positive but honestly one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. In company like that I found no reason to be upset. We ended up in this little tucked away place, which bordered between cheap and artistic.

I found myself lounging on a couch with chickens clucking nearby. It’s safe to assume that I was outside. Although chickens indoors may have heightened what I was feeling. A sensation that I’ve been feeling for a while, and it’s hard to explain. It’s as if reality is cracking, and thick wafts of a dream state are leaking in. It’s like nothing is really real, everything is only pretending to be solid, but at any moment it could totally transform into something else.

I realised I’d probably drank way too much, and the hookah that I was puffing on was not helping either. With each exhale, waves of smoke flowed out of my lips. I became light headed as I watched the smoke float into the sky and into nothingness. I felt as if my thoughts were doing the same thing. Then it wasn’t just my thoughts but my whole being, dissolving into its surroundings. I turned my head to look at my friend and I felt no distinction between where I ended and he began, and honestly I thought nothing of it… I just existed.

Staying in the moment is becoming difficult, I’m in my head too much, and my head is fuzzy most of the time. It’s becoming difficult to see what’s dream and what’s reality.

Deep breath… And I’m back… And I scribble down that one line. And I feel myself drifting into the universe again

I feel so full, and so does my soul

I love days like this. Days when you decide to have late afternoon tea with some of your closest friends. The whole scene is spun like dreamy cotton candy, it’s so sweet and nice. You’re laughing, and not, but even when you aren’t you just feel so good.  You can’t help but wonder whether you’re just about to wake up, stretch and say to yourself, “ah, what a nice dream”. Instead you’re stretching out on your bed, feeling full, feeling satisfied and in more ways than just physically.

I really needed this after the week I’ve had, tests are coming, assignments are being given, and even a relationship that’s just hit the road has it’s bumps. Yesterday J (which is what I’ll call him here) and I had quite an intense conversation. We had spent most of the day together and it was great, I was in such a good mood. I sat on a bench with him and asked if he’d like to be a couple, as it was coming from my mouth I already regretted it. It was way too soon, his answer confirmed it, “I’ll think about it.” I looked into his dark brown eyes, which usually made me smile, that had seemed so warm to me, suddenly had caused this sinking feeling. We walked away in silence.

Later that night we spoke over the phone, it was very emotional and it’s the kind of gritty details that I don’t want to recount openly. We came to realise that we just need to slow down, calm down, and go back to being playful and light-hearted. I put my fat pants on and decided to spoil myself, the ice cream came out the freezer and the kettle was put on, I was going to eat my feelings and not give a damn.

Today the air was cleared. It was like a sudden summer rain had just broken and drenched me, but all that was left was the electric in the air, warmth and that great smell of wet earth that holds potential of growth. Today I just basked in that wet warmth and the electric afterglow.  Stuffed myself with the dropping of walls in a relationship, relished the great company of friends, savoured being with myself. Of course there’s also the bread, cakes, coffee and ice cream. For the first time in a while I just feel so satisfied.

Nothing but a bunch of grey paint.

Today I was supposed to write a post about an experience of colour and wonder. This didn’t happen. As I’m waiting for the next bus, because of course I was one minute overdue for the previous one, I can’t feel more removed from colour and wonder. It has just rained, or it’s just about to rain, I don’t think that the clouds themselves can decide. Either way, everything is tinted grey and the fading light of the late afternoon multiplies the dimness of everything. All I want is a full tea pot, of something that has a warm colour, in a warm house, with a warm feeling inside. Rather I feel grey, on a grey bench, in a grey world.

Even as I write I feel that the words lack in anything spectacular. This is the worst place for a creative type to be; apathetic, tired, room-temperature. In a  room lit by flickering florescent lights,  in a cubicle, repeating some menial task, looking down at the kind of carpet that hides stains by it’s undetermined colour.

It’s all a bit romantic in the Venetian way, a beautiful city sinking into cold waters, rotting from the inside out, reeking of mould and the existential lamenting of centuries worth of writers and artists. So this whole post is a bit old hat, we’ve crossed these streets and found them wanting. That’s just the thing though, I’m wanting, what I’m wanting I couldn’t say. Technically everything is going well, university is interesting and my classes aren’t too much to handle, I’m just at the beginning’s of a relationship, I have a nice little cluster of friends. I really can’t name what’s wrong, and without a diagnosis I can’t prescribe myself a cure.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I think times like these are perhaps best kept for contemplation. Silence of the physical and letting the inside speak for itself, perhaps then the colour can be found on the inside. It’s a nice idea isn’t it? Very Buddhist. I find comfort in the idea that we’re never feeling these things alone, people have felt this, people are feeling this, I just hope that all of them got out of it and maybe some created something from it even if the only paint they had were half used tubes of grey.

Roots

I’m sure every blog in its beginning’s struggles to settle its roots deeply in order to grow into something impressive. It’s not that I aim to impress, or even for growth. These are just my thoughts about things as I have them, shifted around, put down on paper and then uploaded for all to read. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about roots. Currently I’m doing the history of English in my English class, in philosophy we’re questioning the concept of a history that progresses to a point or whether we as people have progressed at all.

Maybe some time I’ll write a post about that, but this is all a little more personal. I want my blog to also resemble a story in a way, a narrative of the things that happen to me, only because I enjoy reading blogs like that. so here are some of the roots to my emerging little story.

I shouldn’t be here, I’m too young, it’s too crowded and the cigarette smoke is seeping into my clothing and turning my eyes red. The thumping music drowns it all out, the constant thoughts, the constant, “did he care about me? does anyone care about me?” I’d probably leave with someone else tonight, partly because I can’t drive and partly because I can’t find a reason not to. I’m that innocent looking kid with a twisted smile and an even more twisted sense of self-worth. This is really highlighted when the credit card crushes something on the top of the toilet, the powder is scraped into neat little lines and all I can think is, “I should not be putting this up my nose”. That idea soon leaves my mind, but is followed by more “should not’s”; I shouldn’t be having another tequila, I shouldn’t have taken my shirt off, I shouldn’t be making out with this guy and I really shouldn’t be making out with his boyfriend. All of this culminating in a blinding morning-light thought: I really shouldn’t have done that last night.

After my break up I was a little more demented. I was looking for an escape in the rat filled holes of the city, I was escaping into the city lights, I was a black room boy. It took me two whole years to really shake it all, with a few botched relationships, meaningless flings and another big heart-break along the way. I’d say that I was saved by the good lord but I wouldn’t be able to do it with a straight face. I saved myself, I grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and dragged myself out of these places, away from these “friends.”

There are certain moments that saved me. Insomnia driven, tossing and turning, thinking about life, kind of moments. When the rest of the world is deep in REM, and the only rapid thing about you are those incessant thoughts flitting around your head, and perhaps your quick reaction to the “skip” button on your Ipod, because you don’t need to wallow in Adele right now. This is the paranoid exploration of your own life up to this point, and a fearful glance to the possible future you’re headed toward. You try to remember a time when you were a kid and you were happy, when things scared you and you could just hide under the covers. Back before the monsters were under your bed, not in it. There’s no more hiding or running to your parents, you have to be the big boy now and sort out your own pile of crap.

Now I’m much better adjusted, to being in my own skin that is. I think it absolutely necessary that I went through that, it built me in ways that I couldn’t imagine, especially as an artist. The road ahead seems a lot brighter, unless of course I’m about to be run over by an 18 wheeler truck. I’m still growing, I’m still not exactly where I want to be but it’s all part of this journey.

Robbery

I’m sorry if this post is a little soppy, it’s about a relationship I was in last year that really got to me. This is me trying to take all of that and turn it into something. It become a sort of narrative poem. somewhere between a blog-post, a short story and a poem.

I swear he was standing there, moving with the bass of some club song. In between the smoke, flashes, lights, I was caught by him. There was something about him, I turned to a friend and called that boy beautiful, because he wasn’t like the others.

He slid his arm over me in the bed, pulling me closer. Maybe it was a cold night, maybe he’d been waiting to do that for a while. Turning around my heart was so fast, unbearably quick… You know I haven’t felt that since. Quickening as our lips crossed a chasm of possibility into something that was exquisite.

I remember how he trembled in the car, parked in a strange place, because he had to ask me something. His words stumbled and cracked, he wanted me, I agreed. We tumbled into an avalanche of memories that seemed so picturesque.

It was a good story, a journey. The places we went, clear oceans crashing against rocks, faces lit in the flickers of candle light, whispered nights next to each other as we secretly held hands. How did I not realise it was a dream? That I was just enraptured in some scenic story.

Scratched out roughly all of a sudden, as if the ideas had dried up, they had hit a wall,  Chaos, darkness, trouble. He fades out like a spectre, like some fantasy I dreamt up, some fiction I wrote while the real him wasn’t there… The words were being read back and they didn’t make sense. It wasn’t beautiful any more.

It was as if the love was being sucked out in reverse, the places went cold, the faces were strange and the boy was faded. Back in the car… This time I’m the one trembling. More than that, I’m cracking, breaking. Staring back at me is someone who looks just like him, except this boy doesn’t love me.

When I look at you now I don’t see that boy, you’re not him. He’s gone, transitioned from this world and now his big eyes, the way he smiled after a kiss, his embrace exist only in bitter-sweet memories…

A memory. Lying with you in the soft morning light, smiling, kissing, the world doesn’t matter. A flash, all I have is a picture of me, framed by ethereal morning glow, smiling at a boy that doesn’t exist.

The Lacklustre Creation

Have you ever had a feeling where it it feels like somewhere inside you creativity is sloshing around, boiling, foaming from your lips? Although all that’s coming up is just that foam, just the burn of stomach acid as it wants to burst from your orifices. Leaving you with a scrunched up face and a bitter taste and a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the very thing that your own body has created.

This little pool is filling up, getting fatter, faster, flooding every part of your being but it’s just not going anywhere. Frustrating! It’s not mellifluously pouring out onto a canvas, or onto a page, the way that you wish it would. Everything you try to do with this supercharged sense of creation just falls flat. It pales in comparison to the grandeur of things that you’ve seen before. Your ideas strut around on the page in their false importance, you’ve chosen to put them down on paper and try to call them pretty. It’s not that you want a masterpiece, but you’d prefer something that at least resembles the same sort of power as the creativity thumping inside you.

It’s not that there’s a lack of inspiration, in fact you look out the window on your train ride home and the music you’re listening to seems to melt perfectly into the scene of the sparkling city lights; which in their subtlety are able to take your breath away for a moment. Yet at the same time they disgust you in their arrogant cliché, a big ball of “been there done that.”

They’re just not enough, your work is just not enough, you’re just not enough. Even the little you manage to scratch down in your little notebook manages to disappoint you in its brevity, because in its brevity you find the gargantuan vacuum of lack.

… you know that feeling?