stoic

Blithely wrapped in self-importance, stumps churning, the amputee fails to causally walk.  Crowds laughing as, unable to reach the counter, he props himself up with chairs and stools to order.

Still ignoring the deriders, he takes his order and slowly spills it in a long trail back to his table. Blissfully unaware of anything amiss while curses and shaking fists accompany his remains. 

I glance back at the commotion just previous to that fool, noting similar trail and detractors. Smugly trying to identify the entertainment.  No one obvious arises, I turn round to my table and think it passing odd that my drink eludes my nimble grip. Not once or twice, finally succumbing to a handful of attempts. The straw bends sharply and, unable to quench my thirst, I set it down again. Or, rather, drop it messily to the ground.  Hmm. Seeking distraction from selfawareness I hastily eye the wake before me. Without hesitation, I begin to follow the debris to its source. 

Wending back and forth in comical fashion I arrive.  At the same counter from a different angle.  Retracing steps reveals freshly spilled beverage. Outrage and embarrassment wage with no clear victor.  I stumble...have been stumbling all along, to sanctuary. Sinks and stalls for moat and ramparts. 

There revealed, the fool stands transfixed, by himself as laughable effigy of man.  

Wave upon wave crash down. History, memories, scars. Intricate wrappings, insulating, shielding, falter. Through alabaster, veined with fractures, unwelcome guests return. 

Blindness, though welcome abatement, is not the culprit.  Instead of seeing no colors at all, those reported by others find no match.  The beautiful landscape a negative, or more like, eyeless picking hues by sound and taste, rearranging each before arriving at my palette.

Thus reminded of the purpose and effectiveness, the barriers are re-erected.  Emotional handicap re-disguised as stereotypical male lack.

Battle lost

Gooey, rotten carnage. Stark warrior clad with overlapping, barely useful plates, gory, dripping, stares down.

Bucolic, tender, fragile corpse, or soon to be, unfocused eyes unflinching, covered with debris.

Contrast evident, comparison unlikely, yet still, some parallel stirs the senses.

As heinous gobs fall unnoticed, the two juxtapose. Ragged wounds and armored joints seamlessly match. Neither follow rhyme or reason, carelessly thrown together jabberwocky with macabre grin. 

Time's corridors thrown open, halcyon days revealed...

Utility unheeded, a child's drawing of a knight superimposed upon unwilling victim. The well worn paths of weapons now repelled by solid iron, adorning gangly frame.

Steeled and impervious, at least to movement, the new juggernaut beams in relief while underbelly enjoys respite.

Staggers in place of skips, teetering for running, stumbles where youthful joy once leapt. New callouses, blistering and raw, tears, at first of sorrow but then resolve as darts no longer find their mark. Grim determination succeeds, innocence cowers.

Confident strides, unwavering steps...not yet. Bowed down and shuffling, wracked with new pain, undeterred. 

The skein continues to unravel, miles of time, seconds measured on unforgiven ground. 

Ungraceful, strength replacing spry, uncomfortable still, but accepted, forged mail contiguous with self. Chitinous exoskeleton in proud array. 

Ghostlike echoes faintly heard from deepest corners. Strangely familiar battle scene. Upon reflection, weathered warrior finds nothing new.

Eons and light years, instants and angstroms, all collide; progress, depth, perspective, meaningless.

There, the footprints so match my own. There, the body, familiar, haunting. I turn, jerk with reflexive memory, find nothing, and ache. Would only death finally succeed, these taught threads release me. Wandering away without movement. The ground resists my best effort.  Bound to this death scene.  

Perception enfolds the environs. Cries of anguish, my own or the wrecked mass entombed behind me I can not tell, as realization dawns.  The aggressor and the condemned share more than just this duel, the weapons leave in bloody script a perfect signature. 

Uniquely matched, wound to blade. Staring, uncomprehending, devastated. I see the blows and skillful work that dispatched yon unfortunate. The furious, deadly dance is easily traced to a single set of prints.  Anguish, pale and vapid, brushed aside by passionate gale. 

Yang alone

Pavlovian channels, ever reticent to relinquish their prerogative, reinforced by spectators, unhappily, unconsciously, adding depth and grade, doom those within.

But, upon reflection, the barrier protects and insulates, entangles and promotes in equal measure. 

Desperately testing every spectrum, frequency and mixture for some small progress, and yet resigned, barely registering the identical results. Action, inaction, gentle murmur, sharp disabuse. Reaction and indifference likewise loathed. "Too much, tone down, calmer, nicer" the tearful cries. Met at counterpoints by "have an opinion, react, input, move!" equally recriminating with downcast eyes. 

Thread and thumbtack, protruding from soft wax prove more binding than shackles and concrete. The pachyderm, though once stout warrior, now restrained by lightest tug. Within the pen, the bronco tamer looses interest in the gentle pony, while, without,  spirited gallop offends genteel sensibilities.

Surely the greater wedge from reality is when madness sees itself as mad, and can do nothing to remedy. The sweet, blissful indulgence of unaware blithering, one reminisces. The voices, the light, the hefalumps and woozles. Alas, a gorge, the other side normalcy, as sole companion. No prescription, no couch, no asylum. 

The sharpest blow, repeatedly added to every consequence, comes from the pauper.  Previously, even still, begging for compassion, understanding, grace. Now finding fault in every glance, every syllable, every unvoiced breath. No irony, in utmost sincerity, petitioning contrary requests. Crushed by answers, impatient with waiting, unable or unwilling to compare. As ever, one finds the greatest fault in others with those sins in common. Margins of ability dwarfed by margins of sensitivity. Ludicrous, absurd, insoluble, churlish. 

Not content with any answer, miscommunication prolongs, delays the inevitable. Silence, misunderstood no less, brings closure, non-elysian, brooding, silence. 

Les Mis

It seems sincere. Heartfelt. Logical and unassuming. Incredulous and hurt as belief fails to follow request.

Madness: same action repeated, expecting change.

But, this too is madness, same action, ever flux.

Madness meet madness. Rather than 2 negatives making a positive, divide by zero.

Surely, if madness has receded this is clear.  The small, waning part of the beachhead that has stood bears witness. Is the nightmare fading, relenting or is that spark the vestige of twilight, spent and dying?  The two are the same. The cusp indistinguishable.  After so long, it doesn't matter. The cycle ever flows, not clockwork.  Nothing gentle or predictable.  Darkness shouting, claiming sanity uses the same voice as clarity's pleas.

The constant comes from fragility.  Both crush, fall under featherweight of doubt, mere probing to discover which is which likewise wounds. More, self aware of failing causes added pressure. A weight shared by gaoler and prisoner alike. The difference becoming less clear. Now even hesitation and inaction are perceived as blows. The former caretaker stricken, finds no means of communicating care or even, if ever capable, compassion. Watching as every blink, touch, breath is mislaid, contorted into battle.

Worse, even with the unwelcome guest at bay, intentions are cruelly twisted by habit, blindness, apathy, weakness, exhaustion.

Numb. Fatigued. No longer able to tell if freedom is worth... freedom, wholeness, are they?

Outside cares little for petty squabble. The mouths continue to suckle on any teat, latching to whatever fills them. 

This past can not escape notice. The break in clouds no longer musters hope, so often dashed with worse end. Madness meet madness.

Hope and expectations, trembling.  Flinching from misuse.  No relief as, with dawns break, prisoner runs free. Unwilling, unable to hie behind, still unsure of boundaries but sure of that which never worked before, a cell remains occupied. 

Reproof and misunderstanding the only companions.

Spiral with no center

So many layers, so many boundaries, so many rules.  No pen is fine enough, no paper large enough to show proper detail. Weighing heavily, they strain actions and words. The burden taints responses, magnifies the distortion, misunderstanding compounded by mistranslation. Nothing linear, easy, simple.

At first, still uneven, coarse, unused to fluency and fluidity in metathought, the seeming leaps and starts of conversation, harsh overtones, unveiled contempt. Mutual refining, unperfect, yet tolerance increases, understanding by degrees. Pace unquestioned previously, too many, too much, too fast. Slowing some, easing some. Unburdened with talent, solvency, or other means, efficiency and ritual become armor. Care and rigor prolong, reuse and strict, measured economy circumvent waste. Here more than anywhere the gap is felt. Protective or restrictive by turn.

Then, barriers torn down.  New, unknown beginning. Without reference, uncharted, threshold not measurable.  Every word, syllable, nod, twitch, blink, relearned. Or, unlearned. Without commonality, in place of two become one, there is only one. 

Learning, understanding, growing. Impossibility. Tracks in the sand, pollen in the air, rumor whispered to the deaf, ghostly glimpse for the blind. Repetition, pattern are not. Without boundaries, all equally does not fit, injures, bemuses. Lacking necessary counterbalance, top flies wildly out of orbit. Restoration not possible, new balance, new axis, new path. Ramifications not explored nor realized, no recourse, no correction, no return. Not so important for the one. 

One? more or less. Mostly less. The other, not cognisant of absence, unaware. Yet, one not truly one. Nonawareness does not shield, does not abate implications. Awareness comes and goes, existence wavers, brick wall resists efforts of disbelief. 

Two? more or less. Much less. Acceptable collateral damage, no. Consensus, no. Decision, yes. 

New path, new scenery, choices not new. Results, new, not new, new, injury, pain, entropy.

Two? Two. But not. Awareness of bonds. Struggle, scream, run.  Bonds rupture, injuries spread. Now sensate, revived, flush with life and zeal, marshal the troops.

One. But more.  Reactions spread, counteraction. Consensus contested. Words, actions, now foreign. Each one a salvo, assailing the other. Description becomes prescription. Apology becomes defense. Contorted, not recognized, even by sender. Neutral zone shifts, aggressive, active, reflexive.

Progress? Goal? Direction... Standard struck, bearer kneels. Cost too much. Consequences too many. No forward, no back, no thought. Surely white flag denotes cooperation. Reconnoiter, rejoin.  Come back?

Two. Distinct, disparate. Path? Unknown.

purpose

I watch.  The sand gets no higher.  Despite the care, dogged diligence, pathological drive, to stack the grains, one upon another.  Perhaps the other ingredients are likewise to blame.  Cobwebs, crystals of ice, vapor, fleeting glances, glimmers, grasping.

Sudden awareness of futility.  The tides come and go.  With them, perception, solidity move as well. I am moved by pity and flail, as my assistance is seen, to help.  

The shifting reality focuses on my tools.  But rather than hands or instruments I see ragged scars where flesh is grafted to steel, the rapiers jutting out profanely from stumps.  Too late to withdraw, the helping hand turns to a lunge, piercing the effigy, no where near complete, but recognizable.  No gasp of pain or horror, just sadness. Or just a rippling trick as tide ebbs. The components again spread and detached.

Fickle senses are crude guests in this place. None are home here. Nothing is home here. As the stack starts to grow again, deft movements can be traced, but the owner defies identity.  More acutely visible only obliquely. The author is anonymous, androgynous, ineffable. The sand rises.

With greater care I approach. Although, inextricably bound and sympathetic, one to another, there is no recognition. The construct moves, aware of its bonds and seeks me. Reflexively I hold it. Severing it again from this place.  The dust swirls, in patternless beauty, to the ground.

Without reproach, senselessly building, the naught forms the intangible to shape. The shape, cognizant of its plight, voicelessly pleads. Struggling for dominance, the inevitable collapse forms an outline, one which I should know. My stare serves in the same place as the steel before and even the ghost recedes.  

Number and time have less hold than the other hostages, I find myself repeating or, is this the first? The tide comes further up the shore, in its wake the limp debris of aggressors, spent propelling a foothold. In strength and light, blinding, dazzling, Escher's inspiration glows, as the building blocks put themselves together and it coheres! Large white tablets, small colorful pills replace the meaner constituents and it works.  Unthinking uncaring, we embrace, I flinch, remembering a dream, but through some legerdemain, sensate hands take the place of my rightful tools... hazy, unsure.  

Tugging, slipping, unsteady footing, rushing, foundation crumbling, apex, nadir, from the shadows both light and dark are indecipherable. The penumbra departs with tangible ache, insidious tendrils, and in their wake scars, phantom finger strokes.

At my feet, disintegrating, the corpse drags at loose clothing. Pooling around weapons that were hands.  What has been dispatched? By whom? I see the phases as a kaleidoscope, each overlapping the last. Gentle caress, fatal blow, the same, some quantum leap, or hop, or tantalizing wobble. 

Juxtaposition, disjunction, vertigo, dementia. Tides flow, reality comes and goes. Or goes and comes. Do I move or does it come to me? The only constant is the bleak, lightless void stacking silica picking out the pills, exerting will.  Episode after episode.  Are they one or many? 

I stand. I watch. Inured, exhausted. Unable to tell if I hinder, if I influence, if I matter. 

untacit

Neat, orderly, well known paths.  Not well known, simply extensions of self.  Ethereal, lengthy, monofilament, precise and solid in spite of composition, binding them together. Thought, senses, unneeded, unused, ramparts coordinate with actions, unified, no need, indeed unable, to trace circuitous journey.

Nonself, yet within, trespasses.  Unable to perceive the transgression, uncapable, beyond imagining. Interruption, disconnection, gaps and breaks.

Tacit betrays. Reaction impeded. Fabric unravels with self bound by threads, uncomprehending. Implicit memory, well trained, blunders, collides. Recovery? Reforge, create, remould. No mould, nothing to model, no castings. Terror; virgin, empty void. 

Twisted, useless wreckage. Colossus, antiquity, artifact. A pattern yet remains. Nothing is truly new. Paths must be. Tacit betrays. Paths are not paths. Stagger, collide, vast panoply welded in place of gentle digits injure and maim.  

Care, thought, cogitation. Deliberation and agony in the stead of reckless passion. Tacit betrays. Paths are, are not. Seamless running together. Known, unknown, blending.

Tacit betrays.

laundress

Consciousness only knows self and not-self.  There is privilege, duty, madness unadulterated and undiluted behind the veil.  Welcome.

From without the glimpses alarm and repel.  But those foolish few, by weakness or fault of genetics, become transfixed by the maelstrom.  The filter refines, throttles, gentles, at the perimeter. Self is not coddled, allowed no respit from the intoxicating, damning blast.

Unintended, unknown, perplexing consequence. Within is unknowable from without, granted.  How has it been overlooked that the reverse is also true.  The shield, equally opaque from both directions, imparts as much damage to knowablity of without as of within. Likewise, those travelers must pass and metamorph. No longer the charming, glowing pretties, and yet no change is visible to the occupant of this oubliette. 

Further and further the mystery grows, for the journey has no cure. Rather than an eye of calm, the torque grows, torsion and pressure increasing.  Event horizon is far behind, in fact was the threshold.  Comprehension, stark and uninterpreted sparks balefully from the reflection. Caught, mirrored and frozen in the victims eye.  Within views from without, compares self to self.

Now, trembling, self withdraws.  Unwilling to pull. Unwilling to push. Unwilling to mar beyond the current, still lifefull, barely, step. These tools, very good for their purpose, have no use here. Gouging and abrading, repelling and deflecting, honed for martial intent.

Insoluble dilemma! The snares and danger, unheeded, ignored. They strive and insist. The noose is set and tightens with each valiant, futile twitch.  Inaction misunderstood and reproved. No forum or translation with commonality. 

Gales and collisions unnoticed. Without contracts. Within contracts. Comfortable, suffocating ocean floor of demise. Static unlife. Statuesque, porcelain, teflon. Hibernating automaton looking for clean socks.

all you zombies

How to start?  Beginning implies an ending and a direction. The darkness that comes before. The gap into knowing.

The parts are unintelligible without the whole.  The first no less than the last. How does one ease into everything with no "neutral" vantage point from which to spring?

The consistency of nothingness is more friendly and complete than the stark misunderstanding of poor introductions. Yet, when forced into action the bloody, ravaged, ragged edge must be overcome. 

One hopes the viewer survives the impact, the point of contact, critical mass long enough to appreciate, well not such high hopes, merely endure until pathos or curiosity rather than inertia carries them.

But then, is there any need to continue past the start, since it is really, inclusive? There must be some middleness to distinguish it from the startness and endness. Are there more than conceptual differences, notations or shorthand for otherwise meaningless markers on a blinding, contrast-less plain?

So, then, in beginning, one commits one's self to all. Casually, arrogantly, skipping the crass discussion of necessity. Desire? Ability? Utility? No place is found for their ilk.  And how can there be?  Within, there simply is. Without, well, without must not be. For one cannot be aware of that which is not everything.

Herein lies the folly.  Without must not be and I persist in catering to its needs.

Can something be profound and drivil at the same time?  Probably, there aren't many constraints to our creativity as far as mixing error into useful things. 

I think blogging is a bad idea for anyone. 

You, my semi-anonymous friend, certainly don't deserve to be drug through the detritus of my thoughts, and, apparently, they aren't worth sharing with a live person. Therefore the theoretical psychoanalyst is losing money and I am much safer with no one to challenge or change me.