It’s like a thousand little faeries looking back at me with their lovely little eyes, all trying so hard to help me not lose consciousness whenever I think of her, whenever I fall back into this world with my arms stretched open and that piercing empty look in my eyes.

Sitting by myself, in my world, praying to god to give me strength when I am weak, when I get lost in imagining what that kind of love means, thinking that the bestowed memories I have of her will be enough to help me transcend into another plane of existence, fooling myself into believing that they alone will help me be the man I wish to be.

Oh but it seems like a waste of time to me, losing the power of pretension brought upon by her ruthless words has left me dried and speechless. Maybe I was washed away from her body like a lip print on a shirt. Maybe it was that easy. Maybe these hands of mine that hold inside such stories of might and courage have no real warmth to give. Maybe I am not as infallible as I once thought.

But with words untainted one night she brought back to me the heart which had been taken from me an age ago, and softly whispered in my ears the names of those that once had loved me. And at that moment I knew the sound of absurdity which had clogged my mind had been defeated, that it would never come back to haunt me, that I would never ever be alone or cold or tired. That I would look into the sky with my dreamer’s eyes and that I would see those mythological sea giants gliding slowly across the sky with unrestricted passion, and I would marvel in their beauty and their grace which painted the firmament with soft and lively colors.

I was wrong.

And I believed in every word she said because there was no reason for me not to. Because I had no power over her, and in the end I never did. Because when you love the way I do, there are no real roads to follow, nor any threads of amber gray to weave.

And in that night I looked and saw and pondered the ways in which my heart had been taken from me, and I realized that they had only been moments and images and memories, that the truth which once concealed me, made my isolation seem slight and trivial.

But I need to feel this pain now, I need to wallow in my weakness because I refuse to kill the part of me which I love the most, the part of me that loves.

Man, it’s so easy to blur the line that exists between solitude and madness, isn’t it?

Frank 23.30

Sad, I know, but thankfully this is not always the case.

I know this because I, like many before me, have been known to fool people into believing that I know exactly what I am talking about, when the truth is that I am as confused as they are. And even though I have managed to cheat my way into -or out of- quite a few situations, there has always been one thing in this journey which has remained true and constant all the way.

My writing.

You see, I have never written a single word during the winter that could not be read in the spring. Words themselves didn’t jump out of my heart simply because I wished them to, neither because I forced them into existance.

No, it didn’t happen like that.

The little ones and the imposing ones, those that were confusing to me at first, and even those that made me forget, if only for a moment, just how brittle my own coherence was at times. The few sad words that kept me warm at night, and those that felt so familiar inside my zealous heart. All of them, all of them simply found their way into my callow hands one day.

It was simple, quiet and brief. And just like that my life was changed.

Sometimes the ethereal movement of my hands controls my destiny without me knowing it. I don’t even care that they alone imagine the stories and the characters which make me laugh endlessly as I contemplate in silence the joy that is re-discovering them. They are small and fragile, my hands, but inside they keep multicolor stories of great deeds and everlasting warmth; stories which I would never dare to speak out loud for fear of abandonment.

But to see, to be, to watch in awe as my dream moves pass my eyes in ravishing beauty while I write these childish thoughts. To realize in that very moment that all my pains and all my thoughts, that all my wishes and emotions are centered around that one perfect moment. The very instant where all possibilities exist, when all it takes is but one look, or one smile, to bring my life back to me and make it what it once was.

I live for those days.

Frank 21.40

I say that I remember it clearly because that day, like so many days from that time, were filled with wonderful new discoveries. That song struck a deep chord in me. For some reason that I can not easily explain, I have always thought of myself as a traveler, always moving forward, never looking back. I realize that it is a romantic notion, but I’ve always been captivated by the idea.

I wrote yesterday’s post while listening to that song. Here are the lyrics:

“Days are numbers (the traveler)”
by Alan Parson’s Project

The traveller is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he’s taken isn’t leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware

The traveller is always leaving home
The only kind of life he’s ever known
When every moment seems to be
A race against the time
There’s always one more mountain left to climb

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you’ll know where you are
Remember
Days are numbers
Count the stars
We can only go so far
One day, you’ll know where you are

The traveller awaits the morning tide
He doesn’t know what’s on the other side
But something deep inside of him
Keeps telling him to go
He hasn’t found a reason to say no

The traveller is only passing through
He cannot understand your point of view
Abandoning reality, unsure of what he’ll find
The traveller in me is close behind

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you’ll know where you are
Remember
Days are numbers
Count the stars
We can only go so far
One day, you’ll know where you are.

Listen to the song if you haven’t… hopefully you’ll like it.

Frank 14.48

With arrogance and bitterness, the traveler awaits for the precise moment in which to take the road again, leaving behind everything he knows. Memories are what he controls, the only life he understands. They remain in quiet places, distant faces and little pieces of brown-colored paper. A way to defend his madness and his absence; the fears that surround his days and nights; nightmares that like little demons eat away his skin and suck away his blood.

But the traveler doesn’t know how to give; he simply conceives moments and places without name. Fearing that if he were to give anything at all, he would realize there is no place for him in this reality we have manufactured for him. His is the ability to create the perfect situation and come up with the words that best describe it, without really being there at all in the first place. It’s being able to imagine other people and control their minds. To think, laugh and to cry. Everything he does and says justifies his lack of sense.

But it’s the solitude itself what consumes and eats away his flesh. And so he lives, our traveler, never owning his destiny, always doubting which road to take and avoiding at all cost any kind of encounter that may remind him how lost he is. How imperfect he truly feels.

But have you ever seen the road of a lonely traveler? It is filled with moments and desires, mindless demons that crawl up behind him making little or no sense at all. All the colors of the rainbow paint this road and a soft, melodious chant can be heard all the time.

And he walks on through the road anticipating, looking on ahead and thinking of the way he used to feel. Remembering yet again the distant places and the blurred-out faces of those that crossed his path in the past. But his road is also silence, the silence of his mind and the silence of his actions. He screams and curses time yes, but the poor fool also laughs at infinity and then he cries at his own eternal solitude.

And everything he is and everything he knows. All his dreams, and the fears that hunt him. His world in shadows, and his moments of compassion. All his imperfections, and the years of expectation and solitude. The air he breathes and the moon that watches him when he’s asleep. His clumsiness and the humility he feels. All of his confusion and the innocence he still keeps inside.

All these things and so much more tell the traveler that, after all, his road is also kindness and is hope. The hope that one day he will cease to be the lonely man walking by the side of the road.

Frannk 19.14

I am constantly reminded of enduring memories and fleeting moods, of stories of ancient lore I heard one day in someone’s house on an afternoon while drinking coffee, many years ago. How’s that for being specific?

There’s a certain perfection to them though, you don’t need to worry about color, so you can concentrate entirely in the form, in the composition, in the mood of the scene. You wonder what was going on through the photographer’s mind at the time. But there’s also a sadness to them, a feeling of being old and tired, quiet and forgotten. It’s a kind of vulnerability that touches your heart like only a soft melody or a beautiful poem can, if you’re sensitive to those type of things that is.

Oddly enough, I have a tendency to see my life, or at least the memories I have of it, as a series of black and white images. I can’t recall a single moment in time when I haven’t closed my eyes to memorize an experience in the form of an image, an image that I quickly file away and use later to create stories and dreams that I put down in paper with passing words. This doesn’t mean that I am strict about the things I do, I often see shades of blue and gray here and there whenever I’m proving new ground. It drives me crazy. But I like the idea of being so familiar with a process through which you not only see life, but figure it out by applying a set of proven directives.

Look, I know this all sounds very proper and very scientific, let me assure you that nothing could be farther from the truth. Like everyone else I guess, I am just as confused and bewildered by the way life turns on you. Heck, it even makes me cry from time to time. However, I do spend much of time in quiet contemplation, taking a minute here and a minute there throughout my day to help me figure out which way to go next.

But in any discipline you run the risk of missing out on a lot of details, that is just a chance you take whenever you concentrate on something. How do you know if you’re not missing facts when you make a decision? How can you be sure you know the answers to all the doubts you have before you decide to act? Well, the answer to all this is that you don’t know, not for certain anyway, but that’s a good thing.

Wait, I’ll explain.

You can be very stubborn and try, for example, to juggle a thousand things at the same time, telling yourself you know exactly what you’re doing and, more importantly, that you can take it. But behind all this is the understanding that in reality you can’t do all those things at the same time and you certainly can’t take them all at once. Everyone seems to know this except you because, well because you’re stubborn. Regardless you continue in your attempt to do the impossible and while you may in the end achieve a thing or two, chances are you will not be entirely satisfied.

Sounds familiar? I thought so.

So you go on thinking there’s got to be something wrong with life, after all you’re way too smart and sexy to make mistakes, it can’t be you because, remember, you’re stubborn. Thinking it doesn’t make any sense at all when you give everything you have and receive so little, if any, in return, and then watch the next person hardly do anything and get all in the end.

There’s one thing missing in all of this, do you know what that is? Perspective.

Well ‘duh’ you may think, but believe me, often, very often we lose sight of the whole, we lose perspective in the things we do and the things we accomplish. We kind of forget to look at the composition and the shades and the scene because we’re so frigging fixed on the form that we forget about everything else.

Is this a masked catharsis? It may very well be, I don’t know. But that uncertainty that comes with life, the knowledge that you don’t know for certain whether or not you’re making the right decision is what validates life and whatever outcome your choices may bring upon. In the end you dust off, get up and continue down the road, that’s all that you can do, hoping that the next turn will bring… whatever it is that you are looking for.

As I write this I have in front of me a black and white photograph by Wouter Deruytter of a woman walking along the railroad tracks, I wonder what she’s thinking, I wonder why she was there in the first place and where she’s going. I wonder why she looks so sad. I wonder.

I wonder what makes a woman fall in love with a man.

Frank 09:42

Maybe it is easy to believe that, no matter how defeated they may feel inside, the essence of that which once made them smile with joy still remains inside, untouched, clean, virgin. When they rest in the distance, these dreams, when they are surrounded by nothingness and in silence they are filled with sadness.

The other night I dreamt of a fortress which sat on the middle of an island, which in turn was in the middle of a lake. The fortress was not what caught my attention, nor was the lake or the blood-red sunset which painted the sky with lively colors. What caught my attention was the detail with which I remembered everything that surrounded me. The texture of the grass beneath my naked feet, the shadows which hid the colors from those far-away walls, the countless golden boughs which concealed the sun and its passion.

I have to accept that I seldom have such lucid dreams, in fact I often have to remind myself, when I wake up in the mornings, that I have been dreaming about something –or about someone, that I can’t easily remember, but that I can’t forget either.

In these dreams, like the ones I often have, what matters most are the characters and the story they tell, not so much the scenery which surrounds them; nevertheless, when you wake up you feel a sort of emptiness inside which is very peculiar, since you know and understand that all of that which you thought you were living was in fact nothing more than a dream. Now, this giant dream that I’m telling you about was completely different from all others. I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that I can’t recall seeing anyone else in that place, and I don’t think anything particularly interesting happened.

No… I was just watching myself watching the space that surrounded me, captivated by the endless canvas of textures, sounds and colors. The impression was so real and clear, that now I’m not sure if I’m writing this to you from within my dream or not.

Frank 14:08

A dream itself not so complete,
but scattered remains that light the way ahead.
In empty hollow places,
where blustery winds in rage once met.

One time I almost died.

And in that night a prayer went up so high, so eager…
that life itself let in by death,
was shown to me without contempt.

Sometimes I can almost walk.

And just like you, I too have spent my life in the traveler’s way.
In roads not filled with dreams,
but felt with tears and blood that form the road ahead.

Smile again once more per chance I will,
that dreams themselves will come again.
And in that night I will remain, at last, complete.

Sometimes I almost dream.

Frank 16.41
(based on c. carter’s memento mori)

All that I remember from my days of quiet isolation is a collection of thoughts that now seem to transcend into the ether, feelings that once ruled my days with great expectation now seem strange and unfamiliar to me. This is not my life you are seeing. This is someone else’s dismembered reality, replete with disturbing moments of sorrow and pain. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not a philosopher in any way, on the contrary, I am a man who is deeply attached to images and sounds.

For a long time now I’ve been wondering which way to go next. Wondering how to go on when I feel there is little alive inside of me. When the putrid remains of my once callow life remain but a shadow of distant days. Convinced that everything I feel and know and do is cold and dark and wrong. My ability to weave stories of expanding beauty, filled with everlasting moments of delight has been diminished. Diminished simply because the light which once lived inside my heart has almost been entirely extinguished. My hands no longer feel alive or eager, now they mostly just feel cold and tired.

And I can’t help to wonder what is the best way to pour out my heart on paper like I used to do so easily, and so readily. How can I write effortlessly, willingly and completely? Write as if blood itself was pouring down my arms, as if blood was the only ink that I had left in me, the only ink I would ever need.

The hardest part about writing is finding a purpose. It is so easy to jolt down words and make up sentences that seem to have a function, but it’s an entirely different thing to write something with meaning. Something that rings true, something that feels alive inside.

Sometimes I think that I have lost that.

Frank 9:33

Whenever you have something important to say, be it a story or an idea, it becomes such a trivial task to put it down in paper, seamlessly writing words until you either run out of paper or ideas. There is no need to force yourself to do it because words themselves pour out of your hands. This happens when you feel passionate about something, be it life, an image or even a memory. It is then that you have the ability to easily explain how you feel inside, to transmit the idea that occupies your mind at that moment and let someone else take it home; which is, incidentally, when words cease to be yours, when someone else adopts them and in turn uses them explain their very own set of problems and desires.

But getting there is not easy, and I mean that in the most practical sense of the word. Easy as in getting your thoughts in order, connecting A to B and then to C. Sure, it doesn’t always work like that, but the trick behind all this is that as long as you are completely aware of your existence, of the place you occupy in life, everything else becomes as easy as reading a book.

Or so they say.

Being daring in the face of adversity requires not only strength, but also complete awareness of your shortcomings and your weaknesses; this is crucial, only then can you expect to be able to face your fears and your demons, to be able to conquer them and leave the arena with a big, broad smile on your face knowing you did a good job at the end of a day’s work.

But looking back upon your life is a tricky thing. It’s tricky because you’re bound to see things subjectively. You’re bound to ask yourself a myriad of questions too: what went wrong, what went good, you’ll wonder how things would be different if you had taken the other road instead. Sometimes however, if you try hard enough, you can manage to see the whole picture, so to speak, and see things objectively and appraise your life, or at least a portion of it, with all its hits and misses.

It is not without trepidation that I write these words however, I am well aware of how immersed I am in my own feelings and emotions, in my shortcomings and my doubts. I feel however as if time itself had given me the opportunity right now to look back and reflect, if only for a moment, on all the things I’ve been through these past few years. And believe me, since I know just how risky and uncertain my relationship with time is, I’m not about to decline such an offer. I want to carve these words inside my heart before I let them go for good so that they will always be there should I need them.

Frank 10:40

It was about six o’clock in the afternoon of the last day of the year and I was watching the sun go down. It was an amazing sight to behold, the air was sweet and warm, I was feeling lazy and intoxicated by the sights and sounds around me: people walking leisurely down the boulevard, young beautiful things eyeing back, smiling at me in delight. The peace and beauty I felt in me drove me to write about that moment, to put into words what my body and my mind were experiencing then.

I miss that day so much.

There’s a simplicity that comes with life. Knowing that there are no excuses when it comes to understanding it, that you have no time to waste, even if you feel like you have to start all over again. I like that. Sometimes.

I like feeling a sense of peace inside when everything around me overshadows my entire body.

Still, all the inconsistencies and the days of relentless waiting can only amount to a brief moment in the light of my recently discovered self. But the truth behind these words can only be explained by the utter realization that, after all is said and done, we are beings of light and love. Estranged souls that feel deeply and never cease to weep. Even now, as I try hopelessly to hurry my hands across the keyboard with all these words I have inside, an implacable sense of peace falls upon me and clears my mind of all thought.

The joy of believing in yourself is as big as the pain of not feeling anything at all. Remember this always.

Frank 16:22