Tips For Living No. 1 - Try Not To Get Accustomed To The Sound Of Approximate Silence, Part 2

...So, where were we? Don't believe I don't know my reader is there, whether it be in a singular or more plural figure. Just because of the silence of you, it doesn't mean I neglect to ponder your presence, and I can still feel your breath on my writer's neck. Oh, yes, we were discussing the silence of our times, our modern charming world. Well, precisely the lack of it, and the acute surprise whence it befalls us, it sweeps us up in its fleeting arms.

Do you just see words, can you cooperate with the loneliness of the words on the page and fall into some great meaning, as everything continues around you outside your earthly bubble? Gravity, fixes us here, takes all our energy at times, sinking through my feet. Perhaps I swing from my theme of contemplation, alas, I shall endeavour to return and focus (as my dad swears I never can...)

Silence. I love you and hate you all at once. Like the best women, like my head, like everything of any value, it has a heavy dark side, a joy attached that makes us feel spectacular. The dogs barking, like some mad chorus, the electrical creatures that almost take over our existences, among them the buzzing fridges and cancerous television sets. The sounds of vehicles, and people, and thoughts that rarely leave peace in the mind, and the birds, the wind, the clock on every wall and the sound of a tense heart in a chest. Almost everywhere you look, go, dare to step there is noise, softening the blow of potential loneliness. Now, we are never going to have to cope with getting used to something that we hardly have the chance to cross paths with, are we? But Silence, I would certainly not mind if you sought me out a little more frequently,. or perhaps, and this is just an idea, maybe I should abandon my surroundings and come looking for you once in a while.

Tips for Living No. 1 - Try Not To Get Accustomed To The Sound Of Approximate Silence

Modern life inflicts many things on us but silence would seldom seem to be one of them. When the near if not perfect presence of silence actually does drop it barely seems possible and we almost miss the moment waiting for its bubble to be burst by some mundane audio effect from our soulless existence. The machines take over, the stars are less visible, the neighbourhood at times seems too concise and the heart cannot beat as it would like. The lungs cannot take the air they need. Try to not become accustomed to silence, not that I feel you ever could, for this is our tale. There are pockets of space where all can be appreciated, where silence can echo long into the night, where dreams seem real. Everything exists within the strength of a mind, at the very least, so we can create and be artistic with our days, our thoughts.

To.be continued...

The Upshot

Strike me down. Make a choice. Wrap the stars in cotton wool. When it comes down to it we all must pass through roller-coaster days, we all must accept the ebb and flow of life's tapestry as it tells its tale. Like a river, with opposition, like everything we are. Conviction consume me, push me to the post. Rape our uncertainty, fit me in some box of decision. The upshot as ever, all that needs releasing, we are searching for sense and solution. I long for the body of water, the lake of her soul, her ocean, her endless pool of sacrifice, one for another. Love. Only for this. She walks through every door, the last word echoes, to the drop of it all, the earth at the wall, shattering like you never knew a thing.

Bow and Arrow

Straight for the heart, striking it, pushing it, tearing it from the body. A sucker punch. Unexpected, like so many glorious and tragic things. I watched you line me up, take aim and then with pinpoint love and hurt and golden focus you took the greatest part of me, all for yourself. I wouldn't allow it if it weren't for art, for the pain and the wonder of every beating second that pushes us to the post.

I contemplate the way so many stars blinking upon us celebrate the sky together and so many people can see nothing. The way a bow and an arrow combine, make love, crucify the very air, a split second of perfect trajectory and motion. All is everything, cutting us to pieces, like some exquisite musical cacophony. It never seemed lovelier. Like her, like the eyes of everything, like her. A bow, an arrow, a woman for eternity.

Communication Breakdown

Oh, everything is a battleground. You try and I fail. I put my heart in and you watch in amusement, from the sides, with a whole audience. Spectator sports. Neglect, the breakdown of all words. Language, evolving as we use it. The walls of the city were never built to last an eternity, and words as we use them have no everlasting fortress of meaning either. At least not as we regard each other from a distance. Not as we spell our thoughts out to each other. Someone isn't open, another knows not honest, some have hidden agendas, some just can't force the nature of expression. I know those who struggle and get lost down endless avenues, dead ends and nooks. God, the breakdown of everything, communication kicking out, all falls apart. I want my only words, truest of all, to leap out from a computer screen, to shake you, grab a hold of you, suck your face then body into the screen, and take you with them, take you apart, take you everywhere they choose to go. Nothing is ever gonna happen for no reason, nobody can get across what they mean and the sinking plunges ever deeper. We know we fail, we never stop trying, glued to the other side, watching as we do.

Take me with you. Break me. Teach me. Love me. Cross me like two swords. Defender, oh, useless bodyguard. You can stop nowhere and it ends up complete. A castle in ruins. A communication breakdown. Repetition. No solution. We see it take place. She wonders...

The Brick Wall Treatment

She was made out of stone. She was beautiful. She was a building. She was unfathomable. No question about it, she didn’t understand things. I guess maybe that was what would stand the test of time. She was probably broken, just in different ways, but she was something; something to look at, to tick in unusual ways, to observe and to just accept, in all her confused and hypocritical glory. Always on the edge, feeding off both sides, never falling off. I could wonder or just let it all slip away, write about it, put it to bed. Yeah, that was it.

If you ever come up against a brick wall, don’t take it on, perhaps. All it can do is dwarf you, all it can do is bounce your words right back at you, maybe even break you; stop you in your tracks. Completely. Oh, and it towers over me, and I can do nothing. I can storm its shadow to keep me from the brutal sun, painting the streets, around every single corner. I finger the puzzle, the pieces in my paws, it makes no sense. Some puzzles were not meant to be finished.

I could bang my head on you, I could knock myself silly, really put myself amongst the tortured ones. But, to be frank, this treatment is educational for me. Everything that rolls my way, whether I see it coming towards me or not, is designed to help shape me, just like those jigsaw pieces, so that one day it all fits, so it all just fits, someday, maybe. 

Invisible Forces

Do I lead myself nowhere? It is all in the eyes. What lives behind? Oh, we try to see. Get lost in the magic. My darling, I know it isn't real, I know it isn't dream. I know nothing. Sometimes we break, and never know why.

I can't find answers when my heart is dripping from the shelf, when the clock still doesn't tick, and it seems as never ending as some of the seconds that once sounded upon it.

I could want to give myself wholly. To you. It wouldn't matter, I think. Invisible forces come into play. Animals capture moments and swallow them forever. Like they never even existed. We wash away, into the past, just memories, some rotten history, some golden curse. So much beauty, it never even seems it was here. Inside some eyes, maybe just two, silent answers, vanished parts of us. Swimming, in the sea, never coming back. Dearest times of our lives, we never even knew we had. You.