Wind Go! You Go!

I can now see why very intelligent and not so intelligent people in the past have used the ocean to symbolize life. If one floating on an endless ocean, one must go with the wind. Unless, of course, that person possesses oars. Then he could use his mighty strength to go against wind, against current, and against fate. However, as many of my generation have learned, it is very difficult to fight fate. So we throw our oars overboard, yell, "good bye old friends!", and we let the wind take us to wherever the wind may please. It's the chef's choice and the wind not only owns the restaurant, but cooks its tasteless delights.

I threw away my oars years ago and have been floating ever since. Floating very comfortably, I might add, but not content. So I made oars of the floating debris that crossed my untraceable path and began to row. I rowed hard and fast, but those sticks were gutless, and I made no progress in any real directions, succeeding in only wasting energy. I decided to give up. My body ached. My head needed rest from being restless for so long. I laid down on my raft and closed my eyes and woke to a gentle knocking. ***knock knock. ***knock knock.

I opened my eyes and half expected someone to be staring down at me. But there was no visible entity there. Perhaps my shadow playing tricks, I told myself. I closed my eyes again and made myself open them when I heard the same knock. ***knock knock. ***knock knock.

I got to my feet and looked around: there was nothing. Only endless water was to be seen from my raft in the middle of the sea. I sat, put my hands on my chin and gazed at the sunset. Sunsets in individual peoples' oceans can be beautiful or terrifying. Luckily, my mind produces a beautiful sunset. It is one that maybe found in sunny California.The temperature is not too hot, not too cold, there are beautiful people walking around you, and the sun is that unique red-orange that can only be found in the west coast of America. Beautiful. ***knock knock. ***knock knock…

…My ears traced the knocking to be next to the boat. I peer over, expecting a piece of drift wood, but to my surprise, I find my old oars! "Hello old friends", I called over, and they greeted me politely. "Shall we resume our journey that we set so long ago?", they asked…

…***knock knock. ***knock knock.

Coffeemon

Legos

At times, it feels like building a goal is a lot like building something out of lego pieces. Some people have a blueprint that they go off of before they start to build, while others build as they go. Regardless, it's a piece by piece process that takes substantial time to complete. But finishing your lego masterpiece is only part of the process. You have to take your goal from point A to point B, or to wherever the final destination may be. Unfortunately, the course is usually never a smooth one. It's more like an obstacle course where mistakes could cause damage to your lego model. Bumps and falls can cause pieces of your  model to fall off. It is up to you if you want to pick them up or to keep moving on. Not picking up pieces could either be advantageous or it could be disastrous. But you won't know until you get to your destination. There are some people who spend so much time building their masterpiece that they move towards their destination with extreme caution. But even the most careful people can make mistakes.

I'm careful, but I can't help but feel that I dropped my lego model and that it broke into all its individual pieces. I have no choice but to pick up the parts and make a new whole. But from my new point of view, looking down onto chaos, I can't help but see that those pieces can make something completely different than what I had made before. So as I pick up the parts and being to place them together, I see new shapes and possibilities form before my eyes. I have no blue print to work on as I had before, so this process is a dynamic one. A process full of mistakes and rapid evolutions. Enough time has now passed that I am beginning to see what I'm building, and I am impressed but at the same time extremely scared of what I'm making. This new masterpiece looks nothing like what I've made before. Just the foreignness of it makes it appear difficult to carry. Will it fall apart before I can even pick it up?

I suppose that I must develop different skills and tools to carry this piece safely to my destination, but part of me cannot help but wonder what happened to my prior lego model. The dreams and hopes that I had were put into those pieces used to build my first model, but now those same pieces are being used to make something completely different. Are my prior dreams, warm and impossible as they were, still embedded in those pieces that I am using to build my new goal that is so different, so foreign that it even scares me? Do I use all the pieces that I had before or do I put some pieces aside to use for a different side goal?

Life of legos is truly a complicated one, especially when the pieces are made from your own ambitions, ideas, dreams, and fears.

Rabbits

My body is stuck in the present, but I have developed a habit where my mind wanders in and out of reality. My imagination takes me into the past, to the future, and into situations of pure fiction. Once while on a run, my mind projected a movie into the back of my eyes of myself running through a glowing field of long grass. I was running free and smooth, but suddenly I exploded into a cloud of colors and was swept away by the wind.

I brought my muscles to the brink of tearing in an effort to stay together, but the crosswinds began to pull them apart. I was shredded into pieces then reformed only to be torn up again. Finally, I was molded into three different small animals and myself. We flailed about in the air and fell to the ground with such force that it caused all the air to be pushed out of my lungs and caused my eyes to tear. I lay on the ground feeling as if I was clubbed by a group of hooligans, but I also noticed shearing pain in my chest. It felt as if I was stabbed three times right across my breast. I kept trying to locate these holes but it took time for my eyes to adjust to the bright sky. I searched with my eyes and then with my hands, but I could find no damage to my flesh. My eyes wander to the animals and noticed that they were three rabbits. They were stunned from the fall as well, but I could sense their eyes upon me, and I noticed their muscles twitching with anticipation. Do they feel like I'm going to try to catch them?

My imaginary wounds began to burn as if someone was taking hot shards of glass, sticking them into my chest, and then raking their fingers over them. I could barely breath. No feat of genius was needed to put three and three together: three stab wounds and three rabbits must mean something. I try to completely relax my body. The pain slowly began to fade. Perhaps the pain has a  trigger? Regardless, I'm fully content to have it gone for now. I began to focus on the explosive reaction that I must create to grab these rabbits and put them back inside of me before they run. I open eyes, breath out, and fire all my muscles at once. I am on all fours and quickly get my feet underneath me, and I start the chase. At first, they ran as a group and it was easy to keep up and follow their movements. That was until they decided to go different directions. An electric surge ran through my body as my mind calculated what to do. I cursed at the top of my lungs and this caused them to stop in curiosity. They gave me a look of excitement. Of pity?

What should I do? Chase one? Yes, capture one then the next then the last. My body breaks right. I sprint after the target number one, but my spastic mind tells my body to freeze. No, I must give chase to them all at the same time. Losing one to the world would be unacceptable.

I close my eyes and turn in a full circle on my heels and find two others staring back at me. Our eyes are identical: they are stoic gray yet tremble with desire. The rabbits. We had to find the rabbits. Crow flew after the white one with the playful eyes. Tiger left for the gray one with liquid mercury fur, and I went in search of the maroon hare.

Sadly, my mind comes back to the present, and I am struck bored by reality. I can't stop wondering what happens to those six lost specks of my imagination, and I can't stop wondering how their stories unfold.

My day in 5 seconds

Saw something like this online today and it got me thinking...I could do something like that! So I did. Here's my day in a neat little pictogram.

Shackles

I want to move. I want to take flight. Get me out of this mundane city and drop me into a town of mysteries.

I thought that I wanted structure, but what I truly desired was mobility. I believed that through developing a sturdy structure I would be able to increase my chances of travel, of excitement, and of happiness. So for years I have fought for, dreamed for, and cried for this structure to arise. And I was happy when it finally came to being, but it evolved from my foundation to my mirage. A mirage which tricks me to be complacent, wrapping velvet shackles onto my wrists, and feeding on my creativity, my bravery, my curiosity, my humanity to increase its own hypnotic powers.

I want to forsake this false oasis. But I am afraid it is too late. The shadows have devoured my mind and left me as a simpleton who relies on ritual and routine to keep time moving.

It is important to let the days and years go by, for with it comes hope. I become intoxicated with thoughts of "Perhaps tomorrow will be different. Yes! Tomorrow does not have to end like today". But again, this is the perfect trick of the oasis. There is no such thing as hope here. The crows ate hope yesterday.

It is rare for someone to fall this far and find a way out of the mirage's sweet and warm darkness. One must be strong enough to rewire the mind, build up the body, and to convince one's self that the decision to runaway into the electric unknown is a sane one.

Do I dare try to escape?

Run, Run, Run¡

"Bob, hey, you ever get tired of living like this?"

"No John. Not allowed to. You know how things work. We're nothing but balls rolling down a hill now. We don't get tired, it's all kinetic energy till we come to the end. No slowing down, no stops. We march forward, John. That's what we do."

What Bob doesn't know is that this hill is flattening out. I guess it's better than before. Before, we were more like people on bungee ropes, carelessly jumping off cliffs. Things would eventually slow and when it finally came to a stop, it didn't just stop. No, this is something Bob doesn't fully understand. In the time it took for us to fall so far, the world above us has changed. Ideas, material goods, people that were once mighty and important are relegated and new ideas, new desires, fresh people rise from seemingly nowhere. Well not really from nowhere. We're blind to there slow rise and by the time we notice them, they are giants and as cowards, we run away.

"What you getting back? You saying you're tired of this life? John, what's got into you? You keep thinking like that and you'll find yourself in a bad way. We can't risk veering. How much gas do you think we have left?"

"I have plenty of fuel in the tank, Bob."

Like I was saying, our fall doesn't just stop. It stops. Of course it stops. Everything and anything can come to a momentary standstill. This standstill is what hypnotizes us and the when the movement restarts, we are dumb to the fact that, yes we are moving, but we are going back to where we jumped from. It's a cruel device in that it tricks us into thinking that we are still making progress. But when the ride ends, we realize that it has simply throttled us back to our old world. 

"You know I was thinking Bob, maybe it's time I get out of this place. It just doesn't feel right anymore. The music is muted. The food and drink are bland. The people are the worst. Where's the honesty? Where's the fucking sunshine and rainbows, Bob? Not here. Not anywhere near here."

"Rainbows and sunshine? The shit that comes out of your mouth sometimes. Come on, man, don't you remember? We were tired of our lives there, so we came here. Now you want to go back? Show some backbone will you?"

He is right, you know.  I was tired of living the way I was. I felt trapped in the current of the modern lifestyle. I had appointments everyday. Had to meet people I didn't want to. And did things that I don't even like, just to do them. And the worst of it all was that if I refused to oblige, than I was the scoundrel. I became the backwards rebel. Rebel? There is no rebellion here. No revolution. These times don't allow for it. Everything is in such a tight, intricate network that undoing one string is going to do nothing to affect the whole. Worst of all, we make this network. This web has become our home and if one continues to do something to muck it up, well that when the spider comes to eat you. So when we get fed up, we jump off the web, thinking we are jumping for our freedom. But its transparent strings are attached to us and with a twist of fate, we are hurdled back to where we came from but in a worse state than when we left. Always in a worse state. Was it worth the trip? Having that short span of freedom from jumping off the web, was it worth it? No. That's why I cut those strings suspending Bob and I. Turns out, we just end up making new ones.

"By the way, what do you mean by sunshine and rainbows, John? Have you lost your mind. Don't you remember all the shit we had to go through up there? All the red tape, all the running around in circles just to much an inch forward? Up there, being slow and backwards was the only way to move! Now you want to go back? No way. Get your senses back, will you."

Bob has always been the strong-willed type. But he lacks vision. He doesn't see the changes occurring here in this world. We grew strong by staying mobile, relying on speed, and staying flexible. We could change our ways on the fly. Everything was done real time. No need to wait for something; just had to get it done. But in the human mind, in the conscience, there is a limiting factor to our progress. At times, the decision that would give us the desired result would be against what our conscience thought was righteous. That was the beginning. Soon, those of the similar mind would being to converge and the largest of the groups would become linked. Another web is beginning to form. And I think Bob is entangled in it.

Anarchy. Chaos. Entropy. I do not like any of those things. I crave order. I devour order. I need order. But these webs form sticky lines which repress any forms of change. These webs are made of good ideas that become warped and twisted until they become backwards. Now, if our world can identify that this once good ideas have gone sour and move to rectify it, I would have no problem living in this web. But that is never the case. The strong become leaders and their ideas become laws. The idle pretend to care and the opposition gets eaten by the host of the newly formed web.

"Things are just not making sense to me anymore, Bob. We run away from a world just to make another world like it!"

"John, you've always been a runner. You're a hard worker. You always help build the nest, but by the time it's done, you scream that we are making a monstrosity and run. You keep running like that and no ones is going to be able to keep up. I'm surprised I've been able to. But if you run from here, I'm not going with you. I got family now. Wife and kids. They're not runners like us. This world works for us. It's the best we've ever come across!"

Bob has been my best friend since I can remember. Bob would take a bullet for me and I would do the same for him. Bob is right. I'm a runner and Bob is losing his feet. I'm gearing to get the hell out of here. But I'm coming back to get him.

"You're my best friend, Bob. Don't tell the spider I left until I get a good head start on her."