For the backs that labour

Pushing up the weight of hopeless

Dreams

For the hands that grasp in misdirected desperation

For the streets that bleed

Memorial

to a million trodden, dusty, broken lives

For the reaching green

Sprouts of hope

Gnarled with time and pollution

Rooted in discarded filth

On shattered concrete

For that crusted soul

That watches glorious

Wheeling kites

In that forever cloudless

Expanse of sky

With vague, unattended longings

Akin to envy.

Life continues, after all these years, to be full of surprises. Some are of the sort that knock the air out of you, make you instantly feel sick and dizzy, that seem to turn you inside out, sucking everything into the swirling black hole in your gut. Some take your breath away in a better way, bowl you over with the awe, the mystery, of unexpected, undeserved goodness. Others are quiet and slow, gradual dawnings, eyebrow-raisers, producers of the bemused half-smile. Some come with thunder and lightning, trumpets and fireworks. Some occur in a quiet field at night, under stars, or lying in bed in the morning, watching the first orange light moving along the wall. warm, sudden realizations, or moments, isolated from time, without past or future, not to be questioned, only enjoyed-lived. Blessed aberrations, where something breaks in, something escapes, slips by the guards, as if the great numbing destroyer acccidentally overlooks something, and something from another world, one not fracturing, not dying, one of perpetual morning light, something from that strange world irrrupts into this one. They are quiet secrets, still and sacred, held and treasured only within oneself. Or, in rare blessed moments, with perhaps one other.

so its over... for now.
I don't feel heaven-like rest.
Exam stress seems to have seemlessly slipped into crazy holiday last minute Christmas stress.
I don't feel that peace ...i feel kind of numb.
I've theoretically had some fun, hung out with some good friends, but somehow, i didn't seem present for it- i feel like i'm swimming, like others' words are coming to me through murky water...they are blurry images to me, like i am seperated from them by this thick, enveloping medium...i watch myself moving, slowly, i hear myself speaking...it sounds like someone else. I am watching, from this soft, thick coccoon, from this odd distance, as someone else lives my life - or rather, continously fails to live it. This alternate version of myself is not one i particularily like- he doesn't feel much like me, or who i want to be- who i, maybe, thought i was...i want to supplant him, take control, banish that distanced, detached slow and constricted subsitiute, but i can't seem to reach him, though he floats nearby, just within reach... I see myself grabbing and shaking, only to look down and find my arms still at my sides. I will myself to hurl my body forward, but my surroundings don't seem to change. It feels just like waking up continously only to discover each time that i'm still dreaming.
Something feels wrong with me - despite assuring myself repeatedly that i know where i'm going, and what i need to do, i haven't, for the last week or so, been able to shake the feeling that something is wrong...perhaps, even physically...
Maybe i'm just recovering from the paper/exam frenzy...maybe i'm returning to a state school served to distract me from...
But i feel dull. Empty. Not manifestly unhappy, certainly not hurt or lonely, just ...not...here, somehow...
Anybody have the faintest sense of what i'm talking about?

Last night i dreamed, not of heaven, but of a strange curling-like game being played across the streets of my childhood neighborhood. The goal seemed to be a sort of simple race, to be the first one to get your rock to the destination, in the least number of attempts- kind of like curling/golf, but the whole neighborhood seemed fair game. People i hadn't seen in a long time were playing, and we wound up at the front door of my mother's house, she was baking, and it may have been Christmas.

Today my friend dave gets married, and many old friends will be there. But i can't make it to the weddding because i have too much studying to do. I just want school to be over with.

I am already somewhat into that euphoric Christmas break/next-world paradise i alluded to ealier. The only nice thing about two exams in one day is that half of your total stress load lifts in period of a few hours. More work remains, including preparation for the dreaded physics-that-is-the-death-of-many-an-arts-student final, but i feel demonstrbly lighter. In fact, come the afternoon of December 20, i may need a tether.

returning to an earlier subject, i used to dream about heaven. All the time, actually, when i was a kid. Which is a bit odd, in the sense that i was not raised to beleive in heaven, didn't go to church, and didn't have any theological concept of it. Nevertheless, when i slept, i used to die and go there on a regular basis. Now if you are the sort of person who, when you watch action movies like to point out things like the impossibility of firing a handgun sideways, or who turned off 'Crouching Tiger' when people started flying, you might also point out that my dreaming of heaven likely had some bearing on my degree of satisfaction with my 'earthly' life at the time. Well...possibly. But if you are that sort of person, you might also need to lighten up.
The point is, when i was young, I had recurring dreams in which i was involved in huge battles or other calamitous ordeals, managed, despite a typical lack of heroics, to get myself good and killed, and went on a guided tour of various versions of heaven. (There was never, at any time, any trace of puffy clouds, harps, souped up suburban garden gates, or people walking around in sheets with wings on their backs) actually, in one of the most memorable of these, heaven was simply the schoolyard across from my house, at night, under the orange glow of streetlights, quiet, still except for a slight, warm breeze stirring the treetops and promising...something. I was walking leisurely with friends, light, relaxed, laughing. It was quiet cool at the end of a long summer day, eveything was done, and we were waiting, with no hint of anxiety, only relief.
I suppose my heaven was, at that time, simply a slightly accentuated version of the one real place and time where i sometimes felt somewhat at peace, and somewhat ok.

You'll sense a reoccuring theme in the last few posts. In the madness of the last few weeks, hell, of the last year, simple daily moments of peace and relative clarity achieve an almost mystical value...

I just finished cleaning at the cafe...half an hour late! I should go home and sleep...but i have good music, playing immersively loud, candles, Christmas lights, heck, even a fake fireplace...atmospheric solitude. this post-shift lull is actually one of my favourite moments of a day. I'd just like to savour this low-lit cafe goodness just a little longer...one of the few moments i have left where life stops for just a little bit...

I think i'll go for a little walk under the stars...

There's a proper place and time for the bags under your eyes...

Round here....we stay up very, very late....

As predicted, i feel much better. Mellow. perhaps a little lonely. One notable absence, i suppose. A familiar presence felt in absence...or something. Of course, its also pretty deserted in here in general. The random music-chooser in the computer seems to share my mood- its developed an aversion to the upbeat. watching the candles burn out, one by one...watching the white ave early crowd strolling, plotting and hugging their cellphones in silent movie form outside the glass. It's probably only me who's moving in slow motion...i wonder...have we slipped into another kind of time in here? People outside seem to be moving twice as fast. Maybe we are, just this cafe, just this little glass-enclosed dream, losing touch with that silent world out there, slowly drifting off, farther and farther, till whyte ave fades to black, and this is all there is...an isolated, floating, warm & fuzzy oblivion that feels alot like sleep...mmmm....that reminds me....

Well, that's one down....packaged, sealed, and delivered. Just a couple tests to get through, and i might be able to breathe. Once or twice.

Aside from mad paper writing and the omnipresent exhaustion this is....well, no it's still a shitty day. Oh well. They can't all be good ones. My mouth is furry, my vision is all distorted ( people's heads are funny shaped again...tee hee...) My heartbeat is irregular, Old English poetry is swimming before my eyes.... I feel like every last once of thought has been squeezed out of me. I just want to sleep for days...but, of course, i'm working tonight. That might cheer me up- but i don't know if i'm depressed, or just utterly expended, in pure one-foot-in-front-of the-other-mode. In a weird, sick, twisted, and utterly unhealthy way, i kind of enjoy this. This could be bad. What if i overcame my absolute stress aversion the way i overcame my coffee aversion, and became addictied to stress? Thats sounds like someone i know, and fortunately, as much as i am sometimes accused of it, i don't think THAT's a transformation that could ever happen. I worry a bit about my gleefully self-destructive habits of late, though...

Surviving, just surviving....

just....

a little....bit...

....longer.....

Ok, fine...

That was a fairly pathetic hue-ing and cry-ing....but i don't have anything else interesting to post at the moment, so...here y' are.

Enjoy.

The Hesitant Reader

He sat, placed the book on the table in front of him, and prepared to read. He took a moment to take it in, its solidness, a thick, square object alone on the blank surface. What an odd thing, that something so small, so simple, ordinary paper spattered with ink, stacked upon itself like the layers of tree trunk it had once been, could carry so much within it. It took ideas, notions, plans, imaginings and fleeting images from the secret places of passing thought, of uncertain memory, and made them real, freezing them in unchanging, perceivable shape, fixed expressions on an immortal face. Imprisoning a permanent imprint drawn out of the fast flowing river of memory, it had the power to rescue some things forever from forgetfulness. In it, something of a person, something of their thought, at least, could escape even death.

He held it in his hand, feeling its weight, it potential. He could not help feeling a quickening of excitement, of anticipation. It was more than a preserver of dead, frozen things, of course. It had a life, of sorts, of its own. He knew he could interact with what had been committed to this most unusual container- it could even reach out and transform something of him. It had the power to bring him into contact with people he had never met, people who had died long ago, people who, perhaps, had never even lived. He could converse with these people. He could sense something of their thoughts, their emotions, their moods. He could feel he knew them. Their words, their way of seeing the world, could become part of his. He could go to places he had not been, see through eyes not entirely his own. He could enter other worlds- worlds of possibility, worlds, perhaps, that could not exist in any other place. Things could be brought together, grouped, turned inside out, split - in these worlds, things could be made out of what would otherwise be called ideas, and these things could be positioned in relation to each other. Whole palaces could be built out of the intangible moments of thought, out of things which could be not be touched or seen in any other place, then explored, room by room.

With the spine resting on his hand, he gently moved his thumb over the edge of the pages, stopping in the middle, opening an inviting gap. He was about to begin an interaction with this book, but what form would it take? It could an engagement with the character of a battle, a conquest of territory and information, a struggle of opposing views, with only the winner left standing. Or it could be something more like a dance, the back and forth play of motion and response, whether executed according to formal, learned steps, or through rhythmic instinct. It could be a consuming - either slow, patiently chewed and digested rumination, or greedy, ravenous devouring, taking the text into himself and leaving nothing behind. He could lie back and let it wash over him, or he could force it to flow in a channel of his design. He could get caught up in its current and allow himself to be swept away, following the text wherever it took him, content to wash up on whatever bank it threw him on. He could also navigate that flow with a destination in mind.

Why was he reading? What was he coming to this book to obtain, to experience? What was he looking for? Pleasure, perhaps? Certainly it had the power to produce this. The flow of words, the music of sounds, could be enjoyed, as could the art of skillful construction. He could seek to be caught in the sweep of a story, its rising and falling, the fascination of characters, of living lives one cannot, or should not, live. He could be exhilarated by the sudden rushing in of a new understanding, or by the excitement of constructing something out of the puzzle pieces of ideas, the thrill of searching, digging, and finding treasure.

But this thing in his hand could do much more than amuse or entertain. How, again, should he read it? Should he look for something specific? Should he stare at it, past the surface of the page, until the components that constituted this text became apparent? Should he break it down and break it up, cut it open and dissect it? Was it important to know how it was put together and to what effect? Did the process of its construction matter, or only its existing structure? Was it a thing to be studied, so that one could understand it completely, definitively, possess it with certainty, know its substance, its meaning, without error? Or did it defy such analysis? Would it forever elude his attempts to grasp it, remaining a thing to be experienced as a mystery?

Should he enter it expecting to find something? Should he enter it with the interest of seeing what it had to say about certain aspects of his world? About culture? About power structures? About women? About reading? Dare he approach it for what he could get out of it – something he could use? Was he allowed to seek in this text examples to confirm a belief he already had formed? Could he use it as part of his own argument? Could he make it his own, do with it as he pleased, see in it what he chose, incorporate it into himself beyond distinction, or must he remain separate from it? Was it permitted for him to play with the book, to improvise in it and from it, to make it one theme in a larger symphony of words, to use parts of it as material in a new creation?

Was it even possible for to avoid merging himself, and what came with him, into the text? Could the book stand on its own? Was it really all alone in the middle of that table, or was it tied to a million other books stretching back through time, to the whole history of language, to the culture it came from, its history, to the personal history of the author? Was it possible to wrench it free from this web of attachments, and read it and it alone? And did it matter who he was, reading it, his gender, his culture, his position in society? Could he, and should he, remove such influences from his reading?

He furrowed his brow. This thing, this thing in his hand, did not spring from nothing, he knew. He was not completely alone with this book. There were likely other readers, but there was certainly, somewhere or at some point in history, at least one other involved in this book – an author. He wondered what his relationship was to this other as he read. Was he entering into a communication with someone? Sharing their experience, their thoughts? And who was that someone? Would he truly be able to see them in this thing they had brought into being? He might be able to know that other, perhaps even in ways they did not know themselves. Perhaps their secrets, their insides, that which was underneath driving them, without their being aware of it, would, to a careful reader, be revealed. Perhaps their world, and everything in it, all the books they read and the people they knew, the life they lived and the environment in which they lived it – all these might be contained in their book. Or perhaps they were masked, hidden from the reader by the reality of the words themselves. Perhaps that other had disappeared in the creation, and only the book remained. Perhaps they had merely been the conduit for some force, the obedient recipient of inspiration. Perhaps, after all, that author was merely a function in some greater process, an inter-working of many threads that went into this work. And it was possible, he realized, that he could not know anything certain about such a writer, even with their book in his hands.

But did that matter? Did he need to know the author to read? Were they sending him a message, or perhaps, messages, that it was his task to decipher? Did the book only say what the author meant it to say? Could he be sure the author knew what they meant in the first place? And might not the book mean something different to him? Who was in control, himself, or this distant other? Was the author constructing a world, fully conscious of its minute details, sculpted precisely to achieve a premeditated purpose, and was he, the reader, constrained by the laws and design of that world? Could he only enter in on the author’s terms? Was the key to the book’s meaning found in the mind of its creator? Or was the book something alive and separate, capable of speaking on its own, without the ghost of an author inhabiting it?

And then there was that troublesome word: meaning. Could he expect to find such a thing in as complex and powerful an entity as a book? There could surely be many meanings – could some be better, truer, than others? Did the book contain any certain, identifiable meaning? Was the quest to discover it even a valid one? For, trembling, he conceived the possibility that in the very search for meaning, he might create what he sought, burying the voice of the book itself.

He might only be reading himself, projected into whatever words were before him. He might not be able to hear any pure, other voice. The quest might string him along, as he continually tried to reach outside himself, to get at what was concealed in these words, that which he sought , which slipped away at the very instant he grasped it in order to secure an understanding, always retreating to the primeval darkness at the edge of his probing thought.

He almost put the book down. The storm of unanswered questions poised threateningly at the small gap where his thumb rested, waiting to be released.

He knew he could not possibly separate the book from its world, from all that went into it or was attached to it. Nor could he possible explore the vastness of that attached context. And he could not avoid bringing his world into the book, either. His encounter with it would surely change it.

But it just might be able to change him in return.

And that, perhaps, was worth launching into that sea of uncertainty. With a pause, and a deep breathe, he opened the book, and began to read.

Thirteen glorious hours of sleep later.....i feel much better. I most certainly did crash last night, and what a mighty crashing it was. I fell asleep at 8pm, and woke up, seemingly moments later, to the squealing of hyperactive Norbert's hamster wheel. I thought i'd dozed for a short time - but it was already 7 in the morning! Apparently Ali called at 1030, and i actually spoke to her...sort of. I have no memory of this. Though it does explain why i woke up cuddling my phone....

Ahhh...i feel good, though. I still have much to write this weekend, but it feels like a holiday. Christmas break....its so much more...anticipated after this ordeal. I have a pet theory that heaven works in a similar way. Its like the Christmas break at the end of a long, bitterly fought, barely survived semester....hmmm...

Good morning, good Mooorrrrning! Its great to stay up late writing flowery, pretentious papers. Actually, i like being given those 'write me whatever you want' assignments. I have just produced a fun peice of stylized pseudo- fiction, for marks. It'd be an odd animal as either a paper or a story- it occupies that strange nether region in between. Another entry in the no doubt already crowded genre of 'reading and interpretation' themed fiction, or fiction written for critical theory classes. well, i enjoyed it, anyway. I think it turned out well, even, a rare opinion from me regarding my own writing. Not brilliant, but well. I'd actually thought i'd post it here, but it's five pages...i fear it might exceed the attention spans of my blog readers. Tell you what - if there is an overwhelming hue and cry of demand, it might appear.

Despite a caffeine induced complete lack of sleep, i am absolutely wide awake. Either i am still under the influence, or my body has just given up trying to be sleepy at normal times. I may crash horribly later, but, for now, i'm pretty darn chipper.

Since i'm awake, somebody else should be. i'm going to go wake somebody up just for the fun of it.