texticle

Woke up to this text yesterday morning:

Romantic Taurus
Rather stubborn just now, you wont bend to fit in, not even if it means friendships or close relationships part company. Be less extreme.

I'm an extremely confused and intrigued Aries
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Metamorphosis

Death is but to cease to be the same, the mechanical transformation from red to yellow to green, and back to red, the constant acceleration causing life to move forwards: eggs to hatch, flowers to bloom, cocoons to open, stars to explode. To one abode; here one road leads us all. Death is the birth of something which previously did not exist, and the disappearance of another thing whose time is up. Nothing is permanent.

Therefore with adulthood comes death; we are dragonflies undergoing metamorphosis from our nymph form, shedding our transient innocence in return for self-absorption, unrelenting and unfulfilled desire. What was once beautiful becomes tedious; what was novel becomes inadequate. Here is an example.

A three year old baby, in his naked naivety, is old enough to know between right and wrong, but young enough to take it into account. He has not yet experienced enough of the world’s contradictions to try to fight against them, and he has not the capacity to notice the world’s futility. So what is the consequence of his actions as he tumbles haphazardly in the waves of Mexico, causing his parents to run frantically after him, terrified? They rescued him, clearing the salt from his blue infant eyes. But he was not crying fearfully, he was not wailing. His cries were of laughter, of amusement, of the ecstasy of his first dangerous thrill. Cheap, unexpected, his initial glimpse into a world of possibilities, deadly risks which knock the wind out of you and render life worth living.

Twenty years later, this baby’s innocence has washed out with the tide, his involuntary immersion into life’s excitements evaporated into clouds. In this present moment, the ocean holds no more pleasure for him than a cigarette, burning the air around him, filling his body with a warm, plastic replicate of the good old days. A la recherche du temps perdu, he desperately seeks a modern wave to sweep him off his feet, to propel him into unknown depths. Amid the techno beats and voices encircling his head, there is an omnipresent solitude. This unwelcome sentiment is countered only by prescribed remedies, a tidal pull in the form of a pill, injecting colour back into his black and white veins. His sense of self is consequently vaporised, dissolved like medication on the tongue. Girls, unaware of his dark and broken being, flash past his glassy eyes, fleetingly kissing his cheek. They are his forbidden monsters, conspiring against him, falling in briefly to take for granted his vulnerability, then rushing out just as suddenly, leaving him skeletally empty. His disposition suffers, his blue eyes no longer hold contact, his fingers tremble upon electronic keyboards in his lightless home. He is utterly alone, awaiting the apocalypse. Human existence is chaos, a raw and undivided mass, devoid of reason, definition, or pattern. A mind infected by treason, loud music, and hypochondria, he is weary of his shadowy loneliness, and longs for inspiration: spiritual, metaphysical, psychological, whatever.

His desire is finally realised somehow with an abrupt change in character, a sudden tangible confidence, a metamorphic phase of sorts. Silver wings burst out of his back like flowers, and hypotheses spill out of his eyes, philosophical concepts seeming to unlock universal secrets. His focus is no longer averted timidly to the floor; he stares vertically through contrails and stars, discovering scientific theories, overwhelmed by the ideas being concocted in sleep. His dreams contain fantastical pictures, cinematic scenes of nuclear destruction, cosmic fires, planetary order. At last he senses a pattern, a clearly structured design in the way of things. No longer afraid, he is entirely invincible, a God in his own right, one of the few who possesses the knowledge of antiquity, of ancestral shores. He is immersed in the undertow, rolling on the edge of the breaking wave, and laughing hysterically.

Recording his ideas on napkins, post-its, receipts, cigarette cartons, empty spaces of wall, transforming it into a story, creating plot, character, setting, outcome, he falls head over heels in love with it, with this idea. At the same time, he is wary, as he knows of the perils that would face him, should his story leak. The authorities would be curious, men with guns circling his palace would coax him outside through a megaphone, patronisingly talk him down, psychologically manipulate him as though he were a criminal. He would be crucified, they would drown him in their confusion, weigh him down with a thousand questions unanswered and unanswerable. A martyr, maybe, but he still has things to do, things to learn, things to write, before that end. He must save himself.

When it comes down to it, all we can do is save ourselves.

Living for days in secret, in a state of superlative fear, he hears only the metallic sound of helicopters ticking incessantly overhead like armed clocks, hovering as though suspended on string, waiting for it to snap. His phone rings but is disregarded—it could explode, break up into millions of jagged and radioactive pieces which would pierce through him, put holes in his palms. There is no trick they can pull on him, no ploy which he has not thought of beforehand. If they took away his life, at least his knowledge would be immortalised in text.

And there he remains for a lifetime, perched stoically in the shadows beneath his desk, pen in hand. His skin moulting, his black eyes bulging, his wings crumpling like paper. He is fallen from flight. The lights outside his window burn red, buzzing away at him tauntingly. The waves keep on coming on, deafeningly so, but he’s lost the ability to laugh.

Memory

You’re in books.

Your memory echoes between pages,

Your voice permeates cover to cover:

Pretentious mutterings scribbled in margins.

Your eyes are the rusted orange corners of folded over leaves.

Your hands are the letters,

Long and deliberate.

Your smell is ancient like the sweet decay of paper,

Like unshaken dust.

You are the words, the rhyme, the symbols,

The plot, the beginning, the bitter end.

You are books.

++ my backspace key is on the verge of breaking, this could be eenteresting

Snow [cocaine]

In the evenings I can smell your reeking snow
Cascading onto a vacant void of consciousness,
Existing secretly within a desolate forest,
It melts into rain and you feel alive.

Reason fries like a raisin in the sun
Infringing on your white voice, ripe now with anguish.
Your remedy is faultless and loud like thunder:
Self-inflicted vibrancy on a cotton-picked field.

It’s as a current of dust-bowl ripping through the air
Blending your surroundings into a cacophony of noise,
Lightening life’s weight with which gravity reproaches you
Creating purpose for your eyelashes which clump and molt.

When the voices cease to exist
When the men no longer listen
When your mouth can no longer conjure up
words which your brain sees in pictures
When the earth is hot and dry
When the silence begins to kill you
Let the snowflakes rob the calm
And free yourself for them to fill you.

moonshiiiine

I’ll be your moonshine if you give me sanity,
Suck me dry to obliterate that vanity
That turns into liquid. I’ll pour me down
Your throat; you’ll drunkenly dismantle my crown.
Slur your words til they’re useful, teach me to think
Before actions and battles push you to the brink
Of the bottle. Deny me attention I’m after;
I’ll steep you in tinctures of fancy hereafter.
Once we’re stripped of our vices, naked and cold,
And the bell delivers a backward toll
And our souls can balance the take and the give,
We may remember once more how to live.

New York City

Every iota of New York City is
constantly poised for a picture.

Not the lush green and
ancient egg whites of London,
whispering sweet histories
of elegant composure;

But dry, sculpted, clay-red angles,
shouting out from up high of
a greater new;
dark hidden pockets and nooks
bursting with dusty steam;
the traffic of bodies, souls,
electricity and sound,
waving and illuminating in
razzle-dazzle synchrony.

You've got to be really hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.
- Aldous Huxley

Innocence vs experience

Innocence verses experience. Ignorance verses wisdom. Which side of line is preferred? Frankly it’s wisest to stay innocent, if only to be ignorant of experience, for therein lies growing up. The predicament. The involuntary liberty to do whatever, whoever, whenever and wherever, that is frightfully constricting. The sudden commotion of limbs flying akimbo, grabbing sweaty hold of shoulder blades, and shielding your eyes from the ever-nearer sun (Global warming’s such a drag when you’re no longer ignorant.)

Why would God do such a thing, put us on Earth with such temporary, transient innocence that is entirely incompatible with knowledge? Why be so rash as to grant babies the bliss of ignorance, when they have neither the time nor the capacity to comprehend or appreciate their pure, silken, blank slates? Then he condemns them for learning, plucking away particles of purity with every moment of life, until we are old, guilty, and trembling with sin.

Why not do it the other way round? If He wants believers, why not give us experience from the start and grant us innocence as we grow? Wipe away our wisdom, our hasty conclusions, our mundane understandings as time goes on, and teach us ignorance when we are old enough to want it. For we are starving for it.