Monday 28 July 2014

tidbits

From August 21st 2013 - July 29th 2014 this is 50 weeks worth of random brain activity I have written fueled by my experience abroad in the UK and beyond and my brief time in the YAGM community:

August 21st, So he stood in the corner all week. In hope to go unnoticed, unseen, unheard. Watching as they thinned out, he grew thinner with every exit.  Gone like yesterday's news, forever on his mind.

August 22nd, So here we are about to embark on an adventure to change us in mind, body, and soul.

August 28th, Where are you God?  Stop looking I am here.

September 5th, Stopped at a line of pavement, I kick start off into a pebble bed that snapped crackled and popped like when rice crispies are touched by ice cold milk.

September 6th, like it was some exotic medicine to kill my every ill

September 11th, It's the people you will meet that will be the best stories not the places you went.

September 29th, I don't miss things ever. I just long to be places I ain't. Once I'm there I don't care 'bout them no mo'. Chalk it up to a life of instant gratification.  So now I long for the desert.  The hot stinging dry.  Dead dirt that crackles when you step on it, not sink into it. when you look out in the distance and the sun looks like it's boiling the earth, not lost in fog.

October 2nd, Mondays felt like Wednesdays, Wednesdays felt like Fridays, and the weekends didn't feel like days at all, they were an amalgamation of time void of hours rounded off into moments that were over before you knew it.

October 21st, Lonely people shouldn't be left to contemplation, it never ends well.

November 19th, As they prayed for him I stood and watched

December 7th, A Christmas tree is a lot like a penis, no one wants a small one.

December 19th, It hurts so I drive. I drive to distract, to leave behind.  Monotonous enough to feel productive.  I drive to pass by to fool myself into my self prescribed daily recommended dosage of decay. It's hard reading the words. You can see them in their blinding pain, endless pictures worth all the novels in the world. You can hover over them and torture yourself with them. to be so practiced in the art of self preservation you conveniently left the madly in love for greener pastures.

December 31st, If Paris is the city of the world than London is the city of the universe.

March 8th, New York, its like Sodom and Gomorrah with a subway.

April 26th, Lutherans don't worship with the bible in front of them

May 1st, Only in grief, void of anger and resentment can one know truth.

May 11th, Your challenges this year won't be at your placement, they will be with your identity.

May 12th, Nothing on this list will be what you need, this is not a list that by ticking the boxes will make this year any easier, these are the obvious and no so obvious things you might want.  Pack your patience, not the patience for the language barriers or the cultural barriers, you packed those the day you said yes.  Pack the patience for yourself, for when times are hard and you want nothing more than to be home.  Pack the patience to know that you will be alone, despite this ability to connect with anyone at anytime, you will be alone and away from the people that know your subtle needs that your new friends will never be able to pick up on.  Pack knowing that no matter what you pack in your two suitcases, you didn't bring and can't bring everything you want.  Not the clothes, not the pictures, or that special present that is too strangely shaped to pack neatly will aid you.  But the smells, the air, the sounds which are more your real comforts than your having your favorite shirt or pair of shoes.  You can't bring your familiarity of life, that doesn't fit in your bag.   Your clothes will stop smelling of home they will wrinkle and fold differently, your cologne and perfume will never be what it was before the flight.  You'll realize that the pictures hurt just as much as they help you, those hand written notes and letters, with those warm memories will give you strength but not enough most days and leave you colder than any cold day.  But pack knowing that the, "it's just a year" mentality is in fact so much more than a year.  It's your life.  Your dreams, however much a part this is of those dreams will be raw and at times will feel the farthest thing away from your dreams.  You will be lost more hours than you have days in your year of service.  The essence of this year will not hit you until you are home again and realize you could have, and should have done somethings differently.  But at the end of it all know that you packed exactly what you needed to pack.  The struggles you will have will be the ones that give you answers that you hoped this year would be able to answer.  And know that you will be more complete from having an imperfect and incomplete packing list despite having ticked all the boxes on the list.
Also buy a rail card. You def need one of those.

May 17th, well emotion is a kind of power isn't it?  I'd say it's a burden at times to be emotional but someone has to be the one who feels deeply.  I like knowing that I can feel others that way and not need words to know those feelings.

May 18th, There is such a goodness in crying.  You never feel better than after a good cry.  The world for however small a second seems lifted from your shoulders and you feel what real peace feels like for just a moment.

May 19th, I think we see each other as forever blank slates.

May 20th, We are forever attached to people, more so than we wish we were at times, and more so than those seemingly extrovert peoples, but we love that we are forever committed to those we care about because they fuel us.

May 29th, Morgan Freeman titty sprinkles Batman!

June 25th, It's amazing how something as simple as an oak tree can remind you of home.

July 2nd, life is like construction there is no such thing as a perfect job.

July 22nd You can't pack the things you wish you could, the people that touch our lives.  But the great thing about us as humans is we save a little piece of each person we meet wether we know it or not.

July 29th, So he stands arms crossed in the corner, a small smirk in the corner of his lips, watching the ones he loves, tending the flock, feeling never more complete than now.

Monday 14 July 2014

Lost in Winter

He slurs his words as he spoke, it was starting to snow.  The sky was backdropped in a sea of black for miles on end with only the sporadic street lit pavement as vantage points.  They stuck out like stationary fireflies along the road.  He didn't need them despite the lack of sobriety, he knew this road all too well.  His long shuffle alone in the cold familiar dark was accompanied only by the hot breath that escaped his chest; which was lost to the ice riddled air in between his incoherent conversations to nobody.  Even the occasionally wiz of passerby cars cutting through the black as they whipped their way home went altogether unnoticed in his vapid dialog with the dark.   He talked endlessly, staggering his words through a tongue that couldn't keep up with his jack rabbit of a mind.  It was then that he lurched over, hands drawn to his knees, a hard dry heave that sprung from the pit of his chest was the lone culprit to his abrupt stop.  He turned slightly as if to address and continue on speaking with his absent companion but instead of a monolog of a boozy bourbon humdrum speech, a short shriek dribbled from his mouth as a hot cloud oozed up from his mouth.  Then in an instantaneous switch like from white to black or from night to day his mindless ramble to his nobody accomplice that had stopped mid mumble now became a full frontal assault as he swung a hardened fist in the direction of his would-be partner.  Now violently swinging his arms he looked for the knockout punch.  Seemingly there was no reason for this solitary act of aggression but he whiffed clumsily with his left hook misses his target completely.  He swung again, a devastating body shot that nobody but the black air around him could feel, he staggered forward now, his equilibrium lost. The street lamp played tricks on him as white snow confetti danced down through the light.  He stumbled, trying to make contact, swinging again only more widely and out of pace. The firm pavement soaked with fresh powder, starts to slush between his shoes that were sliding and stumbling along what felt like soggy sandpaper.  It is then he trips and falls face first into slush hardly breaking his fall, he rolls onto his back and looks up blindingly into the halogen lamp some twenty feet up into the air.  He rocks himself up, and now trying to catch his absent attacker off guard, he throws his fist again blindly as his vision tries to catch up.  Again he staggers.  He fumbles.  He falls.  Crashing forward into the wooden railing that separates the pavement from the ledge, he breaks through the deadwood beam as he soars over the edge into the darkness, gravity pulling him down.  He crashes into the water cracking through the thin layer of ice, sobering him instantly.  The air escapes him, leaving his body empty as he continues to sink.

We still got time- 
well we still had time, once upon a dream...

You were my jukebox hero, my saving grace, the so right to my so many wrongs.  Why'd you have to go and leave, to follow in Winter's footsteps?

 - But I've been grounded hard from my long flight into oblivion.

The water dances around his hair

I thought once of better times, of happier times in your arms...
how silly a thought. 

He kicks up trying to surface, but he continues to sink

Yesterday I came to see you resting by the river, you were hypnotized in your trance. Frozen to time.
I wonder what I thought would change after all this time. 


His once protective coat that shielded him from the cold now sucks him down with each vainful attempt to push up

she fell through the ice, how were we to know?  You always blamed yourself for it.

I can't take your empty eyes anymore... 
Now drift softly into my melancholy as I push you further into your infant glassy-eyed state of trauma.  

The bubbles are rocketing out from his mouth as they break free from the stratosphere

Our baby's gone lost to the winter for which we named her. 

Instinctively he flapped his arms heavily, trying to propel himself out

but I was gone too, 
I was lost to you forever the moment we lost her.  But the truth was I never stopped loving you
you were the one that stopped.

We buried our love in Winter's grave.  Nothing really matters - and you just sit and cry anyway. 

My cancerous words dropped like bombs, the pitter patter of word diarrhea beat against your brow and their pain washed away any feeling that was left inside you. 

The tide is starting to rise as I drowned in a sea of our memories. 

  They say their are beacons for lost ships.  I am so far lost now the only light is at the bottom.  
It's getting hard to breath now.     

He sucks in water. Needles digging into his wet water-logged skin. 


Now these are just the uncensored thoughts 
of an old man
lost in the bottle
of his own inactive destructivity 
prolonged by the mortified gratitude 
of the numbing miracle elixir that covers up the things I never had the heart to say. 

I watched you fade away into your own darkness
never to resurface, never to try again 

I can't blame you for choice 
she was our first, our only
but you were my first and my only 
doesn't that mean anything?

I hoped to see you one day 
after all this
maybe I will

He thrusts up trying to continue on, only to fall again, drifting further down.
He gasps for air in the vacuum of black water

It's cold.
I am not shivering.
I'm beginning to like the dark.