Her Cashmere Coat

It stuck to her, to her form, in all the ways you wouldn’t expect a cashmere coat doing so. Following the lines that would not usually be followed. Along the shoulder blades and covering the collarbones, the top button fixing tight to her chin.

She looked at me impishly, with the chilled wind blowing through the strands of her fringe. With a posture slightly cowered forward as if she were cuddling a hot water bottle onto her belly while standing.

Turning and leaving footprints in the snow, she left little size seven boot marks.

That was the first memory I have of her, of the one that means the most.

The innocent

Innocence is something we never discuss, as a society, as a nation, as families, or even as individuals. We don’t say to others how important it can be. Maybe because we lose it so soon, never understanding what we have lost or what we have to protect with our youth. Our modern world doesn’t have any room to allow our innocence. It must be stolen in sacrifice for acceptance. Given to others, feed for their modern sensibilities, their depravity; their guilt.

Youth is essentially promise, opportunity, time and of course innocence. Vampires lurk to steal all of it, suck it away and consume it like a snack, never satisfied, they crave forever more.

Devils of desire, mindless beings of passion.

Purity they can never recover, for others they seek whatever they can. The youth are the innocent, the pure. Merely fodder to the mindless, the passions, the zombies; the slaves.

Ostracise Sméagol, for he is single minded in his pursuit. What he holds precious is single and circular. Never ending and consuming. The ring is lost and he will enter the darkest of caves forever, in the hope of just another glimpse.

My Queen

My queen sitting on her throne, head down, in a foreign place.

Life can’t be that hard being a queen.

Like all queens before her, stubborn and brave, she dreams

She rules from a distance, behind those ‘bangs’ which fall on her face as yellow drop-down curtains.

With fine lines under her bum, the fingerprints of her thighs. And baby toes so gooey, wriggling when touched.

Light is easy to find in her cloudy eyes.

She learns to see in herself what he sees.

Her festering wounds

She dipped her toes in the water, but ran away after realising it was cold.

Her gasps,

Another idealization of love, leaving her and disappearing,

Still blinded to her own festering wounds.

The secret moment

When blowing up a balloon, excitement running rampant.

“I can’t wait to play ping-pong with it” she says.

“I’m giving mine to my mother when she picks me up,” another second grader exclaims muttering.

Time goes by blowing, with breathlessness and dizziness defeated by strict perseverance.

Exerted, jaws aching.

Eyes pressurized, like that of the balloons ever expanding.

Both balloons pop.

Faces splashed with its own slobber.

Surprise reflexes immediately all encompassing.

On the verge of tears from freight.

They recollect and acknowledge the other.

They succumb to laughter.

And looking into each others eyes, knowing this is their secret to keep.

 

 

*I would like to acknowledge that the beautiful image is not my own.

The Idea Bank: Safety Deposit Box I

Caffeine seeping into my veins, bringing with it the morning kick-start for the heart. Why am I drinking coffee? I don’t really require a rev up. Coffee fills the stomach, fending away tummy grumbles and the feeling of ’emptiness’. Practicing intermittent fasting does this to you. It continuously leaves you wondering whether you are or aren’t hungry. Is it hunger or just me thinking its hunger?

Today will be filled with contemplation. I will fill today with contemplation. Always too many things to ponder and consider, to keep one step ahead of the rest, one step ahead of myself. The internal battle between the expectations of my life and of life itself raging on. As if I am the clairvoyant of my own life, predicting what lies just past my own line of sight.

My ex-girlfriend arrives back, walking back into my life with complexity. How do you sacrifice yourself for others? How do you allow yourself to wear masks, concealing your intentions from the ones you want to open up to most? How do you endlessly hurt yourself and close yourself off the way that you do?

King Louis XIV, the Sun King, was one emboldened, visionary man. Bending for others but never breaking. To live without judgement of circumstance is the true lesson he had to teach. How does the noblest of kings treat a peasant with the same sincerity and wholeheartedness as he does his courtiers? Did this empathetic nature make him he noblest of kings?

Are trees happier when they sway in the wind as opposed to standing cemented?

A Tribute to Hermann Hesse

“Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously.”

 After turning the final page, after reading the final page of the fifth Hermann Hesse book I have finished, I found myself fuzzy. Like in all his other published titles, I found myself fuzzy. He places me in someone else’s shoes to such a degree, that when I am finally required to take the shoe off, I look down to see a foot that is not my own.

Narcissus and Goldmund was a book, similar to Steppenwolf, that I saw myself in. While reading it with my night light on, my person not only cast a shadow on its pages, but also in its pages, in its story.

I want to discuss a quote from this book, the one written above.

This quote came from the mouth of Goldmund, a romantic character, a wanderer, living in a world like my own in which the lines between him and his surroundings are ever dissolving.

The quote above depicts Goldmund in a nutshell. It depicts the person I strive to become.

Living in a world of giving. Influencing those around you in the purest way only you can. Each person has their own capabilities and blessings they can offer everybody around them. Each person has something they can teach, inspire by. When you offer and give this willingly, without expectation nor greed, not possessing a feeling that you deserve repayment for the act, people will then gravitate.

People will become transfixed, encapsulated, shrouding you in romantic souvenirs. Attempting to hold on to the romanticism, joy and perception you have distilled into their lives. People will begin to hold on to you for that romanticism, joy and perception you have yet to distill in their lives. You, you like Goldmund must stay focused on your capabilities, being the purest you you can be, learning the most you can, teaching the most you can.

Boundless love is only found between two that stay focused on their own capabilities. Whilst offering each other all they willingly can, without expectation nor greed, while not possessing a feeling that they deserve payment from the other for their acts. A boundless love shared between two givers. Boundless love that doesn’t require for one to move on. Boundless love that realizes that learning and teaching each other is giving to each other, loving each other.

The Art of Making Decisions

Turning to-and-fro, like a spectator’s head at a day of tennis.

Do their necks get as sore as my mind does while I search for the direction to turn?

Life decisions are important, important life decisions a more important.

 

With each point in tennis, there is a celebration from the winner.

Spectators stare, eyes locked on the victor.

Spectators stare, forgetting the opponent for only a moment.

Thirty-Love.

The umpire delivers a shrill through his moustache.

Quiet please, no clapping.

 

Effective life decisions cannot be made looking from either players perspective.

Perspectives should not be compared.

Left or right is not important.

The player in the red shirt or his opponent wearing trendy looking Nike shoes, is null and void.

It is about the tennis, the game.

 

Life decisions, if productive and undistracted, can only be made as an umpire.

With a distance or separation from the result, one only an umpires has.

Spectators cheer, spectators are left or right, spectators like Nike’s.

Umpires watch, umpires are the game.

Relationships: when the wheels fall off

Being isolated and truly lonely, you turn on yourself and everyone you love and could love. It’s the sense of losing all hope. People do not need you at the point in time you need them most. To receive anything, the way a starving man needs anything edible within his belly. Deep emotions, inner turmoil fighting in hand to hand combat with your thoughts. The deep insecurities are sometimes too deep and cold to swim in.

‘How can I transform myself into a fish to swim to an underwater home? No, I do not belong down there. I need the sun and a breeze.’

Your lady is not by your side, who is she sided next to? If you want to be with someone wouldn’t you just be with them? Life is never sweet for long. The bitterness of sacrifice leaves an aftertaste in the mouth only the brave can handle. It is a taste which is as sharp as the spade which digs the hole for you to lie in. The hole too dark to see out of. The person you are entrusted to hopefully stops to realize the damage they are doing while digging, sweat on brow, spade in hand. One person’s everything can be another’s nothing.

I think those that matter most, are not aware of their value.