For Neda.
A voice:-
Once strong and sweet with melody,
Now silent,
Not just the voice of one,
But many,
Their song silenced by the few.
Be brave,
Do not falter,
For she will not fade,
Her life and beauty resonate,
She stands now,
No longer on the blood stained streets,
But on the pavement of our minds,
She sings now,
No longer cloistered underground in dark,
But in the brilliant light of six billion hearts,
A voice:-
Once strong and sweet with melody,
Never silent,
If we will sing its song.
—–
I had to write this. I had to write something. I’ve been so moved and affected by the unrest and injustice in Iran. But witnessing the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, even second-hand, is not something I can brush aside and forget. Her passing is something I cannot, and will not forget. Remembering her and all of those who have struggled in the name of lofty words like Freedom and Equality and Justice, is the very least that we can do.
—
Untitled – David Gear
On the shoulders of giants,
With the feet of infants,
We stand,
Watching from afar,
In perpetual dawn,
We lament our lost treasures,
While their dead they mourn,
Unforgivable indifference,
Breeds persuasive malevolence,
Inaction by any other name,
Murder by any other hand,
Casts the same pall shadow,
Across faces forlorn,
We dine on the sacrifice of others,
While their dead they mourn.
–
My good friend Dave wrote this, his current feelings regarding the situation in Iran inspired it and I found it very enjoyable so I’ve posted it here with his permission.
(David Gear is a local W.A. journalist here, but his passion for politics and history will no doubt make him a fantastic feature writer one day. )
With your love, you could feed me.
(Following through on my ‘let’s use lines from songs I am listening to as titles for blog posts’ trend.)
I wake up here, and the first few moments are filled with dark thoughts, uncertainty and a reminder to take deep breaths.
I have forced all this confusion and discord on myself, and I am determined to learn something from it.
But, I am the queen of second guessing myself.
And I am notorious for making my life more difficult then it has to be.
Will these things ever change? I can’t actually say. But at least I am writing. Even if it is just in my journal and letters to people.
Back home I was hardly writing at all. I felt stifiled. I had ideas, I even had the time, but I simply could not do it. Now I can hardly stop myself from writing. It’s like therapy. Forces you to view situations objectively. Helps you to put your actions into perspective. Helps me understand how to express what I feel.
This place is strange, but I could come to call it home. I enjoy it’s atmosphere. There is an element of Carnivale in this town that appeals to me. (I know a few people who’d get a real kick out of it.)
The next time I update this blog, it will be with something more than my minds secret ramblings. It will be with something inspired.
And that is a promise.
You didn’t hunt that strawberry.
A conversation recently held between myself, and my buddy Brock.
“I still have sugar under my fingernails.”
“More evidence.”
“I’m like an ant.”
“An ant that can only eat sugar.”
“Yeah well, you know I’m good for it.”
“Seriously, did we buy anything without sugar? Ok, the milk has no sugar. What else did we buy? Fruit, stolen baked goods?”
“Yeah it’s true.”
There was a slight lull in the conversation here, and then…
“I had to hunt this strawberry.”
“No you didn’t, Brock. You just paid money for it, actually, Mitchell paid money for it. Actually, in reality no one hunted that strawberry, someone just picked it off a bush and then someone else packed it in a punnet, and then we paid money for it.”
“Yeah, but that’s the equivalent of hunting now days.”
And that’s when I stopped eating the strawberry and looked at it and wondered.
This time next week I will literally be touching down on the other side of the world. I will be heading out into a brand new hunting ground. And I am going to have to hunt that Strawberry. I am going to have to be as fast and ruthless as I have ever been in my life. I am going to have to beat every other strawberry hunter to the punnet.
Because if I don’t get that punnet, I might not get to eat the strawberry. Or worse, someone might say to me “You didn’t hunt that strawberry.”
Nightswimming
It’s really quiet now.
I first noticed this quiet the other day, but it’s much more pronounced now.
The other day I put on your sweater and shirt. The ones you had been wearing to go to the shop, and had left discarded on the bed here, in your study. I stood there for a while, in my underwear and your still warm clothes, and looked at your bookshelf. Your house is full of beautiful books. Books I want to read, books I have read, empty books with soft cream pages, and books that aren’t even yours. Then I noticed it, the quiet. It wasn’t just an absence of sound, it was a feeling that permeated everything, as ingrained as the air I breathed. The sort of silence that accompanies absence (A sound I am all too familiar with.) I walked around softly on the balls of my feet on the way back to your bedroom. I took notice of all the little signs of you as I passed and even though I knew it was only a matter of time before this very same quiet took a hold I crawled back into your bed and fell asleep.
Now, here it is again. My attempt to combat this heavy silence? Music of course. I’ve opened up your itunes and scrolled through, and found Nightswimming by R.E.M. The only song by Stipes and Co in your whole music library, and it just happens to be my favorite. It’s not just the melody that I love, which swells and ebbs just as a gentle tide should, it’s the way the words and the voice evoke that feeling of nostalgia so perfectly. Nice choice, if I could only have one R.E.M song, Nightswimming would be it.
Still, this isn’t the sort of silence you get rid of with a pop ballad. Although it does provide a nice soundtrack I suppose…
You should see your place now, the parlor is filled with all sorts of junk. Boxes of linen, screwdriver sets, a sandwich press, an old analog television, a clock. But let’s face it, your house is in need of a clock. It seems so full, you can barely move through the rooms. But it is so very empty. Your absence is overstated, everywhere I look it confronts me. No escaping it. And that’s what makes this quiet different from the other day. The other day, as I snuggled back down beneath the covers, inhaling the smell of you on the sheets I knew you’d be back. Now I don’t know if we’ll ever both be laying in that room on those sheets again. It’s a much more pronounced quiet.
I feel a bit like a voyeur really. I’m noticing all these little things I didn’t see before, for instance; You’ve got writing on your desk, but it’s faded and I can’t make out all the words. You’ve got a really good nail file. You keep a lot of old receipts.
I know for a fact, that eventually you forget the sound of people’s voices, the smell of their skin. I want to try and remember for as long as I can.
No one ever asks how do they? They always ask why.
I am pretty guilty of always asking why too.
I have been asking why a lot today.
And yesterday.
And the day before.
And I recall it was the first thought on my mind after “where” when I woke up on Friday.
But something tells me the how is the more important question. If you ask the how, you attempt an explanation of the whole course of events, and not just the final moment.
So I am going to start asking how. Right now.
But it’s not easy.
Then again, nothing worth doing ever is, right?
Good night, sweet dreams.
Whispered in the night,
In the dark recess of my mind,
Are fears, unconquered,
Of what is known and what is lost,
Fragments of space and time,
Played out like children’s lullabies.
And I am a ghost,
Floating down familiar passage ways,
Watching the process,
Hearing the protests,
But mute to speak my mind.
“Running over the same old ground”
But I’m just walking along,
That ground beneath my feet,
Learning to find strength,
In the eyes of the strangers on the street.
Sometimes what you want,
Is never what you need,
And sometimes what you need,
Is something no one else can provide.
—
I went for a walk last night, after the witching hour and watched the lightning through my father’s old binoculars. There was a storm in the sky and a storm in my head. But even though a thunder storm is frightening, there’s a dangerous beauty about it. I feel like my life’s a bit like a storm at the moment. A lot of uncertainty, but I think it’ll be followed by something as majestic and powerful as the lightning that splits the sky.
Or at least that’s what I hope.
Work.
Right click.
Copy.
Left Click.
Right click.
Paste.
Left Click.
Send.
Left Click.
Add.
Left Click.
OK.
Left Click.
Close.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Oh. Monotony. The most regular of all my work mates.
Reminder
I worry at the bruise upon my arm, and its twin, which rests on the plump flesh of my thigh. My thumb presses into each of them in turn. The result is like a jolt of electricity, an awakening. The pain is all at once sharp and dull, and as I sit on an unmade bed and investigate these purple blemishes on my pale skin, I feel a strange sense of relief. Upon pausing for contemplation I wonder why I am so prone to this sort of behaviour. (And not just me, it happens to everyone.) An ulcer on the inside of my cheek must be prodded at by my tounge, a graze upon my knee must suffer the caress of my fingertips.
It’s a reminder, and this is why I subject myself to it. The sudden flurry of activity from my nociceptors as they carry the simple message of “ouch” from my bruise to my dorsal root ganglion is proof that I am alive. Not just that I am alive, but also that I am awake, and the events that transpired to leave me with these violent marks were not a dream, but a real and very physical occurence. It forces me to confront this fact, and deal with it, instead of shying away from it.
And confront it I will. Every time I apply pressure to my bruises I can remind myself where they came from, how they came to be there. And I can use these reminders to change the way I will approach the rest of my life.
Eventually, the reminders will fade, they will heal. Because it is true what they say, that time heals all wounds. But even when my skin is no longer coloured by them, the memory of them, and the memory of the pain that lingered long after I acquired them, will keep me strong, and remind me not to make the same mistakes as others.
Realizations at the kitchen sink.
I’ve got about 4 hours before I absolutely have to sleep tonight. I made myself a cup of tea with just a smidgen of honey in it. I plugged in my headphones so that the soothing refrain of 90’s rock songs won’t wake my 7 and a half month old nephew and I sat down, with the full intention of working on one of the many assignments I have to do. All of which are overdue. None of which I actually care about.
What do I care about? Quite a lot of things at the moment, but I suppose there are a few things in particular I care about more than others. I was thinking about this earlier, as I washed the dishes from dinner, what is it I care about? Today was a hard day. A very bad day all things considered. I was feeling quite low in spirit, but then as I scrubbed saucepans and baking dishes I resolved to think about the things I care the most about. And it surprises me what those things are.
I care about myself, much more than I ever did previously. Suddenly I have a deep and staunch desire to go and take what I want from life. I have some sort of resolution that I was lacking before, something that grips tightly at my heart and head and buoys me up when I start to sink beneath the raging waters of doubt. I am determined now to achieve the goals I set for myself. The desire is backed by reason, and opportunity and I cannot ignore it.
I care about creating my own happiness and peace of mind. Forging the sort of self-reliance which I have been struggling to attain my whole life, but to date have not quite managed. I don’t want to depend on others. That is not to say that I won’t play the game of give and take, that I won’t turn to others and let others turn to me. It is simply to say, I want to be able to deal with my emotions without that. Because once I can master my emotions, there is nothing in this world which can hold me back.
I care about laughing. As much as I can, I want to laugh until I cry. So that my sides hurt and my breath comes short and sharp to my chest. I care about sharing this laughter with others, and enjoying it in my solitude. I care about facing each day with a smile, and still wearing it as I close my eyes when that day ends.
I care about adaptability. I care about being able to reinvent myself when I need it, being able to cut my losses and start afresh with no regret and no sorrow. I care about letting go. L e t t I n g g o .
I care about feeding my passions. Not letting those things that make me inquisitive and creative fade away. I care about keeping them alive, and keeping myself alive by that act. I want to always seek, always reach, to always ask for answers.
And in learning what I care about, I’ve also learnt what it is I do not care for. I don’t care for callous words, or over-acting. I don’t care for assumptions, and conclusions hastily jumped to. I don’t care for judgement being passed, nor do I care for phony charity, only offered to ease the guilt of the giver.
I don’t care for doubters, and nay-sayers. I don’t care for blockades in my road, I don’t care for fear. I don’t care for lies, inventions of the mind which satisfy some insecure neurosis. I don’t care for demands, or insinuations. I don’t care for safety nets which are full of man size holes.
I don’t care for people who neglect the present in favour of a glorified past or an imagined future. I don’t care for people who don’t have the spine and the dignity to voice their opinion to my face.
But I do care for a lot of things. And I won’t be letting the things I don’t care about put a stop to them.
Superwoman complex.
It happens to everyone right?
You know, you take on more than you can handle, you make promises that you kill yourself trying to keep.
I do it without even noticing. I just get so wrapped up in what I want, I forget to think through the plan about how I’m going to get it.
I can hear an all too familiar voice in my head, (one I used to hear daily), saying “Don’t you think you should set a more reasonable goal? Aren’t you aiming a little high?”
I should. I am.
But I’m one of those people who can never back out of anything. I’ve always felt that it was preferential to crash and burn, rather than bow out gracefully and admit defeat.
So how hard will I have to grit my teeth to pull everything off this time?
I guess we’ll find out soon…
