Brown, and the Blues

When you're depressed, it helps to lean your head on your arm and stare into space.

If you're unusually depressed, you may have to change arms.

Vicissitude

"Life can't be controlled.
It changes in the blink of an eye...
Sometimes, the things that we can't change
end up changing us."

Abyss

Where do you draw the line between a dream and a nightmare?
Can you identify the point where one ends and the other begins?

The dream is good and the feeling is one of pure joy, with everything going the way you always hoped. The touch seems real and the happiness you feel is unbound, overwhelming…surreal. For a moment, you step away from the person that is you in your dream, and simply observe. You know it’s just a story that’s unfolding in front of you…that it isn’t true…that it’s got to be some waking thought that has percolated into this illusion…but for that one infinite moment, you almost believe.

You wake up, with flashes of the dream still vivid in your mind…but what you remember most, is the way you had felt, which only magnifies the loneliness you feel now. It awakens the void within you, which exists in the real world, where the players, having departed, will never return to fill. You realize what you’re missing, a hundred times over, and with a degree of despondency, recognize that you can’t control or keep the players in real life, any more than you can, in your dream.

Maybe this is where the dream ends and the nightmare begins. When you wake up. To have touched elation, to have tasted desire, and to have seen it dissipate when your eyelids flew open. To perceive the depths of the abyss you’re helplessly falling into, and to know that in your waking hours, the closest you can come to living the dream, is by dreaming wide awake.

Crash and Burn

"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume."

Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene VI

Identity

“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”

- Bob Dylan

 I give you, Frank Sinatra. 'Why try to change me now'

...and a reminder, that
someone out there is happy to have you just the way you are.

Metamorphosis

Growing up. It implies a continuous augmentation of wisdom and understanding.

But, seriously?

As children, we knew exactly what we wanted, and how to ask for it. And we did too, without hesitation. Even before we learned to talk, we managed to make ourselves perfectly understood. When we wanted affection, we stretched out our hands for a hug, or pressed our face close to another’s, to feel warm. Such implicit belief that we would be taken care of…would be loved, no matter what.

And then, we grew up. And suddenly, all the languages we’d learned couldn't help us say what we really needed to say, or even ask for what we wanted…that, considering we even knew what we wanted. We learned to wear masks to make others believe that we were perfectly alright on our own, and that hey, we actually liked it this way! But on the inside, we still desired to be loved, to be held, and to be accepted for ourselves. We built walls…

Maybe we need to go back to being kids. Maybe we need to go back to trusting the world at large, fearless of the consequences. Maybe we need to realize that people weren’t meant to read minds; that we need to get vocal, at some point. And finally, we need to understand that walls isolate, rather than protect. And that they only block our view to the beauty that is around, to the possibilities…

And that communication is all it takes to bridge the gap between who we used to be, and who we are now.

Another Place, Another Time

Another voyage around the sun

And yet my life did pause,

At that place where the sun shone brightest

After which the light was lost.

Arrested in another time

A still frame in my mind…

When forever was a promise to keep

And friendship was sublime.

It’s been a year of sunrises,

But the sunshine stayed behind

At that moment when dreams awakened,

Another place, another time.

Desire

In those hazy, nebulous spaces between sleep and wakefulness, between dreams and reality, lies a secret place where our deepest desires come so close to the surface, that we can almost reach out and touch them.

Indulgence

There’s something to be said about having too much of a good thing…

How do we know when to stop? How do we recognize that point when something stops being good, and the indulgent sweetness starts leaving a bad taste in the mouth?

Because, most of the time, we don’t. And by the time we do, it’s usually too late.