The city

I feel empty. Like some kind of receptacle through which fly fleeting memories of moments long gone. I feel disorientated. Walking towards no clear goal, walking in straight lines down boulevards of unknown names. Daytime spent in the illusion of discovery; nights dwelling in the painful drool of what is no longer, gasping for the bleakest signal of human contact, waiting on what never comes, never saves me from myself. That is all I have now. And now even that begins to look at me with disgust in the mirror. That is all I know. And now like a rotten fruit, its very thought is of the vilest nature to me.

All I need is the smallest encounter. Even the most insignificant and the least edifying conversation seems like some golden oasis I desperately wait for. But I can't even walk towards it. The city is a foe. Anonymous I am, anonymous I will stay, until the past resurges in a concrete form to authentify discovery. With no footing, I cannot step through this muck, to the other side of the sewer that some call a road.

I am now of here, but I am not here. I exist, but yet I am invisible. I am a number but not a person. I am not waiting for them to come to me, but some kind of bridge. There is no bridge for now.

Being a number is not enough. That is all that is expected from me. And how does this work?

Red

The Mountain Top

Around 60 years ago from the heights of a stage, above some unconditional believers, a young preacher would say some words. Now it wasn't that long of a preach, no the preacher made a short speech. But even so those few words that, the preacher said on that heated April night, would go down forever in the scriptures of history. He stood there and yet in front of some amazed spectators he was unlike himself, he shivered and his nerves consumed him.
He stood on top of that mountain, and said that he had seen the promised land there, that he had heard the voice of the almighty himself. He said that the voice of the almighty called upon us to follow him to the top of the tall mountain, through the white blistering snows, through the rocky path until the green grasses of the valley of the promised land. The preacher shook and quivered, it was as if god had took control of his spirit and through him, through the young preacher from Georgia he had pronounced his final message. At the end of the speech the preacher collapsed, fell into his chair as if his mission was accomplished, and it actually was for the next morning God opened the gates of heaven to receive him.

Since that hated April night back in the year of 1968, not a lot has changed frankly at least for the better in my point of view. For you see at least in the times of the preacher people had hope, people believed that a new day was to come. And today in this superficial society we have forgotten the values that made that young preacher walk, that made that young preacher speak out, and fight for what he believed in. It's as if today we had gave up in some sorts the fight, at least the real fight. We think that our little personal fights are important and we let those little fights take over. We watch from our ivory towers, through out tainted glasses and in our grandiose cars the fire surrounding us. And all falls, and all falls, into the sea.
Everything around us crumbles and yet I stand here and watch. The day the preacher died, thousands went to the streets, thousands with fire had the idea to bring down the system, they burnt, they brunt, only to awake up surrounded by the ashes of their fire, not knowing why they had set the fire in the first place. They awoke and forgot why they were fighting, why they had fought and all went back to normal. Yes throughout years the preacher had died in vain, all had the memory of him none really did know what to with that memory. And so years went by and those that had once walked with the preacher forgot too, they still walked, but not knowing why. And all fell, and fell, into the sea.
Clouds of greed, and of selfishness had covered the mountain top, for us to see it no more. So we where born and lived thinking that all was perfectly normal, we lived our lives thinking about seconds, minutes and hours. Those that remember that great ideal, those that could still see the shine of the mountain top in their heads, tried to hide behind their material possessions , their big cars and houses, their money. And all falls, and all falls, into the sea.
We stood here and watched our prophets die.

So today in these dark times, times of despair in the winter of our hardship. Let us remember the wise words of once upon a time a young preacher who called upon a generation to leave their place of comfort and pleasure, and give in all of their material love trade it for truth. He said that instead of material riches what we needed was truth, instead of good intentions, he asked "give me justice" and rather then inflexible walls and tinted mirrors give me love. For some the call that resonated from the top of the marshes of Washington is completely and entirely bound to death. Many do not catch the universal grasp of the image that the young preacher left behind, for many he is but a leader of his people, a leader limited to his situation and captive of circumstances. For some believe that the young preacher's message was and is more important to some of us then the rest of us, they be wrong. Yes the preacher was a black man, but his message had no colour, and we must not enslave his message. Today we do have a black man at the head of the preacher's fatherland, that even accomplished does not make his message moribund.
For today, the long winding road that leads to the promised land is still shaded by the shadows of doubt. Yes things have changed since the preacher gave his final speech from which years separate us. We keep our looks focused on the big lights that now shine on a once dark conner, we are amazed and we stall in front of these shining lights. But as one little conner of the scene grabs our attention the vast darkness that is the rest of the scene escapes our view.
That young preacher is my hero, I believe that his voice lives on, and in his voice lives the voices of so many others, for what I mean is that what that young preacher tried to do during his stay on earth was to continue the work of so many that sacrificed their destiny and blood to accomplish. The names of those are many, some known, some not. The eternal fight between reason and fanaticism, between truth and lust, on goes. The valley shall descend, only when man wins that fight, the inner fight that defines mankind, the fight between the greater man and the inner beast. And today it looks like more then ever, we must hear and follow the call of the young preacher, we might not slay the beast in one, two, five or maybe even ten generations, but when we do the flowing black water torrent that poisons our fertile land shall dry-up.
We must slay the inner beast. Do you hear the bell toll?
Sky

Kier

This post is dedicated to my brother Kieran...

Hey Kid it's been a long time, days pass, nights too, and yet I can not the distinguish light from dark. It's been a long away down this twisty road since the last time we saw each other. Hasn't it now? Sometimes at night I stay awake and just think how this situation is just so wrong, and how hate can just destroy paradises from the inside out. I guess it was just destiny or something like that right? or was it?

Deep down it just feels so wrong, right down in my heart I just can't fix this leak, and I just have to get this dirt off my shoulders, I have to get this off my conscience.So just sit back kid and watch what's going down.

Remember that one night, it was some time ago, up in the north. Remember when we sat and watched the great show, the northern lights. If you don't, I do remember this. I remember that throughout that harsh winter, the coldest winter I went through, the winter of our hardship. I guess that, that winter was just some sort of a metaphor right? It was just the start, the start of a long lonely track, a track throughout which our road divided in two. It was like we where walking on the same road, but even so we didn't see each other, or if we saw each other's hardship we watched in vain. Like the time we watch our dog die and yet we could do nothing to stop his pain, we just watched and finally, he got the easy way out.
Sometimes I wish I'd have a needle, to put an end to this everlasting winter. I guess it just ain't that easy!
I do remember those nights in Sioux Lookout, when we would stay up and wonder if tomorrow anything would change.I remember those grey skies, and how sometimes we would just fade away because living in reality was just not worth it. Was it? It's been a long time since then, and people say we aren't the same, that we are different now, and bro I don't believe in that B.S. A long time has passed since then kid, a long time but for sure we aren't that different, we aren't aliens as they say, and even if there's been some bumps on the way here, one thing is for sure we never looked back. Did we?
I remember the time we where bitten by the frost of the burning snow, by the red of the winter. I remember you where the one that helped me back up, not mom or dad, not any friend or any other person, you. During this period of my life, I look back often on that cold winter, I look back on the time we stayed at the reserve, I guess that it was the period that made us who we are today.
But the problem is that, its images still haunt me like I've got ghosts flowing over my head and some times they even inhabit my mind. I probably believe that its now more then ever that I have to look back upon my past, and try to understand why I am, the way I am. But somewhere down the road, somewhere on this path I screwed up bad, somewhere I left you, I let you down, didn't I?
I guess that why sometimes you get so cool on me, I guess that's why sometimes you don't believe I'm your brother anymore. And man how the hell, do you want me to say, that you've got it all wrong? What brother would rather try to capture grace, instead of giving a hand to his own brother? But I guess thats just the essence of live, I guess I'm just some sort of pawn, that life uses, and abuses of.
But that would be too easy, to say that my actions are controlled by someone other then myself, by some supernatural force, that utopia is the refuge of the weak, and I can't be weak in your eyes!

I guess all started when we left Picton, on that sunny June day, remember how for once in our lives we where happy in Picton, and then like everything that was nice in our lives, it floated away like a cool breeze right? Remember how once we believe, we belonged somewhere and then we took away, and we had to start all over again. Remember how those trips from the great north to the south where long, remember? But never where they as long as the trip that started, the day the winter started in Sioux Lookout. I guess that winter started and it still has to end. That's why many times, when I have a good situation in front of me, around me, I just fuck up everything. I guess, I just can't stand the cold.
Since the time, I last saw you, I've last been with you as your equal, as your brother, the day that car pulled out of the driveway, a lot of things have happened. But even that has been like a mirage, nothing has been real, because the only thing in my life I had, that was real, was you, and I guess I just wasn't fit to have it. Never did, and probably I will never have, a friendship so true, and so pure as the one we had. And no its not just because your my brother. I guess that through the tangles of this tricky winter I did learn somethings. I learned that finally there will never be peace, that probably we will never find peace, on this earth, in our living.

Probably we will never see each other the same way again, will we? But I guess that if this message has a mission, it is that one, to bring peace once again in this family, sometimes I wonder where are were the people we need? When we need them the most. Where are they when we need them? They're never there are they? I guess your asking yourself exactly the same question about me aren't you now brother, tell the truth. The fact is that I'm writing here the notion that I believe in the most, but also the notion I betrayed. At least if I write it down here it will not inhabit my thoughts anymore. The fact is that I believed in you, probably more then I believed in myself, this of course I told you already. Now when I left, I felt that somehow I was becoming the monster that lived in my closet through my childhood, the reason why I kept my light on at night. But this time there was no light for you.

I guess that I want, you to know all of this because, life can be fast, and I don't want to go into the soil of earth, without having said, these things. Brother, just know that even if I'm not there next to you, even if I'm not there throughout your hardship, if I'm not there to protect you, even if I'm not there to be your armour, I'm still here. And listen do not rejoice every time you hear my voice, because the day will come, when no walls or barriers will be between us, the day will come when they will fall, crumble at our feet, and no more will stupid shit, keep us apart. One day we will find peace somehow, somewhere we will find it, and if they don't want peace we will impose peace once and for all on this broken family, and we will fix the holes of this broken house. And Kier if everything around you falls, and everyone you ever believed in gives up on you. Remember if your world crumbles at your feet, you will find refuge beside me, I will be there. I know that in the past I haven't be that brother, I wasn't the brother you needed. But now that brother is here, and we will put an end to that winter that started in the snows of the northern woods.

I remember one night we looked up, to the sky. One night we looked up to the sky, and we saw the northern lights, even though the cold of the winter surrounded us, all we felt was heat.

Sky

Build stuff and nuke it

Books, television, music, painting, drawing, building, cars, politics, sports: a man's got to do what a man's got to do. To turn this damn section of our brain into something constructive. Even better if you throw destruction somewhere in the equation. Because if there's two things a man likes, it's construction and destruction.

Oh how sorrowful it is that we are eternally tied to the tentacles of occupation. Men thrive to reach higher levels of whatever all in the goal to not be left without anything. More so, men seek to be never left alone with their own thoughts.

For what unpleasurable things men will find when they are confronted to the depths of their minds. Eternally running away from or what they can't understand, because incomprehension inevitably breeds frustration and hatred. Men drown their misery in alcohol, bury their shame in great works and jump into cars to run away from what they do not comprehend.
There lies dormant within each of us the silky threads of the spider. In eternal darkness the threads bind, wind and un-wind, forever and ever and ever, and these are mechanisms men fear so much. These same threads are held together by the very subtle balance of what composes a man's mind.

No one wants to truly be aware of this subtle balance we all try to keep up with our grandiose illusions, forever hoping the thread doesn't snap under the weight of some inconvenient truth. Consciousness is thereby punishing, as we are aware of every step we take down the ladder, every move we make through the jungle and those great jumps into the insanity that is our hidden mind.

Clouds and fairytales; some sort of pillar of life that we grab on and from which we kick all those who look behind.
We are animals and we are gods. We stand on this thin line: fall over and you're an animal. Try to fall over the other side and you'll get a wall in your face. And when those who spent their lives looking after some final illusion find none, they split in two: one side falls over and turns into an animal, the other jumps over the wall.

I'm sorry that I'm always such a pessimist, but all this fucking constant anxiety is getting me down.
Red

Changes

Well, I guess I always get back to this point. I try and escape and run away from all of this. I guess that it just comes back stronger every single time. I try just to live my life, not to think too much; I guess that just the way we live. And yet all these ideas just pop right back up and take control of my head, and I just can't do anything.

Somewhere on my path, I lost myself, and since then I just can't find my way home. I think I know where my home is, but I just can't find it. I walk, probably like the majority of us, on a strange road. I don't know where it leads, I just keep on walking. And I tell you now, this road is frustrating me, and I'm sick of it.

At some point in ones life, we all get to a crossroad, we all get to the end of a road, of a path and we start to question the path and all the things that lay on it, all the decisions we made on that path. I guess the time is upon me to change roads and to change my old ways. That's probably the big problem of this world; that we always talk as a community about change, and how things are so wrong and yet we do nothing to change our ways. Yes it's true, change must first come from the inside, from ourselves. But the question I have today that is slowly killing my mind, taking control of my spirit, is change. Has change ever been more than some words on a blog, or part of a speech? You really want to know what I think? I think that change has never really been more than an assumption, that with words the world will change, and that with time all will change.

That's why tonight I say bye bye, thanks but no thanks to that assumption. No, nothing has changed. Some of it is human nature, that's probably true; maybe it just is human nature. I think it's something that yes, it sure is part of human nature, the fact that words are lighter than acts, and the fact that human beings just don't have the motivation, or just maybe because motivation like everything in this world fades away, with time.

For too long, I've been too sure, for too long I had the idea, that inside my life there was only me. For too long I was an egoist, not thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the present, and not realizing that maybe there was something more to all of this. Sometimes I have flashbacks. Yeah , I knew real people that wanted to change the world, like Mike; well now, Mike's dead, gone forever, his body washed away by the deep darkness of reality. I remember being told that MLK talked about the promised land and never got there because of two bullets and a gun. I know Jesus changed the world in some, but our sins crucified him, and our sins will crucify the Jesus to come and all the other men who bring change. I know my sins crucified them, do you?

During all of history, people rised, called for change, believed. Yet no matter how much praise we have for them, there is one reality, the reality of failure that describes them all. Yeah Woodstock. Yeah the 1960's. Yeah Marx, and yeah, Malcolm X. Oh and poor Müntzer, the one who believed that a kingdom of heaven on earth was about to come; nothing is about to come.

Look over there, do you see that woman, that old lady, living out of bags? And there, do you see those poor men, drinking, trying to forget that when they get home they will have no way of feeding their family? Yeah look over there, that poor thing is a woman, society made her go crazy, inside her lays a baby, just another kid that will never get to be the man he wants to be. Once, a man told me "if you put your head to it you can be anything you want to be". Bullshit; I'm frank all this here isn't anything you'll find in a Newsweek tribune or in Times magazine, all this here you'll never find in a politician's speech. But that's the way it is... isn't it, that's just the way it is.

Well I'm sick of that way, I'm sick of not being capable of changing my damn ways. I'm sick of not being there for you brother. And when I say brother, I mean many things. It's time for society to notice, that we're all in this together. I was born in Canada, you in Portugal, maybe you in France, in China, Holland, India etc... anywhere, everywhere, the thing is the place you were born is just random. I could have been born in Somalia, or maybe in Afghanistan, it's just pure chance to have been born here in a place like this one. The walls we put up in between us are invisible, they don't really exist, they're part of our imagination, they're just there to protect us because we're scared of our differences. No this isn't anything like the stuff you'll find on CNN or in Newsweek is it? And yet we know that all of this is true, all these things happen to be facts. We know that all of these things are facts, and we stand here, wait and watch, as day after day stuff just gets more screwed up. 130 dead in Africa this week, racism rising in America. For if there is a thing I understood lately, it's probably that our happiness may not lay in the fate of others, but one thing is sure my fate is linked to yours, be you in Africa or in Asia. I don't even know and still your acts affect me, and my acts affect you, and we have an obligation to one another. All the prophets say that we are all brothers, equal under the glimpse of God above. I might not have much in common with you, but I do have one thing, my future.

And yet I stand here, and I write, and yet the world still churns on wrongly. People still die of curable diseases, people still die because of those invisible walls and of those made up differences. And yet we know the facts, we talk about change. The problem is that we talk about it but we don't reallu trust it, we don't really believe in it. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and the day never comes, it just stays dark: lights out people. Yeah, that's why I'm getting the hell off this road... and this change is dedicated to three people, to my two brothers (Kieran and Theo: no matter how far you are away from me tonight I hope that through the words of this message the kilometres shall disappear) and the 3rd one I have yet to find. I'll get to that one some day.

And yet I see no changes. I guess it's up to us to make the changes and words reality; I guess we can't ask anything from any one, we've got to flip these to heaven by ourselves. Yeah people, my fight starts here, and until the day I die I promise that I'll never give up this fight. First I'm going to fight myself and open my eyes.

In the morning, the cold smoothly rises; I get up and do my stuff. I walk down my street, head to the train, you know I'm Canadian I guess my genes have let me down (messing around, of course): I get really cold in the morning. And every morning I get to the station. There on a bench lays an old man about 50. Each and every morning, I pass him by and think "who knows, one day, that could be me". Most people might think the same thing when they pass him by, but they just pretend that he doesn't exist... That's the problem, that's society's problem, we just pass by stuff, the problems of others because we've got money, so why would we care ? Well no, for my liberty lays in your liberty, our liberty lays in a more general liberty of all. My happiness lays with yours, and our happiness lives only with global happiness. For the problem of some men in this place is a problem for all. The riots in far away lands of Guinea; yes, that's my problem. The genocide in Darfour; yes, that's my problem.

Here's your international moment of zen

Sky

Left alone in your mind

It's a quiet place, here on the edge of the universe. A place of tranquility and peace away from the turmoil of everyday life. Now, there are no colliding thoughts and emotions, just a certain sense of understanding.

I threw days away in the vague hope of getting nearer to better moments, never thinking that the present could bear equal fruit. There was no peak and no bottom, just the constant flow of trivial affairs.

Is it this easy to accept fate? Can I open up my arms to bring in defeat, just like that? Maybe there will be harder days ahead. Maybe there won't. Maybe defeat is the hardest part of it all and all that is before me now is a flow of bright and hopeful days. Until then.

Until that day. But everything seems so clear now. Maybe I won't have to face that last moment of lucidity. Maybe it's time to give names to that which is ineffable, give them names so that we can be forever and that they may be frozen into eternity.

And now I'm warm all over, back from the palour of rigidity. But what remains is a wake up call back to another reality. The mornings are tough. A few comfortable moments in that half-light before you realise that it's still there.

The twitching, the jerks, the aches, the tension and that nausea, that sense of hopelessness, of eternal isolation. That noise of depression that just can't be ignored.

Now I can't think, can't see, can't hear, can't feel nor exist without that surge of unfamiliar emotions, those inexistant memories, those echoes of a distant world that is clearly not mine. Here I am, a stone in this infinity of rock, yet an isolated alien in this crowd of people.

Tremors bring me back to something that is obviously not eternal but, never the less, is a pain to endure. Some thoughts aren't mine. It seems imagination has now become some incarnation of nemesis set to punish me for my foolish adventures into the realm of unconsciousness. And of course, those delusions. Short lived but truly disturbing. Half awake from intense dreams.

A healthy body for a healthy mind, or vice-versa, I'm not in the state right now to remember correctly. Either way, missing vital parts of your system isn't something that you can easily ignore.
Hence these long weeks (soon to be months?) and this page of lamentation.

There's nothing left in me but this vicious cycle of vile thoughts and a deepening sense of despair. But I know how depression works, and it only lasts for as long as you're convinced you're depressed.

Here and now, people, here and now.

Red

Already there

These past few weeks have been full of revelations on things that trouble a lot of you.

These days, with a world marching ever so quickly to cut its roots off, it is hard to find some sort of sense to ones life. There are those who turn to religion for solace and others who dwell in the miasma of nihilism. I guess when you've given all that freedom of choice to your people you've finally ripped the boundaries off the meaning of life, and so many of us wander aimlessly, looking for some kind of reason.

I was lost in a sea of confusion, wild eyed at these new things floating past me and these things oozing around. I couldn't make sense of my thoughts nor of my speech. I was living some sort of self inflicted schizophrenia. I was fearing for my sanity,  wishing for some sort of return to normality for the time limit had long been passed.

Why did I do this to myself? I came close to a world so different to ours, where the unconscious mind paints the canvas of vision while the conscious one tries to make sense of all these things flung at it. So many great revelations flying at the speed of light through my mind, jumbled up with pure nonsense, chairs, feelings, bananas, cartoons, music, space, breaking out of the doors that were only supposed to be opened while sleeping.

Everytime I do it the world makes a little more sense yet a little less sense. I'm sure I was looking for something that would get me away from this world, this world in which I couldn't find much meaning. I tried to obtain that spiritual revelation that so many had told me about.

And so 16 hours later I am still dumbfounded, slightly handicapped, feeling that my head was decapitated but no pain comes, just no link between my head and my body. I was exasperated, on the verge of tears, tears that begged for the one thing I was trying to escape; solid, boring reality. Boring weekends where my idea of fun is making myself crazy.

Suddenly I understood the whole point of it. I was not ready to let go of this sweet reality. I wasn't truly part of those people who had no refuge in reality. This wasn't for me, or at least I couldn't stand it for that long. It wasn't a holiday, it was a waking dream, but dreams are sometimes strange, and you always wake up to barely remembering them. This one made me sick, made me crazy, made me beg for sanity.

In a great rush of hope and awe I saw the greatness of reality and the complexity of the mind, something we shouldn't dwell on too long for it shall never be fully understood. If we were given hands, eyes, noses, mouths and consciousness, it was for a reason, it was to feel this world as it is. The world is a beautiful thing, but some don't have the chance to realise this.

It's up to us to make sense of our own reality. It can be the work of Gods or the work we go to everyday. We should be able to fully enjoy it, for there is so much to give and take in this lifetime.

And I'm going to try something else.

Red