Frigid winds blow cold. Leaves fall and crumble away. People die and leave only ashes and memories. Darkness comes and leaves but loneliness. Old friends whom you once loved go their own ways. Treasured memories become blurred, hazy, and then are forgotten. These are all beautiful things, to be treasured in and of themselves, not to be despaired over with the silent hope for better days.

The soul may be eternal, but life is limited. We never got to choose what stage of human history we would be born in, nor the family we would grow up with, nor the society that would condition us. We never got to browse and decide our genetic heritage to have perfect eyesight, no predisposition to diseases, and a killer metabolism. We were never asked if we wanted to have fathers who beat us, siblings who fell prey to drug addictions, or a mother who would die giving us life. We never chose pain. Life goes on.

But we do make choices. All day, every day. We continually add to the eternal now and bring about change, slowly nudging the state of all human wisdom toward a greater future. We believe in days of happiness, and blissful love, and a better standard of living for our children. We strive to emulate those whom we admire and hope that something of what we admire in them becomes bred into us so that we can grow. Our legends value courage, wisdom, truth, honor. We exalt those of strong morals and unshakable integrity.

Our bodies confined to the ground, our souls take flight. We create beautiful dreams and inspiring songs. We revel in the worlds of our mind, escaping from the confines of everyday living. We create bonds with others and establish community and communicate with language. We laugh at jokes and weep at tragedy. We idealize the past and simplify values. We are human beings.

And as such, we make mistakes. We indulge in vices. We cause pain and sorrow. We hurt ourselves and others and the natural world around us. We dominate with our strong wills. We wage wars. We kill. We steal. We turn blind eyes. We laugh at misfortune.

Still, we all shiver in the cold and drown in the sea. We are cohabitants of a beautiful world and a common body. We are all connected and we find ways to express the fleeting glimpses of momentary existence in an arbitrary world. We believe in gods, whether their names be Allah or Yahweh or Money or Science. We act upon our intuition and social conditionings. We are all the same people living the same lives and sharing the same experiences over and over again.

I believed, when I was younger, that I was different. I believed that I was smarter and better looking and funnier than everyone else, and that I was born for a great destiny. Now I know that we are all born for the same destiny that meets all living things: death. And that the only thing that makes that destiny great is the singular experience of the journey of life. Death is the ultimate purpose that defines every thought, every spoken word, and every action as significant.

We die in every moment so that we may live. We may not think of it, but our mortality stares us starkly in the eyes from the moment of our birth. We avert our eyes, we try to draw its attention elsewhere, we ignore its presence – and then, slowly but surely, we glance toward it, are intrigued by it, and eventually, meet its gaze. We smile. We understand that death is not to be feared, but welcomed; it is our friend, our mentor. Death is not against us. It does not destroy us. It is not a release, it is not a monster, and it is not an unknown. It is not Other; it is the very essence of who we are.

And so we learn to define ourselves in relation to other things. We observe, compare, and understand. We say, “I am taller than him but shorter than her; I am more inclined to this than they but possess less predilection to such a thing or other.” We distinguish between the physical and the emotional and the spiritual. In relationships to others, we begin to realize that they are in fact all relationships to oneself. We begin to suspect that our relationship with death will more clearly define who we are than any other in our lives.

Then we begin to mature as persons. We question, “Why do I do what I do? Why do I believe this, and respond with cynicism to that? Why am I gifted at the one, and unskilled at the other?” We begin to analyze the narrative of our existence, engaging in the eternal dialectic that has existed since the dawn of human cognizance. We embark on the journey of a dying man, apprentices to the art of life. Just as a writer strives to perfect his work so that every word is significant, we strive to perfect our work. We pare down the unnecessary. We excise what we dislike. We are sculptors, who have been given supplies with which to work, and not everyone is given the same ones. Some mistakes are reparable to some, while fatal to others.

Endlessly, we chip at the stone every day, defining continuously. We learn that careless strokes are unfavorable. We integrate the styles of art we observe others practice. We work and work, always with a vision of the finished product in our mind’s eye. But before we are ever able to set eyes upon that finished product, the statue we worked upon our entire lives crumbles away and leaves only dust. We realize that it was not the end goal that mattered. We are not sad that we did not attain it. Instead, we revel in the moments we spent in its crafting: the hours of frustration, the exasperated confusion, the longing for better tools and more competent help; the moments of bursting joy, the grandeur of the project and dream, the tireless toil and rich sweat of our labors.

We live as journeymen, never attaining the title of Master. And we’re fine with that. It is, after all, only life. We smile, at peace, and sweep the dust away into the wind to make room for others to come in after us to practice their art as well.

We attain perfect simplicity in every moment, by walking with death. We do not attach ourselves too much or become too dependent on people and objects, knowing that at any given time, everything can be taken away from us. We are content to be in the moment, cherishing the paradoxes inherent in existence. We know that there will be a moment, one day, when all moments are one in a blinding realization of all things true, and that moment will be forever, and there will be no more moments after that. We seek to experience that moment in all moments.

We are the masters of our own destinies and pioneers of fate. We are architects of beauty and and soldiers of choice. We are the individual embodiments of the entirety of humanity, with all the eminence and responsibility thereto pertaining. And as such, above all things, we know and regard one truth above all other truths, for it is the core of who and what we are:

Death is beautiful.

idle idolatry fades into incessant wonder
and greatness is defined by a lacking spirit
as we said to our fathers, in days of youth:

“a blissful soul is emptied of desire;
it finds no rest in heights nor low places
and receives the reward of tranquility.”

a thousand years have passed since then
long since those days, ignorance remains -
still he waits for christmas but it never came

raging on, I remember, we continued
walked through the torrentuous day
and swam in defiance of the flood

and from the midst of lies materialized
a new answer, instantaneous infinity,
a completion that dwells within the void

but then he turned and asked of me,
“in the long slumber of winter season
have I been dreaming an eternal dream?”

I think this piece from years ago really captures how I feel right now, though. Maybe I will get back into writing poetry, even if it is utter dredge what I come out with. It’s cathartic.

Leviathan’s Lament

Rising, the troubled waters reach
Screaming, shrieking, grasping for the sky
What divides the sea from the heaven?
Where ends shore and begins ocean?
They seek to usurp the hierarchy of blue
Pulling strength from the vasty deep
To lunge like a whale up to the clouds
A spray of tears on a young man’s face –
His eyes close. More than one reflection
In the water staring back – moving in the waves,
Reaching for him too, reaching down in itself.
The sun sets; the seas unsettle
Wreak all hell forth, in water’s fury
Weeping for his love, lashing at the least,
Roaring, ‘A thousand depths cross I
To smile thine eyne upon mine, o love!’
Not the unstable havoc of a child
But the custom madness of a poet
What terror lies there underneath the glassy sheen
Both a mirror and a window;
What hope rests within the flimsy craft,
Both a gateway and a coffin?
My love, you know not despair nor joy
Until you kiss these lips which have waited for you
My love, you know not fear nor elation
Until you see yourself fall into the ocean.

they spoke(to me)about:
dancing
in darkness,
old sailor’s songs, and
laughter spilling over
pintglasses, droplets of wisdom shaped like
tears
shaped like-
is this all there is?
&fade
&fadeaway [silence]

(Happy New Year)