Everything Is Connected

do as many things as you can until you fall over

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It is all so big and I feel it so keenly.

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If you are not worried then you probably do not understand the situation.

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To escape the clutches of the realm of dead dreams. To slip the inevitability of an unsatisfying end. Looking for the hollow walls that lead to the full potential of me.

[everything-connected-blog]

October was the beginning of the end though we did not know it

Year One, I suppose. Or Zero, perhaps. A retreat, perhaps.

The great unravelling from the truth of trying.  Even the indecision that cuts these words and reforms and being too afraid to speak. Again. Because comfort keeps me retreating. From this, and so you, and from work.

From work. I had written 'I am beginning to enjoy work' and that broke the spell, perhaps. 

Searching, I've been searching through my mind for words. They're not ripe and ready for picking, but are twisted into themselves and convoluted and setting them out neatly outside myself is... problematic. 

To name the thing is to break the spell. 

And does it work both ways?

'I am getting tumbled every which way and I lose track of all the abstract things that follow me around.'

Here is a list of abstract things:

Brushing my teeth Broaden understanding Pay attention to dreams Learn deeply when reading Maintaining an online presence Making vague structural improvements Buying the right amount of food for the week Taking distractions into account while planning Keeping in contact with current and potential collaborators Knowing where I want to find myself later on down the line

New shoes on the table/break the old spells which are habits like the staff of magi and will (with the roll of a D100) in half of all cases send the breaker to another plane of existence and in all other cases be destroyed by the explosive release of the spells.

Kill or cure. Point of no return.

One year down the line (or thereabouts) (for you, anyway) and even if it hasn't all ended up here, I've made it, in parts, perhaps.

[everything-connected-blog]

And you followed what felt right but didn't like where it got you.

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Born under oceans. Burnt reaching shore: Dreams.

Seven word stories.

[everything-connected-blog]

It’s like that dream you keep having where youre walking around spitting teeth out one by one into your hand, and you just keep spitting and walking and all these teeth are piling up in your palm. Writing I mean, it’s like that.

[everything-connected-blog]

A grey day (Anew)

Happiness will beckon me with open arms And I will turn away from it For I grow tired of the song you sing Before it's hardly started

Another damp day and I'm picking up the pieces Broken eggs my future plans for Autumn Swept away by the monotony of doing what you know And after all isn't that what we are Pushing that rock like Sisyphus over and over You can hide all you like but I'm sober In the gaps between the labrynths of my mind Lock me in a sin which only one can cleanse And since I do not believe in Him:

I will be here a long time.

[tashitashi-deactivated20130924]

Being Self-Constructive

I thought happiness was a choice, before I hit a wall

happiness is a decision; but it is a journey

take the troughs with the peaks

a few weeks of sadness is worth the months of above-average happiness

there is no need to medicate human experience

in the darkness I have found creativity

if you believe in the silver linings you will see them quicker and more often

losing excitement is terrifying, but focus will return

being surrounded by the most supportive souls is not luck - you receive what you radiate

eating well, sleep routine, exercising, talking about your feelings, avoiding alcohol and connecting with others

Freud coined it the ‘death drive’ - fight it

[everything-connected-blog]

I still think it's large parts luck.

[everything-connected-blog]

When your left arm twitches

it's like sunlight on sugar

to me and my tongue seeks

the sea of your skin, its oily

calm of green light on the floor

of the ocean

                     as in parting,

there's a flutter between us

while I haul down a flag and

you look absently out of

my heart so you won't see

what light one fears in the

sea that I don't want you

to know is of you in me

  - Poem (When your left arm twitches) - Frank O'Hara

[mememyselfandeye]

Today has been a long day, this month has been a long month, and this year has been, well, endless. Today I travelled back from Berlin, to London and then up to Ely for Neil Gaiman’s book reading in Ely Cathedral. His reading was excellent as always, he answered questions with dignity, patience, and creativity. Fortunately the Milk sounds truly excellent (Ocean is already confirmed as top notch for me). It was a special day. Today is even more special because I went alone. I am still learning to do things alone and it was a good place to learn. I talked to such lovely people that I never felt alone, not really, although I was and am. Today I asked Neil Gaiman to touch my heart. I wanted to ask him to hold my heart ever since three weeks ago when i felt it needed holding, safer hands than had held my old one, but Tam said that I needed to learn to hold my own heart. Tam is wise, but I still wanted something. Since my old heart was shattered i am just a raw hollow ache. I don’t yet know what my new heart is like so while it develops I have a temporary heart. Something to fill the space where my old one was. I figured it could hold all the things that one would want in a heart, it has my Godson’s drool and my last cat cuddle. It has hugs from all my friends and has been present at all the Skype calls from family. It is a brass and silver heart, so it is tough and fearless and travels well. One day soon the ache will die down and a new heart will have grown (although I expect that there are still some old-heart splinters around) and then I am sure that all of the great stuff in the silver heart will move into a wing in the new, improved and much bigger heart. I wanted to know that I would still have Neil Gaiman in the new heart. Not the real Neil (or maybe the realer Neil, who can tell with artists?) but the Neverwhere when you are new to London and don’t know to mind the Gappe. The American Gods for company when you are alone in a strange land. A fierce unicorn for courage. The hope of flight in a fall. I wanted all those things for my new heart. The queue was very long and my request more than a bit mad. Who really has a temporary heart? It was just after midnight and he had signed over 800 items and books and things and my well rehearsed sentence with a please and a reason came out a blurt, “Can you touch my heart?” and he did, he stopped mid-tea, mid-queue, mid-strawberry-sparkle-chocolate and he touched my heart. But the thing is, he didn’t just touch the silver heart I was holding out to him. The heart I had bought to hold the place of my old one which is irreparably broken. My heart receptacle, or holding heart; the heart I need to learn to hold myself; the place holder; the space filler. He reached right out and looked and touched my new one. The one that is only just starting to grow. The fledgeling heart, the mystery heart, The heart I didn’t even know I had yet. He said, “It is a beautiful heart.” He said, “It is a beautiful heart.” i think one day it will be.

[neil-gaiman]

It was a long night but a beautiful one, in a huge old cathedral that held 1100 people, and it was filled with perfect moments.

[everything-connected-blog]

Funny things, hearts.

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My mind is going. I can feel it.

When I was small we went on holiday to America. We were driving fast down the motorway and I stuck my head out to use my trusty red binoculars. Not expecting the wind at high speeds, I let go and they were forever gone.

I'm working hard on lots of different and exciting things all at once and I feel if anything slips out of my mind it'll be gone like my red binoculars.

[everything-connected-blog]

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

My earliest human memory is of seeing my black cat slinking across the back wall of our garden. 

I have many memories besides, of places travelled through long before I was human.

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I walk in that old hall, yes, with the gods that are my ambitions and my old love and my ideas and even the dreams are asleep and dreaming as I move quietly through them. The trick is to coax one in its slumber to sleep walk out down from the hall and if it does (and sometimes it does) then it'll lift me into its arms and we'll fly or swim or run through the world together and the journeys leave a sense of worth within these cold-when-alone bones, and a little learning to take home too.

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The last of those I loved that lived there are gone. It's just a place in my memory now. And even when I'm finding new ones, they feel like the past already. 

We're spinning violently around the non-object. The gaps are not between things and can't hold the content. The choices are either/or illusion/unimportant. Increasing threat of collapse into same. Turn again down Turnagain lane, then back the way you came.

[everything-connected-blog]

And so we reach the end of another dream.

And so I sit, rebuilding myself after it all. A little sad, but that’s in part due to tiredness in all the parts of me. Those tiredsad parts are also happy, so that I am a good mixture. Sunday night showed me: I am so easily uplifted and saved by another. A little closeness, and I feel ready to take on the whole world again. I can find it in words sometimes (a little Etty, or O’Hara perhaps) and if I write I generally work through the problem (though this can take some time). But it’s my fortune that the best medicine for me is the thing I try to pour out into the world but that doesn’t navigate so well to my emotional core. It’s like, affection (or possibly Love) is like a waterfall in me: It flows out with such a strong current but travelling back the other way is so difficult. It’s a contradiction perhaps, that I try to be present, and close, and real with people, but I struggle when people do the same with me.

I must try to be more open and accepting of the love that people have for me, or maybe learn that other people have different ways of expressing it.

I didn’t really think of myself beyond the immediate this last week, too busy juggling the space and other people’s happiness. 

A bit later: “All experience offers the chance for improvement, the opportunity to learn. Pain inspires. Hope is a fire is the beacon is the pulse. Faith is the path is the journey. The adventure of faith."

You must busy yourself in work. It’s hard: I try not to feel bitter, but it’s hard. And no-one’s fault particularly. “It is what it is," said Love. 

[fuckyeahrumi]

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal.

Rumi (via underthecarolinamoon)

oh.