Sometimes I can barely breathe. Most times I can barely stand to.

Step XIII
Meaning

Would you say you are here? I just read a book that left me hopelessly lost.

I've got some thoughts that seem to make a dark winter that much blacker. I'm pretty sure I'm coughing up at least one of my lungs. I can't see or breathe or think or sleep or move or do anything. It is just like that. I'm barely substantial. Fluff. White noise. Static. Static and Stasis. It is a nice sounding phrase. It is all about how I'm stuck in the background and torn by indecision. There seems to be action and motion in static, but there really isn't. It is a droning infinity that people only bare to put up with until they can tune in to something worth hearing.

I'm not sure if I couldn't care less or I hate it with every fiber of my being. I don't know if I'm capable of either.

There is a beacon out there. Of this I am absolutely uncertain. It sounds nice. Maybe I'm pleading for you to help me. Maybe I'm just bitching. Maybe I'm lying to you, just to feel in control of the situation. I want to reach, but I'm not sure what to grab.

It is all spinning out of control. Are we getting motion sick or are we enjoying the ride?

I've got a head full of lies and dreams and questions. My head hurts. I wish I could sleep.

The collapse of not only polytheism, but my general psyche as well.

Step XII
Weight

Sometimes the weight of immaterial things can have a very physical effect on me. Certain stresses, as of late, I feel are actually pushing me down. Henry Thoreau had that grand concept of "building castles in the air." Noble in concept. Reality has this tendency to come crashing in, not unlike a castle that recently found it can't defy gravity, and was infantile for trying.

I have these grand ideals, about reality and existentialism, and mastering destiny and all this bullshit. That is what it is in the end. bullshit. excuse my cursing.

No matter how desperately I cling to these convictions, my life is still my life.

Cursed and blessed. middle of the road. I shudder to think how else it could be.

These days have a tendency to snake away, leaving m...

Still searching for your faith...

Step XI
Then, Now, and Everything After.

Still tired. I am beginning to think that it might be permanent.

As thoughts are prone to do, I find some racing through my head, no modesty or humility to be found. They are demanding. They want God. We aren't exactly sure why.

Probably a lot of reasons.

One of those being: "Where the fuck are you lately?"

I'm pretty sure God died. I'm pretty sure we killed him.

In that idea of intelligent design, it just makes sense.

He was lonely. He made us. He wanted us to be like him. But we couldn't think for ourselves if he knew our every move. It would be like playing dodgeball with nothing. Dodgeball by yourself is sad and lonely.

So he deconstructed himself so that you and I could go right ahead and rip all the good things out of reality. A terrible way to cherish his legacy if you ask me.

I'm not so big on the symbolic cannibalism, or pillars of salt, but I think we let God down. And I think it looks like rain.

Life is a song, and your heart is the beat.

Step X
Chains

Constraints. Boundaries. Walls. Borders. Confines. Inhibitions. Limitations. Curtailment. Hindrances.

Break the mold. Push the boundaries. Aim for the horizon.
Get a good grip on what is, and let nothing limit it.

I think you can look at it two ways.

Your life is defined by existing limits and preconceptions.
Or
Your life defines the limits.

You live entirely in your head, the way you perceive the world.
The only absolute is that you do perceive.
Blur the lines between dreams waking hours.

Night skies and blue eyes.

Step IX
Blues

One thing to remember.
Its never that hard to smile
Black nights in November
Only last for a while.

Over and Out, Connecticut.

Step VIII
Acceptance

One of the hardest things to do is accept the things you would never want to. I've had my back pinned up against the wall and been still unwilling to let go. Some things I've let fall that I shouldn't have. I think some things. It is hard to put them down.
I guess I don't have much to say.

I spit hot fire.

Step VII
Poetry

Oh, well I write this out in poetry
so you could sense whats best for me.
I'm sick of this complacency.
Burned by mediocrity.
I'm just asking for some empathy.
A little taste of entropy.
Now you could read and maybe be
all things you'd now believe.
Go right back to redundancy.
Spew your medicated prophecies.
The future you could hardly see
now drowning in the first degree.

Dispostion

Step VI
Blue

Watching the weather change...

And the Well Runs Dry.

Step V
Inspiration

How cripplingly ironic that I am talking about how lack of inspiration has inspired me to write about lack of inspiration.

Sometime ideas come in a flood, a torrent you couldn't hope to halt. And sometimes the well runs dry.

Dry as a bone buried in the desert. Dry as the polite laugh of someone who you know can not stand you. Dry as the tears that stream down the face of a stage actor.

I took a train the other day. Not the kind of train that you ride, the kind of train that wouldn't go anywhere after the lights go off. I don't need to explain myself. I couldn't explain myself if I wanted to. The entire extrapolation of these words from my mind is not only redundant in it's core concept, it obviously tells you nothing you haven't heard before. Still there is always this longing. To create, to experience, to be, to destroy, to dream, to feel, to fall down and scrape your knees on the surface of that which you desperately want to feel. There has been so much said about this "hole" in the soul. People fill it with what they can. Music, drugs, God, family, pets, cars, the suffering of others, the suffering of themselves, laughter maybe even damnation. All in a futile attempt to make themselves whole. I don't think it is a hole.

It is a tear, you see. You are never going to fill it. Trying to fill it is only going to rip it wider. Until you are torn in half. That's the escape. When you stop wanting to dream and you start living a dream. I think it is pretty clear I view reality as subjective, relative to myself and only myself. That means I can define my own existence, my own reality. Hell if I want to, I can define my own fucking colors and shapes and number and words feelings. Maybe just one feeling. I wouldn't want to go overboard. I think I got here by being ripped wide open.

"Oh, swing the door wide open;
show me your jaded eyes.
I will turn them red,
drunk with vivid flame.
You will see again,
and you will learn your real name"

That makes sense the way I see it.

"Debate to understand that we all have a flaw "
"Pain is only a pulse. If you just stop feeling it, you might be able to use the very thing that makes us up."
"Oh God, you're all fucked up for sure."

You're all fucked up for sure.

The dreams that play inside my head are the words that I can't say.

Step IV
Fiction

Whats the difference between fiction and life?
Everything is as real as you want it to be, if you only have the will to grasp it.
Those are some enlightened sounding words.
Why is it when you want to say something, no words come to mind? And why is the opposite true?
Somethings I want to say:
I forgave you a long time ago.
I hate you.
You aren't even on my mind.

Now only to say those to who it matters, not to myself.

What is "fiction"? Merriam-Webster's says "something invented by the imagination or feigned."
Made up. Pretend.

There is a line in a Coheed and Cambria song.
"The Fiction will see the Real"

Where does it meet? When does the truth become a dream?
When do you loose sight of the line between the lies and the lives?

And how does this work anyways?

Step III
Cults

"Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
"Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad."

That is from a book I've never read. I know a few folks that have read it. Not sure if I want to.

"In the nightmare desert stood a building.
Outside someone was diggin' a hole in the ground.
They were burying my luck.

"What have you done?"
"What have you done?"

That's from "Burying Luck" by Minus the Bear. He has an evocative way of writing very poetic, but often very literal lyrics. You listen to it late at night when you are slipping on to the border between sleep and reality, and it almost like he is telling you things you couldn't bear to say yourself.

"You must be an illusion
Can I see through you?"

When I(or you, how should I know?) make this attempt to relate(to anything really, but mostly people) I'm often crippled by some thoughts. It is this idea of existentialism. Sometimes its like reality is an illusion, at least for me. Probably for you occasionally. I heard that November was Write a Novel Month. Fuck that.

I have just now in this instant realized I never shut the fuck up. Ever. It's not so much that I want people to hear what I have to say. I want attention. I never want to be in the back of any one's mind. Coincidentally, it is really easy to get people's attention when you are a huge dick to them all the time. I want to take a day and not speak at all. Just listen. Sounds like a nice change of pace. Maybe tomorrow. I don't think I could do it. People would bother me about it. When you are as obnoxious as I am.

Communication is a funny thing. How can I be sure that what I transmit is what is received? I don't think I can. Seems like most just yammer away and hope they are yammering correctly. Lost in Translation. (Never seen the movie. I think it was a book to. No it wasn't. Wikipedia would never lie to me.)
Mostly, I think I am unconcerned with what people hear from me, as long as they do.

I wonder where the meaning in communication lies. Does it lie where it is conceived or where it is received? That little gray area between? Is the meaning in what we say floating around in the air? Is the atmosphere littered with spent words and shared dreams?
Maybe yours isn't. I'd like to think mine is.

Sacred Geometry in relation to the common spanner, or wrench.

Step I
Life

Living? Breathing? Moving? Yes, yes of course. That is elementary. We are all doing that. Try to dig a bit deeper for me.
Thinking? Feeling? Being? Existing?
Now that is interesting. How do you define that? Even better, why even try to define it?

There is this idea of a world view called “Sacred Geometry”. Adam Jones discussed it in a Guitar World interview. It is about breaking down life into its simplest forms. Shapes, colors, vibrations. I wonder “what is the point of something like that?” Sure you can find beauty in simplicity, but breaking life down as far as you can seems to detract from the overall picture

Existing. That is a tricky concept. How can you explain or rationalize without knowing what it means? How can you break that down? It is a concept that fulfills itself, if that makes sense. It needs no explanation. It can’t be explained. It just is. exISting. Tricky subject, life. Too many ask the Question.
What is the meaning of life?
Life is a self fulfilling prophecy. It creates its own meaning.
A friend of mine is always stuck on asking why. I tell him to ask why not.

Step II
Death

Lately I've been saying I want to beat people to death with a wrench. I mean this kind of wrench.

Lost in Stasis.

Tomorrow I’m going to wake up. Tomorrow I’m going to truly wake up, for the first time in my life. Reality seems to get to the point where it no longer seems real. You become a line in the white noise. Neither the problem, nor the solution. You become causality. Eventually, maybe, you’ll get a chance at reincarnation. A chance to open your eyes and see the dawn.
Until then you are asleep, but not alone.
Lately it seems we are all lost in stasis.