"Was is a vision or a waking dream, fled is that music...do I wake, or sleep?" (Keats)

"King Sleep was father of a thousand sons -indeed a tribe - and of them all, the one
he chose was Morpheus, who had such skill
in miming any human form at will.
No other Dream can match his artistry
in counterfeiting men: their voice, their gait,their face - their moods; and, too, he imitates their dress precisely and the words they use most frequently. But he mimes only men..."

We are constantly tossed about like ragged puppets hanging from ropes that swing and constrict...all in a moment, a fleeting lapse.

Oftentimes the smartly dressed gentleman wondered about his futile existence and tried in vain to demarcate the boundaries between the repugnant reality of life and the sickening mimicries that haunted the passage of his dreams. The vulture's pale yellow eyes mirrored his deceit, and watched as he writhed between the two worlds that swirled around him.

To one thing constant never.

And like a boat that slowly slid down the ghostly wards of Lethe he slides towards his fate. The brotherhood of sleep and dreams curl into the mystical vacumn, the ground whispers into his ear about the time of the Parcae.

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air...not so happy, yet much happier...Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none."

The defining element lies in success. The trailer before the tragedy flickers in shades of grey across the dusty screen. To one thing constant never.

(Dervied from Ovid - Metamorphoses)

"The wildcard of existence" (Cervantes)

'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.

"As in a wintry tree"

The Universe is bewitching and uncannily idiosyncratic.

"Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy, In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement."

As a cluster of mere paupers trapped against the canvas, we stumble and watch the travelling circus with trembling hearts, and trembling hands.

Is it pure folly, - I whisper to the dusty ground below me- , to lift up my eyes and try to tear down that old star-eaten blanket of the sky, so that I may fold it round me...and then..in comfort lie?

Is our unexplained endurance expected? Or simply unrewarded. How much does one endure, adopt and adapt in order to simply...remain much the same?

Wonder outwaiting pain...as in a Wintry tree.

Cannonball - Damien Rice

"There’s still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
there’s still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
it’s still a little hard to say what's going on

there’s still a little bit of your ghost your witness
there’s still a little bit of your face i haven't kissed
you step a little closer each day
that I can´t say what´s going on

stones taught me to fly
love, it taught me to lie
life, it taught me to die
so it's not hard to fall
when you float like a cannonball

there’s still a little bit of your song in my ear
there’s still a little bit of your words i long to hear
you step a little closer to me
so close that I can´t see what´s going on

stones taught me to fly
love taught me to lie
life taught me to die
so its not hard to fall
when you float like a cannon..

stones taught me to fly
love taught me to cry
so come on courage, teach me to be shy
'cos its not hard to fall,

and I don't want to scare her
its not hard to fall
and i don't want to lose
its not hard to grow
when you know that you just don't know."

"A feather in a hat"

What was meant to be said, the things I wanted desperately to say rattled around my head like nails in a rusty tin can. Could one succeed in transcending beyond this shell? This mortal frame that traps me so?

Two creatures, set in a tableau as one perched unsteadily on the shoulders of the other, fiddling with the latch..a click..a terrified squeak..

The flight was surreal, freedom was free...and yet, what is freedom without constraint...?

Thoughts like nails in a rusty tin can.

A train hurtling down the tracks, metal screeching, lights blaring, noise - noise from the outside. Trapped inside the train he hurls himself against the sides, again and again he crashes into the inner walls of the steel cabin. It glints back at him, a knife is drawn. The Train keeps charging, angry, oblivious, thoughts keep pounding, the knife slices, not a shudder...the silence is deafening.

W. H. Auden - "If I could tell you"

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when Musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Drowning beneath the swell of the tides

Struggling. She struggles and gasps for air and lashes out with her shaking limbs as the mass of water crashes down upon her, again...and again. She fights to breathe, her urgency increases, she cries out in desperation. Another blow. She is not as strong as before, and yet she writhes with feverish animation. Her hands slam down on to a hard wooden surface, it is hot and dry.

The harsh sunlight blinds her and scorches the left side of her face, she turns away and sucks in the smoky air around her in raspy gulps. She feels greedy and unstable, her fingers rake up through her silky hair and clench down tightly. She shuts her eyes and her tears burn her. She hopes that the others would quietly leave.

He sits across from her in the corner of the room, his table is covered with a frayed black cloth - frail like the wings of a dying butterfly...his pocket watch ticks noisily beside his folded hands. He watches with chilling Omniscience.

The door swings open, the bell jingles shrilly, her head jerks, his figure remains motionless, the wraith glides across the floor. He slowly stretches out his index finger, weighed down by a single brass ring and flicks the first piece in the line before him, they fall, treacherously close, they fall, stripped of life.

A heartbeat. The thudding races madly, rising above the ticking, the wraith swirls and lifts itself higher, her head slumps, the whip cracks and the waves close in.

A shower of all my days...

"I have always loved the rain" She said to him, gazing dreamily out of the open window as the white linen curtain billowed gently over her head. It was a moment of relief, a brush with divine ablution..her fingers slowly closed around his wrist.
She reminded him of a porcelain doll at times, with her bright staring eyes, long dark lashes and plump rosy lips...yet now, as her dark curls fell about her almond face and the smoke from her elegantly held cigarette slowly streamed around her in delicate tendrils, he knew that he would never be able to truly ease the anguish that stifled her more and more each day, or feel her tense body give in entirely to his embrace...even though his heart reached out desperately to her, and her eyes longed to fall asleep in his.

"Borges and I" - crafted by Jorge Luis Borges

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I five, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

(Derived from 'Labyrinths')

The first of many quizzical passages about the paradoxical nature of...well, -everything.

The first problem area concerns time. Time infiltrates everything, and exercises an absurd amount of control over our actions... And yet, why must the 'clock on the wall' be our universally objective marker of reality? Why do we have to succumb to this madness?

This is just the start...and yet I apologise for the brevity of this note...I fear that the ironic truth of the situation is that I am running out of time. There was once a moment, not too long ago, where I found myself scribbling the following sentence on a scrap of paper;

"Time ye arrant knave! Yank on those leather-bound reigns and steer thy light-winged chariot to the ground!"

Yet now I realise that I was merely trying, in desperation to convince myself that I wanted the passage of time to cease...or slow down a little... Whereas it was merely one half of an inescabable paradox - I do not want time to slow down, for if it did, these moments which I wish to hold on to would lose their beauty, their urgency, their importance.

Similarly, as I sit at my desk now...procrastinating much of my life away, I gradually accept the fact that my pointless actions are deliberate and...are thus, - quite unfortunate. There is a pressing need as I write this, to leap forth and actually finish that which I have not yet started but..(I ask the wall in front of me) why, in heavens name would I want to do that?

I conclude with this... - Life is an ugly business...and yet we live for it.

One ring...more emotion and yet less importance?

l'amore, le memorie e l'amicizia eterna

"Do nothing till you hear from me..."

Am I to pay no attention to what's said? "true I've been seen...with someone new, that doesn't mean...I've been untrue, while we're apart...the words in my heart, reveal of how I feel about you. Some kiss may cloud my memory, in other arms may hold a thrill...but please do nothing till you hear it from me...Baby you never will..."

Therein lies the tragedy..."Baby you never will"

Eptitaph: Life is a jest and all things show it...I thought so once, but now I know it.

How odd...we intuitvely know so much about life and yet we quite adamantly fail to pay heed to any instincts that may creep up on us on some....idle Tuesday. Are we slaves of our emotions? creatures of passion and fire, overcome by varying degrees of temptation...depending on our characters of course. Yet what is character? Do we inherit characteristics or are we a product of our circumstances? And if we do not have the tools of association to aid us in defining ourselves then who or what are we?

I know a creature of desire, who lives, feels and breathes all that he cannot handle, and yet he revels in the flames of his actions. How does one escape the clutches of something so powerful? And why do we ignore our better judgements? Is there nothing one can do to fight the artistically metamorphic qualities of their own cretinous reflection?