Here Is

a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance:

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.

The Boy Must Die

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Buck Up, They’re Coming

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.” – Rose Walker, The Kindly Ones

Swimming In The Flood

The chord change at 3:11 makes me feel like I’ve been dunked in a tub of ice. The discordance chills my spine and shocks my senses into being. I’m awake now, I tell myself, almost sheepishly. Awake is the sluggard that needs to go to the ant, learn its ways and be wise.

It’s like

The river’s overrun

and

We’re swimming in a flood

you know?

I thought I felt your touch

                                                                                                                

  But the water’s rising up.

If

Kipling’s one of those literary figures that follows you through life. A real man’s man’s poet.

 

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Happy New Year

Neil Gaiman is one of the biggest inspirations in my life. He has a good soul, and somewhere deep inside his wonderfully depraved skull lies a profound understanding of what’s really Important. Case in point:

I believe this year will be a good year, by God’s grace. There comes a point, or points in your life where you go ‘enough of the fluff and the bullshit’ and actually start doing the things you’ve always wanted to do, start working towards the goals you always wanted to achieve. There’s a fine line between a resolution and a revolution and I think it’s time to cross that line. I mean the world’s ending anyway so why not we sit by the stars and watch this space.

Like Day And Night

We were bound by common things like two moths drawn towards the same flame, circling each other in a dance that only you and I knew the steps to. A song that only the two of us knew the lyrics to. A place that only we could visit. Or so I thought.

I feel like I’ve been standing in the rain for way too long. My black hair is wet and matted, and water drips down my forehead, diluting the salty taste of lacrimation on my tongue. I feel like I’ve been standing in the rain for way too long, staring blankly at the shadow you cast in the pale moonlight as you walk away into the darkness, holding an umbrella for someone else. The sound of your footsteps drown out the pitter-patter of rain on gray asphalt, each step plunging another bullet into my heart.

I thought we shared something special, something sacred. I placed my dreams in a wooden box carefully two years ago and gave it to you and you opened it, flung its contents to the floor and filled the box with dust, afterthoughts and cheap, deformed imitations of memories only I could create.

You knew that this day would come. You knew that I’d find your collection of wooden boxes. And you knew, as you ran a finger slowly over each of them, taking in the intoxicating smell of oak, feeling the intricate carvings of one box beneath your skin while your eyes set themselves greedily on the next…

That you’d never look back.

And that this too shall pass.

You disappoint, my friend.