Nonsense.

Tasted bitter and tasted sweet,
A single melody in a bustling street.

wrapped in arms and wrapped in vain
The shallow breath of the oncoming train

Wasted time and wasted brain
I watched you fall into rain

I stomp in puddles with wandering feet.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

- T S Eliot

And so patience is a virtue I hear

Wait wait wait and bide your time. A smoke in the afternoon sun, lids closed for the glare and the same song playing over and again in my head. The same song. And I thought of you. Which is a far cry from the normal routine my head hammers through day in and day out. Such a nice relief.

Nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn

Again we cross this well worn track. I forgot which fork in the road I took before and now am left wandering across this path. The sights are the same, all so familiar. I thought I was taking the easy path but I have been led across the mountain track where rocks crumble at the edge to a deep fall beyond mist, Ive never managed to make up the bottom from such heights.

Fire, Fire, Fire

I can smell the smoke, as it rises above my bed and swirls out the open window. I can't see it in this dark space, but feel the air choke. The air thins, and breathing comes in rasps. Although I am stuck. Pinned down, awake and half asleep. It could be a dream? I could only be smelling the remnants of the battlefield my mind only just left. The scorched earth and burnt buildings.

The air is still, the mood sedated and all I can do is lie here and watch the dim glow turn into a pulsing light as the flames lick the edges of my bed and I know now that this is not the plague my dream has left, but the reality I woke up too.

Measurable Distances

So we put one foot in front of the other and forge on. Excited at the prospect of the future instead of savoring moments from a time when we were different people and the world was slightly ajar with the buzzing lights that kept me from seeing who I was. Now, we learn, we embrace and come to the point were things are as they seem. For perception is truly a reality that each and every person lives in.

Watered Down Wine

I've dipped my feet in many pools, careful not to fall right in, test the temperature, the buoyancy. I've stuck my hand in many flames, just to watch it burn, feel the heat across my skin as though I am untouchable.

I've sipped from many cups, careful not to indulge, careful not to let it intoxicate me. Wanting nothing more than to be pulled into an abyss of pleasure, engulfed in something.

I guess maybe its time to stop tempting myself with things. I don't want to drown anymore, I want to skip across the surface as though nothing could touch me but the wind.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

So how much distraction can you give yourself before it ebbs away? How much can you take away from your life before you are still the same empty shell? I am in a pickle, tossing up where to fade away. I think far away from knowing eyes and far away from all I know.

Dreamer

So vivid in the haze of sleep
as if ink spilled across the page
as the story teller let it slip
through mumbled lips

so careless in its guilty innocence
each aching thought
cast out like a net
upon the oceans surface

if the heavy lead of lids
were an escape I would hide
under each tightly shut cave
waiting out the storm

but it seeps through when
there is nothing there to
keep the wolves at bay
no control, no rest for the pain

vile temptress
open awed wonder
as they play and play out
with no script to prompt them
no bait to lure them

please don't let me lie there
so peaceful in the torment
such a deceptive face
tease and tease again
there is no rest
the dazzling colors
conjure up only what my
enemy could bring upon me
heavy lids close tight
let it drift upon me
watch me suffer
with the torment of sleep

Little Things, Big Feeling

I know being where I am I should be excited about the buildings, the architecture, the history...but just quietly, I am excited that I have a kitchen to cook in, a television with one English channel that isn't just CNN and my god I'm excited to have a common space which isn't a double bed. I guess sometimes its the little things that makes the big things seem special. Nothing makes you feel less at home than listening to a selection of German, Czech, French or Italian as my night time music.

Midnight Train To Vienna

SO, Berlin to Vienna, 600km's and 10 hours to think. After 5 weeks in Berlin there have been great highs and great lows. Things of little significance which seem huge, and things of huge significance which seem little. There is certainly a vast spectrum of culture, night life and people that -10 puts in a terrible mood. My German has improved, if only to be able to keep my standards of manners slightly above the normal and to figure out how to push and pull a door to keep me from constantly looking like I cant read (Ziehen, Drucken). But now Vienna is on the cards, another cold city with a lifetime of history that my home country cannot even comprehend. So when to return, when to come home? When is enough enough? I am not even sure some nights, and other nights I wish to smell the freshly mowed grass, the sun on my skin and the sound of my family and friends in the same room.

This will all be figured out I guess on my midnight train to Vienna, lets hope it helps me give the answers I crave.

Expectations

I sometimes wonder whether they are a good thing or a bad thing. To have hopes in something to turn out the way you wish, not by pure control but by it taking responsibility for themselves as much as you would for yourself I guess. I am disappointed that sometimes I am taken advantage of, mostly because my expectations of people are often too high, or that they do not set themselves the same standards as I would myself, therefore making it very difficult to understand. Sometimes I wish, without me being angry, without me making a scene, or without me withering away you would understand the importance of friendship, and the importance of asking for help to a friend. Maybe I should not be saddened by the fact that when I do reach out, you aren't often there in the way I would be there for you. Am I to blame for that?

The New, The Old, The Dust, The Gold

Recently I have laid to rest many things, many things have now been covered like the open grave they were to me and I have healed. Time apart makes loss into an interesting thing. While I was gone some things have changed, some things are now eternal. My family laid to rest two beautiful people, poured their ashes into the same peaceful place together so that even in dust, they were as they are remembered. Together, in peace, forever overlooking the place that they watched every sunset pass for the last 60 years. It was something I never wanted to miss but something that I will never miss, for now they exist in my memory, in my heart in a way that nothing can touch. And hopefully time will not ravage my brain in the way I watched it do to someone dear to me and I will forever preserve them where they count.

I see things in the past now as they should be, where I now leave them, in a moment. In a passing second in time where the world seemed to stop just for you, and then sped right up to whisk straight past you like the train that will never again stop at your cold cement station. But its from these rare moments that we take the best, the gold. And from these moments we can also separate what doesn't matter anymore.

All this rhetorical thinking spins me in circles but I have finally found that my circle is link, that may spin round and round but it does not stop, and I will not force my hand to stop it forcefully. I am once again myself. I am no longer surrounded, nor do I need to hazey cloud that has followed me around like a lost puppy for the last 3 years. I do not need to comfort the speed of my thinking, I just need to express it.

So to things in the past, the things for the future, for the memories we hold dear and for the things that stay with us wherever we are. Home is where ever I choose to take it, and for me, finally it is wherever I am. Because those moments exist now inside me where the time can not touch them anymore.

Okay, I get it, You're a Creep

So differences in culture, in language, in up bringing. What can I pin you down too? Are you just normally an alienating, intimidating person? What about us makes you act the way you do? Alone, out of nowhere you come with the drunken saunter that reminds me of the people you avoid at 5am on your way home, to ask such strange questions. When for the last 4 weeks you have pretended that we either don't exist or we are an inconvenience. Not sure why you have just stepped over that invisible line which separated you from being yourself, a person I don't understand, to a person I am now uncomfortable around. It was your doing.

Phantom Limb

I hope you are still there

Where Time Isn't Weighed By The Clock

Movement, form, space and no space. I learnt today from Alexander Calder that reality is in the imagination of each person who sees it, and to make realistic art, you merely have to represent your perception of what you see.

I saw things today that were so organic and inorganic, that to actually perceive them both at the same time, in the same image was a very difficult experience, but altogether beautiful.

It was like watching someones dreams.

Snow like Sand

Its been almost 3 weeks now in Berlin, the time has flown like the snow across my face, each stinging moment melts away as fast as it came. I am finding a way to heal those war wounds of mine, even if in cold threatens to keep their dull ache ever so close, as if forgetting was losing. So I ache, as I walk each carefully placed step across cobble stones streets and past the paint glittered walls. I remember the way things smelt, the sounds like lullabies and nightmares for my sleeping brain. I remember the secrets, my privacy and the moments when it felt that I was on the other side of the world while sitting in my own home. And now I am in anothers home, on the other side of the world and I ache for a peace that I only find within myself on quiet summer nights, with the humid timbre in the air and only the sounds of the bugs to keep me company. What I would wish for to stroll down the streets, to walk past the house down the road where the fence is lined with a bush that smells like lollies.

But here, I find a different peace, one that seems to grab at me and shake me awake at nights with the potential of the new, the different, the exciting and the sheer scale of it all. The loneliness as it creeps in like the cold through my many stacked layers of clothing, I find a freedom that comes with anonymity. In many ways I share it, in many ways I have never shared this experience with anyone. It is mine and mine alone. Something that you can't even tough with that rough touch and velvet skin.

But what I wouldn't give right now, to be able to walk outside and smell the candied fence to walk my way to eat my Chocolate gelati at the echo dome, where I can sit in the sun and feel like I'm untouchable. The promise and pride of youth is so delicious.

An Ode To Feeling Better

Sometimes you hurt people you care about the most, and sometimes they hurt you too. BUT at the end of the day, we are human, we do stupid things and I still need you. It was more important to get over it and be a real friend, than it was to hold the grudge.

But, just don't do it again.

You Should Know Better

Muddy footprints all over the carpet
Dirt trodden right to my doorstep and through the house.

I thought I had more consideration in your life, maybe the only thing good about you and I, is me. The rest seems to be swept under the rug.

Great.

Like Valium

I guess I have been waiting for something, I guess I have trying to sit back and let the tide of life roll over me, taking me somewhere that I never guessed I would go. I think I have been fooling myself.

If I could take all that was me, I would send it across the ocean, wrapped up in a little note and forged in glass. Floating floating floating across till I am finally smashed upon some far off rocky cliff face at lands end, and I will dissolve. The ink of my being will run, and I will dilute myself, each carefully penned letter, each fragile sentence, will run. Melt into an ocean that knows nothing better than to forge on.

I could be apart of that.

Your Face Is

Please quit, it sickens me.

Scratch an Itch

Concussion, hungover, and possibly a slightly bruised ego. Gotta love the walks home from the middle of nowhere in -5, trying to tie the pieces of your brain back together. So I tried to slowly sow it back together, sat down like Peter Pan without a shadow and slowly stitched each end of myself together. I may have used a few cut outs, and un-picker here or there, little did my hands know they had no sowing ability, so I did it by feel. I sowed a place for all my friends and family, so when I returned they could add parts of them self to me again. I didn't have any room left after that, so I add another layer, for memories and for heartbreak. Maybe I should have left those parts out, but other wise I wouldn't be able to be thankful for what I have now and what I have been through to get it.

So my sewing experiment worked well. Although I sowed myself in a ball, I knew I didnt have any skills, and left myself all wrapped up, with my friends, family and sadness wrapped up so tightly I hope they never escape.