The Words

She hides the words

She keeps them sloppily yet safely crammed

in an old, beaten up suitcase.

She keeps them for

some reason.

What to do with the words?

To render them useless is to

bury them alive

to give them a torturous death,

to dry the blood of the heart.

What to do with the words?

Let them out?

Free them from captivity?

Let them dance off her tongue

and into his ears,

and risk once again the 

slaughter of her very own heart?

What to do with the words,

what to do with the words,

what to do with the words?

She knows these words will not fit him.

They are too large in size,

and she would be ridiculous to believe he

might 'grow into' them.

But perhaps if ever one day,

the cruel world leaves him alone and cold,

she can cloak these words over him-

over-sized, loving and warm,

wrapping him with all the words

she has secretly struggled for so long

never to share.

And when she does,

she will have to speak nothing.

He will feel them and he will know.

Her love, he will certainly know.

Oh, how deeply she has missed him...

All of us together, All of us alone.

Sometimes it feels like we're all just aimlessly shooting around life wounding one another. Like we're playing razor blade bumper cars with one another's feelings. The unfortunate thing is that for those that are unable to avoid the collisions, they become more erratic and inadvertently end up driving even more recklessly, perpetuating the problem even worse within those in their immediate paths of traffic.

Most people want very little more than to be understood and appreciated by someone. A genuine validation of their purpose and existence. What I find to be tragic about the seeming failure of such a simple human requisition is that it's as if we've reached a stalemate with each other because either no one believes that anyone is interested in the veritable contents of their true being, and/or, as a result, are emotionally repressed when they encounter someone who actually is interested. Which, of course, leaves the interested party feeling shut out or potentially rejected. Wounds are mutually inflicted, and both continue on feeling misunderstood.

To be open is to be brave. To be brave is to risk being hurt. But if we're able to choose between shooting a  gun at the virtuous and altruistic, or taking the bullet for them, I think the latter choice is the only way to ever define yourself as part of the former group. This means that we need to be brave. We need to be open. And we need to receive others, despite their considerable differences from ourselves. If we can all be decent and proper in our intentions, then we might just finally find a universal language that the human heart can understand.

Maybe.

The Great Death Game

I was 5 years old when my father came in the room, knelt down on the floor and with tears in his eyes told me and my siblings that his father had died. This was my first experience with death. I remember feeling confused about my father's sadness, and about what my grandfather's death actually meant. I was told that I was too young to attend the funeral, but my two older siblings were going to go. I don't think I ever mourned his death. I was too young to comprehend it all. I just learned to get used to his absence. 

It would be 7 years later when death made another appearance. It was a strange year in which 2 kids from my school whom I knew both died. The first died in his sleep at a young age of 13, and the second was killed in an alleged accidental gunshot wound at 14. At this time in my life, I could comprehend death a bit more, and I recall spending a lot of time in thought about the loss of futures ahead, and about the family of the deceased. I imagined what it must have been like for a mother to come in and try and wake her 13 year old son only to discover he was dead. I pondered over the mystery of the gunshot wound death.

3 years after that, death returned again once more. In a bizarre chain of events, my cousin and my father's then girlfriend were in a high speed head-on collision with one another on an old country highway. My cousin would survive, but my father's girlfriend died. In even stranger circumstance, this happened on my brother's birthday. The odds of a person being involved in a head-on collision in traffic are one thing, but the odds of being in a head-on collision with someone else that you actually know? It was so peculiar. My brother's birthday would forever be somewhat tainted with the sadness of the events of that day. While my father would surely want to celebrate the birth of his oldest son, his heart would always be marked with the loss of a woman he loved.

2 years later, I would be awakened by my mother telling me that I had an important phone call from back east. I took the call and it was my best friend telling me that one of our great friends whom we had known all our lives had taken his own life in the night. He shot himself in the head. He had just graduated high school and had enrolled in college courses. I remember wondering why he even suffered through high school if he was just going to kill himself a couple of months after graduating. I always took a lot of photos (still do), and after his death I remember looking at the photos. I also used to use a video camera and film my friends when were hanging out. I reviewed the photos and the films, and suddenly it seemed so clear to me. It was as if it was so obvious our friend was not happy.

2 years after that came the overdoses. These deaths would continue for years and years to come, and were many. There was something about death that had perplexed me. I could not distance myself from it, it seemed.

I then lost both of my grandmothers and an aunt. Then my sister lost a man she once loved, who was also a friend of mine.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that I wanted to become a mortician. I felt that I had a lot of experience with death, and I wanted to be able to help people during the most devastating time of their lives. I wanted to be able to try and quell some of their anxieties and suffering. Eventually, the human funeral, corpses, and grieving families became a part of my Monday through Friday routine. Though it could be incredibly stressful, I felt good inside knowing that I was doing something for others that few actually could.

Then I moved to Sweden. Death and I once parted from each other again. Until this year.

I lost a beautiful friend in May. Sara. She was 40 years old.

Then Yancey died. He left behind 2 children as well as my 2 nephews.

And today, I was told someone very special in my life died. David. He was under 30.

Treasure those dear to you. Love them with all your might.

Death has made its move once more in a great game that I no longer wish to play.

The Miracle

Life and its bastard 'trials'. Why is it every time you finally think you're strong enough to live with misery, right at that exact time that you finally resign yourself to living with your pain or your problem, right when you accept that this pain or this problem just might be a significant part of your existence in its totality, that suddenly SOMETHING comes along and changes all of that?!

These things one cannot predict. Perhaps you can predict their coming, but never the moment of their arrival. It's like waiting on a friend that is running seriously late. They said they would be here, but it's getting very late: 

"Are they sure they are coming? Did something happen to them along the way? Ok. Maybe they aren't coming. That's it. They are not coming. Sigh. Oh well. It's okay. I really wish they could have made it, though. It would have really transformed the entire evening. But that's life. I probably didn't need company tonight anyway. No, no, I didn't need company. See? Now I can do this, and I can do that, and this. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah, that's it. But wait! What's that!? The doorbell! They ARE here! They HAVE arrived after all!"

Waiting on the miracle to come can be a lot like that. The hope. The uncertainty. The doubt. The resignation. The acceptance. And then? Well. The miracle comes.

Now I know it's quite a character flaw, but very few things make me genuinely smile when I am alone with my thoughts. It is when I have these moments--these authentic, grand smiles in the quiet and lonesomeness of my space--that I know that no matter how dismal the world can seem at times, it isn't pointless to have hope. 

For some of us the world can be an infinite field with only a few flowers. The important thing to remember is that the flowers are indeed there. Instead of being upset that our fields are so empty and lifeless, we should be grateful for the contrast we get when we encounter these flowers. For it is, for us, a wondrous gift to be able to never take a single flower for granted, to be able to see all of its rich colours, to smell the intensity of such a rare fragrance, to touch the fragility of such perfect petals. We take great pride in caring for our flowers because they are not many and do not come often. We never take them for granted, and from our hearts, for our flowers, we become the sun.

And for some of us...

...that is nothing short of a miracle.

The Lights Will Go Out

Right now I feel as though life is a holy mess--as if there is an inhuman pandemonium occurring in the air around me. People as a specie have become second, even third, fourth, etc., issues of interest to my mind. I'm further preoccupied with the happenings unfolding all around me. I'm watching a beautifully strange, lit-up, autumn Ferris Wheel make its rotations, and I am peculiarly hypnotized.

Each car on the revolving wheel possesses a different realm. There are realms of cacophonous street life, blasting sirens and garbage trucks, blaring horns and roaring engines, drills and hammering. There are realms of dancing and swing music and the sound of my tapping feet on an old wooden floor. There are realms of the sound of my family's hearts beating--loudly and quickly, slowly and lowly. There are sounds of ice clinking in glasses of whiskey that are still yet to be drank in a smoky bar in Hamburg. There are sounds of the waves of the ocean lulling from a terrace in Spain, where the night sky and doo-wop music sits waiting patiently for me. There is an anxiety that mirrors mine and merrily welcomes me to the South of Africa. There is a realm of a house in south Texas calmly watching me discern it all, and there is a nest of squawking baby crows that patiently wait to be hatched one day. There are these realms, and so very much more.

The excitement and dreaminess of it all can drive me to mad nights of sleeplessness!

But somewhere else, in another realm called Georgia, the lights will go out once again. And it is for this man's life that tonight I will turn out the lights of this Ferris Wheel called life, too.

Dear Lord, Karla.

No matter how many times I tell myself that I'll "never be hungover at work ever again", I keep finding myself crawling into the office slightly disheveled and feeling a little rough. I hang my jacket and scarf, turn on my computer at my desk, and then do my best to sink down into my chair so as to hide myself behind my screen. It's on these days that I break my 'no coffee' rule, and I sit with a cappuccino and eat some sort of pastry. "Is it inappropriate to wear sunglasses inside the office?" I find myself wondering. I then realize that my hooded sweatshirt complimented with wearing sunglasses indoors just might give off a bit more of that unibomber look than I would want. Particularly in the office.

I wish I didn't bore so easily. I drink mostly out of boredom. And to relieve anxiety.

Yes. I know. I shouldn't do that. But if people always did what they should, think what a catastrophic effect it would have had on art. We can't have that, now can we? So you see? I'm doing it for the art of the world. Settled.

Office anxiety is really quite discomforting. Especially because I can't drink on the job. So being hungover at work is just a barrage of anxiety that I really wish I'd stop signing on for. It just leads to blank conversations, a heightened sense of hearing (and being irritated by nearly every sound), and compulsive clock-watching. Most importantly, it even interferes with my youtubing. Joke.

So as I throw back this orange juice that I desperately need, and try to restore some order to the island in upheaval that is my desk, I can't help but repeatedly hear my own voice in my head saying:

"Dear Lord, Karla!"

Subways and Sharpshooters

The human emotion can be a quite equally enjoyable and disturbing thing. It can also be remarkably unpredictable. From one moment to the next, you can suddenly find yourself going from the east side to the west side. From the north to the south. And on this clamourous and bustling Wednesday, I found myself near Stadshagen experiencing just that.

The underground (the subway) can bring many delights as well as heavy feelings. I usually ride on the green line. That's my line. It's always been my line since I've lived in Stockholm. It was over a year ago that I lived on the other end of the line that I do today, so needless to say I don't venture over that way so often. But today, I had some business to tend to, and I had to go surging down the green line deeper than I have become accustomed to traveling. 

That particular end of the green line holds a lot of pain for me. It is where I first lived when I moved to Stockholm. It reminds me of the reason I came to Sweden: For love. So as the subway crossed over the water, and from the window I could see the door to what used to be my love and my home, I was a bit taken aback by how much it stirred in me. It probably wouldn't have affected me as much had I not also passed the stop before the one I describe. The stop before it is also a place I lived a year ago. It is also the place where two of my dearest friends lived. Unfortunately, one of them moved over a year ago back to her home country, and  the other friend tragically died just this past May. So as the subway train came to a stop, and the doors opened, and I looked upon the platform that I used to traverse so often, it was hard not to see and hear the ghosts of a time passed, of a friend lost, and of the wonderful and the rough times 3 friends all had there together not so long ago.

I found myself struggling not to cry, and I was doing just fine, but the next stop on the line was the place that started it all, and even worse was that I could see the front door to my old home from the window. Even more memories forcefully resurfaced, and I found myself in a rather fragile state.

Most of the time, I manage to keep moving. I try not to think too much about the fact that I'm pretty much wandering around alone in outer space over here.The only thing familiar to me is the unfamiliarity, which I've become quite used to. Regular solitude, tempered by reckless socializing have been my only means of surviving. The essence of home and all that lies therein has become a faint and distant memory that seems to not concern anyone, and I have even marginalized such thoughts myself.

Sometimes everything seems like a really bad dream that I can't wake up from. It is difficult to not want to rewind the past almost 6 years of my life and make different choices. The best we can do, as we all know, is learn from our mistakes. I've always tried to forgive people, no matter how badly they have hurt me, because I know I am only human myself and we all have our limitations. I've always felt that anything can be healed, and that pride is the ultimate killer. Fear would run an insanely close second to that. Pride and Fear are a match made in hell, and they will always bear Loss as an offspring.

I have a birthday soon. I believe I will spend the year of my new age exploring and learning more about those three things: Pride, Fear, and Loss. I will learn all that I can so that I will be able to give more to the people in my life, and so that I might spare my heart any of the bullets from those three, quickly-drawn weapons...

Monday Night Thoughts

I have this relentless obstinate feeling that I am approaching another life defining crossroad in my life. After nearly a year of reflecting and processing experiences and memories of great magnitude, I feel that I have come to a certain closure and have reached a pivotal position. These moments occur regularly in our lives. Am I ready for what lies ahead?

How could I possibly know? What I do know is that in life, when things stagnate and become commonplace, I need change. I am in constant evolution, at what seems at times to be occurring at warp speed. I love to explore the depths of human nature and I am fearless when it comes to exploring foreign environments. I watch. I listen. I anticipate. I predict and generally see a rather accurate outcome.

It's all so very transparent. The great disappointment of humanity leaves me with a bleak feeling, and the regular distractions that the world is so easily provided with to blind ourselves from this reality are no longer a functioning opiate. Humans are less than animals. Even when they belong to someone else, they truly belong only to themselves. 

Earth. A beautiful, sapphire blue, emerald green, and opal white jewel dangling in the center of a vacant, black vastness. Far into the void, the piercing silence. So beautiful, so alive, enticing...just as we humans can be. But on the inside--just as when you come closer to the surface of the earth--our flaws clearly show.

All the answers are available to us. Great philosophies and peoples have been a testament to this. Yet we line up for our opiates instead.

The only true mystery left in life is love.

Crow

I am a Crow.
I have claws.
I have a beak.
I have black feathers.
I make a scratchy sound.


A Crow has a great history in Native American culture.
A Crow is said to be:


"Highly enthusiastic, and a natural entrepreneur, the Crow is quite a charmer. But he/she doesn't have to work at being charming – it comes easily. Everyone recognizes the Crow's easy energy, and everyone turns to the Crow for his/her ideas and opinions. This is because the Crow is both idealistic and diplomatic and is quite ingenious. In nurturing environments this Native American animal symbol is easy-going, can be romantic, and soft-spoken. Further, the Crow can be quite patient, and intuitive in relationships. Left to his/her own devices, the Crow can be demanding, inconsistent, vindictive, and abrasive."


A Crow can also be lonely.


A Crow can also be empty--
but she will give one all the shiny things that fill her basin. 


A Crow will nestle sweetly in your arms.
A Crow will fly about jolly around your friends
A Crow will squawk loudly at your bullshit
A Crow will sigh softly at your sins.


And as we are all in life 
To face trials and put to a test,
A Crow will be forced to find 
A home where she makes her own nest.


Her feathers do not like it here.
Her fluttering heart has meant no one any harm
Her little bird song was never more than mere
Her squawking has never lacked a sincere charm


AND YET THEY STILL THROW STONES.


She can invite you in, 
She can offer you her breast,
But you choose to simply eat her
Chew her up and spit her out like the rest.


The Crow understands all things-
She is beyond a relevance that you must grow
She has already flown the Milky Way,
She takes a rest in the trauma that you know.


The Crow dreams of a world wonderfully fecund
Of an existence that is unashamed of the absurd
She will observe and experience nearly everything
So be kind and careful with that black feathered bird.

Gemini

It's days like this that I separate myself.

I peel myself out of the duality that composes me.

I look with my eyes and see--

I see the little, lost and lonely girl

Who sits sad and

Starry eyed,

Full of hope that maybe this time...

But no one comes for her-

And when they do,

It's the other piece of me:

"I dont want to look at her-

Pathetic, whiner, clingy little piece of shit."

She tugs at me like a broken record-

- - - - - - incessant dah-dah-dah-dah- - -

She leaves me no choice.

I slap her across the heart

I tell her to stop

I tell her to go away

I tell her to "shut the fuck up!"

Then I throw her to the ground.

And as I run away, her cries fade

And when I turn back to look, I see her:

Alone

Growing smaller and smaller

As

I

Distance

M y s e l f

From the door

She so

Desperately

Tries

To

Open.

I Lost My Creativity Today

I lost my damn creativity today

It was such an irresponsible thing to do

I can not remember where I put it

But I desperately wish I knew.

I decided to look around the house

To see if it would decide to appear

I must find it! Find it quick-

Or maybe I never will, I fear!

I looked in the closet

It was not there

I looked in the cabinents!

I started looking everywhere!

Under the bed-

No creativity.

Through the drawers-

No creativity.

I checked in the shower,

I combed through the sinks,

I've just got to find it!

I'll search for weeks and weeks!

Frantically I've been seeking it

But I still am coming up blank

Where the hell did I put it?

Did I leave it in my think tank?

Yes, I finally think I have lost it-

My creativity, that is, you see?

For it is gone and now I'm a pity

Because who am I without creativity?

True Love Waits

Waking up alone wrapped in a comforter and gently clasping a pillow with your arms can be rewarding. Apart from the loneliness, there's something truly beautiful in it all. There is something wonderfully rewarding.

Those whom have made love to silence for countless nights would know what I mean, just as those that have had torrid love affairs with busy nights would know as well.

Eventually, you let the calm and the excitement collide in a space of solitude, filling it with the words of poets from long ago, thoughts of anguished souls who've surpassed your own journey, songs that pull you by the hand, set your heart afire and provide an escape from the stagnation.

It's quite easy to fall in love with all of that. And in truth, a love should be given. But to become consumed is a sentence of vacancy. A hindrance. An avoidance from one's waking life. A dream. And dreams are beautiful, but without reality to temper them, they mean nothing.

In this space...this dwelling of growth and change, of the melting of resistance, of the accepting of the self...this is where a real bravery lies. So many walk this beaten path--fearful of the other wanderers. Some will wander forever, but have still come further than those who are exclusive dreamers. But it is those that are not afraid to dream, not afraid to seek, and not afraid to live life AWAKE that will be the blessed encompassed. 

They will not fear to dream for love. They will not fear to live for love. They will not fear it when it lies next to them on a pillow when they wake.

But it is these times of great passing that one shares a pillow with emptiness, shares a space with silence, and shares subconsciousness with the self that will ultimately lead them to love. True love. And true love always waits.

August Summer Night

Evenings that belong to the summer's end can seem quite saturnine. With one's window open into the city's night air, you can breathe nostalgia directly into your lungs. People are either out accumulating more memories to carry into the wintertime, or they are indoors sorting through the memories of yesterday. 

Solitude or distraction. There seems to be no in between, here. Always one or the other. Perhaps one even is the other. The hands of time always ticking away at the age of the skin. Souls desperately searching the dark rooms of castles hoping to find their mates. Psyches working overtime while remaining forever anonymous. Broken hearts nursing themselves back to health as best as they can. Few ever make a full recovery.

From such great heights of a desert mountain, one can see the grid of civilization lit up like Christmas lights. The steam and smoke of factories. The crawling of traffic. We all seem like directionless little bugs wandering through a large carnival. Yes, a large carnival with seasons separated by emotions, and emotions separated without unity.

Summer nights bring such awkward thoughts and feelings.

A Seasonal Affair

There is something special about

a summer day

that adorns itself in autumn's clothing.

It will wear the wind like a melancholic perfume,

leaving its fragrance dancing gently in the leaves of all trees.

There is a silence

There is a sadness

There is a slowness-

almost like a funerary waltz.

Yes, the summer will slide on autumn's dress,

and will play pretend-

dreaming of being and envying that season,

for the summer is in love with the winter

and autumn will always be closer

and more near to him

than she can ever be.

Solubility

There was a slowness in the summer city's air--

like a transparent oil gliding over the city streets.

It was the heaviness that I've tried to shed myself of,

it was the intuition of the abscense of your love.

From my window at the break of dawn I used to pray

that this lonesomeness under the northern sky

was indeed certainly not the art work of fate

that though time must pass, it wasn't too late.

Now when I wake, I make my way down the stairs

then through the hall and out the front door,

I step onto the streets below and fight my way

through the oil that traps me and still makes me stay.

Cars pass by -- my eyes are fixed at the horizon ahead,

and the emptiness guides me without a single faulty step.

Onlookers whisper and murmur, "surely she is dead!",

and I am hypnotized with emotion as I am further led.

There will never be any way to make sense of a lost dream,

it's known there is always a risk for ever even having had one,

the mysteries of love will always be what they shall be,

whether something beautiful is forever lost or won.

And as I haunt these foreign streets

My very own heart I still cannot understand-

maybe it's because I was raised by a man that loved the bottle,

because I was raised tough and without mercy by the hand.

The blooming flowers are something my eyes rarely see,

the only organ that works anymore is my heart,

which leaves me to continue walking toward the sea

as I feel us being distanced further and forever apart.

Dine to Die

Tonight they dine to die,

dressed in their Sunday best

across from one another at

a table lit up by gentle, twin

flickering flames-

And so were they!

A love fiery and consuming,

and hearts full of blood 

viciously beating within their chest

masqueraded by the cloth of said

Sunday Best.

But tonight they dine to die,

with a poisonous laughter permeating

through the air,

smiles as wide as the horizon,

and conversations that moved

like a locomotive-

They were all but safe in

one another's keep, and

the wine ran down their throats

as violently as the lies that had 

come deceitfully dancing

out of them.

Their kisses and carnivorous 

natures were all to be for naught,

for though it was love that lived

there at dinner in that space of time,

Aphrodite had now all she had dreamed

and cast, 

"Tonight they dine to die."