welcome to my

I want a fog effect to go here, but am having difficulty getting it down. And please pardon all the bats. Not sure how they got in here! They must have migrated from that cave over there. I keep imagining myself swatting at them with a coat hanger, but then I remember I got that image from the film Birdemic, which did not involve bats. Also changed the scenery a bit thanks to a little background site.

I intend to be a bit serious in this subspace. There might be a little joke here and there, because I physically cannot help it.

CAUTION

This page may contain material that is scary (or generally unpleasant). Reader discretion is advised.

grasping at vapours

I often feel like I am trying to hold onto moments in as fruitless a fashion as grasping at steam. I see the clouds evolving over the pot, but as I go to grab them, I'm left with nothing but droplets of memories on my hands that also disappear in time.

I also often feel like I'm walking across a bridge that's collapsing behind me. The planks I trod and can never step on again. Places and people and moments I can never return to.

the weather

The morning's forecast predicted strong storms that afternoon.

I ask my coworker if he brought his umbrella, but he looks at me skeptically.

"But the sky is clear and the sun is bright now! How could there ever be a storm?"

As if expectations and what we see within our tiny frames would keep the hurricane away.

the tornado

For over a decade, I've had the same recurring nightmare. I am the passenger in a car, and we are the only car driving down a highway in the countryside. In the distance, I see a tornado touch down. It doesn't seem to be moving, which means it's headed in our direction.

I alert the driver. There's no buildings nearby, so I advise we pull over and hide in a ditch.

But the driver says

"What tornado?"

What do you mean? It's right there! And it's closer now.

I beg the driver to pull over. The tornado is so big and so close that it cannot be ignored!

"Stop being dramatic."

I always wake up just before the twister hits us.

the blood

sometimes you learn. then you know. and you can't stop seeing the blood everywhere.

dripping from my headphones. spraying from a tailpipe.

oozing from your sandwich. steaming in the percolator.

when you know others see it to, but pretend not to. when we could work together to end it, but just acknowledging it in the first place is too scary to too many —

     you see
         red.

but they see



    nothing.




they leave a trail across their face as their drenched fingers tuck their hair behind their ear, and ask



           "what's wrong?"

        Everything

the visions

it has been horrifying to see the visions i've had for decades become reality

imagine how horrifying it must be for those who have seen this coming longer than i have

those who came before me, who went unheeded.

who tried to stop it

and could only watch in horror as others

held them back

      because

There's nothing to worry about.

They believe that if they say it loud enough, often enough, that we'll no longer smell the blood and rot. That ignorance will enable us to defy the laws of nature, and that the floor beneath us will magically never cave in. The must gets stronger and the floors bow further every day.

And when we finally crash, we will blame everyone but ourselves.

the underground factory

I found myself once again in a location lit by burning furnaces. The humid, underground facility was lined with churning machines and manufacturing-sized walls.

Ahead was a vertical conveyor belt. It loaded the orphans' bodies into the machinery for dessication and pulverization so they could be incorporated into cigarette filters.

the nightmare

I found myself slowly descending a staircase that spiraled along the wall of a tower. Everything was bathed in a red glow from the fires, especially from those below.

The air: hot. Filled with humidity and the smells of blood and burning flesh.

In the centre of the tower stood several tall metal spikes.

her grief

She told me

"But I need to pull the lever on the orphan-crushing machine! The mist it produces soothes my grief!"

As if the suffering of one justifies participating in the suffering of others, so long as the latter even marginally alleviates the former.

Grief is hard. I have carried it all my life, and it has only gotten heavier.


But still, may I never slice my soul for a whisper of relief.

the tornado II

Another recurring dream I've had.

I left my hometown for a place across the country, as I found myself chased by a tornado.

But as I kayaked down a canyon river, I saw that the tornado had followed me.


And in real life. I left. And I was found.

the nuclear option

we are separated from communities.

we are separated from our families.

we are separated from ourselves.

and so only those Rightly Ordained define reality, even if their reality contradicts what we see with our own eyes.

and we subscribe to the reality we want to see.

because critical & independent thought is but an aesthetic among others, making it totally reconcilable with

    "it's not that deep"

because to think deeper than a cookie sheet is to invite bruises to our ego

and so we are damned to talk at each other instead of with each other

salvation

so long as we worship at the altar of celebrity


so long as we beg for someone, anyone, to save us


we will never be free

     I wake from dreams and turning
     My vision on the height
     I scan the beacons burning
     About the fields of night.


     Each in its steadfast station
     Inflaming heaven they flare;
     They sign with conflagration
     The empty moors of air.


     The signal-fires of warning
     They blaze, but none regard;
     And on through night to morning
     The world runs ruinward.


        -A.E. Housman

the tornado III

Maybe I have been too afraid for too long of tornadoes.

Maybe I need to become the tornado.

    Now hollow fires burn out to black,
    And lights are guttering low:
    Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
    And leave your friends and go.

    Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
    Look not left nor right:
    In all the endless road you tread
    There's nothing but the night.

        -A.E. Housman