Precipitates…

“…somewhere over the rainbow.

I was wondering how I should be feeling now, and I think it’s somewhat peculiar. I feel a little like the tin man and I fear his predicament. It seems to me that the scarecrow was not the one needing the brain in the first place. What sort of lunatic would keep on picking up that axe? I just hope no one else got hurt in the wild swinging that swung far too quick and wide, with hands assured without the slightest sliver of hesitance.

“Swish“

“Chunk.”

I hope the tin smith’s in.”

I feel somewhat annoyed that my useless body’s beginning to hold protests against me now. My skin has begun picketing and raising little red flags all over me, threatening to call in the union and break rank at any moment. Looks like I’m not immune to rust either. Dammit.

War.

As I read through a narrative by a BBC reporter who was visiting a World War I Site in France, the picture used in the article caught my attention. After reading some descriptions of the horrors endured and ruddy life poured from soldiers bodies out into the forest floor the picture of tombstones ran chills through mine.

What caused it wasn’t that the tombstone was eerily covered in slimy green moss, watched over by stone angels and forgotten by time and man. What made me scared was the normalcy of it all. The sterile, anonymous stones plain white, completely bare apart from a cross engraved and a token sentence. It felt like balmy afternoon, like every other day, like a time unassuming and so normal. It terrifies me that someone’s life could pass in such a manner, and be marked in passing by an afterthought, their memory evaporating like leaves from the trees in fall. Here for a moment, and gone forever, like the passing of a flower that no one saw. The fields are full of them, and no matter how brilliant they are perishing in an instant. How much more tragic lives that have been brutally cut short though the rage of aliens, strangers whom they’ve never met, a voice they haven’t heard, all of themselves spent on picking up the receipt for someone else’s bill.

War.

I’m Not Acting Tough…

… I’m just scarred all over.

And The Thunder Rolled In….

Somewhere halfway to paradise, rolling billows of grey were swallowing up the sky. The air, cold and quiet grew heavy and began to smell of rain. How strange it was that the same sky which several moments before was washing everything in amber coloured sunshine began to steal the colour from my eyes.

“How goes it young man?” He said.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” I replied, curling my knees up my chest.

“Once I though that I knew the skies, the seas and the wind, when to move and when to be still. I’ve spent a great deal of my time travelling, and have made my way mostly alone.”

“When did you start travelling?”

“The day I was born.”

The old man began toying with a staff he held in his hand. It was somewhat curious in appearance; too perfectly formed to be natural yet too beautiful to have come from man’s hands alone.

“Do you intend to stop?”

I turned and stared, and remained silent.

“Only when I have to.”

Thunder rolled in from the distant mountains, tumbling across the fields until it pass us by, striking the roof over our heads and rumbled deep in our hearts.The sky was ink now, lighting striking the clouds, slashing the sky apart with raw and raging power.

I closed my eyes as the rain soon followed after, anxious to catch up and rushed towards our little shelter, shouting and crashing in its wake. I soaked the sounds in, imagining the road ahead covered in mud and torrents of water; wind tearing the trees apart and whipping their leaves across the land.

“Do you trust the skies?”

“They have obeyed a brother of mine in the past, yet I am not my brother. I only know that if they destroy me it is my father’s will.”

“How curious.”

“Indeed.”

My steed rumbled gently,  waiting immobile while the rain lashed the land around us. Her chrome carriage beaded with drops of water, now quickly collecting as they rolled down her side.

“Would you defy the clouds to ride through the storm?”

I closed my eyes again.

“They may not receive me then I will die. Yet I have seen the heavens open up and the light eternal pouring down on those who persisted.

When I hear from my father I shall begin. I fear not the rain nor the storm, only wasted time.”

“You are young, and have life to spare yet.”

“Then I fear for my steed, for though loyal she may not be built for such times as these.”

“She too can be restored.”

“Then I fear I may wander and lose my way.”

“After travelling for so long?

I was quiet for a while. Pools of water began to grow on the ground around us, engulfing the little steams and tributaries that were forming.

“Is the journey really worth it?”

He held the staff, as if beholding it for the first time, turning it this way and that.

“Only for those who make it so.”

Satisfied, he replaced it on his lap and started humming. I lay down on the hard wooden boards, and began to breathe.

My Sycho Girl

Somemeans, somehow a friend managed to drag me into the cinema to watch a movie I didn’t really want to watch. It was conceded in the name of solidarity. Of all movies I got dragged into, it was the American version of ‘My Sassy Girl’. Hmmmm. And I enjoyed it a bit more than I thought I would! What’s more, I’ve even come away with a couple of object lessons.

1) Some girls are psychotic. Empirically unstable, emotionally abusive and self absorbed.

2) Some guys let themselves be emotional, physical slapping bags. In all generosity, calling them sadomasochist would be putting it lightly. and sometimes…

3) It’s really not your fault.

“But isn’t that nice?” Sometimes the only thing you did wrong was ‘being nice’. People have died for being ‘nice’. People have been crucified for being nice. Upside down. I haven’t been brought to a point where someone’s trying to steady the point of a fat rusty nail on my wrist, but If I’m ever going to get crucified I better be pretty damn sure what I’m being nice about, like having to redeeming mankind from damnation and being assured an everlasting throne and dominion or something like that.

I’ve been told that sometimes in life you have to be able to risk everything to gain something of great importance. How often we forget what we are risking and what we stand to gain in life. How many have risked all for nothing and others risked nothing for all. To be in either situation would be a tragic waste of life. I think I’m grouchy again.

Illusions

Somehow, my senses are beginning to do strange things to my brain. Or is it my brain doing strange things to my eyes? I beign to see and read things that I know shouldn’t be there, and see things too. Mmm.. I’m gettin gold.

Anyways, who listens to jazz? When I listen to jazz, particularly late at night it makes me restlessly lazy. Who in their right minds want to be restlessly lazy when they should be sleeping? Probably musicians. Particularly jazz musicians.

We’ve Only Just Begun…

…to live. And yet.

I’m a little too tired to think. Or write. Blogging here must be some escapist reaction I’m having. Mmm. Goodnight world.

I Under My Microscope

For the lack of subjects to pick apart, I have turned to examining myself in detail

More Thoughts…

On Icons: For small, similarly sized objects, the first thing you tend to notice is colour, followed by shape, then detail etc; but the biggest differentiating factor is colour

I remember.

I feel like a clean slate. I’ve spent the past couple of months removing things from my life I felt shouldn’t have been there; some thing I lacked the strength to do God helped me to the point where I feel like I’ve been emptied out, wiped clean and put back on the shelf. I’m not addicted to anything, as far as possible I try to keep to everything that leave my lips and try to find ways of being a better someone than I was yesterday.

How painful it is to be who I think I am sometimes. And now that I’ve walked this far down that road I think I’ve missed the point altogether; I don’t think living a ‘perfect’ life is all it’s cracked out to be. I hate being afraid of giving more of myself out than I’m comfortable with, and losing more time than I have on my hands and always trying to be right.

“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

I think there’s so much more to love, faith and knowing than I believe. Maybe it’s time to drop even more preconceived notions, and take all my judgments and my knowledge, and throw them all away. To forget all else and really believe, and to understand, to know, to seek Jesus. I want to go to a place where love compels me. To wash the canvas with colour.