Forks

It was not until the middle of this year that I had finally come to realise: this something which I should have done so much earlier before.

This mortal coil that binds all of us to a universal, unshakable and yet very surreal destiny —death— is fast catching up on those who could not be more important to me.

These marvellous, mindless vessels of flesh: they define us, they enable us, but ultimately, they betray us. 

And it aches me to the bones to witness, to know, and to accept the fact that time has caught up with them and that I am unable for the life of me to change this scenario in any plausible way. 

For lack of a better way to say it, for this one moment of blatant and supreme selfishness, quite frankly put: beyond their conscious existence, my life to me is completely expendable, but theirs are not. 

I would be willing to give any and every thing to have, to savour, and to spend these precious moments, for life without them means absolutely nothing to me.

Nothing is more important to me; though this realisation feels as if it has already come at a time too late. In the blink of an eye two and a half decades have passed, and they have aged more years than in that time. The clock now races through another two-and-a-half decades which must not pass in the blink of an eye. I have gained a life from their givings, but no life I give to them can return a similar gift. 

Time, time. Time with them is something I already know I no longer have enough of. It tears me apart, breaks me down, and haunts my every waking moment. 

Sadness fills me.

I cannot fight time. Truly, no one can.

Life for Rent

Gosh I haven’t done this in such a long time. But as has always been the case, no news here is certainly good news everywhere else. My professional life couldn’t be any better. And I feel utterly fulfilled. That truly wonderful, and deeply rewarding feeling. Pure awesome personified.  

Life feels like it has just begun. I’m slowly settling down and into my new skin; all that has been for the past six years —the financial, emotional, mental and social trauma— was to prepare for this: this and the entirety of the four decades to come.

My future unfolding before me, my academic preparation complete, my career at its first steps. A stark comparison to the aimless, impulsive and perhaps down-right and aptly stupid undertakings of youth. Days without a sliver of responsibility. Days without thought. Days without maturity. Oh goodness how could one live like that for so many years?

I have entered into a new phase of life, one where it is expected of me to perform and thus conduct myself in ways that I have never done so before. And for this I get paid a sum of cash at the end of every month, where in time that sum would grow in size and prove to be substantial enough that I will be able to horde a ton of dough to… to, well, spend on whatever that fancy finds me.  

And so it becomes tremendously easy thus to get sucked into consumerism and the pursuit of ever greater wealth. That there would be no end in sight. That the growth of companies and markets and national GDPs and consequently, the expansion of humankind itself as a whole, is inevitable and inexorable. That we as a race and as a civilisation can continue to flourish unabated for ever.

But no.

Our treasured home is dying.  

Before this century is over, our little blue speck of celestial rock and water will be irrevocably damaged . The tipping point is already upon us. Yet day in and day out, we trudge along: wasteful, improvident, without a care in the world. We dream, and we do so lavishly. We live, we spend and we consume, but the only thing that we consume is our home. We are neither great nor beautiful. We are nothing but a cancer to this planet.  

It disgusts me to live in this filth of fat and unnecessary excess, this sickness and perverted attitude that there is always more beyond the horizon. New opportunities to exploit. New resources to pillage. New lands to conquer. New worlds to rule.  

But there aren’t any.

There isn’t even enough to sustain all of us in our present state of continued excess, much less another few billion people who will soon flick the switch and join us in our so-called first world civilisation —one of mindless twenty-four-seven consumption of any and every resource imaginable.  

When will we wake up and make that change? Buy that one less little unnecessary item. Live without that one less frivolous object. Make that one less journey. Shower that one less minute. Set that one little Celsius hotter. 

Do it regardless, if only because long-term happiness isn’t that extra ten thousand a month, nor is it that fortune worth multiples of a lifetime. Joy isn’t a giant two-ton automobile, nor a house filled to the brim with shiny shit. We need to learn to live a smaller footprint. Learn to live with less. Learn to live on needs. Just as now is and has been a fitting time for us to “grow up” as persons and individuals, so too is now a fitting time for us to collectively grow up as a race, for are we really nothing more than perverse lumps of dividing cells all gone wrong?  

Towers

Of late, the one thing I’ve learnt is that a successive stream of accomplishments can make a person over-confident. And most certainly arrogant.

Just so proud of all the fantastic feats that lay behind one’s path; a towering symbol of one’s sheer and utter greatness.


Success. We all yearn for success. We strive for it. Kill for it. Die for it. Yet success isn’t necessarily life-long, nor is it necessarily the be-all and end-all to all that we hold dear in our long odyssey through mortal existence. For the masses out there who trudge along their daily lives, inconsequential to the eyes of the great and mighty, just the simplest of pleasures might just as well suffice. And so what if a ten-cent cuppa coffee can bring to someone as much as what it would take a million-dollar Rolls to do for another?

I am reminded to what an elder once shared with me, this one little nougat: just as quickly as life could turn for the better, fortunes could just as suddenly turn for the worst; life is long, its course circumstantial, and its bearing unpredictable.

But perhaps even not. Maybe one could be rock solid after all, having had it all nipped in the bud. Gotten everything nailed to the last detail. Maybe one is invincible, and truly untouchable.

All the same, there is ultimately a price to be paid. Most would lose their humility. Likely first to go would be one’s humanity —which is perhaps the one quality we should hold on to most dearly, for what are we without warmth and compassion?

Animals...


What must it feel like to be worth well over half a billion? What would it be like to be worth that amount, and see your life-long friends, comrades and the ones you treasure most struggle even to meet ends meet? Just what must it feel like to be filthy rich and not lift a finger for anyone?

What must it be like to be great and successful if you haven’t a trace of your soul left at the end of that line?


Regardless of where you go or where you're from, joy and fulfilment are universal and fundamentally the same for the haves and the have-nots. Those of us wealthy of accomplishment or cash may certainly be arrogant and overbearing, but remember that life is long and winding, and one might never know if someday you find yourself out in the city streets, without a home, without a living, without a life, and without even a sliver of your humanity left.

Tokens

.
.
.
The silky smooth surface of tranquillity cloaks a torrent of discontent, pandemonium the stirring undercurrent that lies hidden beneath.

A breakdown marks the previous day, the very first of its kind in fifteen weeks.


So tired.

Just so, so damned tired. All the critique, the judgement, the criticism, the ensuing shits.


Tired sick of being alienated, have me and the things I love be put-down time and time again, as if to estrange as much as attempts to marginalise.


I have not come thus long, thus far, to be back at where I was one whole decade ago.

.
.
.

Keys in hand, fuel in tank, the open roads beckon for solace. Peace. My goodness, when, why, have I grown so worldly?

Greed, corruption; these subtle and insidious monsters! Blast them. Damn their eyes.



Too comfortable a lifestyle. Too many luxuries a life.

Filth too dense to clean.

A living footprint too heavy to sustain.


Behind clouds the timid sun hides, painting this land a monochromatic hallucination. The sky darkens. The gauges light, crisp white on black. Rev counter, fuel counter, all systems are still go.


As they were two and a half years ago.

Those were simpler times. Simpler ways. Simpler wants. Simpler needs.


Times happier perhaps not, certainly more beautiful they must have been.

.
.
.

Beautiful this world around me is still.

Great ideas, great pieces of work, great talent, great skill . . . trivialised and suppressed to the realm of gods and religions past, faded into insignificance by the very forcings of ignorant proles all wealthy of spirit, wealthy of cash, bereft of sense.

.
.
.

Take this omen, for tomorrow would not be the same as yesterday, nor as it is today.

Ceilings and zeniths, they were certainly never to be surpassed.

.
.
.

Liberty

Fresh from having just finished the fifth instalment of Herbert’s Dune novel, I am in a state of awe… what a magnificent body of work this is. How brilliant and truly vast this creation of his!


Sadness and that distinct feeling of queasy unease drowns me.

My life as it is now is almost a replica mirroring that of the book; just as the lives and the lines of lineage of the main antagonists have come to conclusion, so too the end chapter of chapters in reality.


Four and a half years of serial, unending academic semesters, stretched over what must be a gruelling five long years at the very least: that chapter of my life has now come to rest. Thousands of kilometres, back and forth. Back and forth.


For so many times now, I have begged for this moment. This the beginning of my life. Free to do what I want, free to go where I please, free from academic shackles and the curse of exams... the prospect of failure and repercussions, dangling dangerously close to the edge of sanity, is at last, no more.

Free at last!

Free! Free …to dive straight into the ever greater pressures and responsibilities that await in life.

The scary question now thus beckons: what now? What now, oh goodness what now?



Safely nestled in the warm protective folds of home, the lovely sense of comfort and security is truly intoxicating.

Ah such contentment you have bred for me to grow into!



So it is over.

So it is ended.

A frenzy of alcohol, a flurry of fine food, a small entourage of coursemates —comrades in battle, wonderful friends truly, a mutual struggle once shared—, and then a life packed into two large suitcases, a twin-engined triple seven and… Home, straight into the warm protective arms of home and the ones loved.

So it has.

So it must be.

Closing Time

June is upon us, and my hands really feel as though they have been tied to… well, something. Something heavy, something cumbersome.

Time is unforgiving and indiscriminate in its advance.

Slashing and ripping through all that is, like a cruel menace time comes for me.




More so than ever before, I am closer to one end of my journey than the other. You know, beginnings are so much less fraught with baggage the way endings are.

The heavy burden of memory and experience is not something universally cherished or embraced.

But without endings, I tell myself, how then can new beginnings sprout?



It was about this time two years ago that I had looked to Australia for hope, escape and new leaves. Today though, escape seems only feasible within the confines of my grey, gooey gunk —which is arguably the very item I need escaping from in first place.


I have started to wonder if my life is one too sane. Is it one too calculated or one too proper? The temptation to flick the switch, run amok, pursue senseless and irrational excursions... and satisfy whims and desires of any and every sort... oh how tempting the proposition!

But then again, when all is said and done, who else would be there to clean up the mess if it was not for me, my own little self?



"A child no longer" voices in my head.

Responsibilities, the piggy account and relationships beckon...


And so, whatever little is left of my youth is being further robbed away from under my feet; time the termite sure loves its wood.


I feel opportunities dissolving into thin air. It is said that youth is wasted on the young, but somehow I have always sensed that I had never wasted my youth. The past decade was spent trying to be as grown-up and as sensible as I could…

But oh the irony!

I laugh now, thinking how these very actions were tantamount to my youth being laid to waste: I have little memory of joy and experience from my younger days. What of the crazy things you did as a child? What of the ridiculous things you said? What of the absurd suggestions you had made, or the outrages desires that you had expressed liking to, and even more shockingly, were granted with? Oh how exciting it must have been.

But if only that …I was there too.



So, with what little is left of my salad days, my time here in this city and the luxury of being “youngish", must I really walk away like this? Walk away on this path of continued arrogant, self-serving righteousness and the delusions of an unsullied life?

Must I really walk away from this one chance, guided by ever more sane and reasoned laser systems? Is the grass really always greener on the other side? Is Lord Dreamer sleeping again, or is it Lady Rationale moving on to greener pastures?

Time and the bubble of a world around me is just screaming at me to act …but if only the solutions were not lost in the very jungle of noise that they created.



But then again, none of this ever seemed to matter to me before. I wonder, must it really now?

Legacies

You know there’s this one thing I have long known, but never previously shared with anyone, neither in public nor in private...

Not that this is a particularly secretive nougat that should only be kept within the confines of my skull; I just suppose the opportunity never presented itself…


Twenty four months: that really, is the longest period of time I could spend at any given place or institution.

This is the duration long enough to be marked by epochs and cataclysms; for history to be written, new standards to be set, achievements to be celebrated and looked back upon in times to come, meaningful relationships to be made —and detrimental ones to be killed.

And perhaps most importantly: critical life lessons to be experienced, absorbed, and learnt.


Dragged on for longer, and the burden of memory and familiarity becomes unbearable; the weighty baggage of experience and contempt start to swell up into a pool of trauma.

Twenty four months is the longest amount of time before I pass from being too comfortable to being too sick, and before I get stunt from growing and get encapsulated by the very spheres I set over myself.


As the sliver of realisation falls, comes a reality that liberty and release looms ever closer beyond the horizon.

I now liken myself to a four-engine winged-tubed craft at one end of a runway, waiting for four green lights to signal at the other, before putting thrusters to full for the imminent pressure-differentials to do their aerodynamic witchcraft.

And then, freedom.