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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Like When We Were Children.

I wished many things.

I wished for —believe it or not— a better life.

One much less swarmed by academic hardship and pressure and the simmering prospect of failure and retribution.

And more cash. I wished for more cash to spend daily, to live more comfortably, to splurge a little, to enjoy life with, to be more carefree.

I need more time; time for my own personal self-development… the D80 and the weights beckon, the creative little child in me needs escape, and the world isn’t waiting for me.

I truly wished for more space, more time, and more cash to stretch my legs and spread my wings.

Flight.

Freedom.

Fantasy.

They've been too far and too few of late.

Distant Ties

There were quite a number of you.

Back then you were, all of you, my saviours from ...so many ugly things.


Sometimes it pains me to see how far we have all drifted apart from one another, the currents of our lives taking us toward our individual destinies, as we set off to make our mark in the great big world.

We have grown distant; friendships stretched just a little too far, and just that wee bit too thin. It’s as though we never met, as though we never knew each other, as though the other person never existed.

Then again, I suppose there isn’t much to be said between us in the here and now anyway. Simple hellos, simple take cares, and simple goodbyes.


But memories of the warmth, the good times and the good deeds linger in my head and in my heart still.

I cannot for the life of me find words to express gratitude for everything that you have filled my life with —if only in times past.


Wherever in the world you are tonight, you are not forgotten.

There’s a little piece of me, wishing you all the best, in whatever you are going through.