For I Am The Siren More Than I Am The Song

...This morning we woke to a blanket of snow covering a slumbering city, or I should say some of us awoke. That snow filled the transition from night to day, but the darkness flooded in long before a single pixel found itself resting along a motionless motor. The snow seems fitting given the time of year, as the tears we've been holding down can no longer be restrained and they have begun to freeze in piles at our feet. And we'll hear claims of the purity such a lack of color represents, but there's none of that to be discovered here. There's nothing comforting about having our breath pulled out from beneath us, because the warmth will surely escape and we'll be left inhaling the frigid cover of a world in slow-motion. Our lungs will fill but I'm not sure they possess an ability to expel that recycled air back into this room. For we pulled in your final scent and are now committing too passionately to the art of holding our breath. We border upon suffocation, but somehow the edge is welcoming. Perhaps sometimes it's good to instill fear within ourselves of ourselves for the sake of recognizing the limits our bodies can withstand. Though those limits are echoing so loudly off these canyon walls which are nothing more than a suburban hallway, however this is the natural world we've grown to accept as our own. The world which convinced us that domestication could appear so wild. I'm not certain where closure comes, but I've been spending my morning attempting to best pinpoint where a circle comes to an end, and while I can pick apart the scars that may stand as defining factors of this division, there's nothing stating that such linework dictates points of weakness. For often the strength recognized in those we've lost is required to help carry so many broken individuals through those moments of absence that will linger far beyond the vast vacancy of a winter straddling the separation of a man-made calendar that keeps filling up with anniversaries we have no desire to celebrate.

Now I can taste the blood filling the space behind my teeth, as a reserved smile of knives digs deep into my jaw to present some level of release, but we've been so focused on that which is pulled out beneath the doorways of these homes that have become nothing more than spaces to house all the demons we convinced ourselves we wouldn't need to converse with so quickly. So I'm stuck revisiting the idea that I'd pull my limbs from their sockets if it would somehow remove from those much stronger than myself the fevers which keep them awake through these days of waning light and reorganized existence. How bittersweet the way the weather patterns appear to mimic the way the human form seems to rush between various planes of understanding. How fleeting we can all become within moments that stand still, within an existence we experience in sequence but recall primarily through stills. We long to bury our bodies within the lasting labor of those classic films, but resolution discovered isn't some idealized storyline. It's a battle reminiscent of those our grandparents outlined within the walls of a home we're all still trying to return to. Oh the warmth of the past, if only we could trade these chills for the comfort of days that feel so close. Days we feel we could reinstate in spite of the fact that we've bent all of our fingers to the backs of our hands, and broken bones aren't much when it comes to carrying the weight of the world. A world that will endlessly refuse to wait for your approval to keep pushing on, to keep presenting to you admirable progression through unshakable heartbreak. In these moments we will begin to discover the way such hours of suffocation births within us a serious desire for destruction, as passion revoked is often reorganized as a real passion for destruction, but we don't desire to pull others beneath the rising tides. So we reserve that destruction for ourselves, inhaling currents for the sake of feeling truly organic motion, swallowing everything we need besides personal solace. Because it's always been easier to push myself below the promising peaks of the waves, to allow the salt to coat my throat until I am nothing more than a mortal lighthouse, a beacon standing to remind you where the edge is drawn, to remind the point where the consoling repose of the open ocean is replaced by the silent threat of submerged mountains showcasing the promise of pinnacles while concealing the valleys necessary to project such heights above the submersion we chemically combat with each new sunrise. For I am the siren more than the song.

And I wish I spoke with more frequency of topics that focus on the radiant points of existence, but it's hard to not feel stationary when the winds have been cut off like the sentences I've filled so many notebooks with. Ideas come to a close, and thoughts find a point of finality, and if life is essentially an abstract series of thoughts that exist separately yet are inexplicably and undeniably connected via wires we pay others to attempt to comprehend, then life too will find a point of completion, and we must embrace this point. We must learn to embrace the beauty of closure even when our palms are burnt by the handles of doors holding up the thresholds we'll never fully pass through.

For while an open, or otherwise unfinished book, presents an immense level of intrigue, we tend to fill the forthcoming pages with details we personally construct, and life isn't meant to be lived in such a manor. Because when we find ourselves too ingrained within organizing the details of a subjectivity exterior to ours we fail to find that fulfillment within our own self-dictated details. So learn to admire the possibilities that align themselves within the absent pages of what is yet to come, but don't fret when you find yourself face to face with the final mark of punctuation. Because while the details may be momentarily concealed from their surroundings, we have an ability to absorb and expand in such fascinating ways, and such tendencies allow even the oldest stories to stay alive in a sense I can't quite understand. Though this fact is no different from any other attempt I've taken to define what that odd balance feels like between being and feeling alive.

The frost seems so much heavier now, how it hangs in my chest through each initial inhalation I pull in as I escape the confines of home and immerse myself in an ever thinning atmosphere. And there will always be those that paint such pretty pictures of the point where the air ends and somehow reforms itself into something a little more solid, but I don't think the air ever ends, rather it simply gets thinner until we no longer possess the ability to differentiate between our own being and the space that being is suspended within. We have yet to reach such heights, however I'm not sure height is the correct means of measurement. For we place so much above ourselves and it causes us to question our worth a bit too passionately. Because there are gaps here which will never be erased, like a bridge burnt to the ground for the sake of reminding us that rushing waves and raging flames often echo just the same. But gaps allow the light to spill into our overly-diagnosed seclusion, and this light will mend us with gold, not for the sake of removing the reminders of where it all fell apart, but to accentuate this scorched earth with a beauty and strength representative of the being which involuntarily caused us to lose grip in that moment that filled the floor with the scattered pieces of what once was whole.

So this year we shall cancel the holidays, and we'll gather the same weekend within hallways pulsing with so many people it'll be impossible not to notice the emptiness, however whether that emptiness exists within us and is being impressed upon our surroundings, or vice versa, is yet to be determined. And I don't believe in ghosts but I feel like one all the same, as I pull teeth out through my sleep, broken like the windows filling the fractioned walls holding up the industrialized side of town that represents my lungs with each heaving hour. These are the moments where we question if we're actually lost or simply have lost any desire to be unearthed from the frozen ground we buried ourselves beneath hoping this unnatural rise in mercury would reorganize the frost into a lake that could swallow us whole. Because we still aren't convinced that if we are truly fluid beings we can't simply submerge ourselves to the point that we become one with the waves. Though perhaps we've been dreaming a bit too feverishly about anything that could carry us from here. Perhaps such thoughts connected to lofty dreams of evaporation is what has me drawing up plans for diving from the depths of the bridges in my hometown, filling amateur postcards with their oncoming absence.

So we shall remember you as a time. As a light. As the light which falls in those magic moments where the sky becomes a painting and we truly understand the undeniable beauty that results from such a resilient entity pushing itself through layers of resistant atmosphere. Because the midday sun coats the city in an even glow, but that light only accentuates the shadows which really hold our attention. For without the resistance of a day racing around to greet the tropics, and without the glory we recognize within the final breath being pulled free from the sails, the sun is nothing more than a hole in a sky we've spent these recent days dreaming of tearing apart.

This need for expression is so strange, for we push the morning fog from our throats and then attempt to document that escaping breath before it simply becomes one with the rising sky. And we run circles round our heads as we interpret the unfurling nature of that which ebbs and flows outside our beings and valiantly venture to find a correlation between that and the flashes within our minds that we've learned to transmit from mere concept to connective actuality. For I do not desire to be the blood pulsing through your veins as much as I long to be the means of carrying that blood and allowing it access to areas previously unnoticed in spite of a continual existence. Because I'm nothing more than a being that strives to explain himself through showcasing the way my actions relate to the actions of existing factions of subjectivity which you already feel you have a grasp on. So we find ourselves surrounded by rooms we don't visit much, enveloped in the stale blue tones of a morning yet to greet the sun. And it will cause us to question whether this darkness signifies that we still have yet to let go of the night before, but the sun need not fill the sky to supply the radiance needed to turn night to day. These moments seem to redistribute strength, but I'm only pulling my fingertips free from my hands for the sake of keeping distance from discernibility. Nails now pushing through the defining line where the flesh begins, but my joints have turned to open wounds and arthritis is beginning to overtake any semblance of personal plasticity. However I'm learning this may be a genetic trait, or some form of adopted habit that those near me picked up in their own past and we now address as some long time familial commitment.

Last night the sky was bruised, but I failed being able to determine if this was a reaction to a new wound or old wounds finally pulling some level of healing to the surface even if only for the sake of showcasing that not all diseases push us through the floor. Now silence is spilling across state lines as it fills all that surrounds me while finding no place within me to rest. Rest is so fickle, for even when I close my eyes I'm unable to pull myself completely free from the confines of a recent reality we will surely revisit once the months begin to pull the heat from the ground and the sun will rise only to illuminate our breath, to showcase our increasing chills with each exposed expulsion of air. Though this year we set the sky on fire. And while we avoided the holidays I was reminded of a past placement perched so purposefully in that frame, but I can't recall who was coloring more outside the lines. We develop connections at a distance and fail to fully act upon that which wires us together, for at times we associate too greatly with the confines of a shared name and we adapt an inability to better access the fact that there would be a means for coming together even without such involuntary traits claiming ownership of our existence.

Now we spend hours speaking words we mean but don't really think of before we let them fall from our throat onto this overly-tread, uninviting carpet that seems to stretch all the way to the ceiling. We'll illuminate this unorganized alphabet as though these rooms aren't only holding the overflow, and we'll keep our back to the crowd as we are the offspring of a generation that learned if you keep your eyes on your demons they cannot come down to pull perspective from the base of your spine. So I find myself in the winter attempting to become one with the absent scenes of empty trees surrounding the skeletal remains of jagged reflections that market the spent breath of industrialized ghosts. Though in these days they pull the relics from my chest for the sake of bringing life back to these temporarily dormant means of inhalation, and I don't have the wherewithal to withstand the oncoming new year winds without the slightest excuse for ornamentation. I've lost the ability to decipher what day it is anymore, for the end of the week is dressed as though it is the bringer of introductions, but it's so skilled at closure it only exaggerates the panic we feel rising in our throats when lost in the purgatory of extended removal.

And I've been so uncertain in my uncertainty in these recent days of record warmth where I still felt chills so deep it made me readdress the space which I possess/disrupt all the same. Because it's so difficult to discover a point where I find comfort in completion. For I fear that such a means of closure will keep me from revisiting this momentum when calendar days shift slightly to match motion with the moon. However I have this peculiar infatuation with the songs which close out all these albums I periodically forget, and such an adoration for the final note, and the beauty that is a caterwaul of sorts fading into the static of silence never ceases me from finding a desire to come back to that initial melody which builds in the first few seconds until falling back to that moment of static. That moment where the silence envelops us and allows our minds to move with a swiftness we'll continually curse for it becomes increasingly apparent, in those moments that the most seductive inspiration arrives, that it tends to come at a rate we cannot fully encapsulate. For the mind moves much faster than our hands ever could match, much as the destruction that falls from the hand of man fails to even compare to the deterioration which fills one's dreams regardless of the time of day one is connected to. Though we must not forget that such drastic desires for destruction can be matched with a compassion so direct it's illegal in several countries. We must not forget that we have a purpose beyond ourselves. While we will watch those we love and abhor fall victim to time, as those that love us will do the same, in the moment we will fight back an inevitable breakdown and tear the tongues from the mouth's of those disengaged hymns for the sake of singing songs of triumph. For the melodies which we share will refuse to focus upon the final place of rest and rather the explosion of passion which eventually led to this splintered excuse for sanctuary perched so perfectly within sight of a childhood we grow further from each day.

(And moments of major loss always create this space where for a moment I find myself immensely envious of those that commit to any real form of religious faction. Not because I personally desire any savior outside myself, my family, my friends, and those that cross over the lines of imaginary division, because I've been down that road and it's surely not for me, but because I envy the comfort they can curate/locate knowing whatever it is they lost will once again be found. Because they hold steadfast to promises of an afterlife, to beliefs that we will end up in a better space, but I fail to find, through a means of removal, any true reason to feel as if where we now reside is nothing more than a waiting room for something greater. If we were all truly just awaiting something greater, some massive eternity where all that has been continues on in some similar sense, then I fail to understand the true significance behind this reality we're all suspended within. For in my opinion, there's little significance that I derive from anything deemed universal/unending. Besides, if by chance there is no true eternity we all share in free from the blemishes of modern existence, doesn't that just make this conscious reality far more important, doesn't it make these interactions that much deeper? When we were children we we're taught that all dogs go to heaven, but what's to say that this heaven is not represented by the space they currently reside within and share with us in a very tangible sense? What's to say we must hold out for the beauty of longevity when we can create ideas that possess a similar longevity/level of beauty in our present existence? Think of all you have in life, the lovers, the leaders, the left behind. Think of all the art, and music, and true beauty we get to immerse ourselves in, and think of how easily your consciousness could have fallen somewhere else along the timeline, somewhere far less fitting. And if a faith-based fate is not responsible for bringing this all together, does that not make all of this immeasurably more endearing? I have no desire to negate someone's chosen beliefs, and I'm not intending to challenge them, but if all of this is truly the result of reactions to organic actions unfolding for centuries, then I believe that is far more alluring/intriguing than anything any book could attempt to define. But this really isn't supposed to be connected to religion, or so focused on it, and I will never desire to fall in line with these factions of faith, but sometimes I just wish I could pull out pieces from it for the sake of finding some solace in sections of existence occupied by an absence even I don't welcome. Then again, I know if I did find myself in such a position than I would likely start to lose grip on the true level to which I should embrace the connections I've discovered/built within this confusing suspension, and that's nothing I need, for I have issues with personal withdrawal as it is. Now I know nothing is experienced universally and so our perspectives will vary, and I appreciate that, so please don't see my shared views as an attempt to take anything away from yours, for I'm simply attempting to sort my thoughts through a caterwauling morning. Turn away from the TV today Ignore the proceedings of politicians that don't care about you Create art Create love Create connection that does not rely on shared disgust to stay afloat Put yourself out there in ways you fear and dream of much the same Be vulnerable Be present Just Be Because sometimes that's a lot harder to do than we'd be led to believe. I'd like to take this final moment to just say how much I truly do adore having the ability to share in all of this confusion with so many, even when my mind/mouth doesn't transmit that, and if you take anything from this, please just give all your love as purely as possible, because you need it, and we need it, and the world needs it.)