Sam,
think less
act
give your best
step back
work with passion
embrace failure
accept yourself
understand
rest
care
love
A Season of Change
Well I’ve been away from this blog for a while now haven’t I? Spoiler alert: I have.
The last post on this blog was published on the eighth of April 2015, almost two years ago. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it was three years ago that I first wrote on this blog, about the Haiku, then about Catherines… God, it’s been a while. More than it has been a while in time, it has been a while for me as a person. A lot of people have came and went in my life and this has shaped my writing quite a lot too. But I’ll talk about that later, now, about my life first.
2015 is all a blur to me, a lot of things happened, one of the big things was that I started talking to someone from very far away, which encouraged me to find more friends from far away. It was around August I believe, that I started talking to a girl from Mongolia and she’s one of my closest friends to this day. Talking to her, learning about Mongolian culture, traditions, the language – it has been an incredibly eye-opening experience and I’m so glad I did indeed start talking to her, because without her, I don’t think I’d have as many people around me as I do now.
2016 is a bit more vivid. My personal life took a complete U-turn, my personality changed, I had a whole lot of psychic things to deal with and this period had the biggest impact on my writing.
Previously, I’d write with my world-view still not solidified, as is visible from my “The Old Man” which explores most of all my view of religion, heck I might go back and analyse that just to show you some hidden quirks of the piece, but it also explores death – more specifically death of one’s parent(s). I personally don’t have the warmest relationship with my parents, it’s not a bad relationship by a long shot, but I never was really close to either of my parents and that piece explores that idea. How much would the death of a loved one touch me, if I weren’t that close with the person?
Away from death and depression, on a positive note I got out of a massive rut in my life – mental health. Finally, I managed to beat everything with the help of a brilliant person, I won’t name her because she doesn’t read, or even know about, this blog, but she deserves to be praised for helping me grow. I won’t go into detail on my mental health but I can say with confidence: for me, now, every day is a good day and I can wake up and smile and talk to people and make them happy and finally, I know my purpose.
And that makes me quite damn happy.
My personality type also changed because of this, I previously was quite introverted, but just a month back I scored a 99% openness percentile on a psychological exam, as well as a 92% extroversion percentile. Pretty damn significant!
Honestly, I’ve come to absolutely adore human interaction, when previously I’d rarely enjoy it, only if it were very specific and comfortable for me, but nowadays, I talk with everyone all the damn time. Honestly, I’m starting to think I might be annoying people… This has led to my life growing to new heights, I work multiple jobs, I have a group of people who support me and multiple projects that are heading in the right direction. God damn!
Now then, about my writing.
I’ve actually finished a book in those two years I took a break from blogging! It’s pretty shit. So yeah, I finished it and started editing it, realised it was bad and started rewriting it, then gave up and started another book, this time with more planning. So one thing hasn’t changed about my writing: I’m still shit at finishing things and editing them. I’m working on two projects right now. The first, which is the one I’ll be talking about the most on this blog is a book that’s going to be a collection of thoughts in the form of essays and short stories, much the like of “The Old Man” and prose in the style of “Crossword” – I want to stick to prose. All these essays will reflect the world and its phenomena as I see them – through the eyes of a young man. The working title, is Age of a Young Man. I might stick with it but who knows. I’ll be posting an essay from the manuscript in the following days, I’m interested in what the response will be.
Now then my second writing project is one that I’ll keep in secret for now, but I can tell you this much: I have written about 20 thousand words of a fantasy novel. It’s set in our contemporary world and I want to keep as much about it hidden, because it’s not a final version and I also want my ideas to stay abstract and not solidify them as words on a blog post (words on a page sounds much more massive, whatever, guess I could print this post and they would be words on a page). But what I can tell you! The story follows a young man who has a curious pet – a raven that follows him around and seems quite smart. Then, one night, the bird beckons him to follow outside his bedroom window and out and away, changing his life forever. Cliché or not? You decide.
That’s all for me for today, to my returning readers: Hello! And thank you for sticking around. To any new readers: Hey! It’s great to have you on board!
As always, I love to reply to your comments so don’t hesitate to write one!
That’s it for now, until next time!
-S.
Sparkling mortality
Reblogged from lordbruder.wordpress.com – written by Branislav Bruder.
A beautiful, truly heart felt description of the deception of uniqueness. I’m definitely going to delve into such ideas after I finish my novel — in between me finishing it, publishing it and starting another large project.
I enjoy your writing style, I feel like I’m reading a scientist’s view on human life through a belletristic point of view — professional, yet accessible.
Looking forward to reading more.
-S.
A bottle. A mere plastic bottle. Just sitting there, motionless, on the table. Only observable motion takes place within the bottle itself. Sparkling bubbles within it attempting to escape it’s plastic containment. Will they succeed, Perhaps they will be capable of escaping their plastic containment, perhaps not. In the end, does it really matter?
Even if they manage to make their way past the sealed lid, within seconds they simply dissipate, vanish. They become…well nothing. A marvelous metaphor for human life. We try to escape our mundane lives, to be something special, different, unique. These hapless attempts often times fail, however. And even if they do, this memory usually survives within people only for decades, at best.
Thus, these people become just another corpses,cadavers,skeletons nothing but food for annelids. We hopelessly attempt to extend our meaningless lives, but for what purpose? To crack the question of mortality? Have more time to…
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The Concept of Family
A friend of mine said her family doesn’t eat dinner together
“Absurd!” I exclaimed, “That can’t be true!”
The thought that five portions had trouble coming together
To sit and enjoy each other’s company every evening
Another friend looked away from us
And silently whispered “My father beats me,”
There were no scars for us to see,
Although a caring eye will surely find
The scars on the heart of a broken child
Pulled into this harsh world all too quickly
Holding in the tears and hoping that she doesn’t turn into a foster child
Hiding her fragility deep, deep within her very mind’s intricacy
Cellphone Society
Have you ever missed a chance
Because you didn’t notice it?
Have you ever not offer your help,
Because you didn’t hear people asking for it?
In this society of blind eyes
Thoughtful gazes often go unanswered,
The pleading eyes of unfound love,
The sighted eyes seek the blind but stay — undiscovered
In this society of deaf ears
Cries for help fade faster than a muted string
Pleas for sympathy waved off as casually as compliments
Why are we still even trying?
In this society of blind eyes and deaf ears
Helpless souls shed helpless tears
Blind hatred blinds blind people
Deafening devices deafen deaf people…
Why have we become these blind and deaf people
In this society of blinded and deafened people
Blinded and deafened by our own desire
Blindness and deafness to that of degree, as to not then hear the sighted and hearing suspire—
Condemned for eternity to miss the meeting
To kiss goodbye faith’s plans,
Condemned, by choice, to silence and blind the feeling
Of a smile on someone’s face as they catch your glance
By our own choice declaring
That this life is unfair and boring
Yet forgetting the vigor we have lost
When we first saw the screen we ‘needed’ the most
Every day looking down
Wasting our life, wasting our time
Playing games, ‘liking‘ pictures
Hasn’t technology gone too far this time? Haven’t we gone too far this time?
How has it become common practice,
To not look at a person when you speak to them?
How has it become common practice,
To prefer an instant message over a smile?
I go out with my friends but I feel like I’m the only one there
All of them laugh and hand their phones to each other
“Check this out!“ they say, they share a laugh or two
Then revert their disinteresed gaze to their ‘significant other‘
I have come to realise I now stand alone
Surrounded by blind and deaf people
I am destined to sanity in this crazy world, on my own
Surrounded by empty laughs and ‘could you repeat thats‘
Curled up beside me in the night,
Her face lit up
As the keys tap silently through the night
I dare not wake up
I hate that my anticipation,
My motivation, has been taken away
The moment of seeing my love every morning
Being happy that they’re no longer away
Has been crushed by their name in a chat screen
Typing away the colon D and colon P and colon close parenthese,
As if it could make up what could’ve hapened if we didn’t rush home
To sit by our screens and stare into oblivion we fail to see
How much we have lost purely because of ‘accessibility‘
I may have made you laugh or scoff, or make my point clear enough
For you to realise that in truth we are all addicted to our cellphone society
Trading in moments for our screens, not noticing the real world enough…
I hope that one day my child won’t be like this,
Condemned to live in a world where noby will notice
I hope I too, won’t become like this, although in all fairness
I probably already have
By the time I stop stroking her hair to think of a rhyme scheme
My love still hasn’t looked from the mesmerizing white of her cell‘s screen
And I sigh silently as I pull out my cell to slowly type away the words
About how our cellphone society prevents us from seeing so many worlds…
Daffodil Day and the 10€ Flower
Today was ‘Daffodil Day’ in Slovakia. You probably have no clue what daffodil day is so let me explain. During the day, young people walk through the streets of Bratislava -our capital city- with a box of little paper and plastic daffodil pins, a box for money and some flyers. Throughout the day they stop people on the streets and offer a daffodil to them. The stranger then pays any amount of money as a donation to the anti-cancer league (or whatever it’s called). Later on in the day these young people hand out live daffodils to people who donate, to make their day better. It’s really a nice feeling walking through the streets and seeing people with daffodils pinned to their bags, coats or scarves, some people with multiple daffodils, or carrying live daffodils.
The most beautiful thing though, is that often people stop the volunteers and donate.
Pretty much every single one of the few hundred thousand people living in this city buy a flower to help fight cancer.
Most people pay 2€ for their daffodil, because it’s the biggest coin and that was my plan too. I caught an early morning bus and went to the city to look for the volunteers. This was not hard, I spotted then immediately after I got off the bus. I stopped then and asked for one daffodil. I opened my wallet only to realise I only had a tenner and two cents.
I didn’t want to donate my only tenner, and neither did I want to give them two cents because that’s just rude.
I decided that I would see how much money I spent that day and donate whatever was left.
I planned on taking my girlfriend out for coffee, but she needed to get on an early bus home and so that plan went out the window. I found two food tickets and ordered a meal (a food ticket is a voucher worth 3€ which is only usable on food products, and is inexchangeable for money). I spent exactly the amount my tickets were worth and sure enough on my way to the bus stop I met the boys from the morning yet again.
I smiled at them, took out my wallet and said: “Well boys, I guess I owe you ten euro.”
Crossword
Today on the bus I saw an old man
With pen and paper in hand he sits so subtle
Turning his thoughts into words that fill in the blanks
In a crossword puzzle, finding the answer looks so simple
Watching his hand flow from square to square
Filling in a letter that might fit there
He often writes half a word and moves to the next
His thoughts already found meaning of ‘underplexed’
I don’t see young people filling in these puzzles
Could it be that crosswords were made entirely for the elderly?
Is it simply too hard for a young mind to solve these linguistic puzzles?
Do they not know which president was J. F. Kennedy?
It takes a great wisdom to solve such a puzzle, sure
But still I wonder back to this man and his paper
Filling in the words, not even completely, how can he be so sure?
There he goes again, I would’ve never guessed ‘H20 – G’ stands for as simple a word as ‘vapor’
By the time I arrived at my destination
The man solved two great puzzles,
Leaving me in a state of utter confusion
How can a mind so great not be solving much larger puzzles?
The man got off at the same stop as me
I asked him how he solved the crosswords
He said that I should let it be,
That with age comes a new sagacity, sagacity of words
Postmortem
I remember seeing her lifeless body
And I wondered what it’s like for those who were really close
The pure thought that life could just come to a close
Moreover I wondered what it’d be like to be that lifeless body.
The Old Man
I haven’t posted anything on this blog for quite a while now. The simple reason was that my life started to catch up with me and I wasn’t in my most creative time. In other news, I’m attending camp nanowrimo in April and I hope to do a lot of work on my novel then.
I have a little short story for you now titled “The Old Man” — I hope you like it, it has been a unique experience to write.
The old man told me that even though I am a big man I ought to take little steps.
When I first saw the man I thought nothing of him. He sat on a bench in a small park, watching people pass by.
On my fifth visit to this park I decided to sit beside this old man. He said nothing and I left after an hour, saying nothing. I returned the next day and sat beside him once more. I asked him why he sat here. He said he observed the passing of time. I asked him why he did that when he could observe the passing of people in this busy place. He said that he traveled the world in his younger years and that he needn’t worry about such things. I asked what job he had, that he could travel the world like that. He said he was a teacher, or a preacher, I couldn’t tell and when I asked him, he laughed heartily with the kind of laugh that only old people can laugh.
He said he taught children with the word of the Dow (which I later learnt was written ‘Tao’) and of course, some practical studies as well. I asked what he taught them that he got so much money for it. He stared at his feet for a while, trying to condense his thoughts into an idea.
“I teach them,” he spoke with a distinct sagacity in his voice, a breath of age, if you will. “I teach them that if they fill their bowl to the brim, it will spill. I teach them that if they keep sharpening their knife, it will blunt. And most of all I teach them to do their work, then strip back.” I asked why he taught them to step back from their work, reject the pride of accomplishment, as I put it. He replied that it’s the only path to serenity. Midnight was approaching and I asked the man if he shouldn’t go home. He said that I better go, or I might catch a cold and that I needn’t worry about him.
And so I left.
I had a busy week that following week, so I couldn’t visit the old man. After eight days I decided to go and visit the old man again. He wasn’t sitting on his bench today. His place was taken by a young lady. I sat beside her and asked her about the old man, if she knew him or where he was. She said she knew him and that he left about 3 days ago. She told me he wanted to see me, that be wanted to give me, she fidgeted with her bag and pulled out, this plain gray metal box.
I took the box and thanked her. The box, upon closer inspection, wasn’t plain at all. Ornaments of exotic plants and fruits adorned the cover, but they were so faded that most of the cover was adorned by your imagination. I thanked her once again and left.
“I brought you water, old man,” I said. “I hope you didn’t mind my absence too much, old man,” I said, putting water to the fake roses. I stood and observed what has now become the old man’s residence. Marble, fake flowers, no candles… I opened the box. The box was filled to the brim with sweets and chocolates from many different countries, a folded paper note on top of the box. I unfolded it and read what the old man wrote.
“Young man,
Today I saw it.
A small boy visited me in the park. He sat beside me and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was embracing the Tao(this was the first time I saw the word Dow written) and naturally he asked how I did that, that I was just sitting there, how could I accomplish anything? I told him about the master and how she acted by not doing and taught by not saying and the boy understood. He said the Tao was one with me as well.
I caught hold of the boy’s hand, I knew him, everyone knows him.
Nobody likes the boy though, they resent him with a burning passion. It is up to the elderly to play with him, for they understand him. When he comes to them they are welcoming, as if he were their own child.
I told him I knew him. He smiled and said he was glad. It was getting cold and dark so the boy took my hand in his and said It’s time to go home.
The boy you see, was death. ”
Rain started to fall and the drops soaked through the paper.
“I’ll miss you, Dad.” I said, clutched the metal box and ran.
At Times When It Rains…
Drops fall from the clouded night sky,
Echoing through the window panes…
My breath fogging up the window,
At times when rains…
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