grown man

playthings

Edge Of Desire

Lift up my eyes
I really wish I hadn't
Because there you are. Flamboyant and disarrayed, the world is your stage
And I am it's fool
Because I want you
And you will never know
And we will never be
You are at the edge of my desire
And there you will remain
For a week? A month? A year?
Perhaps till tomorrow
Perhaps till I see you fall from grace
As they usually do
But it's magical, what your words mean to me
I am punished
It is wrong
But if I ever get the chance again...
I am the world's fool
And you are the protagonist
Though you don't even know 
My stories always have the same ending
I always fall asleep with roses in my hands, and a gun on my chest

You don't even know

         Give the girl a glance. White boots, black tights, red skirt and black jacket? A tight look on her face - she has places to go, things to do. A brief look of recognition flashes across her face as she sees a friend - but she's gone in a minute, dark hair flying, boots clicking in the distance.
        We know her. We know her major, we know her friends, we know her classes, we know her room number, we know where she went last weekend.
         Did you know that she hates to smile, but does it because she has to?
         Did you know that she never knew her mother, and does not want to know her father?
         Did you know that when she looks at you, she knows she can give you her all - if only you asked for it, if only you could?
         You don't know her at all.
         You could, if you tried.
         But I know you never will.
        

Just another goodbye

The world is full of goodbyes. Is this any reason not to say hello?

For me it is.

I have said too many goodbyes to be naive enough to say that saying hello again is worth the pain. You meet someone new... you get close to them... and they let you down.

Again.

Sometimes you think, yes, I can trust this person.

Sometimes it happens unconsciously. 

And then all of a sudden you realize they've entered your world...

And you're vulnerable

Maybe it's something wrong with me?

Maybe I'm the one making the same mistake.

Over and over again.

And now I'm tired.

The bystander tells me that if I never say hello, I will never love.

To me... I guess that's the whole point.

If you don't love, you don't care. And when you don't care, you don't get hurt.

I can't help but care deeply about the ones I love. And inevitably, I get hurt.

Shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice right?

I need to see some effort on your side. I need to know you care - because baby, I do.

And you don't even know. 

Did you ever love me?

Did you ever care?

I guess I'll never know.

You're just another goodbye

we are made of steel and bolts, not flesh and bone

           Today I gaze at the skyline and I see steel and concrete pillars, stretching their powerful fingers into the clouds. We speak of ash clouds and pollution, Global Warming and a depleting ozone layer... and machines taking over our lives. Environmentalists bomb ships, and protest against the tearing up of Mother Earth; Michael Jackson holds onto splintering trees as he asks for the world to return to its former lush green glory in the "Earth Song". But the truth is, the world isn't going to miraculously go back in time to when our forefathers burnt wood instead of gas, and people are not going to stop their consumption of our world's resources just because there is an impending, publicized fear of the environment disintegrating and climatic patterns disheveling in the near future. Heck- tell someone that the world is ending in 2012 and that person will laugh and say either "Then let's live it up till then!" or "I need to finish so much before that." The sad truth us that we have forgotten where we have come from, and what is important, and taken for granted what has been given freely to us. This is human nature. We are self-consumed creatures, put on this earth to breed, to be frank. So why should we care if our grandchildren, or indeed, CHILDREN, don't survive? We gasp and make up our minds to do our part to save the earth after we watch a gripping show on Discovering Channel about Global Warming or after we watch a movie like "The Day After Tomorrow". But does this mean we will all sell our Marutis and ride bicycles to work? No.
           So what we supposed to do?
           I look outside my window. A forest of green greets me as I live outside the city in Sri Lanka; but the sad truth is, my father is already cutting down a tree as I write this because it was growing against our wall and marring the paint. This is what is wrong with the world. And the truth is, unless we step up, and really take to our hearts the consequences of our actions on our planet, this WILL continue. Heck, this is going to continue whether I get off my bed and ask my father to stop or not. Fact of the matter is, unless God pities us, or wipes us off this Earth in 2012, or we switch to renewable sources of energy soon, we may not live to see the world as it is in time to come. Machines have taken over the world: heck, I'm using a machine to write this write now. Was the world simpler during Jane Austen's time when she wrote her books by hand? Yes. Is the world more efficient now? Also- yes. 
          I am not asking you to try and invent new forms of biofuels to save the world. All I'm asking is that you look around, realize how many Earth's resources have been taken for granted, keep it in mind, and do your small part to stop, if not slow down the destruction. Heck, even if it doesn't help, we can say that we DID do all we could. Prove to yourself that you haven't turned into a money-minded machine; that you are made of flesh and bone and not steel and bolts. 
         Now I'm off to talk to my dad about that tree!

what a tangled web we weave

I Will Always Walk With You

Clean Up My Soul

"Could you make a phone call to Jesus to clean up my soul?" ask July For Kings in their song "Girlfriend".

How often do you stop during your day to wonder, "Am I doing what I have wanted to do my whole life? Is this my purpose? Am I working towards my life goal? Am I really doing what I want to do?"

Probably not very often.

However, if we really do take the time to stop and think about it, we may come to an interesting revelation.

How many of you can honestly say, at this very moment, that you have everything you need in life: that you are truly happy, at this moment? Not very many, I'll bet. However, funnily enough, every single human being with a breath left in their body is in the pursuit of happiness. Happiness can mean different things to different people: a bottle of wine, a girlfriend, a home, a child, a job, a loaf of bread, a trip to Montenegro... However, it is the road we take in the pursuit of happiness that sometimes lead to our demise.

Every road has its pitfalls. I'm not embarrassed to say that I seem to have followed the pitfalls rather than follow the straight road in my life. I've lost countless friends. I've made terrible mistakes... with people and with work. Can I blame it on a turbulent childhood? On an overprotective mother? On a closed society? Perhaps. 
        But in the End, we have only our own decisions to account for. 
        I made it to college last year. College in America had been my goal since I was six years old - and I have my diary entry from fourteen years ago to prove it. I didn't made it to college like I thought I would - meaning, I found more pitfalls than highways on my way; but there's another lesson for you: nothing in life ever does work out as you plan. I've now learned to simply deal with what life has to offer me; take everything in my stride, because in the End, it's how you dealt with life, and what you made of what it has to offer, that counts. Who's to say that that person with a $1.5 million home and Mercedes Benz is happier than me with my closest friends, lying out in the beach with a bottle of wine watching the sunrise?
        That's not say that I'm not a planner. I plan every detail of my day! I learn from experience; I never make the same mistake twice. And I consider myself incredibly blessed for the life I lead...I've come amazingly far. And I DO want to make a name for myself, I do want financial stability. However, that is not my supreme goal in life. My goal in life is to be happy at every moment possible. And no, this does not mean I do not cry; heck I cried during the Spain-Chile World Cup Finals match yesterday! But only those who know sadness will ever know what true happiness feels like.
        So what brought on this tirade of thoughtfulness?
        Yesterday I was at my cousin's house when his mother and I got to talking. My aunt was saying that human kind is suffering - our lives are a continuous rhythm of tears, loss ans hardship, dotted with a few instances of laughter. She's a very religious person, and we started talking about Judgement Day... the End of the World as we know it, and such. We started talking about the program I'd seen on CNN putting forth a scientific hypothesis regarding the End of the World, and discussed the End of the World as is described in the Book of Revelations. Writers and poets from centuries ago pen the demise of the world, engulfed in fire. Only a handful of God's children are supposed to remain. In the movie 2012, a startlingly realistic picture is depicted, of the End of the World.
        What does this all mean?
        I wish I could say that I will embrace death when it comes; that I have lived my life to the fullest thus far, and will die happy, or at least, without considerable regret or remorse. Perhaps if you had asked me this question three weeks ago, I probably WOULD have given you that answer.
        However, about two weeks ago, I came over close to facing Death; indeed, I saw myself staring into the shadowy darkness shrouding Death, and I screamed in fear.
        Truth is, I DON'T want to die, not here, not now. When I was awoken at 3.30AM by my mother receiving news of a Tsunami warning due to an earthquake in the nearby Nicobar Islands, I panicked. Sri Lanka had been hit my a tsunami before, which had completely devastated a part of the island. It had destroyed the hotel we were holidaying at, when we received the news. One of my worst fears is death by drowning: I had nearly drowned twice when I was young, I'm always apprehensive of deep ends in pools, and sea-bathing. And needless to say, I did not have much faith in the Sri Lankan Meteorological Department: to me, the Tsunami could hit at any moment. And we would be the first to be washed away as it was supposed to hit Trincomalee first (where we were) and indeed my family and I would be the first victims as the ocean was right outside our window. 
         As I had predicted, to my dismay, my mother decided that we would stay the night, and not leave immediately.
         My mother is not one to act spontaneously. All her actions are well thought out, or planned. I have the habit of planning, then following my heart all the same. However, we were in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night - there was no where I could go. So I found myself lying in bed, listening to the hissing of the waves as they crashed on the rocks outside. 
         Truth is, I was NOT ready to die; I was young, and I had so much to live for! Were the decisions I made until that day enough to guarantee Eternal Happiness? And to the non-religious: were the decisions I had made completely satisfactory? Had I gotten everything out of life so far?
        It was at that moment that I knew what Gift God has given us in giving us Life. Our 'reality' is man-made; and it this so-called 'reality' of education, occupation and marriage that is making us suffer. We as human beings are supposed to embrace life, enjoy the smaller things in life, like our times with our friends, and the smile of a child. How many of us can say that we are happy, at this very moment in time? Does our new iPhone make us happy? Does our new skinny jeans make us happy? Or does that memory of you and your friend in high school, or of you meeting your first love (even if that hadn't ended too well), make you happier? 
        When Judgement Day comes, it is not your salary, or phone model, that will save you. Even if you are not religious, don't you think that some day, when you are grey and old, that you will be happier cherishing those memories of taking time out of your day to grab a beer with your friends than that memory of punching numbers into a calculator?
        On the road to happiness, avoid the pitfalls. Avoid friends who will take you down the wrong road, avoid making those decisions that you know will not make you that person you know you want to be. It was when I was lying in bed, envisioning being washed off by the Tsunami wave, that I wanted to make a phone call to Jesus to clean up my soul. And we can do that, right here, right now, by making the decisions that sometimes we make not want to make, but we know will finally aid us in the pursuit of happiness. 
        It's not about where you're from, it's about where you're going. It's never too late to clean up our act. 
        Sometimes, it's hard to make the "right" decision. Sometimes we don't even know what the "right" decision is! Think about it: if you make the "wrong" decision, and end up suffering, you can't really go back in time and make the "right" decision, can you? So what good was that "right" decision, if you never knew it was "right" at the time? Reality is not always black and white; not everything is clearly labelled "right" and "wrong". Which is why I don't believe that there is any such "right" decision. You make a decision which you feel is best, and deal with the consequences. 
        Maybe you're not doing what you've wanted to do your whole life. Maybe you're life purpose isn't what you thought it ever would be. Maybe, at that moment that you stop and think, the trivial duty you're performing may not seem, to you, a step towards your life goal. Maybe you're not doing what YOU want to do, but what you're told to do, or what you feel you SHOULD do, as opposed to what you WANT to do. But, at the end of the day, no matter what your life goal is, no matter where you find yourself at this moment, know that, when the End comes, it is your own decisions that will save you, that it is your choices that we lead you to Eternal Happiness. So call a friend, crack open a drink, and soak in the good times, learn from the bad times, and live for the moment. 

children color the world

"I am not young enough to know everything" - Oscar Wilde

the sky is bleeding

indifference?

an eye can capture a soul

EveningSong

"At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets." - Oscar Wilde