2004-06-01
Life's Phantasms
Life with its many colors--splashed all around you, feeling cool like trickling water. They soften and delight like the scent of candles in the afternoon, like ripples in a stream, like the end of summer, like the ivory keys of a piano. Life consists of many things to bring infinite happiness. It is so many things combined into one feeling that is so strong--amazing, constant, vibrant.
The world can be seen as quaint to the eyes of the carefree, and the ears of those are immune to the wailing song inspired by pathos. I felt normal today, just calm and complacent sans any false sense of blissfulness--it was all there. It feels like a soft feather that blurs your vision with its dabs of hazy colors. I had Jackson Pollock in my mind today, as well as Picasso--wine, shrubs, salty ocean breeze, seagulls flying in the melting sun, lampposts made of metal and soaking up heat, summer in Manhattan, Paris in fall---all things that they bring to mind. Geniuses, but above all, human. This made me infinitely calm...blissful.
Memories came and went last night, but that is all they are--ghosts of the past, that still preside over the imagination. Surely, my soul would have no definition without these things, these images, these phantasms. Yet, I can�t live within them, their world is completely separate. I remember that day when the rain washed down and flooded over the dry dust--drenching everything--the grass sprang with life, the clouds slowly danced in beautiful and inspiring sorrow. Water trickled down birds� feathers as they shook them off--bits and pieces of crystal drops flew through the humid air. Trees alive and green--majestically looming over everything--I thought that this is destitution. Yet, I thought destitution, desperation, sorrow, pity, apathy--all equally beautiful....I wanted to be like the tormented Chopin--the quintessence of turmoil and pathos. These things do not fade in and out like some fad, but rather, they stick into you like a stake. I am forever scarred. Last night, as I lay still in my bed I began to wonder about many things...
Those same phantasmagoric memories drift in and out of my mind as I hear whispers in my head mixed with echoes, and the clear image of the past--sometimes, I cannot distinguish what reality is. My scarred soul, my bleeding heart, my dark life---was it all worth it, and do all of those past instances help shape who I am now? Despite the fact that they torment me, do they make me?
You take a grape--firm, crisp, young, vibrant, enticing. You take many grapes that are the exact same way--your hands feel their fresh youth, that damp feel--silky--that makes them look untouched and perfect--luring. They are strangled--flattened, no longer firm. The cotton-violet transluscent skin stained and black. Bruises cover them, yet you make the wine. The bottle of wine sits there in the dim candlelight--elegant, aged to perfection....this is the dried soul of the grape. Both stages--youth, and old age are both beautiful and graceful.
Make an oil painting to capture the youth of those grapes--give life to words to capture the youthfulness of your own soul. Such is what I have done, and will continue to do. I only await for the day when growth will not be so painful--let me preside over the dim candlelight.