Share it with a friend and keep them safe

…so maybe sent it to a friend and keep your distance.

1 step forward 1.5 steps back

And if you can read this -

I probably need my space.

Let’s share words not moments.

Let’s spend memories not time.

Let’s enjoy this life!

Through a lens,

…and hope it gets some likes.

2021, Zero sugar for you baby.

The very same taste.

I still hear the cries of my forefathers

I smell the burnt flesh and fresh blood

Of women and children behind barbed wires

I feel their hurt and will never forget

The betrayal of dishonorable men with

Foreign dust carried by their boots.

I see their anger and hear their vulgarity

After years of unwarranted abuse.

But with misguided hate and fear

I see a regressed people standing behind

False pride.

Words that cut like fresh whet blades

Actions reasoned at the breast of the devil

To no end and no means

Tirelessly dehumanizing

The victims of dishonorable men

The children of god forsaken children

And so the blood river flows to no end.

A legacy of self-centered preservation and hateful stubbornness

As the children of the vanquished hold hands to die together

A story of the eyes

I see things sometimes. I didn’t know other people couldn’t see them so I spoke about the stories my eyes shared with me. We have no secrets. I see things in broad daylight when I’m as sober as a child. I saw things then too.

Prisms of light bend into shadows of lampposts and the occasional ceiling would heave deeper and deeper, closer and closer to my head like an elk in the belly of the beast. Oh and the phantom spiders (fair enough though, I probably see these because they scare they are scary and one must always be alert for spiders). Rows and rows of people shaking their heads at me in perfect time to the melodies dancing from my car stereo. What a laugh we have, my dear little eyes and I.

Though I see colors that don’t belong and strangers dancing to my life’s soundtrack, it’s not nearly as powerpuff-like as it may seem. It’s dark here. It’s a Wes Anderson — Coen Brothers — Tarantino montage. There’s no tip of the iceberg, with the doom and gloom hiding under the surface. No, no, no it’s all there singing and dancing and shooting and burning in the daylight for everyone to see. Only the dialogue isn’t always as good as I’d hope and I’m the only one watching the bloody thing.

I’m a Virgo, which by definition suggests I experience things for the first time more than once, or something like that. But what drives me insane is feeling like a tadpole in a mudslide that never ends — you can’t see anything, it all feels the same and yet you know it must be vastly different because you never stop.

That’s disillusionment for you. You experience, evaluate and conclude — only to do it all over again once you’ve matured a little in time and space. It’s the painful experience of Plato’s cave allegory day in and day out.

And I’ll admit I’m a hot mess most of the time. My brain is like a coke addict with a stoner roommate that just can’t keep up for a body. The crazy hair and poor time management just top it all up for aesthetics’s sake. You can see it can’t you?

Poorly-choiced red curls, disrupted by last night’s sleep, scarf running away with the wind in the opposite direction and trying not to burn my jeans with a cigarette while I stumble to tie my shoes because I forgot to stop walking — god I wish I couldn’t imagine.

And people love it or hate it. Honestly I think it scares the sane ones and intrigues the mentally-agnostic. Those who haven’t yet chosen sides — between those who are apt for survival and those who will crash and burn in a miraculous fashion until there is nothing left. Now I know there must be lifetimes of ember in my eyes and people can smell the flames. It’s exciting to strangers and once they edge close enough to feel the heat of my words they must decide if they want to burn, be burnt or head for the beaches.

I’d scare me, and I do sometimes. The stories my eyes tell me exhaust me and I’m too young to be this tired. I may be 20 but my eyes were previously owned. Or perhaps I’m just a miniverse of the multiverse all wrapped up in too much self-reflection.

L.

Rainbow Shadows and Phantom Spiders was originally published in Ramblings of a Mad Woman on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sing Mockingbird sing
Screech into the night the unbearable
Truths of my demise — 
Loud for me to hear
I have an enemy.
I see her at a glance
When the whiskey has gone
And dusted tables
Have only deserted bank notes
To call friends.
Scream Mockingbird scream
Blood-coated blades into the darkness
Of the disillusioned tales pulled
From the past
So my huntress may hear
Call her by her name so
My weakened bones and
Cankered skin may know
Who to blame.
Speak Mockingbird speak
My truth so I may know
Which cheek to turn in fair.

What is the point of reproduction?

I love driving. The hooting, the shouting, the out-of-place politeness, the waiting, the boredom, the thrill of life and death and the angst feeling nothing or going nowhere — it’s all there. An unquestioned microcosm of our lives.

Which is what got me thinking, while I was stuck in some school traffic pile-up, why are these middle school parents driving so slowly!? Perhaps parents drive extra cautiously around their children, not necessarily to keep them safer but to protect them from their own future errors and introduce them to a life of calculated thinking and safer decisions. You know — monkey see, monkey do?

Anyway, this idea that the parental generation in our society may be the sole emanation of safety and caution, made me wonder what use children are to the world. Beside the obvious preservation of the human race and all that. Maybe the only reason we have a moral compass is to guide the little ones. Perhaps all hope isn’t lost as long as they’re around.

Do you also get a sick feeling in your stomach if you see someone throw a baby doll on the floor? Just don’t hurt the kids, please not the kids. The kids, the kids, the kids. Anyone, please just don’t harm the kids. It’s how we’re wired, most of us at least, and I’m not entirely sure is for the preservation of our race. More consumption monsters would hardly be beneficial to the evolution of man. But a conscious generation? A wiser generation that makes calculated compromises and builds on humanities legacy rather than their own? Well, I see that.

Why would we choose to believe that our role is to create better beings if we can believe that we are alright and we need more kids like us? We simply don’t. It’s not leading by example that will save us, it’s learning from our mistakes. A predetermined lesson from a prehistoric act is one of the greatest gifts you can give a child.

Would it be so bad if this was true?

L.

Monkey See, Monkey Don’t was originally published in Ramblings of a Mad Woman on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I wonder I wonder:
What song she will sing
The little bird — grey with a clip on each wing.
A whistle of whimsy or
Whisper of woe — 
The little grey bird with cages for wings?

What will what will
The little thing sing
With no colors to choose from — but her master’s old things.
Perhaps broken sunlight or
The parade of clothes — 
The ones from the faces that come and never go?

I wonder I wonder
If ever she’ll sing
The little bird — untainted but doesn’t know a thing.
A tale of envy or
Fable from home — 
The little bird — grey caged to her throne?

We all know the nursery rhyme, don’t we? Ring a ring a rosie… Sad isn’t it? That we teach our children to sing such sad songs with a smile on our face.

Well not really but what is disturbing to me is how we, the product of billions of conscious souls before us, stagnate so profoundly well. I mean it’s just about the only thing humanity is outrageously good at — not learning a goddamned thing and preventing anyone else from doing it any differently.

Today, walking back from university I overheard two security guards behind a fruit and veg. stand speaking of how our knowledge years ago was real and how we knew what we were fighting for; we had vision and we could execute it as such — a beautiful and respectful discussion between two different humans on the South African struggle. Moments earlier I saw a stranger walk up to a weeping student and for the first time in a long while I heard someone ask and actually mean,

……………uhm, are you alright?”

And yet I proceeded to reply to my own morning greetings with a prerecorded, “Fine thanks, you?” as I hurried off to continue my day’s missions.

People don’t care about people.

But that’s a lie, some do and some don’t (just like the answer to most human behavior questions).

The thing that makes me hate people — that makes me hate us and in turn myself, is that while my tear filled eyes and warm heart revel in the increasing signs of consciousness and bare-moral humanity, soldiers are being trained, weapon designs are being refined and tested. The chessboards are packed and lives are taken at each turn. All in the name of nationality, pride and someone’s idea of what should not be tolerated.

This has all happened once before, countless times in fact, but with a pocket full of posies we will all fall down again because while History repeats herself we will all deafen ourselves to her voice and proceed to sing the woes of tomorrow in complete disarray.

L.

Ashes! Ashes! was originally published in Ramblings of a Mad Woman on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why do I spend hours in a day thinking of what the air smelt like and shades of sunburst the skies sang in the beginning of time? What would be the use in my mind meandering among the concepts of time, space, and the color blue?

Almost every young and vulnerable conversation I have with a newcomer in my life, ends with the question:

Why do you always get so deep?

And I really don’t mean to evoke uneasiness or irritation, even less so anxiety or anger. I don’t mean to waste your time by including you in my thoughts. To me it would be a gift to have you do the same. But I understand that different interests build a home in different minds.

I was sitting in my philosophy of religion class today, listening to different arguments for whether existence is a presupposed characteristic for entities our minds have conceptualized and it just hit me. Suddenly, I sat there listening from the perspectives of my countless conversationalists who weren’t at all amused by my questions. What a load of crap right? Existence! Why the hell wouldn’t something exist?

Whether you buy into these schools of thought or not, it’s gold. You learn how to think for yourself purely because it rids you of your parents’ facts and teachers’ corrections and helps you to find out what you would have believed without their influence. It gives you an opportunity to listen to the world’s advice and have the freedom not to follow it.

If I could have learned this lesson earlier (in terms of personal advice alone) I would be a wiser person by now, without doubt.

If we evolved to become photosynthesizing organisms, what would the social impact be on our race?

Who cares! Because it really doesn’t matter does it? Tough the thought of weight loss being coupled with an umbrella really won’t shake your world, ask someone else what their first reaction to this statement is and it opens up a bit of their soul to you. Ask yourself the same questions and you might be surprised to get to know yourself a little bit better too.

I don’t waste my time thinking of trivial things. No, I’m just trying to get to know myself, while wondering what my alien friends would look like if we ever had the chance to meet. It’s far more entertaining than reading Freud, and I love Freud.

L.

Why do I waste my time? was originally published in Ramblings of a Mad Woman on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Black bag — gleaming

Grey smudges of blood and dust

Of fingerprints you’ll never know

Paling face and cloudy eyes

That’s what they saw — that’s where he lay.

Instead you saw what you couldn’t be

The last glimpse of a cause you claimed

As your fingers led the zipper

To its end.

The life you took in

A mosaic of cells

A pattern yours couldn’t grasp

But with a wish could it be

The grave of your temple

With another’s eyes.

Beach Music by Pat Conroy, begins with this story of a man wandering through the streets of Venice one evening. As a masked woman grabbed his hand, covered his eyes and led him to her apartment. She placed her finger over his lips gently and made love to him in silence. She led him back to the street where she found him, still masked and without a word. She left him with a perfect memory of a moment, untainted by anything other that what he chose to make of it…

That, to me, is just breathtakingly beautiful. Sometimes, in a word full of fact and reason, we need little harmless secrets to ourselves. Stories of others that we have to write ourselves to get to know them. Sculpt a perfect picture of people we will never meet, just because people have become too real. I don’t want to know that Alice in Wonderland was written by a pedophile, can’t some things just be great?

And I’m not referring to world problems or condoning false identity. All I want to extend to you is a feeling. Why can’t we let moments remain untainted by excessive information. Silence is so essential in such a loud world. And I don’t mean, get lost in other worlds and leave reality, but rather to have some thoughts to yourself— eternal and perfect.

You won’t go and narrate every aspect of an acid trip to someone whilst it’s happening. No, let it be, soak in the strawberry fields. It’s your little secret, your perfect Lucy in the sky with diamonds moment, because no matter what words you use they will never do it justice.

So what if I begged you not to make me human? Would you understand me if I said, I’d hate to be animated any further by the truth? Would you read my words as if they were a lost photograph and wonder who I was or tell your own story about who I am?

Perhaps I’m a lonely old woman dreaming of the good old days. Perhaps I’m just a child with premature words. Or perhaps my story is just too lame to give my words the kick they need. One detail could shatter the glass sculpture that is your experience of me. My point is, I could be all these things or none at all, but what does it matter? Who I am to you is art made by you, don’t break a moment due to curiosity.

For once, I beg that in a connected world where we meet people we have no right meeting, I could be a perfect stranger, a traveler’s romance, where none of my humane glitches make their way to you. Just a photograph and the hands that write — that is all I want to give to you. The rest is your little secret.

Sincerely Lucy, was originally published in Ramblings of a Mad Woman on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.