The Meaning of my Life

As I have grown older and wiser and tamer, my cynicism and objectivity seem to have kept the monster quiet. Maybe it is dead, starved from the various raw emotional and intellectual vomit I used to feed it every day. Have I grown numb? I now struggle to remember how I used to feel and think. Has it really happened to me (too)? All this time the old used to say, "when you're older, you'll see"... And I do. I do see things and they make more sense or the nonsense that they are simply rings true and final. No pondering. God doesn't exist and is an aberration in our evolutionary trajectory. We are not special, just animals with a more developed brain which gives us no advantage when the end comes. We will die like the ant, the whale or the robin. There is no meaning to our trajectory, and so the quest for meaning is vain and doomed. Accepting this makes for a more peaceful life, freed from the agonies of uncertainty and the heart-wrenching need to "do something about it". I am not special in the scale of the universe or even human history. I can only be special to a handful of mortals I'm sharing this curious state of existence with. And this should be my only comfort, my only desire, my only goal. Is this happiness? Renouncing. Accepting. Laying down the arms and rolling over submissively and contented.
How far I have come since the days where I couldn't live hard enough, bursting at the seams with the need to mean something, to transcend our condition, to understand it all. I felt alive in a passionately but highly destructive way. And now it feels like I've wasted precious years forever, lost in the refusal to surrender. A betrayal to what we could be, what I could feel I could be... But no one's done it. Many have skinned their knees and bled their heart and wasted their mind away. They still just died as the ant, the whale or the robin. They may have said beautiful things, but they hurt like the promise of some great meaning for our lives, which is never held. It was my religion. And growing older has made me kill that God too.

So now it's just little me, some others and the whole universe.

I Don't Forget

The past is not a weight to haul and struggle under
But a tidal wave lifting and pushing you on
Towards the light and warmth of the shores of the living
And a welcoming embrace when the time comes
To crawl back into the sea of the original sleep.

Remember Your Place

No time to stop and stare.

Life must carry on without worrying about the dead

For it is too transient and brief a state

After and before the infinity

Of non-existence.

We will join them soon

All the ones who are spent.

Death is not the aberration to ponder

But instead the inexplicable spark

Which occasionally runs through it

So brief so wild

There is no plot, no great design

No time to stop and despair

Just enough to be bright.

Feathers

A shiver

Of feathers

In the hollow of your hand

The remainder

Reminder

Of that small beautiful nonsense

A whisper

And flutter

Our so temporary existence.

Rien à faire

Il n'y a rien de beau
A trouver chez l'Hiver
Les tallus dépeuplés
La nature aplatie
De couleurs mélangées
Comme dans le goblet
D'un artiste douteux
Où tout est brun et gris
Et khaki et boueux

Je n'ai pas vu mon ombre
Depuis trop longtemps
Je n'ai pas vu de mouches
Même elles me manquent
J'oublie l'odeur du monde
Et la voix du soleil
Il n'y a rien de beau
Il n'y a rien à faire

Je ne peux rien trouver
A aimer chez l'Hiver.

Letter to Sophie

Oh I will be back but you will not know me
For I will have traveled in space and in time
Over boundaries so distant to our naive eyes
Who thought our place was defined forever
As the lucky ones who can waste and linger
I have moved over to the next generation
Now I can look back and truly remember
And looking ahead seems to rush fast towards me
No longer a vague and faraway dream
Oh I will be back and you will not know me
And so will I look back and not know you
For against our feelings we were not immune
For against our belief we now are old too.

Wintry Night

The night brushed my face with its cold humid wing
Heavy and slow, dragging itself over the world
Leaving there a tear the size of this year,
This age to live through till it turns into a wren
Again and floats away light and bright like a smile
Like the laughter of children running as fast as they can
Dropping colours and flowers from their wide open arms.

Moonlight Interlude

I went to talk to the moon

And the sun doesn't know

Because I needed to warm my wounds

And he'd left me so long ago

She never said a word to me

But her glow was like a fire

The grey loneliness of the days

The cold emptiness of the skies

Forgotten but for an hour

I went to sit down by the moon

And the sun doesn't know

But I needed a silent friend

To see my blood through my eyelids

To feel some light upon my face

To dream of an impending bloom

Remember you'll be back again

Just like the sun to warm my heart.

The Unbearable Loneliness of the Conscious Being

A shell never to be cracked

The treasure inside 

Never to be seen

Never to be touched

The eternal mystery 

I will remain.

And when the walls finally fall

I will be long gone

Blown back into the infinite anonymity of oblivion

A breath in the wind

A secret never revealed.

And all this time wasted

Staring

Pounding

Screaming

So alone under my skin.

So much

Wasted

Inside.

The mess I am

I found this picture amongst other old drawings I did when I was younger. This one was done in my art class when I was 12 or less I think. We had to draw something out of the outline of our own profile. The result very much reflects how I've felt most of my life...
I remember that day. I was very self conscious as a young teenager and having to do something out of my own body image was a terrible task. I was very much an applied and aesthetically-orientated artist at the time, doing mostly delicate, representative or idealised graphical work. What I did during the session was quite unlike my usual work. The result of this lesson didn't bring anything up to my Conscious at the time. It was a disappointing session as far as I was concerned.
It's only 20 years later that this suddenly strikes me with a very poignant and moving strength. This drawing is such an honest representation of what I was soon going to experience. So maybe it had started already?
I feel so sad for this little girl, whose mind melts in a gory mess, so empty and hollow inside. An omen of what was to come. A snapshot of lucidity.