"Life is supposed to be difficult," he said taking a long swig for his ornate hip flask, "It’s the struggle against the infinite violence of a universe.”
I smiled, perhaps he was right or perhaps he was just an asshole making it up as he went along, but the gravity of his remark struck me unexpectedly. The default to life was indeed struggle, for all life not just intelligent life; why would I be exempt.
I didn’t care for the man and his insidious gloat of pomposity. Nothing is absolute, nothing certain, which makes the possibilities boundless.
The joy of life is making it from one moment to the next through adversity and earning the things the things people say about you when you arrive at your freshly dug grave carried by those you hold dearest.
In a train without destination, on a day such as any, I
saw her. A calm centre of swirling rush hour madness; she clung to her man, illuminated
by the buzzing florescent lights.
I caught a glimpse in her eyes of something truly remarkable.
It had set sail across oceans and reached out to the heavens and it came to me;
men had died for this, thousands would go their whole lives without even coming
close.
The train rolled through the dark city that couldn’t give a fuck
and never knew the thing to save it was in her eyes, because she was in Love.
The type of love that broke down, opened you up and spread like rivers of colour.
And the hearts she touched would forever be changed on that
day, because they shared her joy. A joy looked upon by the envy of angels.
She left the home she abode, longer than her memory,
And crossed the bridges burnt by others to get to the place she needed.
There she found great hardships and difficulties to overcome.
There she planted her home in sandy soil
And carved a life from the tree that grew.
It was there she found the peace and joy she once thought
only others knew.
We found hell in a beautiful place.Where the sun shines through sparkling dust.
It made him pull
the teeth from his face, I understood; that’s where the need grows and the
spider lives.
As long as there was gold to be poured into our brains, setting
pleasure alight in every nerve ending we owned, a million mad soldiers could
march up our spines.
In the crystal darkness of a one roomed flat we lost our way
searching for the first time the juju gave us colourless daydreams.
We lay in that cold wet place of such hazy agony and I knew
he wouldn’t make it. I put my head on his chest to listen for his heart to stop
beating and howled for his lost soul.
We as a generation will be judged by future generations, its up to us what history will say.
There is a potential for greatness but if we don't fulfill that potential we will be know as the generation who played Pokemon for two weeks one summer.
Worse yet we are letting down our children and yes every child is our child as species.
You may be religious or Atheist, rich or poor, you may be Jedi; our differences make no difference in the face of one fundamental truth.
You may or may not believe in climate change or equality for all, but You must believe in the future.
You must believe that we as a generation have a responsibility to leave this World a better place than we found it.
This is Tina. On the 9th of December we have been married for 10 years. Tina rages against the dying of the light; this is my favourite thing about her, she has the courage of an exceptionally courageous tiger.
This is mostly why we've been on so many adventures and probably why having been accidentally kidnapped by Austrian drunkards in Barcelona is a genuine excuse for being late to your child's Christening that one time.
She wasn't fazed by the terrifyingly ramshackle crocodile farm we went to in Malawi, the Goat sitting next to her on the bus we caught in Zambia or playing scrabble in that bar in Cyprus definitely a hang out for mercenaries, hired killers and gun runners all of whom were terrible cheats.
But the most courageous thing she ever did was say yes to marrying me especially after she got to know me first. I love Tina and it's safe to say that over the years we have been in love.
Its a rare thing to find someone who likes you and endeavours to make you a better person by becoming a better person themselves and even rarer who accepts the things about you that will never change.
Ten years is not a lot of time and adventures are not just good times and delicious cocktails there is always work to be done difficult work, the type of work that takes the courage to commit to your decisions good or bad.
And with Tina I never have to doubt, even in a hundred years and after a thousand drunk Austrian kidnappings, a day will come when she stops loving me because its too difficult and this gives me courage to do the same.
I hurt myself today, stuck a needle under my skin.
There is an empty bed, where my heart used to be, with crushed
linen and a glass with a lipstick edge and the ash of a smoked cigarette on the
side table.
She paints the streets with her dreams now I’m no longer in
them. With dark blues and reds and I couldn’t stop her because it
would be too unkind to take her away from herself and make her ordinary.
The rain fell on my face today, cut me deeper than a blade.
I felt my heart exposed, my flesh just melt away, as I watched her move further
into the night and brighter in all her brilliance.
There is no one else to blame because in my mind I know she’s
too beautiful to inspire such futility.