Minds At Night.

It's late at night.

Late as it gets.

It's dark outside.

Doesn't get darker.

It's raining down out there.

Down, down, down.

In the morning the world will belong to humanity.

People will drive cars to work.

Eat their breakfasts.

Solve their little niggling problems.

Love each other.

But for now...

Something else has taken over.

I don't know what to call it. 

I don't know what it is. 

All I know is...

Strange things happen. 

In our minds. 

At night. 

We don't talk about it much. 

Nor do we think much of it.

And unless it's a special occasion, we forget. 

But the fact remains. 

Strange things happen. 

In our minds. 

At night. 

Do they tell the future? 

Some say so. 

Others say that it is just the by-product.

Of the supercomputers, in our skulls', magic.

But the fact remains.

Strange things happen.

In our minds.

At night. 

Things that would make you afraid to sleep. 

If only you remembered them. 

Things that tug at dark corners. 

Things that grow.

And breath softly. 

Things that make you scream.

And run.

Oh God how I ran. 

Things that make no sense in the waking world.

That die, as if exposed to the vacuum of space. 

Are they malevolent?

Who knows. 

But strange they stay.

By night they come. 

Are your eyes getting heavy?

Mine are.

Are your limbs weak?

Damn, I'm tired. 

Are your thoughts slow?

Mine are like treacle. 

But I can't sleep.

How could I sleep?

After remembering the strange things.

That happened in my mind.

This night.

The Devil take me.

Satan's a lesser fate. 

Someone save me.

Please, save me.

From the strange things.

In my mind.

At night.

Six Hundred And... One!

This is my six hundred and first blog post. Not all of them are published.

I have regaled you with misplaced commas, spelling errors, syntax confusion and accidental repetition, and various other gramatical mistakes six hundred times before this. Sort of. I still want to make this a landmark post, because I can.

I started my blog on a laptop computer called Gerald, who (Whom?) I loved dearly. He had in-built wifi, and a not particularly large collection of music that I listened to all the time, and which a reasonable amount of is still in my now expanded library. His back-lit keys were a pleasure to press, usually at night, which is when I do the majority of my blogging.

He met his end, sadly, when I smashed his display trying to closed him on an earbud I mistakenly left between the keyboard and the screen. I was shocked and inconsolable for  terribly long time, in which I requested of my mother to get him fixed, to no avail. If I hadn't smashed him, I'd probably be a windows user.

The next computer I was given was an awful hand-me-down from my sister that I named 'Sally'. What. A. Shitbox. Lost her charge in thirty seconds from unplugging, the keys were NOT back lit (forcing me to resort to usb lamps and ect) and were barely readable from age. She got so hot when I used her for long periods, of nothing but writing and music, that I used to put ice blocks on her from the freezer in an extraordinarily suicidal attempt to keep her running. I had a dongal for internet I had to plug into her, which functioned haphazardly, at best.

Nonetheless, she was a stubborn bitch (As toshiba computers were back then) and worked as a medium for self expression long after any sensible computer would have curled into a ball and, presumably, exploded. When I bought myself a new laptop, she was literally falling to apart, and still turned on. You could see the electronics from underneath the warped, curled metal casing. Stubborn, stubborn bitch.

My next laptop which I, as I mentioned, bought myself, I named Wilson, and he was the paragon of 'Okay'. Not great. Pretty unremarkable. His tilt screen was awful, but his keys were sort of felty, and super-fun to press. He caught a virus (or ten) one day and died quietly, without a fuss. He was the first computer I started to take around with me, so I could write on the go.

But carrying a computer around isn't a lot of fun, and after grovelling in a most uncharacteristic way, I was given an iPhone for a present from my mother, which was what I used to blog in between Wilson and my current computer. Pegasus is his name, and he is a magnificent beast of a Macbook Pro, if I do say so myself. He has a Monet print on his lid, and I love him to bits.

As a child I developed a coping mechanism of talking to people who weren't there and replying for them to deal with hard problems, something which originally was helpful, but which sadly evolved into a problem of its very own as my brain changed, particularly in puberty. Writing has helped replace this as a tool of self counsel which has been invaluable to me. The first person I speak to whenever I have a problem is my blog. And that's why I blog so much. :P

It's called the Sky Sailors Handbook because sailing ships have always been my favorite symbol of freedom. I crave freedom in all its forms, but most importantly I crave the freedom of the mind. To put a man in bondage and chains is easy. But it is far harder to stop him walking through the mountains of his imagination. In fact, if he still thinks he can, and he lives, it is impossible.

Cadge me, cut my hair, strip me of my clothes, and rob me of light and warmth. I will still feel the wind in my curls and the soft wooden planks of my sky ship on my bare soles, I will still step lightly through dusty libraries and echoing halls,  I will still swim in blue, kind, oceans, I will still be the hero of a thousand battles, and the lover of a thousand beautiful women, in the palace of my heart.

That's what my blog is, for me. The hope I can share a little of that with you, whoever you are.

If I were only good looking, I'm sure hollywood would make a movie about it. Hahahahaha. Have fun.

What You Used To Know

A talented liar speaks and believes it.

A very talented liar makes everyone else share that belief through their passion.

But the best liars change the past, and make the world itself forget what is true. Then, what he or she says is the only thing that can believed.

But it still isn't the truth.

Don't believe the liar. One of us has to.

I've already forgotten what I used to know. But you can remember.

The Best and The Worst

Sometimes it seems like all anyone does is tell everyone else how shit everyone is. If I said to someone on the street, "Are people generally good?" I think that the answer would most of the time be, "No". And I'll tell you why.

A man called James Cameron (relatively) recently made a science fiction film about a future where humanity has successfully reached another planet that the humans named 'Pandora'. This planet was a vigin to the defilement and molestation of man, and the humanoid natives (Tall, blue, feline and very good looking people) have an actual nervous-connection to their homeworld that no human has, in the form of a usb plug that comes out of the back of their necks and goes into trees, or some shit. The human tech was ugly and clunky, the natives' natural skills were both more complex and more functional.

The movie was called, "Avatar".

The whole thing was incredibly beautiful and expensive. No argument.

But what the average viewer probably doesn't realize about that movie is that it is horribly, horribly cynical. The tree-hugging-usb-necked-smurfs didn't make that movie. Humans did. Humans making a movie about how humans are planetary rapists, that spread themselves like disease.

Sure, you could say that the movie was a possible future, one we could avoid, but the movie sure didn't say that. It was just "Hate yourself" from beginning to end. Hate yourself, you ignorant, evil, stupid, arrogant mother-raping BASTARDS. Yes, YOU!

That was honestly the theme.

Why would humans fund and make a movie like this? Because that's what we think of ourselves.

I don't think that.

Do you know what a human is?

Let me ask you something else then.

Do you know what a human life is? How unlikely it is? What it has the potential of? How complex it is, how wonderful it is? How hard it is for everyone, everyday, to get up and just keep on going in spite of how damn hard it is? How there are huge parts of our brains devoted to not ending itself because it is so easy to do? And how amazing it is that those who live do anything at all worthwhile in addition to all this hardship?

The Superman is good, bold, beautiful, selfless, and everything for him is easy. He's just like that.

But the man. No, he is weak. He struggles. He bites into what he's given, even when it's poison.

Humans aren't wise. All the wise humans are long dead.

The weak didn't die. The wise died. Because the wise knew the futility.

The ones who were left were just stubborn. The creative, the resourceful, the hopeful, the dreamers of dreams and the ones who held onto life with broken fingernails. Yes, The Bastards. That's who you are descended from. Hard bastards. Mothers who had another child after ten of them died, fathers who fought lions bear-handed and won. Children who grew up in strangling thorns, brothers who held each other as they bled, sisters who struggled through tide after tide of impossible odds, just so they could do it again tomorrow.

You aren't shit. You aren't a rapist. You're ignorant, sure, but that's hardly your fault. You're not evil. And if you are arrogant, so what? You deserve to be. You're fucking amazing. Look at what your kind has done, look how you have tamed an earth that has tried at every turn to crush you, and still tries as hard as it can to end your life.

You are the product of a world that hated the idea of you, and from that hate you found love for it enough to care that you were hurting it, love enough to side with it, to loathe yourself.

You're incredible. I salute you. And I have no clue as to how you do what you do.

But for God's sake, keep it up. I know you can.

Honor and Importance.

I've been told that in Japan, it's common for a person, if they feel they have lost their honor, to simply drop off the radar of society. This could be that they got a C instead of an A in a class at school (or however they grade folks over there) or because they got pissed at their boss and were fired, or a multitude of other reasons.

I don't know where they go. Become homeless? Go to Prague? Turn into a fish and swim into outer-space?

But all jest aside, the degree to which people put ideals is something I admire.

I don't admire the pitfalls of duty to wrong causes and judgement on others those people fall into, but for all that, a person with a complete sense of what is right, good and the courage to stick to it, inspires me. Not all honor is like that. But the really good people of this earth possess that quality.

I'm not honorable. Not everyone can be. But then not everybody is special or important to the world. I'm content with my lot. The idea that everything and everyone would be fine if I left this earth suddenly, comforts me. I don't have the burden special people must do.

I'm no one, and I'm fine with it.

The Choice Is Yours.

"Well, go on, do me in you cowards! I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this!


Oh, and what's so stinking about it?


It's a stinking world because there's no law and order anymore! It's stinking world because it lets the young get onto the old, like you done. Oh, it's no world for an old man any longer! What sort of world is it at all? Men on the moon, and men spinning round the earth, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law and order no more!"


Do I have a choice?
What makes me do,
Whatever I do?
Is it me?

What force guides us?
Sets our actions in motion?
It is the flow of time?
Or human emotion?

Is it that same force,
That makes stars spin,
That makes women weep,
And that makes men sin?

Is it that same force,
That makes the seas roll,
That makes mountains tumble,
And the reaper take his toll?

Who makes the world as it is?
What reaction makes love?
What hand turns the silent cogs,
Shrouded in an unseen glove?

What makes you so sure,
You control yourself?
What makes you so sure,
You have a choice?

We are all clockwork,
The semblance of life,
It fills us, clouds us,
Makes us want to believe.

It makes us want to believe we are more.

More than a line in the sand, in the face of an incoming tide.

So we do, with all our clockwork hearts.

Exceptional

Someone once told me that I was, "An exceptional young man." I have to agree.

What exceptional means, is the exception to the regular. An exceptional phone would be one that explodes and burns the hand of the person trying to use it. Very few of them do that.

An exceptional sheep might be one born without the ability to grow wool. There aren't many of those sorts of sheep. They all froze to death before they could breed. Highly exceptional.

An exceptional lawyer would be one that never wins a case, ever, in his or her career. That's very rare.

An exceptional space-flight might include three of the four crew going insane and jumping out of the ship, where they asphyxiate and explode in the vacuum of space. Not many space-flights end like that.

The problem with words like, "Exceptional", "incredible", "phenomenal" and "extraordinary" is that they aren't specific enough.

There are plenty of things about me that are exceptional, just nothing that makes me exceptionally good.

This brings to another point I want to make. Despite my former statement, I often say, and I say it now, that I am a pretty normal bloke. But most people, when I say this, respond with, "Nobody is normal!".

There is such a thing as normal. It's just relative. And for those of you who will now say, "Well, if normal is relative, it's valueless".

NO. Just because something is dependent on its environment does not mean it isn't THERE. Time is also relative. And time definitely exists.

Here's an example of the relativity of normal:

There is a room filled with people. They're all women over the age of sixty.

In addition to all these women, there is one teenage boy.

In this room he is, for the purposes of the statement, the least normal.

But then, suddenly, a grey little alien appears.

Now, by compare, the boy is very very normal. Much more normal in this group to the other humans.

I am normal. Put me in a room of old ladies, and I'm not so much. But compared to everyone I know, and everyone in the world, I am very normal.

No one is exactly alike to anyone else, so yeah, one could make an argument that 'No one is normal'. But uniqueness does not guarantee anything other than itself. It doesn't make it good, nice, useful, worthwhile or any other adjective you can think of.

There are now seven billion human beings on this earth. Are you really so arrogant to believe that there is anything you can naturally do that someone else cannot do better, that you have some special unrepeatable quality? Dedicate your life to something, sure, you've got a chance to be better than anyone else. But as you are? Nope. Humans aren't beautiful unique snowflakes, anymore than snowflakes are anything other than a whole lot of white crap when you mush them together. We are common, and for every child born, you are becoming just that little bit more common.

You can disagree, or argue that you and you alone are without a true equal. But I can tell you right now, someone else reading this probably thinks the exact same thing.