Mother Of Pearl

I've lived and loved with lovers,
Some I've even spoken to.
I remember many, and forgot others.
But they begin and end with you.

I'm a bitter old man,
And an odd little boy.
I'd forgotten my plan,
And been used as a toy.

But when you live so long,
And so briefly, yes that too.
The most tired endless song,
It's hard to decide what to do.

But you make decisions easy,
A smile from you and the spinning ceased
You don't care that I was sleazy.
You make an end to my vile inner beast.

I love you, lady, mother of pearl,
I love you with all of my body, and brain.
Though you were lost, my living girl.
It's always been you that kept me sane.

A Better Solution

I hate conflict. I hate fighting, arguments, war, battles, disagreements, and all that stuff. As childish as it may sound, I really do wish we could get along.

The very first Terry Pratchett novel I ever read was 'Sourcery'.

At the beginning if this book, Death, (the person) comes to the wizard Ipslor the Red.

Even at the time of his death, Ipslor is a powerful wielder of his art. Cradling his eighth and last son in his arms, he admits to Death, (the black robed, impassive, skeletal figure), "All my magic could not save her," He stares out at the gathering thunderstorm.

Death replies,

"THERE ARE PLACES EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO."

Ipslor looks down at his son, smiling. He says, "I would have done it all again. Children are our hope for the future." Even as he watches, the clouds darken, and roll in. The rain starts.

Death replies,

"THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE."

"Then what," bitterly retorts Ipslor, "is the point?" Thunder booms above. Lightening cracks in shards of light, all too close.

Death replies,

"I'M SORRY?"

Desperately near to the end of his life, Ipslor finally says, "What is it that makes life worthwhile?" The rain is heavy, the thunder now deafening.

Death thinks for a moment,

Death replies,

"CATS. CATS ARE NICE."

Ipslor curses Death. And Death evenly responds that many have. The wizard is struck on the tip of his pointy hat by a stray bolt of lightening, and dies.


I am no wizard. I hold in my hands no great power, no great skill, any more than the talents that any woman or man may possess.

I, too, have cursed death. I have used any and all the powers at my disposal to make a life stay alive. Futile as it may have been.

One time, a friend of mine was sitting with his friends. I was there.

"People criticize war, y'know. 'War, what is it good for?' and all that pacifist bullshit. What wankers. After all, armed conflict has solved many more problems than peaceful measures! I don't know how anyone could justify being against it in the modern age." and he looked right at me, in the eye. Challenging me.

His other friends all nodded in agreement, 'So true', 'too right'

I replied,

"Yes. War solves conflict. You shoot a man, he can't fight back. But that's not the point. The point is, that it causes so much death, so much suffering, so much pain and horror and sadness."

And they all said, almost in unison, "Oh yeeeeaah..."

As if it hadn't occurred to them.

I, a person who is against such actions, was just as offended as my best friend, who is part of Australia's armed forces. This was because, in his words,

"It's me and my friends who are killing and dying for them,"

I see the reason why we have men to perish for us, I have only the greatest respect for them. I see why it is that we make war. One can't just throw away one's weapons and say, "Guns are BAD" and expect to survive.

But it doesn't mean have to be satisfied. It doesn't mean we can't try to find a better solution.

I don't want to believe that liberty is a bitch, that must be bedded on a mattress of corpses. And I won't.

Doing Magic

I only have one talent. Being able to learn tricks.

I'm really not good at anything else, but I've discovered that in every situation, there is always a trick you can learn.

There is a trick to getting girls to like you. There is a trick to turning strangers into friends. There is a trick to making people laugh. There is a trick to making people fall in love with you, just as there is a trick to getting yourself to fall in love.

There is a trick to dancing, painting, writing, surfing, and smiling.

There is a trick to coping with horror, there is a trick making people think that you believe what you're saying. There are tricks to saying awake, and going to sleep.

There are tricks to make yourself stay alive.

I was younger, nine or ten, and playing with a coin in my uncles apartment. I had just been informed that my mother was going to die, probably soon. If she lived, they said, she would be badly brain damaged.

I played with that coin. I could make it spin around my fingers. I flipped it up and around, in and out, with the dexterity of a boy who is yet to gain any cumbersome muscle and has just figured out how all the tendons in his hand fit together.

It was then that I knew, there is a trick to everything. My mother lived, in the end. She has no cancer, and no damage.

And now, as I lie here, flattened by the strange shapes that attack me when I sleep, and the crushing sadness that stays with me during waking hours. Transfixed by the weirdness of things, that the world is the wrong shape in my head, I wonder why it is that I am the way I am.

But, as with all things, there is a trick to living like this. I'm sure it is easier to learn than many other tricks, that fortunately I have never had to learn. And thankfully, it is a trick that I taught myself a long time ago, in much more terrible circumstances.

I was made this way, and my friends who sometimes worry about me, don't. Because I was also made with the ability to learn the tricks that make me able to deal with my problems so well that some people don't even realize they're there.

I'll always have a few up my sleeve. :)

Praying to The Aliens.

I don't like aliens. And more than that, I don't like the idea of aliens.

Let me elaborate.

I like vampires, witches, warlocks and wizards. I like the TV show True Blood, the Harry Potter books, Lord of the Rings and various other fictional things. They range from amusing distractions to nifty reads, to profound literature.

I do not think those things exist. I know there are people who think that vampires, witches, warlocks and and wizards actually exist. I think those people are silly. I even know that there are people who think they are those things, for real. I think they are exceptionally silly. However, they in no way bother me. Oh sure, every now and then they go crazy and kill someone, but I would think that is also true of perfectly 'normal' people who do normal things like become lawyers, play video games or work in florists. I find them to be a largely harmless bunch of oddballs and fetishists. And if they enjoy it, if it makes them feel better, then power to them.

However, I do not like aliens. I don't like X-Files. I don't find the idea of aliens existing, abducting, flying around in saucers etc, to be in any way interesting. I think it's boring.

I also do not like people who think aliens exist. I find that mostly it is because those people have imbibed too many recreational chemicals, and have gone a bit crazy. The ones that I have met are paranoid, annoying, stupid and don't make sense. They think the government is trying to control them. They think that 'The truth is out there!'. They think that the reason why the world is bad is because people are blind to the truth that our water is being spiked and making us docile or that such and such is enthralled to the Queen of England who is really a space slug.

The real reason why the world is bad is much more mundane reasons: Greed. Arrogance. Ignorance. Fear. Hate. All boring, and all true.

I know that it is possible that there is life on other planets. But they are not grey litte men getting dissected at Roswell. Most likely, they are fungus growing on rocks.

Let me say this once and for all: Aliens are just pretend. They aren't real.

I'm not being paid to say this by the government. I'm not a mindless sheep. I'm not having my mind controlled by anyone. I just don't believe they exist, in the same way atheists don't believe in God.

If you tell me you believe in aliens, I will tell you this:

I believe that invisible pirates secretly spread mould all around food you don't put in your fridge so that you'll buy those fridges that they are selling you. And that's how they plan to control the world! Don't be blind to the invisible pirates! They're REAL. They want you to think it's aliens! It's a ruse! The truth is out there!

The Terrible Adventure

If you are a person, you have probably been afraid of death at some point.

It's strange to me that a creature could have this happen to them. Elephants, whales, lizards, and a whole host of other creatures apart from us morn the loss of a friend. But none do it for as long or as elaborately.

Then again, who knows, really, what it is an elephant thinks about behind its tired grey skin and its tired grey eyes? Maybe they morn for their whole lives. Those lives generally last longer than ours. Around ninety years. Maybe they, too, fear some reaper that will come for all in the end.

I'm not trying to be that annoying life insurance salesman. I'm just thinking about the oddness of life insurance. These are my three favorite quotes about death:

"Death is likely the single best invention of life,"
- Steve Jobs

"I am become death; destroyer of worlds,"
- J. Robert Oppenheimer (Who was himself quoting the religious text "The Bhagavad Gita")

"Death is the great democracy,"
- Neil Gaiman

You can look up those men's quotes in google if you are more interested in their context.

But, I will say this. The first is about the inevitability and frightening aspect of death, yet its use and necessity to life and change. The second is about the power of death, and the fear that comes with that power. And the third is about living amongst death, knowing it is always there, and feeling no apprehension about it.

Life, not death, is the greatest, most terrible adventure. Maybe when I become old I will lose my iron hate for the way things must die or change. In life, no matter how wretched, there are so very many possibilities. In death there are none, always. And I intend to change a few more times before I stop changing forever.

Do you? Well, intend or not, you will. Fear that. Not your mortality.

Will you look back on your life, and find that the past is a foreign land?

"All that happened in another country and besides, the wench is dead."

- Christopher Marlowe

The Fearful Me

There is a season for everything. A time to build and a time to tear down, sort of thing.

There are times to be fearless, to see nothing in the earth that could harm you. There are times to be fearful, but brave and steadfast against them.

But now, here, seems as good a time as any to feel afraid, not that I have a choice. Not that I like it. I don't.

Little strange fears flutter through me. Some of them don't make sense. Others are as clear and true as anything I've seen when walking in the world. They brush the murky depths of me, and wake deeper fears, long thought forgotten by me, that stir, and rear their awful heads again to torment me.

I'm afraid of many things. Physical things, injury, ravaging illness, savage animals, the violence of people against me. Mental things, madness, the uncertainty of mortality, abandonment, embarrassment, loneliness, poverty. Other things, harder to easily define, or even describe: dark feelings, sudden stares from strangers, the coldness in blackness, that which is unknown, the knowledge that changes you forever, innocence drifting away and the puppet-master pulling strings.

As always, I have no weapons in my fantasies, sometimes I cannot even run, or close my eyes. Only watch, while I am maimed, slain, broken, beaten, humiliated, mutilated, isolated and segregated. Over. And over. And over.

I understand that fear has a purpose: This, you must avoid. Fear is a warning.
But this torture I impose on myself, when I lie here, what use is it? What point is there to this? Why can't I stop?

When I sleep my dreams reflect my conscious thoughts. Weird nameless terror chases me, and I wake up as restless as I was when I laid down my head.

Fear is so close, always. Everyday The people love could be destroyed in freak accidents, every day I could be diagnosed with a disfiguring cancer, everyday could bring some new horror, ready to tear away everything I have.

There is nothing so weak, I think, than a creature imprisoned by it's own self. I think that is what I have become.

I have tactics for fighting the things that go wrong with me, adapt and so on. Cope and keep going. But there is no defense against this ever-ready paranoia. None at all.

No Regrets

Regret is an emotion, it means: If I had the knowledge that I now have, and if I lived my life again, I would live it differently.

Many people claim, "No regrets,". I imagine they must be horribly uncreative. If I could have my time again, I would change so much.

I would kiss people I didn't, invest where I would gain most, learn what would be most useful, encourage where I insulted, and live where I lazed.

How can you say you regret nothing?