Post Snippet; The Flower in Your Embrace

(Another post snippet. I do this from time to time, just take my posts from elsewhere and save them here. The height of ego, eh?)

Oh the guilt! "Everything in my life is great, why can't I even do this one thing?"  I know that feeling well...and it doesn't get better as you age, until you realise a few things.

Writing under pressure is hard. It's like trying to contort and squeeze in on something that's as precious as a flower, trying not to crush it to pieces, but to somehow make it bloom by will alone. And then it's as if you're pushing in both directions, pressing down on yourself while gasping for air and pushing back to leave that little breathing room. You're wrung out and crying, taut and beaten ragged, and that's even before you try to write.

Sometimes your story reaches out to you, like a golden sun extending its warm rays to you. In those cases, if you're pushed to put your hand out, it'll simply settle in your palm, flowing over you and filling you with that beautiful feeling. Sometimes it's inside a glass case, and you need to smash through to grasp that trophy, but when you do, you're filled with elation. Sometimes it's behind rock, and you need to come equipped with mining gear, and if you're lucky, some well placed dynamite might get you through to those gems.

But...all of these cases are different, and all of them live inside of you. If you're crushing that flower that is your soul, it's not because you're not a writer or that you can't write that it's not coming out, it's because you're not in the right place for it to flower. Nothing works if you're screaming at yourself, telling yourself that the conditions are all right, why isn't it working. The most beautiful flowers don't always bloom in paradise, some bloom in the desert, some bloom in the winter, some surprise you in the middle of desolation and pain.

As any kind of artist, it behooves thee to know thyself. To not crush that tenuous link between your muse and yourself by ripping yourself to shreds when it's just not working. Sit back, breathe, relax. The proof of your writing isn't in whether you can crush out a novel in thirty days, or thirty years, that's just the validation from the rest of the world. The proof is that your soul speaks in the written word. All those little snippets, pieces of prose, long forgotten words of wisdom, snatches of shining story...are not worthless. They may not be something you can earn money from, but that means nothing. Artists don't 'art' for money, we do it to send a message, to communicate, to touch people. That alone has value in a world such as this.

The fact that you want to reflect on your life doesn't mean that you're not a writer. It means the opposite. It means writing is so crucial to your soul that you can't see another way to live. Welcome to the club. Now stop punishing yourself and realise that if you turned your gaze to anything other than your story right now, words would flow out of you. Passion would flow out of you. Life would flow right out of you.

So do something else. Live, and let the story wait for another day.

A Note on the Sentai

I wrote a little bit of history to my story yesterday, trying to get the kinks worked out. Thought I'd share it.

The inhabitants of Nova Sentai were a race of traders and explorers that were one of the first to investigate wormhole technology. Eventually abandoned in favour of hyper-light travel, wormholes or darkgates as they became known, would eventually form part of the reason the Sentai have become one of the most scattered peoples in the galaxy.

In 22-24, the Arthannan opened negotiations with the Sentai in a bid to garner darkgate technology. Negotiations fell through, and soon tensions escalated towards open war, lasting several years. Darkgates were used on both sides, though the Arthannan could only utilise drives from captured vessels, and the Sentai's weaponry was sub-standard compared to their foe.

Eventually a decisive strike for the Sentai was rendered into an abject failure, ultimately culminating in defeat for the species, when their fleet tried to utilise newly found Hyper-Light technology for the first time. Many of the ships were destroyed upon stardrive use, others were disabled on re-entry, right next to the Arthannan fleet. The flagship, however, fared both better and worse. Their prototype drive landing them within striking distance of the Arthannan home world, the Sentai opened a barrage of darkgate missiles upon their foe. The missiles malfunctioned, opening up a rift in space and hurtling hundreds of undetonated warheads along with the ship through to an unknown destination.

The Sentai home world soon faced the wrath of the Arthannan fleet. Unprotected and at their wits end, they took to the stars, abandoning the planet and its civilisation to the Arthannan. Harried though they were, they still managed to escape, eventually settling amongst other peoples, integrating but never forgetting their roots through the ages. 

The Arthannan eventually obtained their darkgate technology, but as the Sentai had found to their detriment, it was unstable and ineffective at best. In a cataclysm borne of hubris and greed, the Arthannan homeworld was torn asunder, rendered into a million asteroids, soon sucked into orbit around their sun. The off-worlders of that time were left adrift, having to find their own way in the galaxy as the Sentai had done, forming colonies and raiding the stars in an impotent rage at the foes that had escaped them.

Through the ages Sentai and Arthannan fought, their grudges settling into grim hatred. And to a few, the lost flagship began to take on a kind of mythical quality. A treasure hunt in the depths of space, a race between two enemies for a glowing prize and one final, solid victory.

Disconnect

Context: I'm on Discord a lot, it's a chat program with multiple servers, a bit like IRC but with a nice interface, gifs, and voice chat. I was posting this to someone but then moved it here.

A server I've recently joined there has some fun people in it, and a few are fairly young women, smart, cool, witty, etc. Over the last few weeks I've gotten to know them and I quite like them. And it's an interesting dynamic for me, because they're funny and interesting and single. Anyway...sometimes when I say I'm old people don't really understand the meaning behind that, but it's days like this that kind of highlight not my age, but the difference in my lifestyle. These people go out on the weekend and during the week, and live it up. They date and have relationships and friends, and that's all cool.

At least, it is for them. The problem with being around people that you're interested in, is when they go out and do things you're reminded that you're not really in their lives. Moreso when you realise they're living a lifestyle that you've never had and feel like is in the past for you. And tonight I felt the strangest feeling as they went off. Not a little jealousy, which I'm generally used to by now, but that more and more I've started to miss a life like that. One I've never had, and also been somewhat scared to have.

I want a lot of things in my life, but I deal with what I don't have because I know it has been my choices and my fear, and perhaps my laziness also, that has caused them. But one thing that makes me not feel somewhat disconsolate about is when I know people are out there having a ball and I'm just sitting around at home. I wouldn't rather they be home too, I'd rather be out there, living it up. And sometimes I feel a little like I'd like to be with them as well.

It just reminds me, sometimes, of all I don't have and all I want. And sometimes it reminds me of the gap between myself and younger people, people my own age, and even people older than I.

It gets to me a little. Because I'm reminded that I'm a little lonely and I want love, too. And even if they're not out there finding soul mates and whatnot, I still think "hey these are cool people I like, why aren't I with one of them?" Of course it's not anything like that easy, or advisable, it just makes me think of everything I wish was true for myself.

Even though I know wishes don't make anything...

Feather

Hot, flushed, and wet,
the skein peeled away to reveal flesh and bone,
supply as midnight, smooth in silk,
the flowing rivers of your chest,
peaks and valleys of your neck,
"Surrender," she whispered in tender tones,
an angel's breath away.

Falling stars,
my stars, I'm falling.

The Heart of Adventure

You know what's wild? That we know the universe is expanding. That we actually pretty much know that it started at some point, and that we know that the fabric of the plane we exist on is changing. Not just the earth, not just the solar system, not just the galaxy, but every single thing that is even slightly possible to know.

That we can actually understand that there was something that smacked the universe into existence and while we're living it's still in the momentum of that movement. It's still flying as we go about our lives and will continue to fly long before we burn out, in the wake of that event that caused everything that we can possibly perceive to be.

Sometimes I forget, until I read something random...and then I realise again that somehow, everything we could ever possibly try to understand is undergoing massive flux constantly. The most powerful and amazing thing possibly conceived is happening all the time.

 

Why then, would it be so impossible to think of something that could transcend all that we know, to think of things happening that we don't yet understand, to live in a world where all things are possible because everything is possible?

Sometimes I wonder about the future. I love science because it tells us what we know now, not what we know tomorrow or in two hundred years from now, but right now, today. And the reason it does that isn't just so we can use it, but to teach us how much we don't know, so that we can have our ideas and realise that nothing is done, nothing is finished, nothing is over. This universe still needs explorers and adventurers, willing to delve into the depths of space and the mysteries of a grain of sand with equal fervour, not so one day we will have all the answers, but because there are so many answers out there, and so many things we could know.

How could this life ever be boring, knowing that?

 

And when I think of how the world is today, I just want to send that message everywhere, so people think again just how much is possible in life. How much life contains within that simple word, on that simple breath. How much this life means...that even the thought of that, moves me and fills me with passion and raw desire to just go out there and see it. To find out more. To be in that journey, that adventure, with everyone.

Inspiration is a strange thing. It lives within anything and everything, if you just tilt your view a little. And I think that's just one of things that lets me know life is beautiful, even if it's terrible for some, even when it's not great for me. Life contains all the things you could ever want or dream of. We just have to get there, that's all.

I don't know if a me has ever existed before, I tend not to think about reincarnation because I like the idea of having a definite existence. I like feeling that this is the only chance for me to put a block down for someone else to stand on. I like the idea that my life has one true purpose, that my soul has a destiny, and that the afterlife doesn't really change that. But if there is reincarnation, I hope one day I can come back, and maybe get a chance to see how much of it we've discovered.

I hope one day I get to see it all made right.

I hope one day to see us amongst the stars.

Someone once said; to love is to be vulnerable.

That person did not go on to say how to do that when you're scared. When you're bound and bloodied by emotion and the consequences of your actions. When you're not ready in the slightest but someone holds their hand out to you.

You're not supposed to push that hand away, to fill it only with the sand of troubles, to let it sit, and wait. For love to be - any love, be that familial, platonic, passionate, you have to grasp that hand, and accept what may come.

You may be low, they may be high. You may be up and they down. You might both need each other more than you realise, because that warmth spreads both ways.

I'm not very good at not being afraid. Yes, I don't mind rollercoasters so much now, and maybe I can deal with going to a party on my own, and sometimes even spiders get dealt with. But the big things, the things that would make me a man, a person I could be proud of, well...they're not always so easy.

This place is where I put parts of myself that often reflect what I want to be, not what I yet am. They are struggles and reminders of the path I want to always be in front of me, and whether I like it or not, sometimes I falter on that path.

Today I was reminded to not be a coward. To take the hand proffered and dive into that abyss, that unknown, and simply live. Regrettably I realised this only as the tide began to recede, but this fool is nothing if not hopeful, and one hopes that boat is not yet far from shore.

I have, somehow have always known, that I must pursue my own goals with diligence and purpose in order to truly be happy, to be able to reciprocate the love I am given in the way it deserves to be returned. I need to be that man to truly be worthy of the one I'm with. To feel like someone who has accomplished, who has achieved at least some of his goals, who can really make a difference.

My friends have all moved on, my peers left me far behind, and any thoughts of competition fled me long ago. My desire to be good at something twisted in on itself like a warped sculpture, whispering over and over that I can't ever succeed because I'm so far behind I can barely reach their legacy. Telling me I'm the one left behind, while by night I dream of running faster than the wind.

But that's a lie. I'm better at what I do now than I ever was. And just because I haven't come as far as I've wanted, doesn't mean I'm not worthy in some way. Yes, I don't have a job. Yes, I don't have any money left. Yes, I live at home with my family. But being an artist, being a writer, isn't always the straightest path, and it's certainly not the traditional one. I'm not going to pretend it's easy going against society, I'm not going to pretend I don't feel like a waste of a life sometimes.

And I'm not going to pretend I'm no good at what I am anymore.

I might not be a real writer yet. But I am far from being nothing.

And maybe if I can find the strength to not worry of shattering someone else's soul, I might be able to find companionship on this road again.

The Monk's Reflection

With folded hands I stepped inside and turned the clock to one,
and then I started all again as though had just begun,
the life I dreamed I'd never live and always wanted more,
then gifts I have and love I know and friends I do adore

What found I then a thought so true that nothing could compare,
and roused the mind that had been blind to start to really care,
for all I've known and all I have and all that I could be,
and make that dream instead of one a true reality.

Never Sent

I wish
there was a place we could just disappear,
to talk, to be close, without any fear,
of the world outside and their thoughts and sly glances,
of tomorrow and the days after and what they may bring,
just us,
the two of us,
alone.

So I could kiss you,
And not have the world matter.
Where our short passion could flower,
in loving need,
that was meant to remain secret,
and last days, not years.

But it does not, will not, exist.
So I cannot hold you,
and tell you that you are beautiful,
and wish you well with your life,
while I taste you.

I cannot share a secret with you,
in a moment,
and have you lock it away,
have you understand.

I can only write this,
and think of what is,
and what was,
never sent.