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It documents my traveling through my personal demons and living through a war zone known as, " the ghetto". It describes my awakenings from a dark mental landscape I had created, but blamed others for. The piece progresses from darkness to light in an ultimate realization of self and humanity. I'm proud of this work. I hope you enjoy it. Outline Book 1 Transcendence A. Prelude 1. Introduction to main character 2. Introduction to surroundings 3. Resolution B. Anger 1. Character's thoughts and feelings to surroundings 2. Initial reaction to the world C. Uncertainty 1. Confusion to anger and reaction 2. Initial melancholy D. Disillusion 1. Character faces reality of surroundings for what they are 2. Beginning of initial healing and realization E. Awakenings 1. Healing and realization growing 2. Understanding and compassion for fellow man within his surroundings 3. Second realization that understanding and compassion extend to all people 4. Realizes every individual's importance 5. Stops describing and begins teaching peace through self esteem Book 2 Lessons A. Lessons 1. Continues to teach through active realization and encouraging instruction 2. Talks about love for self and mankind 3. Teaches about faith and hope 4. Insists on the importance of individual, stresses respect, edifies hope 5. Final realization B. Epilogue 1. Expresses freedom from the past 2. Encourages reader to live in hope and love ****** Prelude June 10 These are the nothing thoughts of an un-person, a no-one who did nothing but heard about it once.... some cruel rumor of a something in this world to belong, to be.... The days drag idly by, the evenings are long. Deep in my heart, I run to me I'm sitting and all empty, there is a song in the stone but it's sad and solitary. Fleeting dreams and fantasy in a nothing world of obscurity somehow fill this un-soul. Nothing always happens, nothing always will, everyone left and they're gone still. Depression and unhappiness the only hooks left to hang this mask. These dark things engulf like the smothering sea, cover, as in the blackness of night which at once can make time stop and pass you by like the wind. As I look down at the crack hotel tonight, I am far removed in my tenements' tower roof from the city lights, the traffic can't reach me here but still I am effected. Down the street from US19 where the hotel sits I watch a pack of "dogs" with no home but the street as they tear at themselves for the itch to be scratched. Around the corner, from a window I hear the baby crying, but mama is outside getting stoned, the lighters' flame exposing her wide ghouls eyes within a pale face which has lost hope, sunken within a pale life which has lost love, and seeks only survival , not because of the light within, but because of the fear of the end. Across the hallway, the ancient couple share her fear, they've lived here forever, watching the inevitable creep up, slowly stalking them, watching their neighborhood and their bodies decay. Wanting only another drink, (wanting everything to go away ) scared, in their weakness they hold hands because they are all they have left, but not for much longer. Red and blue goes screaming by, the siren so loud the moon is awakened, the vigilant militant, who, will be by night the hero or the villain, depending upon which side of the line you stand or which law you follow.... But here in Hell things are not always as they seem, and corruption is the general rule on the right hand of chaos, so beware, your angel may be a demon in disguise.... here you never know until it's too late. The young hustler chain smoking on the corner he smiles when police go by, he thinks he has them beat with his flow in one pocket, his rocks and Budda in the other, and his own law stuck down the front of his pants like some hard-on for evil. He rubs the pocket with the wad and smiles some more as his favorite junkie scores another handful of nickel bags and then drives away in his jaguar. This adolescent boy goes back into the hotel room, waving and grinning to his competition one floor and seven doors down, time to take a break, get some more drugs, smoke a joint of the finest sherm and watch all that cash just float to him on a summer nights' breeze. He's thinking to himself, "...what a life..." but he's upside down, he doesn't know his residence is in Hell, and when he finds out....he won't care as long as he gets paid. And the door to room 205 closes. Out in the courtyard with the trampled hedge of thorns and sticks, the broken and rusted fence swings and squeaks as children up too late on a school night peel through it to meet their friends on nocturnal maneuvers. The splattered blood in the elevator and stairwell bears the evidence of the violence...the smears, streaks and trails of disorientation and the struggle for balance which slides down the walls.... the pools in the hallway, this testimony of the pointless loss and disregard for life. It is a war zone in which everyone must be their own army, and these stains which may wash away, never go away within the hatred and fear and this total despair which you breathe in the very air tonight. Near the hotel pool, as it glows silently, the prostitutes are gossiping over cocktails... this desperate night, like every other night drags on...... Like blind witches hanging over the cauldron they cackle, whoop and whistle uncontested, through missing and decaying teeth between hits off the little glass pipe. There is little hope, or maybe only hope for these wretched and sallow people, like the addicts on the corner sticking needles in their arms as the blackness, ( in one form or another) takes them away. For most of us here in these shadowlands, we stand in the crossfires watching each other yet saying nothing.... seeking comfort, companions and protection in the safety of numbers because if you aren't careful, you could be next in this place which can kill parts of your soul as well as your body and mind. It produces a kind of schizophrenia within you in which you learn as a survival mechanism to mimic and think as the very demons around you so as to become invisible to them, lest your light be seen...and you be devoured. A few of us here are young like me, starting with nothing and trying to learn the myriad games and different sets of rules... but most here are old, handicapped, or just stricken with poverty as if it was some terminal illness, ( and for most of them it is ) and we persevere from day to day, sometimes hour to hour and within the worst of it, minute to minute bearing our crosses. So many victims, in casualties and fatalities yet still our strength allows us the natural pursuit of survival sometimes by sheer will, other times by grace. This community is sick from all of this evil, but a few of us are strong in The Lord, so he walks with us and we lean towards God grateful He is with us and confident in the very face of this evil and smile, relaxed, ready and aware, ( if not patient ) let the battle come as it may. The misery of this place is absolute as the death grip which holds it here. This power unseen which swallows victims at random and at will, and methodically seeks to expand and grow... the predators surrounding us celebrate the wickedness and treachery born, bred and sustained here. The demons, laughing in the shadows are many. The ones you see the most open doors for the more dangerous ones, and these try to defeat you from within.... Fear, Anger, and Despair are their names, misery, confusion, and hopelessness are what they use to make you one of them. Everyone here has scars from the battle, everyone.... and I.....I am just a witness and a soldier. June 11 am Conscienceness awakes and decides if there is a time to play, this is not it. Now is a time to be serious. I can feel the movements of the universe around us. Revelation, vision, call it what you wish, yet I feel this motion and force pushing and shaping our course molding our destiny, evolving our future history. As time unfolds in its seemingly linear meter, agonizing and consistent, the events which form and move to determine the shape of this life call out to me....beckoning with the obvious, and unlocking the questions of the eternal mysteries. We search for many things, we wish for happiness in our journey, but where and what is this happiness we seek? We are not aware, and we are distracted. Are we yet too old to un-learn? Too much of anything is corruptible to our spirits, and we thrive for too much, we strive for too much. You can apply this principle with common sense and honesty and see the truth. But then, what is in a dogma? Or rather, what is in a dogma which cannot be twisted or abused? Again we are face to face in too much. Too much action when we should be still, too much thought when we should act, too much poverty of spirit, too much of a lack of discipline. If I were to fix the world, I would start by fixing me. Not necessarily a public confession of my weakness, but by the strength to understand someone else's by my own knowledge of where I am weak. We move in no direction because we have no direction. When it becomes too late, it will be too late to regret. June 11 pm I'm a prodigy of my dark history, a flirtatious lover of tragedy, a transcendental pilot of reality, I watch the signs and omens around me. Floating upwards to the sky, I see pictures of what we've become.... the ways we came undone, the darkness uncovers me, can you make it go away? No. I watch the wheels turning as the days go by, look how this happened to you and I.... I am a glitch within the database, a multiple statistic, a casualty of mass media, a victim of expedience upon the train of violence without the chains of innocence. I am no one, without consequence or meaning, but I am, and so my being is the next technology, the great new prodigy of the ruthless, the meaningless nothing we entertain as life. And so as this new prodigy of this dark history what to do within this meaningless nothing but search for meaning? That as life ebbs away and the next are born, I will know that within the nothing I made a purpose within the search.... and this is something, even from nothing. June 15 I seek the face of God to find the sense of all of this.... to know peace within chaos, to know immortality and timelessness, to know the answers to questions only God could know, and I will ask again and again..... I seek to admire the entire creation by every molecule and atom of our world and beyond, to fully see the intricate clockwork in infinite intimate detail. I seek to understand everything, I seek to know everyone. And for those of you who profess there is no God, you will genuflect as you are broken backwards and devour yourselves. June 18 When a person ceases to grow they begin to die. This applies to the plants, animals, and even the elements. Consider water : when it can no longer move it stagnates and becomes useless. Consider mountains : when they cease to reach for the sky, they become wind blown and erode. Consider plants and trees : when they become root-bound they strangle themselves. And finally, consider people : when we no longer find a purpose, we become decayed in our spirit, slowly fading away without meaning to eventually die. Ask yourself : What am I about ? Are you about anything, or is money / sex what you have settled for ? Just remember, money is temporary, and even animals have sex. I ask you again, what are you about ? Circumstances are irrelevant in answering this question. The adaptability of our race, our will and awareness set us apart from the animals, we can choose. We are not set apart because our thumb is opposable, or because we walk upright. It is that which screams, " I am ! " and confirms to our horror that, " they " also are. What are you about ? Morality has everything to do with that which promotes growth. It opens our minds through discipline,it allows us survival and longevity, it is the prelude to love. And keep in mind, morality is more than just, " doing the right thing " it is more than the agreements of consent. Morality is what is right all the time, and right even when the benefits will go to someone else. It is what helps us to overcome selfish desire when love is absent. Love also promotes growth. It encourages the risk of a chain reaction of kindness from yourself outward to the most desolate regions within the human heart and mind. You can create the fruit of love by the seed which is in your conscious conscience. Note that it must first be planted by you in another, and then like a vine it will spread. Individuality is not lost in reaching out. Individuality is not lost when you let someone in with a selfless act. It is not lost when you cease to act selfishly. It is not lost when you learn to love, it is defined and refined as spiritual gold. And this wealth is growth.The beginning of time was the beginning of our awakening. We began counting when we knew we were awake and alive, when we knew we could be living. Instead of using time as our tool, it has become our pseudo-master which defines how long we activate before certain deactivation on a mass scale. We throw caution and prudence to the wind and blow away to learn ruthlessness. The beginning of time was to be the beginning of our pilgrimage of self that we might transcend our world. But it has left us in darkness about our sense of purpose. If you race against the clock, the clock will win the race. If you are driven by money, you will only be driven crazy. If you have a purpose, what is it ? Who are you ? Who do you think you are ? What are you about ? June 30 Who are you ? This is the beginning question we must ask ourselves. When I look, I find that I am a loosely interpreted entity compared to who I think I am. But I know change, and I can become the me I seek, the me I wish. Who am I ? I am a dreamer and builder. I work to fix myself that I might be of better service to those who want or need my help. I open my mind, ( the skylights to my soul ) and I soften my heart, ( my bridge to you ) and you are welcome to cross. In rebuilding the self you will find pain, because anger and hate are emotions shaped like a yoke, but you can let go. Unless you shrug it off it will hang on your neck. These emotions shine with self-pity and selfishness, but when I saw a glimpse of how large, how infinite love and the universe are, I no longer wanted to be so small. This is what I am about.Growing is not easy, but the fear you feel and the pain you experience are your own projections, illusions known as lies from the demons..... and even if you cannot let them go to lighten your burden as you sprout, these growing pains you create are still worth your goal. What is my goal ? I wondered to myself.....to never stop expanding, growing, learning, or loving. It is a hard answer in such a cold world. But the world will remain cold unless I thaw out myself. On this journey there is no end. ****** Transcendence Book 1 Anger Aug 1 Society ? Bureaucracy mediates the mediocrity, the mediocrity lies within a void and sanity is the void. The mediocrity dictates how we will stay within the sanity, yet the mediocrity overlooks the true condition : everything the bureaucracy mediates to the mediocrity only keeps us in-sane, and not within the sanity. So where lies the true mental distortion, within the lunatics which lead or within the sheep ? With high hopes and a smile of confidence he went to reach for the fruit in the trees, but was left standing alone in the American dreams of wealth and success, to twist in the breeze. Placed within the masses of people with their hands out for the opportunity of a chance to survive, to succeed, to stay alive, and out of the missions of saints, without hope or delusion because they've been denied. And all are weary, but wary. He has tried and tried, still to be relied on to pay the governments' bills for those in the Capitals' Hills, who have never felt hunger or shame, for those who have never known this game he has only begun to play. The technological advances which do him no favors, are sleek and shine and gnaw on his mind as desires which burn without hope, or the means, he will give up these dreams and his wonders will turn into fires. He cries and he stares at the people in pairs who are smiling and driving new cars, and he wonders how, without breath, without sound, he allowed it to get this far... People will pay just to watch you play out your tragedy and your sorrow, and you'll be living each day in agonizing pain with the wish there will be no tomorrow. You'll pay and pay, as it gets worse each day the devil will give you whatever you'll borrow. Watch out for the geeks, the fools and the greeks who give you horses as tokens of love, you'll be lost to the sound of hitting the ground and that laughter from some demon above you, you can hear them grinding their axes. As the shot went off, I saw his soul fly away to another Hell..... because he was always wasted. They came to me out of the shadows to test my armament. The conversation hypnotic and dark like a dying mans' blood streaming out from a mortally wounded artery, the pulse getting weaker, like music fading but staying in your head when it's done. Surely you cannot be serious...all that's happening and you fear God ? Think about it, greed that rules the world, hungers of power, money, even food... ecological self destruction, planetcide, toxic waste, oil spills, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, guns and maniacs, predators in political power and you fear God ? Oppression, racism, bigotry, segregation, hatred, distrust and un-education, un-employment, unbridled mass media, propaganda, war mongers, rapists, drive-by shootings, poison, terrorism and war itself, and you fear God ? Disease, rainforest destruction, acid rain, bombs, car wrecks, cancer, earthquakes, hurricanes, thieves, murderers, intolerance with ignorance, policies and prophecies and you fear God ? Then there was another, and I knew him....their step child manifested... What of technology ? I am the epitome of what is to be...I am metal to flesh, a cyborg, try to program me. I am sharp as knives, I'll do your wives, I'm fun for girls and boys... I'm circuitry, I'm what is to be, and to the unscrupulous I'm toys. But I own you all, you worship me, you can't just turn off this TV ! I am your nightmares and your dreams, I am the twisted cyber-reality you weave, with me you'll reach the stars, think your God cares about Mars ? Look and see I am machine. Then I woke up realizing I had fallen asleep with the news left on, the laughter of some derelict shaking me out of the battle in which there is no rest. I walk to the balcony and contemplate these surroundings as I always do : watching, listening, and remembering this is real, this is happening as horrible as it is, these people I think of are dead...and the rest of these people are dying in one way or another. I can almost see The Animals' claws as I look around and view the scars left openly everywhere........ Aug 3 And the boy looked me in the eye and said to me : You ask me why I hate you ? Ok, maybe it's no reason, and then maybe it's every reason.... You've shot down my dreams, you've taken away all my hopes, how can I not despise you ? You break my wings and tear at my flesh, and as I try to mend my wings you patiently lie in wait of me to merely stretch my wings so that you may break them again that you might break me. You would try to break my back, yet you would rather watch me squirm. And since I cannot fly, I try to walk away, then you break my legs too. You rend my body and you gnaw on my brittle bones. You are a poison thorn within my mind, and you twist as a knife through my back towards my heart, and you ask why I hate you ? You kill whatever I see as precious, you destroy whatever I see as beautiful. In my sorrows you find joy, within my pain you delight, yes I despise you. To kill me would be merciful, and so, you do not, as you would find only a brief moments' pleasure. You choose to keep me alive that I may die slowly, painfully, relentlessly, eternally. If I wear white, in your hands there is mud, if I wear black, in your hands there is chalk. you are a cancer. If I was wearing a suit, you would tear me into tatters, if I was naked, you would sell me a sock with a worn heel and open toe. Into my skies you belch blackness, into my dreams you spew wickedness. You make my nightmares live and fill me with restlessness. As I look for help, you hold out a stick, and as I reach...the stick is gone and all I hear as I fall is the shrill echoing sound of your hollow laughter. You have burned my fields, and defecate upon my plate. You throw at me stones, and demand diamonds. Into my eyes you pour dust, and scream for gold. You make me decay, and you smell for incense. To you I am less than a pawn, yet still I am entirely the game. You ask why I hate you ? Maybe it is no reason, and then, maybe it is every reason. People are wraiths, and I am the shadows' shadow, black, empty and absent... endlessly searching for something to stand between me and the terrible sun. I am drawn to darkness and music, into darkness I am drawn the most, that black hole in my soul, it makes me excited and deranged and I am lost, invisible and blind. The music comes not so often, and so I long for it, she doesn't confuse or lose me, she gives me beauty, in her I am not lost but immersed in harmony, fluidity.....I become absent from the absence I've become ; there is a place for me here without a need for sight. Yet I am not allowed to remain, the resonance fading in an echo of wind and silence, and blackness washes over me so that I remember who I am : a shadows' shadow left to wander, seeking light to hide from it, seeking heat to fear it, looking for answers in a void while invisible and blind allowed to feel, but not see, forced to live and not be. Aug 8 am The dealer does his business early today, his thoughts are those of an insect which sucks the nectar out of the flowers...... My breakfast is of, and lies upon the fields, fields of many armies, armies of many arms. Arms of tawny violet, arms of crimson and verdure endlessly flowing in their random warfare until melting beyond the sight of eye, into a swarthy rolling mist off the very edge of the earth. And I in my own brilliant coat of arms, arms of sunfire and black, arms of fluorescence and skystreak, I can defeat and conquer them all. I suck their life's' blood as I choose, and upon their rotting corpses I lay my young to feed, then we in our brilliance, flourish. I may fly or I may crawl, I may hop or I may skip, I may briefly rest or I may feed, and if I feed, I feed upon you, you in your arms, I feast on your blood... enemy or ally, you all stand helpless to me for breakfast. The morning dew which cools your skin and soothes your thirst, only makes me frenzy, and my shadow will become your deathbeds' shroud as I eclipse you from the sun you smile to. And as I heard these thoughts pass through his little mind I found myself angry and infected. The anger which opened for me a door behind which lived vengeance. As the feeling came over me my own thoughts became subject to this ugliness which has many faces, but only one name, that name being evil...... Aug 8 pm Come to me you vampires, seek me out as fresh new meat, seek me out and prepare to be devoured. Flesh eaters, I will consume your souls, I am a cannibal among cannibals, but you are now slow and fat, and I am hungry. Devils and angels are bearing witness to your ends you lowly, sloth ridden demons. Beware vampires, for my need is great, and you will be my handservants or perish, I will kill for sport, and the sport is you. You vampires, who buy and sell souls, I give you no more time to play with ignorant sheep whom you slaughter with ease.... but demand and command you to be aware, for my time is at hand. It is a soldiers' dawn, and those sheep will rise beyond you, I will give them the fangs to destroy you, and I would do it just to watch you squirm even though you deserve it. So come to me you vampires, you weak nocturnal predators, seek me out, and be prepared to be devoured. He was enraged and engaged in self-destruction. He was fighting his demons and losing, when he came upon the snakes' cage and in anger and frustration, in defiance, he smashed it down. The snake was but as long as a leg, ( until it struck the floor in such force and fury ) within the chaos of the shattering glass, it multiplied its size by a factor of ten, and his demons possessed the python and devoured him, from massive coil to mouth, and he was trapped forever in this death, spiritual and mortal. Immobile, immortal in agony and defeat within the gullet of some denizens he himself had conjured. He vanished when his darkness possessed the python to possess him, and once he left in the belly of this beast, the reptile returned to normal. The snake being only a symbol. Aug 12 Anger, rage, hatred, they are quick like lightening, and last as an explosion by a terrorist who leaves scars which may heal, but never fade. And these scars contain heat below the surface, our own internal magma waiting, gaining intensity to erupt again. But if you hate forever, your anger which hungers, will turn upon you. So let it go before you burn, and you will be free, let it go and learn to be. Uncertainty Aug 30 Down the hall from me, behind the closed doors which were made too thin, I can hear the couple fighting in their apartment three doors away. As the yelling and slamming continues and grows, I can tell they've both been unhappy for a very long time. As if all that is left in their lives was a hollow echo of a happy memory which existed long ago in some forgotten dream. Suddenly, I hear the front door of their apartment slam, and the doppleganger of feet running down the hall past my door and out the exit to the fire escape steps.... she's crying to herself, " I can't take it anymore..." as she sobs and gasps for air, the exit door closes. Five minutes later, in the quiet of the beginning of the evening, I see her plummet past my balcony like Icarus. The concrete ledge which overhangs the buildings' back entrance shudders upon the impact of her body and I feel it right through the floor even though I am eight stories above that ledge. I run to the balcony, drawn, and once there, transfixed at the sight of her mortal remains which rolled or bounced off the ledge into the parking lots' fire lane, the black asphalt stained now deeply red by her unnaturally twisted, broken figure. At times like this you kind of disconnect yourself because you want to believe it's not really happening, but inside I know it is, and I keep reminding myself : this is real, this is real.... An hour later she's still laying there uncovered... (nobody is in a hurry when they can't save you ) when the police and clean up crew from the morgue do get there they find a crowd. A small dog running around her and barking, the children staring and gawking, some of them laughing and pointing. But they can't be blamed, they've been desensitized by growing up with death here, this is just another incident of the usual everyday gossip. After the mess has been cleaned, the remains taken away, and the reports and sta |
