Life is but a masquerade

Salvation in Resolution?

phantomunmasked — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:48:27 +0000

It seems that every single time i try, i succeed. But only for a fleeting moment, because the eternal pessimist in me tells me everything is transient. And so i find myself giving up again, thinking “Just five more minutes.” or “I’ll do it when the week is out.”. Nothing seems to motivate anymore, though no one but myself is to blame for that. All i require is a simple goal, after all, and work towards it.

School equates to dread now, and i wonder why. I used to be so (to borrow the disgusting colloquialism), enthusiastic about it. Perhaps not so much enthusiastic but attentive to the little things that make life palatable, much like how a dog may have its ears pricked to listen for the welcome footfalls of its master. But now it’s just humdrum, huge swathes of drab canvasses that fall on me, layer upon layer, suffocating. There is a desire to break out of it all, to have a single-minded intensity that will instantly make things better. No more messages telling you of your failings, no more reminders of how you’re the child you were never meant to be.

Does everyone have their own destiny? Is this why we study literature? To question providence and the presence of free will? Placido Domingo said that we all have a destiny in accordance to the breadth of our shoulders, and his shoulders were broad. Coming from a man as great as him, i don’t find that hard to believe. But to aspire to be like the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses i have come to worship is not my desire.

Perhaps the trouble lies in that: I do not know what i desire. I have no mitigating circumstances that necessitate a drive towards perfection, given the comfort i have enjoyed my whole life. It is exceedingly comfortable, and i find i am unable to stop myself. Unable to stop myself from acting like something i am not. Time to wake up and smell the rotting roses, and time to sweep them aside in favor of a new bloom. Something hardier, not so delicate. Time to climb down from the treehouse of escapism and embrace the harsh, bitter realities.

Time to stop telling yourself it’s never too late, because right now, too late was two years ago.

Ennui : School

phantomunmasked — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:11:41 +0000

I do not know what is is, but i have always found myself seeking solace in school. No matter how old i have been, school has been the one refuge where the raging waves of emotion cannot properly touch me. Perhaps it is because some part of me is so desperate to appear infallible that it has become subconscious to appear detached. It is a welcome relief from the inexplicable torrent of recrimination, of guilt and of anger that claws at me when i am home, or a private space. School is a place where modicums of decorum are kept, and distances repsected. No, not so much respected. People simply couldn’t care less. It’s your own world you’re trapped in. Even friends are transient, rudimentary constructs of social order that we unwittingly (because we are only human) pull around ourselves. We need that familiarity, and i do not blame us. We as a race are fallible in so many ways, and yet we try to cover it up. Always. Even bemoaning our fate is another way of rejection, becuase by shouting it from the top of rooftops we are disallowing ourselves the quiet, the silence, the stillness to truly acknowledge our demons. And when we are forced to do that, as so many of us are inadvertently forced to, we become nightmares, mere shadows of who we were. We parade ourselves as tortured souls, wearing our insides out; we pride ourselves about our eloquence in expressing what we want to do. And our tortured souls become who we are, denying the truth that lies within. The energy of any educational instituition, with the knowledge of desperation somewhere somehow clinging to the insides of your veins, is a refreshing relief. You know you are not alone in your worries, and all the indifference cast your way is merely a by-product of all that everyone else is worrying about. Worry is nothing small; it never is. It may range from trivial to gargantuan, taking up the tiniest sliver of your heart to consuming all of it, suffocating and choking. But worry is somethign we all have to live with, because it is intrinsic to our nature. We worry because we care, and we care because we want to live. As Annie Lennox once wisely sang, “Dying is easiy it’s living that scares me to death.” How apt. I have felt for some time now that i will take the steps to end my life prematurely, going when i choose to, and not when life finally tires of me. I do not forsee the time to be now, nor in the near future, but it is a lingering feeling in my psyche at this point in time that i will. I will take control of that one aspect of me that i have absolute control over. But then again, this is me, sitting at a computer, aged 17, in an inexplicable whirlwind of ennui (alright, perhaps not so inexplicable, given the current circumstance), hammering away at a keyboard. I do not cave to emotions all that easily, chugging away at life at a leisurely pace most of the time and ignoring them, and so this, this tidal wave of darkness that has pushed its way to the confines of my skull, scares me. I am afraid, and searingly lonely. There is not one human on the face of this earth that does not desire human contact at one point or another; it is only in our nature to do so, after all. And i am no different. This yawning, aching chasm of loneliness i thought i had closed by finding so many new friends will not cease to hurt, like a scaar raked open with a red hot poker. No, it does not hurt so much as leaves me longing; if i could i would keen, until someone comes. But i do not, because i know that keening will not help me. The one that i seek solace from is still a mysterious stranger to me; a figure unknown, completely so, to me. I only knowi crave someone who will hold me, content in silence, in an embrace. An embrace so strong and warm that i will allow myself to crumble, to live my demons in the warm womb of the embrace. To cry and cry and cry, so that i never need to face loneliness again. Perhaps what i am seeking is a soulmate, but then again, to place a label upon something of such paramount importance seems trivial, cheap.

I suppose i desire something poweful, and watching Janet McTeer playing Vita Sackville-West has given me a taste of that.

I desire power, but at what cost? The relationships portrayed through history that have been tainted by power sing of tragedy and regret.

I do not know what i want, becuase i do not know me.

Will i ever?

Emotions know no logic

phantomunmasked — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:29:29 +0000

So she said.

And i love her all the more for staying by me now.

in this miasma of blankness that does not cease to choke.

Those who should love do not, and those that do feel pain for that.

She remembers the hug she witnessed between me and one i loved dearly,

and she said it made her feel.

Emotions humble me.

When did i let this happen?

When did i let myself wash away in the cold tides of blank, unforgiving logic?

It crept up on me, quiet, sinister, and i

felt the tendrils of hope and happiness wither

poisoned by the chill of ice and the raw, numbing ache of logic

Logic, forced upon emotion.

Rationalising my way toward a symphony of anger.

As i broke upon her shoulder,

tears flowing like they hadn’t for so long.

And guilt and pain and humility for showing that i was weak.

that i am weak.

I felt starngely content.

But now,

anger builds, and to deal with it i find myself rationalising again.

And so we are back to the very beginning,

where i will once again become oh so

carefully

blank.

Am I?

phantomunmasked — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:10:52 +0000

I am taking her advice now.

I am coming to terms with my vulnerability.

I am a contradiction.

I am not perfect.

I am confused.

I am still a child.

I am in love with the world.

I am blinking away bittersweet tears.

I am relishing in introspection.

I am discovering.

I am learning everyday.

I am failing.

I am growing.

I am hurting.

I am blank.

I am Logic.

I am Emotion.

I am grateful.

I am humbled.

I am loved.

I am.

I am not.

I am me.

Happiness resonates

phantomunmasked — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:25:35 +0000

Happiness is a strangely quantified thing;

characteristics are inexplicable contractions of the facial muscles resulting in what is known as a smile,

and the feeling of lightness, rising through your chest and cutting through tensions that so weighed you down before.

Is it not strange? That we quantify emotion as something so tangible, so concrete?

But then again, if emotions are not absolute,

what is?

Because everything is only absolute if we make it so.

Happiness is not something that transcends, but rather resonates.

Inexplicably it’s scale can be told as we radiate it.

But then again, how can others tell when we radiate an emotion? Can that, as a hologram might,

be falsely projected?

No.

Not now.

Now, i refuse to quantify this emotion that i am feeling.

Because, for a long time now,

i have not felt this, the kind of emotion that resonates so strongly that no attempt at suppression works.

Happiness.

Janeway Fingers

phantomunmasked — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:29:11 +0000

Today was a day of quiet revelations,

of re-evaluating the resolutions my heart made for my mind;

Once again imperfections were thrown into sharp relief,

and i cannot say that my heart has escaped altogether unscathed

from the crumbling debris of a pedestal.

As before, i noticed the subtelties you had,

as i do everyone.

The English summer of your perfume

the abandonement of your glee

as you laughed carelessly, without thinking.

I’m glad you’re happy.

But today, i noticed something i hadn’t before.

Your hands.

You had Captain Janeway’s hands.

Fingers, long and slender like hers,

and indubitably gentle even as they flew through the air,

gesticulating to get your points across.

I must say,

i am most amused.

No More Mooning Over You.

phantomunmasked — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:20:35 +0000

Dear you,

logic has come in to cool the heat of what i once thought was passion.

and now i see you through different lenses,

tinted with the cool green of thought

with orange and red fanatism fading off the edges.

Still i love your wondrous voice

but now

that love is tempered with the sting of salty doubt,

second guesses of the insinuations behind certain words

some held longer,

some vanishing as the scent of English soap into the wind.

Is this closure?

I don’t think so, but it is no longer what it was.

You were always different, the singular anomaly that was based on physiology rather than what

lay within.

And now i question if i made an error in judgement.

But still.

I’d have to thank you for that lesson you taught me,

for waking up from this haze of that golden, gilt trimmed symphony

that i once thought your voice was,

now strangely an instrument

that i cannot place.

Of Sunrises and Oldest Children

phantomunmasked — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:46:13 +0000

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

But we’re back again, to a new familiarity that is not altogether unwelcome.

Taking confidence in you seems easy, as easy as turning and speaking into the void through an open door.

Except.

You’re not a void, are you?

We spoke of the sunrise as we walked, and of pictures you’ve taken.

I have no doubt that they are magnificent, miniature, frozen moments captured,

never to be forgotten.

Thoughts that crowded my mind seemed crystalline, and i delivered them, speaking of my fears and insecurities.

You pause, and then liken me to an oldest child.

It is not an apt analogy; i know i am far too incongruent to fit.

But nonetheless the message gets through, and it seems unfathomable

how you are able to snatch that thought and put it so eloquently.

Then again, age has done for you what premature maturity will never do for me.

And as the sun rises, ever steady in it’s bloody magnificence,

i know the first roots of true happiness are taking root within a heart once chill.

Clouds, Agapē.

phantomunmasked — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:40:31 +0000

For Shoes.

Walking, something compelled me, suddenly to

look to the skies;

Blue, blue, and then a single ribbon of

white

trailing its lazy way across the bright expanse.

All thought flew to you, and

the one you once held dear

Agapē,

I think;

for you and i both know how much we are capable of,

how our hearts will freefall and cartwheel down

in spirals of melancholy

until one, singular, for you,

( or three, for me )

return us what we so foolishly seek to give,

like a child thrusting roses into it’s mother’s hands

only to have them fall, wilted,

dead and withered upon it’s own pale lips.

But do not fear my dear,

for we have each other to cling to;

that is the definition of Agapē,

is it not?

And one day, one day when you no longer long for your

peppermint soldier,

i shall leave you, content to have been

known to you,

a passing breath in your life.

But for now, my dear,

i’ll sit and watch the clouds with you.

Extrapolation

phantomunmasked — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:05:46 +0000

Always looking in from outside, aren’t you? Plotting a trajectory outside of the given parameters, defying all that data set and given. Your whole life, marked out in little red crosses, in a line snaking it’s way outside of our own set telemetry. Too difficult to classify, you are, as you continue to baffle analysts and defy all of life’s equations that we cannot help but conform to. Oh yes, you are a difficult one, are you not? An extrapolation of society, that impish curve that doesn’t want to come to bed, to rest at the x or y axis, that line that just wants to follow it’s own shape, it’s own set equation of living. No amount of manipulation would solve you, no matter the variable we throw at you. How frustrating. Perhaps it is best that we take this odd line and leave it be, simply accept this strange trajectory arcing over lines of pale green, grids that cannot contain you, cannot hold you forever this

Extrapolation.