Sight To See

There it is, man
Right up there! In front of us
A big black wall
"It looks completely inescapable!"
"'Nothing then to do now
But blink for a second and ignore it.'"

For all, eventually.

Farewell, Celestial Destroyer!

Black Holes...

at the centre of each is a deep dark secret.

It draws you in and then it destroys you.

Fishing On Your Pier

Are you supposed to just go with the flow, and take whatever bait floats your way?
Snatch your chance from the line and then let the drift carry you out to sea?

Is that how all those others garnered such a catch?

And does the same work in reverse?
Does the bait ever go looking for the haul?

Alas, perhaps not.

Steady, Steady

So many people lately have been setting off on their own little adventures!

I wish to do the same, but I guess I'll just have to wait my time out.

Europe beckons at the end of next year, but in the mean time there's a year of uni and work to pay for it!

Pictures like these give me my motivation!

It looked so small from up there!

Viewpoint

I didn't walk back expecting my old place at your right hand.
That of the bridesmaid was fated long ago, a changeling.

But to be left to fend for myself on my own
In a wilderness interesting only for its delapidation.
Is a new and perplexing circumstance.

Numbers Game Pt. 2

Will sheer desperation get you over the line,
Your own wish to force it out of you?

And to that other vessel your energy must go,
In order for you to win that which is your prize.

Remember, then, that projection is the key
That a thought is just a placebo in disguise.

But then again, it cannot be pushed too far,
Or that reciprocal you hope for will bend, and slew.

Numbers Game

Do you think it's a numbers game;

A simple back and forth of the digits?

Or is it more complex, does it explode

Into a game of chance and guesswork?

Really, could it be that we must just bend

Like the most fragile ironwork?

It cannot be as this, that some can fall and land

Like a coin upon neither side but rather on its end.

Step, Slide, Sideaway

Escape, roam free.
There's no need to be bound to that particular
Way of being.
It's just a lifting of a constant weight,
Perpetual motion.
A fight you'll never win.
You can't.

Just let it all go past.
Take your sidestep.
Be the matador,
Only you don't need the red flag.

Just break the cage that holds you,
and fly free.

Maybe you'll find your skies are
Clear and blue.

I find myself prowling the channels
Like some dark beast
Hell-bent on destruction
Or damage at a premium.

I prowl closer, and closer
But, seperated by the void,
I cannot reach close enough.
My claws only graze the prey.

Hindered, I return to view the spectacle from a distance.
A method, no doubt enduring until that time, my
Apocalypse.

A Spark, or a Doused Flame?

I debated it in my mind.
A War of the Roses.

Rationalism vs reasoned debate.
There was no shortage of answers.

Chinese whispers, what was it?
Steely glare or a trace of warmth?

My mind jumped at that idea.

Aerials

Weathering

Your head is set.
It's a piece of rock.

And no matter how much water flows over it, or how many clouds pass it in their blue sphere
It won't be changed.

Not even the sharpest, most violent earthquake can crack it down, or shape it.

Formed long ago, through slow processes. It remembers. But it forgets also.

From tiny grains, it is hewn, rising to the surface eventually.
Now it's there, it's part of your mountain.

I've sent my rainstorms, my frosts, my baking sun.
I yearn to break it off, to send it hurtling down the mountain into oblivion.

But it won't budge, it never will.

"I'll sit and wonder of every love that could've been, if I'd only thought of something charming to say" - The Sound of Settling


"Squeaky swings and tall grass, the longest shadows ever cast. The water's warm and children swim, and we frolicked about in our summer skin." - Summer Skin


"If I could open my mouth, wide enough for a marching band to march out, it would make your name sing, and bend through alleys and bounce off all the buildings" - Marching Bands of Manhattan


"And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time." - What Sarah Said


"I wish the world was flat like the old days. Then I could travel just by folding a map. No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways. There'd be no distance that could hold us back." - The New Year


"On the back of a motor bike, with your arms outstretched, trying to take flight. Leaving everything behind, but even at our swiftest speed, we couldn't break from the concrete - In the city where we still reside" - Brothers On a Hotel Bed


I do really like Death Cab.
So many different sentiments covered, all with human experience coursing through them. Easy to see why?
If you haven't looked them up already, I suggest you do so.

The final tribute
The last respects

But now everything's done.

For those with a hole still in their hearts,
I hope that you can find solace.
Remember that our memories can bring a person back to life within ourselves.

And so, allow him to live forever, let him not be forgotten.

Evagelos Siaflas 21/12/1990-24/9/2009 RIP

The Fates

An arrow,

flying straight and true,

with only small deviations
taking it from its predestined path. And target.

A Place To Hide

Running from those ghosts,

You flit between the trees.

The Macbeth Syndrome

So many things I want to do, but so many restrictions!

I feel so hemmed in right now.

A myriad path, but each path is so small, not even big enough for one to walk along!

A case of being a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

Walls closing in!

Inspiration?

I descended a dusty gravel ridge
Beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge
Until I eventually arrived
At the place where your soul had died
Barefoot in the shallow creek
I grabbed some stones from underneath
And waited for you to speak to me
And the silence, it became so very clear
That you had long ago disappeared
I cursed myself for being surprised
That this didn't play like it did in my mind

All the way from San Francisco
As I chased the end of your road
Because I've still got miles to go
I want to know my fate if I keep up this way
It's hard to want to stay awake
When everyone you meet they all seem to be asleep
And you wonder if you're missing your dream
You can't see your dream
You can't see your dream
You just can't see your dream

Then it started getting dark
And I trudged back to where the car was parked
No closer to any kind of truth
As I must assume was the case with you

Himmel Kuppel

Back in my younger years, I'd look up at the sky.
More specifically, I'd gaze at the clouds and wonder what secrets they held. I believed that the clouds held treasure, secrets, a wonderland, a cornucopia.

Most of all, I imagined that clouds held our dreams.

Clouds are free, unhinged, not drawn in stark lines and shapes, and roam free across the blue canvas of the sky. They are hewn from fine material, in the thinnest filaments and fibres drawn from the loom by unseen hands.
Our dreams are floating, never quite concrete, always seemingly too high for us to reach. They come and go, passing us by with time.
I have a lot of dreams. I don't perceive all of them will ever be fulfilled. But it's important to try.

As the old cliche goes : Reach for the stars (clouds?) and even if you don't make it, you'll still be a long way above the dirt."

The Best Laid Plans

If you make plans, please stick to them.
If you promise someone you'll see them definitely, undoubtedly, without reservations next week, please do it.
Don't think it's not worth the time, or you can't be bothered!
Because I for one, am totally sick to death of "maybes", "we'll see what happens'", and just generally people not putting in any effort to see anybody else, except perhaps their chosen few.
All it leaves is a barren wasteland of empty words!

A Roof and Four Walls

I moved out of my house.

I don't know how long it's been now, but it's been a while.

The move hasn't really had that big an effect on me, but the things I've found that are hard to ignore are the memories I've still held from the 13 years i spent there. My entire conscious childhood, actually. It's a pretty big thought to think 49a Douglas Haig St was the place that built the "adult" that I am now, that was the nucleus of my home life.

There's a whole host of memories attached to the place, and stories that can come from everything, but a choice selection I've decided on exhibiting in narrative form on visual stimuli.

I'll include a caption for some pictures, basically.

This is the dusty, moist, dark, musty, semi-underground, illegal-to-live-in-due-to-its-incredibly-low-ceiling study-cum-bedroom "dungeon" that my brother first owned, before passing onto my sister, who in turn she passed onto me. The damp and dusty environment I'm sure contributed to many a sickness, but this room was cherished by the owner and treated with reverence by its heirs.

This is the rumpus room, which invariably was never empty. Home to my sister at various times, myself, visitors; in its later years used simply as a rumpus room. Just outside the doors, my sister would sit and smoke and talk on the phone at any hour of the night. Many times I would accompany her and sit quietly, while she voiced her angsts, not quite understanding it all.

This is the little bridge over our garden. This is where, our younger years, my sister and I would rig up my tricycle with a towel in the back bucket, and we'd ride tandem down the slope, annoying my mother while greatly enjoying ourselves.

The bridge leads to the carport, and onto the street, the forum and meeting place for the residents of Lower Douglas Haig.

This is the upstairs hallway. Host to many an indoor cricket and rugby game with Morgan, its high-powered halogen lamps made play possible at any time of night or day. Yes, it is extremely narrow, but we compromised.

This is my backyard.

This is the grass my father could never get to grow; this is the Taiwanese Cherry tree family and visitors alike marvelled at once a year, with its bright pink flowers.

This is the pool, the centre of many summers.

This is Bowser's domain, where he lay in the sun, and hunted for possums, with occasional success;

This is the huge towering gum tree, over which I pondered many a time when it would fall over and die, pulled out of its lofty home in the skies by wind, or old age. It never did. It outlasted us. It'll probably outlast me.

But it won't outlast my memories.

Traditional Life

Back in September 2007, I was over in Slovakia.

It was time for my brother's wedding.

It turned out to be a really enjoyable time.

Bojnice was a really beautiful place, and just going out and exploring the quiet streets and the atmosphere is something I've never experienced anywhere in Australia before.

The trip was also a real eye-opener for me, I saw things I didn't believe possible. We travelled to a secluded valley in the shadow of great rising slopes, and there a village concealed in the crevice between two peaks.


As I watched from the window of our rented chalet local villagers washing their clothes in the stream running through the base of the valley, and the aged men tending to their meagre front gardens, a thought occurred to me that this was scene had probably barely changed in 500, 800, 1000 years. A millenium!

Wars had been and gone, the Final Frontier breached, governments formed, peaked, collapsed, The Velvet Revolution occurred, The Berlin Wall was torn down, Socialism was removed, and these people hadn't moved. Everyday their world continued on all the same, regardless of the rest of the globe.

It was refreshing to think that they didn't know what the rest of the world was doing, and even more, they didn't care. Their world consisted of the same processes, year after year, generation after generation.

To me, this was a confronting reality. So many things in life were now deemed to be unimportant by this new perspective. These people were "simple" but they weren't unhappy - they had no reason to be so. Is there really a convincing argument as to why modern life is better?

Life in this modern context is just more packed of things that distract us from what is inescapable. Life is more complex than ever before, but these few dozen villagers showed that it can be enjoyed at a wholly base level, and that these "advances" may not be they're all cracked up to be. I guess, I took away that life should be enjoyed for what it is, rather than what you can pack into it. It's both more wholistic and simple than what we make it.

Weather

You know time goes by fast like rain

It swallows your every sound

From whisper to icy howl

Good luck trying to be someone

If you make it then you’ve won

You’ll grow up to be someone

Storm In a Teacup

It begins with a weird, warped, front to back invention.
Off-kilter, stark, love? A call to arms, eventually.
The venture begins with a touch of magic in worrying times.
Machines spin in a dark factory. Untangling, disassembling.
A pause, for a brief moment only.
Muses, thoughts echo; a contemplation. Voices listen, then reply.
Glittering, a complex, turning less dense but not a moment's peace.
Dozing beneath the shade of palms.
Spiralling, calyptic, hypnotic, metronomic, then something else.
Xylophonic, patterns, a knife through it all.
Digging underground, earth, a vein of hidden gold.
Resurfacing again;
Now to the skies, soaring high, clouds and birds surround.
Settling down now, a lullaby, time for sleep. Godnat.

Workers

I wanna hear drones, and my heart's a drone.

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."

I seek to escape the day to day drudgery, the toll of the bell of life.

I seek to find a place where the pangs and angsts of this world are meaningless.

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

Can it be found here?

Superfriends

Friend - noun


1.a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.

3.a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.


Tonight as I sit here pondering upon a trip to Melbourne I will make soon, I begin to allow my mind to wander upon what sort of trumped-up bender we may be embarking upon; myself and the chosen few that are coming with me on this voyage into the unknown.


This leads me to the line of thought that we'll probably end up having a few drinks, live it up and go a bit crazy in both the Melbourne city centre and probably the small area of Mornington we're staying at. This leads me further still to what I think I'll talk about now - that is, what exactly are these people we call our friends, and what exactly does it take to be one, in our modern, sleek, sophisticated world.


For now I'm going to reflect on what a friend has meant to me, and perhaps how it's changed down the years.


In high school, your friends were the people that you saw every day for much of your waking hours for six years, and that you knew the best and generally you all were part of a large group of friends that mostly got on well.


Over the years you picked the select few to be your 'inner sanctum' so to speak. As part of this, you may have disregarded a different number of people because they didn't live up to what you saw as fit to be your friend, or your inner sanctum didn't like them, or maybe you simply didn't connect with these people in the same way anymore, due to a multitude of reasons. By the end of it, I think, you end up with a fairly defined group/troupe/clique with which you identify/share common experiences/enjoy what the world has to offer.


So, with this group you left school, confident that you would remain as firm friends for the rest of your years.


As a wise man said to me, remember that your number of friends will deteriorate over the years after high school finishes. A year after school finishes, you'll have 15 mates that you'll still see fairly regularly. Five years after school finishes, that number might have dropped to just seven or eight. 20 years after school finishes, you'll be down to four or five, if you're lucky.


I know for my own case this effect seems to have held sway even more quickly than I imagined. I've seen people disappear from my life more quickly than I thought possible, some permanently, others sporadically returning. It seems these days friendship can be turned on when a person we knew enters a room, all the usual decorum we used to share with them be retrieved from the depths of our memory, used for a number of hours, and extinguished again once they walk away back into the ether of commitments, events and work that we call modern existence. To me, this indicates that there is a certain shallowness in this human experience that we call friendship.


I extrapolate, furthermore, that a lot of people merely identify to each other as "friends" because of a common attractive force. People are pulled together by school, university, sporting teams, but once this force is released, the particles, the people, fly apart as if they were never held. People actively seek another destiny for themselves, pushing themselves away from what they knew, for different reasons; people drift apart slowly because of the lack of a common calling; and a few try to cling on to this flagging feeling of connection.


I don't know what the answer is. Am I even asking a question? I think in the end, that I've lost sight of what a true friend is.

In these days, it seems that a friend is just a person from our recent past that we catch up with occasionally and sporadically, and not always in the most conducive of circumstances. Perhaps this is the best we can have in the years ahead. We then have 'acquaintances' that we meet, but resign ourselves to perhaps never really forming a connection with, or perhaps we may. Maybe it's up to ourselves to define our own destinies in the ways of friendship.

As of yet, I don't really weep for the future, but wonder what it holds for the friendships I've nurtured, and those I've yet to.

Lastly, I choose to include a number of photos as a kind of tribute to the days past.