Unfinished stories... Masks

Found some stuff that was from long ago, unfinished stories that i wrote. It's sometimes strange to read your own work. Sometimes it feels so foreign, like you have left yourself for another self, unwittingly letting time come in between...

m a s k s
________________

Now, here -
we have known eternity
through scented air
and the feel of your lips
on the nape of my neck,
whisper in my ears,
our worlds be buried
to release its splendour.

This is a city surrounded by concrete blocks and clean streets. There are signs that reassure you, equip you with the tools of navigation. Miss your way, which is easy to do, and you may find yourself living the same life over and over again in exactly the same way as you begin it. Find your way, and you may meet a familiar stranger at your doorway. She will tell you your fortune if you choose to hear. But this is a city of predictability, finding is often mistaken for losing and losing for winning.

What does it feel like to be travelling through space, if space is not ‘empty’ but a semi-solid celluloid dream? Riding a bike is like this, it is beautiful. You concentrate on the road as you need to, yet somebody else is projecting images in your head. It flashes in front of you - a different skyline, a different sun, different shadows, different faces, different emotions - as you move through something more than empty space. Without faith in this city of predictability, all things loses its clarity.

The dark is like space, never empty, but full of shadows, ghosts. You can touch the darkness, hold it in your hands. You can breathe it in and let it sink into you till it squeezes a tear or hardens into stone. It’ll touch you, blind you, drown you, and take you if you let it. And there is no darkness like space trapped within closed doors - doors that are closed but always open. And the dark is like that - you can open it like a door.


Maybe love is like a modern day ‘Holy Grail’. We grow up hearing about it, we watch it happen to others, we watch it on TV, we think it exists. We hope, we pray it comes to us and if it doesn’t- ? We pretend, turning the same page over and over again, hoping that the word will come alive but it stays in exactly the same way as we begin it. We are a lukewarm people, we are so starved for love that we will pretend for love. Maybe. Maybe not.

When you meet your familiar stranger, she will tell you your fortune. She removes her mask. An angel’s face. A devil’s smile. A broken shadow falls across her face. Is it possible? Is it possible that she’s the one? The one you make up in your mind, the one who will conspire with your mind to deceive your heart…the stranger who is as familiar to you as the one you see in the mirror? And she draws the card from the pack I use to cheat. She kisses me on my lips and offers me her hand. Am I to take it? Am I looking for love? Maybe, but I don’t know much about love, only that she draws the wild card from a pack that has no Jokers.

Is love the same as death? I used to think that death is the absence of self. That death is nothing more than losing one’s self completely and eternally. That the feeling is passing but pervasive like the last heartbeat. One breath, one thought, one beat and the air stops. The mind stops. The heart stops. Nothing means anything anymore. Just this merging with the darkness, - this complete formlessness.

Is love like that?
How would you want to die?
If I were to die, I would do it watching the sky.
I love the sky. It’s different every time you look at it.

It’s vast, massive, limitless, all encompassing, and it’s concave. It makes my heart spin; it makes me get up and dance, it changes but it always stays the same. From one corner of the earth to another, it’s the same sky. I need the sky. I need the sky to know that everything is still brand new and the same. I need the sky to carry me away.

;)