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 Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:27 pm
This will be the unchanged form of my thread of personal writing, Chords. Halfway through I changed the name from Tides to Chords.
Criticism is welcome.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:28 pm
The Tides are a powerful medium. Within their push and pull, their grasp on everything, on the impeccable reality that everything was everything, no more, no less, it would be clear that their was no penultimate moment in time, and that in feign attempt we humans would consult our greatest history, in search and in vain, that, of something truly spectacular and momentous that we humans have lost. It is no surprise that our ways are dying, because change is what the people always seek. There is no truth beyond the fact that change is inevitable, because nothing is endless, save time itself--but being merely an intangible human idea, a thought, once all humans fade, time itself will cease to exist.
This could be considered a molding point, a time, so to speak, when all meaning of existence collapses on itself, and the great, many foundations upon which humanity bases its life implodes, and life starts anew, or never again. When the sun itself fades, and our skies are permanently dark, only religion, that of miracles, would be able to preserve humanity, the lack thereof being something that no human can comprehend.
Can we really comprehend oblivion? It sounds so simple, just the lack of anything, anything at all. But that includes thought. To fade away, into the sweet, alluring embrace of oblivion, to lose all your worries and your troubles... to gain any relief by this, you would think that you would still need to be able to consciously experience it. Which, in essence, defeats the purpose of becoming no thing. If such a conscious existence truly were possibly, one would think that it would be very lonely.
The reason I babble on about this is to set the mood for my work. It is just a simple hobby, but I shall write short stories, of varying settings, here. And I choose to call it The Tides.
The Tides of Fate, maybe, but more likely the Tides of Life.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:30 pm
The young girl sat aboard her wooden raft, gazing at the sea below her. She was bereft of land and bereft of hope. The raft was strewn together of five wooden half-logs, tied together with old but sturdy rope as thick as your two thumbs together. A single mast, figured cleverly into the floor of the raft, jutted out and sliced the dense fog above as if it were a knife to butter. The wood, like the rope, was weathered, and one could only hope for the satisfaction of not having them break anytime soon. The mast was almost grainy, and the girl had no doubt that, should she fall asleep with her back leaning against it, she would awake to find her entire neck full of nasty splinters.
The sea and the sky were not pleasant, and it was difficult to believe the single, simply little fact that had caused her to come on this perilous, lonely voyage in the first place. The occasional pointed fin of a shark, jutting upward and slicing through the water as the mast parted the fog, moving around and sometimes below the raft, the dark shapes underneath being a constant reminder of the tiny, minuscule barrier separating the girl from a cruel choice between drowning first in the cold, salty, choking water or being--savagely or mercifully--ripped apart by hungry, invasive jaws lined with row upon row of jagged, perforated teeth that would end her in moments. It was a foul predicament.
The skies overhead, when the fog parted enough to reveal them, were dark and cloudless. No stars shown up high, or anywhere for that matter, and the deep, empty void of what was most certainly space was humbling, calming, sedating. The fog itself swirled and twirled, wafting and sifting through the skies, only yards above the girl's head, like a great multitude of tiny, tiny faeries playing, so tiny and so numerous that they seemed to be the fog, flying and dancing in a playful atmosphere, indifferent to the girl in rags below them, their ringing, bell-like laughter unheard by human ears.
Her hair was a dark red, but looked almost ocher now from the combination of mud, water, salt, and air that had, in turn, assaulted her hair, and not in the above order, either. Her face was just as dirty, smeared with mud from her numerous--accepted--opportunities to trip and fall during her escape. Her glowing, vibrant green eyes seemed to be dulled with the fog and the salt air, for she did smell deeply of salt, and it actually caused her sinuses to ache deeply inward. Her expression was that of casual despair, and she wasn't quick to react to the slightest sound.
In fact, she was quite nearly dead. A day prior had she left the survivable bounds of land, and the horrible facility on said island. The seagulls were better company than those people, but silence was the greatest amentity of all.
Fog fell like a blanket, and hopelessness like a heavy quilt, drifting down and engulfing, ensnaring her, tempting her to just end it all and throw herself in the water. She could even bite herself, draw blood, to make the sharks that much more bloodthirsty. It was sorely tempting.
But, her mother was waiting. If there was any chance whatsoever, of finding her... poor, poor mother, sacrificing herself to keep her only daughter fed and provided for. Then they came. And took, and took her. The girl was in a daze, sleepy, exhausted, but near-death, as the events of before overtook her, and her life... slowly passed... before her eyes....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:31 pm
Normalcy. It was a queer thing. To be exactly like everyone else--which, in fact, was impossible, since no two human beings are exactly alike. Unless the government is hiding another conspiracy, this present one of the cloning variety.
Gossip would abound, and it did already, of the many different conspiracy theories that the mass public thought up. You could hear the craziest, wildest things on the internet. It was insane....
A boy, the age of nine, sat in his black rolling chair, his jeans ripped just below the knee of the left leg, his shirt two sizes too large, and a hat that had undoubtedly fallen off into unpleasant material multiple times rested on his scraggly, tousled brown hair. He was currently leaning forward, eyes very near to the computer screen, widened--as if that were possible--in wonder as he read about the spectacle of Abraham Lincoln and another past president who had died under very peculiar circumstances. There was a strange, unprovable link to the Ku Klux Klan that threatened the future of the planet in the year 2060, supposing that Armageddon was on the sixth of June that year.
It was all very influential to young, imaginative boys, and unfortunately, it was also all fake, a prank played by a group of college students looking to mess with the already mutated mind of the public. This boy, however, believed it, and he had no sooner finished reading the outrageous story than he had called up his closest friend, to retell the tale in exaggerated and imperfect representation. This boy would then go on to tell the next boy, who would tell his family over dinner. Each person in the four-person family would then go on to at least mention it in idle chatter to a group of four people each, on average, the next day, who would then all repeat the routine, until in a very few days hundreds of people had already heard the newest conspiracy theory.
The power of exponents is an amazing thing. Very quickly, it was the latest news in all of America, and Portal websites such as Yahoo and Hotmail posted stories on it, minor stories but nonetheless drawing even more attention.
And then, as nothing knew could be reported on the myth, it, too, faded away, into everlasting obscurity....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:32 pm
Life was simple, for the small red-headed girl, in that beautiful way that strengthens the conviction that ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is terrible. Very similar to the idea of corruption, from the Tree of Knowledge, that Adam and Eve partook of long, long ago, in that Garden of Eden. She and her mother, they lived, and lived with themselves. They brought no wrong upon others, and it was as if fortune smiled down upon them exactly when needed. Hungry, they always were, but suffer from hunger, they never did. The cold was always just a step behind them, and they survived off of the land, and fortunate tidings of their Life was not given a second thought.
Then the men came. Dark, strange, mysterious men, cloaked in darkness and without hesitation or emotion. They took hundreds, and hundreds more, of the children, without hesitation and without emotion. Cruel, dark beings, tools of science, the ever-growing need of mankind to know, to know everything and to understand everything.
Some thing need not be understood....
Then it was the constant, bright, harsh lights of imprisonment, being always studied, the subject of evil experiments, with no rest for the weary. Food was horrible, as was Life, and all were kept blind to the true nature of things. The giant blue sphere was no longer a harbor for peace, liberty, and freedom, but for the evil side of human nature, where innocent children were tortured on a daily basis and, with even more frequency, killed for reasons that made no sense. It was a horrible world, one where you couldn't stand up for fear of being thrown down, where you couldn't look around for fear of being blinded, where you couldn't listen for fear of hearing harsh, threatening words, and where you couldn't breathe for fear of the toxic fumes of evil that surrounded every iota of your captor's beings.
Magdeline escaped. Or possibly, the let her go. It did not matter. She was hanging on a thin thread, barely surviving. She, the small red-haired girl, was only separated from the maws of ancient, ravenous dinosaurs, sharks, by a half-foot of dead driftwood. She was separated from death by an even smaller line. Fever approached the girl, and delusion, and soon she was under the impression that she had already died, and joined her mother somewhere in some light, heavenly place, with golden streets and golden gates embedded with dazzling gemstones that absorbed and reflected the light in a glorious display of majesty and greatness. The grass was white, soft, fluffy, and never held prickling stickers; it was cloud, and solid, and yet tangible, unyielding to the heavy weight of those upon it. The golden streets, heavy as they should be, each unique golden cobblestone weighing more than enough to prevent itself being thrown as a ball in a sporting field, arrayed together and inseparable, remained atop the white grass of clouds, the white being not squishy but firm, not wet but almost downy, but unyielding all the same. There were no houses, no homes; everything was all under one glorious, beautiful roof that was the sky; and the stars, and the celestial planets, all illuminated by a light source far greater and mighty than the sun.
This was what she imagined. When she finally came to her senses, a day later, it was raining. It was raining, and she opened her dry, parched mouth to take in the epic downpour, where visibility was reduced to nothing, and she couldn't see the edges of her raft, but she was happy, and she had water, and she would survive. Fortune had not yet left the young girl's side. Magdeline.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:33 pm
In a desperate hope, a one last, clawing, struggling, frantic grasp at survival, Kanita Bertman threw herself through the window. Her leather jacket and her dark, deep auburn hair was coated in a cascade of shimmering glass, reflecting the moonlight with a dazzling, macabre display of blood and light.
Kanita landed on her knees, rolling over to rest on her backside for a moment. The light blue pair of jeans she was wearing were ripped, in several placing, and stained with the blood dripping from her face. A pair of broken glasses hung from the window, so far up now, caught on a single shard of unmoving glass. The auburn girl gasped, her adrenaline-filled chest heaving in and out as she fought for breath. From around the corner, could be heard the voices of her pursuers. It was hopeless--they were tireless!
The deep, crimson moon above blurred and shimmered, surrounded by a mass of dark, ominous clouds, viewed from the eyes of a bloody teenager. The stars whispered a silent cacophony of tears--rain. It poured, and drizzled, and dripped, and sang. A sweet, lulling melody. A melodic lullaby. Tangible happiness. It was all coming, coming, oh so softly, embracing the quiet wisps of oblivion.... There were tears. Finally, happiness. True, sweet, happiness.
The tears that were thought rain, quickly became the blood that was thought tears. And the blood the was thought tears, quickly became the pain that was thought blood.
Kanita drowned slowly, a sugary, sickly-sweet death that she could only have wished for, in her wildest dreams. The pain was almost--incapacitating, and dulled her senses to the point where nothing existed any longer.
And then, all was dark....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:34 pm
Magdeline. The poor girl was still clinging onto life, a bare thread in the epic tapestry of intricate designs, itself and nothing more, each single thread representing that of a human life. Each thread was with its own color, quality, material, and weave, yet all wove together to make that which was... everything. Omnipotent and omnipresent, the Tapestry of Existence represents anything and everything that ever was and ever will be. There is no past, no present, no future. There simply is the Tapestry, for all time. It cannot be viewed, but it exists, the accumulative result of the actions and results thereof all humanity, all life, all death, all existence, and all that never existed. Reality, the Tapestry was named.
It's overall design is incomprehensible. Ever-changing, yet always the same. There is and can be only one, single result, once all is said and done. One single design of the Tapestry, that each and every single threat binds together and combines to create. It is an awesome and fearful concept, but it is not set in stone. The result will be was the result will be, after the end of Time and that beyond time, and that is simply Truth. But what that single result will turn out to be is to be decided by... everything. There is nothing insignificant at all, nothing too bizarre or unorthodox to happen, because nothing is strange or unusual, because everything is strange and unusual. It is a philosophical vortex of endless contemplation, though death may end it, nothing else can. For it is death. Our humanly search for knowledge. It is the death of everything.
Magdeline slowly faded away... there was nothing that could be done. She was tired, exhausted, hungry, and--despite the rain--thirsty. Thirsty for love. Was there no one to provide love for a sweet and innocent red-haired girl, all alone? No one would take her in, save her, or do anything else of any sort in order to ensure the girl's survival, her comfort, her enjoyment and fulfillment out of life. And certainly not out of death. She felt she was too young to die; nothing hardly had she experienced. Yet life was cruel, and Magdeline, well, she was poorly prepared to win the struggle that was barbaric, base, and vulgar; the struggle to live. It is base in every shape, fashion and form, and we cannot, no, shall not know any other way. Every action of humanity is at once both disgusting, putrid, despicable, and intricate, beautiful, fascinating, magical.
But magic is for another time.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:35 pm
The darkness shattered an epic, eternal twilight of promise, desire, and hope. Darkness we fear, but shadow is our true enemy. And Shadow becomes overwhelmed, in the darkness. Light feeds shadow. Without light there is no shadow.
...That is just the foretelling of another story, however. Now, you shall hear another.
He walks the same path every day. He only knows that it is a lonely path, and that the only person who can bring a tear to his dry eye does not walk it with him. She is... not there.
Her heart is solemn and full of worry; she believes in the negative, and is quick to be hurt by others. He would protect her--her laugh is pure bliss, as fine as silk on skin, when he knows that she's happy. Her pain is his pain, her worries and fears--all his, except he suffers them tenfold. He cannot hurt her; and were he to, he would hurt himself a hundred times and more than that. He finds it inconceivable that she do anything but what makes her happy; her happiness is like patchwork to his soul, and in the lack of it, he finds himself... broken.
They are separate. She is not with him, and he is not with her. Always waiting... his fear, besides for her, is that they shall never meet. They have never met.
He loves her, but she isn't his love. Neither is he hers. He would rather be a pillar of support; always ready to give her confidence and reassurance. When she smiles... his heart stops. He devotes the entirety of his being towards the insuring of her happiness.
And yet he cannot keep her happy. That is not his place... His place is to only sit where he is, and share her pain, when others fail to make her happy. It is surreal and larger-than-life; she is something out of this world, and made all the larger by his imagination. He can only help but remember that everyone is human, and no one is perfect.
She is his greatest ally, and at the same time his greatest enemy. But even greater is that he is the exact same to her.
If Fate were to declare them to never meet; to never share the warm embrace of friends--would it stop them? There is a driving force more powerful than life or death, and it is simply their love. Not romantic love, or a familial bond of love, but the kind of love unique to every single person and one other.
Against all odds, do these two meet; the result of a one-in-billions chance. And yet, they do... meet... and he would do anything for her. He would die for her. Her laugh is pure bliss. Oblivion cannot compare . . . .
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:36 pm
There's one thing they say about love that rings true; so true that you can taste the natural and artificial chemistry in the air between you and that one you truly love. It has a deep, burning sensation, such as passion, but it is always with you, rekindling with valor and determination every time that face, or that voice, or that laugh, or the memory of that kiss, floats up into your mind. You receive a blazing, scorching hot jolt of red lightning, and your heart skips a beat or two. You cannot control it. You can only embrace it, for all the pain and all the pleasure it affords you.
It is a very terrible thing; always hurting you, but at the same time, you addict to it like a slacker to cigarettes. You are attracted to it like flies to the honey. Like rodents to the peanut butter.
And then, if and when that eternal bond evaporates, or is broken off sharply by one crushing, decimating blow, such as when you realize that your love's love belongs to another, the pain becomes so great that you wonder if it was ever worth it in the first place.
And then you fall in love again.
.
We tend to build up a resistance to that lonely, heart-wrenching emotion of betrayal and sabotage. It builds slowly, but if we truly desire true love's desire, true love, then we receive no choice but to persevere. As we do not desist, we build up and maintain a wall of uncertainty, doubt, cynicism, skepticism, and the ever-eternal guard of one's emotions, and soon enough, it seems, we are no longer capable of loving. Even for a short while, as it were. It becomes too painful to give up, so you develop a resistance to that pain. But, as it turns out, that pleasure without that pain is not love, but something entirely impossible to obtain. It is the desire for perfection.
Those whose loves are true tend to find that they do not lower their standards, and neither are their loves perfect. They only accept each other for who they truly are, and, if that is enough, they love. The young love so innocently. The old remember their regrets.
The old have memories; many memories. None so quintessential as the memory of... of....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:36 pm
The chord.
Of our lives.
Is a beautiful instrument.
To a unique melody.
If we cannot embrace this melody, this super ultimate equation that is at the centerfold focus of our existence, then what are we but a passing dream? We shall all die. It is inevitable.
Even as Magdeline faded away, found two days too late, by a passing ship, her loss was mourned. Not by her mother, her father, or those who had kept her. No, they were either dead, or long forgotten of the little girl who escaped. Even then, Magdeline was grieved, by those kindhearted sailors and fishermen who managed to find the poor lass's body.
And so another life fades away.
And so another existence is forgotten.
Is that all we are destined to become? Just memories, and even later, nothing...? Our passing will, eventually, inevitably, be forgotten. Our race shall extinguish. Our legacy shall fade.
And yet we live, hopeful beings in a hopeless reality. Reality that we ignore, divided and alone we are conquered, by Fate as powerful and magnanimous penurious as eternity.
Magdeline died, but she did not stop existing. No one does, do they? As long as one is alive in another's memories, they are yet still on Earth.
But Magdeline yearned to move on, to her next destination, which she could not until those remaining behind let her go.
Until then, Magdeline suffered Oblivion.
I have renamed this thread the Chord, and in doing so have profoundly changed its entire meaning, without performing a significant thing. All will be clear... or forgotten.
Sometimes, one might wonder, if there ever has been anyone that they've forgotten....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:37 pm
I like to see it as a favor. Or is it favour? That sounds so elegant.
The man in the plain white shirt, covered with an old red wine stain. That is a fragment of a sentence. Or was it... blood...? That is a clause.
Life is full of fragments and clauses. Even as I sit here; alone, and in the dark; typing this, I know not what the final paragraph of this passage shall be. That is ironically like life. I can plan and plan ahead, but the possibilities and length of time are just quite so all-encompassing. And my mind is not. And neither is yours. That sentence began with the word 'and,' which for some reason makes it unprofessional. I know not why that is.
A smile is a chord, laughter a tune, and love a melody.
Or something like that.
I keep mixing them up.
But the meaning remains warm and blissful.
Don't like warm and blissful?
Let's try another one.
In light, we all stand together. But in darkness, we all fall.
The first of those two sentences just now used a broken comma, or something like that. There needed to be a conjunction or a semicolon.
You see how silly life's many rules are? What is the point of these rules? My pessimistic attitude tends to lean me towards the side of 'what's the point of anything?'
Not really. I have a pessimistic side, but not a pessimistic attitude.
You know, that is quite strange. Pessimistic, optimistic, uncaring. I like to be uncaring. Seriously. If the cup is half-empty or half-full -- wait, why does it matter? The cup is the cup, and the amount that fills it is the same. I only care what's in the cup if I want to drink it -- and thus empty the cup. I do not care to know, however, and if I drink from the cup, I will. But I tend not to symbolize life as a cup. A cup is limited. A cup is finite and too simple.
Life is too big to wrap your head around.
This particular post has been a few of my musing, I suppose.
Next time I'll try not to bore you so much.
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:38 pm
Tired. So tired. Can I long for the sweet embrace of death? That is not what I believe, however. I do not believe that death brings emptiness... or, at least, not emptiness as I can comprehend. Just pain, or maybe joy, but no nothingness.
A strange thought occurred to me: what if you never die? You may loose the ability to move, talk, or breathe, but what if you don't die? What if you can feel everything? Even as they bury you, you can see the darkness close in, and that is your fate for eternity, or until you fade into dust.
They say the soul leaves the body behind. What if your consciousness... what if that's the body, rather than the soul? Something might leave you when you die... and you are what remains behind.
Night beckons, kittens. Join unto it, and never fade away.
Never fade... away....
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Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:39 pm
If I cannot have her, then simply no other shall do. Could it be truly, truly, some semblance of love? But no; the old, wizened, experienced old-timers. They say that ours cannot be a true love. That we do not yet know what love truly is.
Not passion, or kindness. Me? I think it's gratitude. Thoughtfulness. Endearment.
But enough of that topic.
Flying.
That is what one dreams of, whether physically or metaphorically. In life, we want to soar. To rise above the slums of our origin. Whether to better ourselves, or to better the world. I can think of nothing else more heroic than to leave this world, having made it a better place. Blindly trusting those left behind to carry on the legacy, which they inherited, from us.
We are the inheritors. I am, maybe you are. Or maybe, possibly, you are the older generation. This world may be leaving your hands soon, and falling into ours... are we worth it?
I cannot tell. I do believe that this generation will grow up the better, because of all the flaws previously made. Though, we never formed the habit of learning from our past before, have we? Hope is all that one may have, because no man lives forever. No woman, either. Only in memory, and after... not at all.
We are all destined to disappear, and fade from existence. Earth will fade. The sun will fade. Everything will return to naught but cold, barren, lifeless. We prolong the inevitable.
All this, from the desire to fly.
I'll fly, for a little while, at least. I'll fly, and then, like everyone else, I'll fall, and die, and fade.
But... that's all right.
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