Phantoms

When I was 11, I discovered poetry. It was one of those types of awakenings that you dream about, a connection I had never felt before. When I started writing verses of poetry in the fifth grade for a class project, I knew I had met my match. I fell in love, if you will, with writing, and how it sets you free from all your woes simply by putting them down on paper.

By the time I was accepted to Interlochen Arts Academy in 1998 for their creative writing program, I had accumulated eight full journals of poetry - all hand-written, all my own. Some had been published, some not - but that didn't matter. What was important to me was that they were heard. I made sure, during my high school years, that all my friends and classmates read my poems. I would bring my journals of poetry to school at times, and pass them around so everyone got a chance to look.

It dawned on me recently that I haven't shared my poetry in a long time. Given, I don't write it as much as I used to, but I still miss seeing and hearing people's reactions to it.

So, I've decided to share a poem that I wrote about a month ago, in hopes of reviving this long lost tradition of sharing the written word. I hope you enjoy.

Phantoms


Take them all out of the closet, there's no use hiding them now.
Everything you used to think was true, never could be anyhow.

Take a deep breath, and let them soar over your chest,
through the woods and over the rain-soaked mess.
There's always more to life than the past.

Explore your options, keep an open mind.
If you keep looking for answers, sooner or later you'll go blind.

Break open the ice, dive right in.
There's nothing to lose and nothing to win.
After you let them go you'll be ready to live.

Always forwards, never backwards.
Climb out at twilight and listen to the birds.
They'll teach you what you have to learn.

Go down to the shore, and howl back at the wind.
Let loose your demons and all that harbors you within -
This is the time to move, this is the time to begin.

Take out your swords and have one final fight,
now that you've escaped you can finally see the light.

Winning and losing are particles to none.
All that matters now is what's done.
Close your eyes to the world,
and become one.

####


love, me

From the Earth we Come, and to the Earth we Go

Going back to nature, I've found, helps me make sense of things.
As the revered naturalist, John Muir, once put it,
"In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks."
This quote comes alive for me when I take walks
with my camera and capture the beauty I see blooming around me.
It's only then that I realize I'm just a
speck in this wide expanse of earth.
There's so much more to life than the bubbles
we live in from day to day.
Just take a look outside.

L'Hiver

Below are some photographs I took in the past few months,
searching for images that would capture the beauty and
quiet solitude of the winter season.
Enjoy.

Change is Good

A couple weeks ago I turned 29 and it dawned on me then just how much my world has changed over the years. I used to hand write everything - poems, letters, diary entries...even essays. And now, in 2010, I can't even imagine writing without my computer - pens & pencils don't cut the bill since I have a keyboard that follows the rhythms of my brain waves.

But that is only the beginning. There is, of course, the internet and sites like Facebook that make you feel like you're connecting with people you never really see. And remember dictionaries? We never use those anymore, we just Google words and, like magic, their complete history appears before our eyes in less than a minute.

It's strange just how evasive technology has been in the past decade or so. It's literally taken over our lives where we can't function without our machines in tow. This blows my mind sometimes and makes me wish I hadn't jumped on the bandwagon so soon. But without all this robotic technology, I would feel strangely out of touch with the world. And that, I guess, is what keeps me hooked.

Change is good. That's what I have to keep remembering. Whether it's a change in technology, a change in a relationship, or even a change in season, there's always something beautiful to attain from it.

You start dying slowly

You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life
when you are not satisfied with your job,
or with your love,
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice…

Pablo Neruda

Back in the Saddle Again

After a long and unexpected hiatus, I am proud to say that constantly evolving is back and here to stay. The past six months have been a whirlwind of a journey with various twists and turns that have made it hard for me to focus and get things done. But I'm slowly starting to realize that I need art and I need writing. They are both a part of me in a way - if I don't have them in my life, I don't feel complete.

So, to make the transition back to constantly evolving complete, I'm going to not only share some mixed media pieces with you (see above), but also a poem I wrote back in the summer of 2007. Enjoy.

TALES OF THE HEART

I found my heart once
Trampled on by flood and drought,
Hazily being caught by the wind
All the while, trying to find some peace within.

It killed me to watch it suffering that way
But the red robin told me that I would savor the pain
Once I realized the beauty that could come from it -
I never knew real love until I could stand back and truly exist.

Now and then I find it beating not so hard;
Perhaps it’s worn out from the pain life can bring
Or maybe it’s waiting for a rebirth in spring
But it still knows there’s hope around every
corner, creek, and bend
And that every now and then
Life will begin again.

5/07

Entranced in the Music

Ok, I’ll admit it. The first minute I heard Thom Yorke’s voice I developed one of the longest lasting rock-star crushes to date (second only, of course, to Bono). The tangled up chords that echo in his voice make me putty in his hands. I don’t care about the fact that he has one lazy eye or that he’s a bit on the short side. The fact that he can write such haunting lyrics and sing them with such poignancy makes me adore him even more.

I think it all began in 1995 – that was the Christmas when my Uncle Rick gave me a CD of Radiohead’s second album, “The Bends.” I had asked for this album, because, as a stellar eighth grader, I wanted to be cool enough to own what Q and Rolling Stone called one of it’s “Must Have Albums.” I was done with trying to identify with the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith – artists that I had grown up with throughout the years as a student of a private Baptist school and a child of an Evangelical church – for me, those days were over.

I remember pouring over “The Bends” CD package, complete with obscure drawings and introspective lyrics, as I sat on my Grandmother’s art deco couch, and absorbing everything I saw in it before I had even heard a single song. My Uncle Rick looked over my shoulder and said, “Yeah, that album’s great. It’s one of my favorites.” This, of course, made me like Radiohead even more as my Uncle Rick, in those days at least, was the epitome of cool. He was the only one in my mom’s family who ventured out into the big city of Chicago, bought a fancy apartment at Lakeshore, became successful, and stayed there to make a life for himself. This had always been my dream, even as a teenager, so the fact that he was living it made him almost a god to me at that time.

Radiohead quickly became one of my favorite bands as well and I found myself constantly entranced with the lyrics on “The Bends.” Pretty soon after acquiring the album I noticed my poetry started sounding like Radiohead songs and all of the pictures I saved on my computer were either images of Thom Yorke or Bjork.

And that is how my incestuous love affair with the music of Radiohead began. So when I saw this video of Thom Yorke’s latest song, “The Present Tense,” on YouTube today, I was hooked. After downloading it I think I have played it a total of five times so far, and I’m sure that that number will only multiply as the days go on.

There are not many artists out there today who can enrapture me the way Thom Yorke does. Bono used to but once he started going mainstream pop with U2 in the mid-1990’s that was the end for me. In fact, a lot of the bands/artists I used to like lost a lot of their fervor in the mid to late 1990’s, which really is quite sad given their music will never quite be the same ever again. But, for me at least, Thom Yorke and his band, Radiohead, have remained steadfastly good throughout the decades no matter what. And that's made all the difference.

Forgotten Memories

For me, the only real up side to packing up all of your shit when you have to move is finding things you completely forgot existed. Lately I've been surrounded in the madness of this never-ending process, but was pleased to come across some old pieces I had written back in the day when I was a student at Interlochen Arts Academy. As I looked at them I found myself becoming either extremely mortified or actually quite proud - but felt nothing even remotely in between that. I guess, like any writer, I have my good periods and my bad.

One of the best pieces from that time period is a short non-fiction piece I did about Kurt Cobain. I was inspired by a photograph of him that I found in Rolling Stone (see image above) and went from there. It is called simply, "KURT":

" He sits, almost dazed, looking off into the nothingness surrounding him. Here, we have the voice of a generation, a voice so pungent you could not mistake it for anyone else's voice. And yet, he just stares, not at the guitar chords or the mike in front of him, but straight into the distance where oblivion exists in the minds of the immortal.

He's an idol, as much as he'd like to think that he's not, when he sings in, Smells Like Teen Spirit,"...I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now, entertainers...oh denial...oh denial...oh denial," as if it's all a dream that's vanished. He never believed what other people told him. He never thought of himself as a "rock star," he never tried to fit into any of the cliches in society - he simply was. There were no complicated messages in his songs, no fancy words to explain what he was feeling, just the constant vibration of his guitar and his angst-ridden voice.

When you look at him, you could almost mistake him for an angel or some heavenly creature. His guitar lays upon his chest as though they were his wings; the painfully poignant blue of his eyes off in some other world - who knows, I could be crazy, but isn't that what he's all about? Feeling lost and trapped in a chaotic world that doesn't even know who you are? Perhaps that is why so many of my friends identified with him, and looked up to him as if he were their god in holey jeans and a ripped t-shirt, an emblem of their future; an everlasting figure of youth they wanted to resemble.

His band, Nirvana, ushered in congregations of adolescent aggression and distrust. They came in seeking renewal, to wash themselves of the society they lived, breathed, and loathed in. His concerts were as spiritual as the Sunday mornings of church-goers, bodies falling in a heap at the altar, arms out-stretched, desperate for any kind of contact, in hopes that he might heal them. For all we knew he could've been Jesus Christ, or even a re-incarnation of Elvis; it didn't matter that he hated life and hated who he was, in fact the more he hated the world, the more we loved him for it.

But he never seems to be affected at all by this rather immense following of his - in fact, he hardly cares. He sits still, head pounding, with his headphone pressed against his left ear, hearing nothing but the constant drumming of voices that rage day and night. There always seemed to be 'Something in the Way,' something that never quite allowed him to be at peace with himself. His music was a reflection of everything that passed through him - the restless anger and increasing vulnerability to a harsh world he did not want to face.

His abrupt suicide made him even more of a legend. His songs are all that are left of him for future generations. As for the one he left behind, his words will always be their anthem and Kurt will always be the voice of a lost generation."