paralysis.

dreams from three years ago, the lifestyle from five years ago, present intentions for the future. all collide and come crashing inward in a single moment. eyes surveying the immediate environment, searching for an anchor by which to pull the present back into focus.

have i been moving forward all this time? have i been moving at all?

spending so much time (re)building the inner world. materials, expensive; so much time is gone. all of these parallel realities, begun at various times and in different places. starting and stopping, turning and running toward revisions of the best possible outcome. with each revision, it feels more to be a whittling away of extraneous pieces.

whittling away? best possible outcome?

the machinistic efficiency of these terms belies a frightful implication: this process has gone too far. all of the past decisions to turn away from one path and enter another seem to have stripped the present of its richness. so much drive, determination and forced awareness. all to arrive here? it seems an insignificant achievement. the electrical fire that once burned in plain sight has become tamped down underneath asbestos blankets of routine and daily detail. over time, the asbestos becomes brittle, fibers fragmenting into microscopic daggers that dig into sensitive tissues and multiply exponentially. the cure becomes the metastatic catalyst of yet another, more invidious toxin.

die outside, consumed by unchecked ambition, or be eaten away on the inside by unfulfilled desires as time marches in a grim lock-step, always toward some distant horizon that can, by definition, never be reached.

i can't keep turning into dead ends, only to reframe them as new opportunities; repainting a dimly light room to become a distant sunrise by clever neurolinguistic sleights of mouth. it is a talent that diminishes its own utility as it becomes more habitually ingrained.

image: hikki standing at the kitchen sink,
pretending to wash dishes,
singing in a beautiful voice.

audio: kyau vs. albert . unknown mix, 2005 . track 10

range murata
futurhythm
image 70

how is it that within one mind there can be such an opposition:

long term futility;
short term struggle beyond unconscious limitation.

unusual to hear two entirely unrelated people speak of the same phenomenon in different contexts over the course of a single day. negative hallucination, or the intentional act of not-seeing elements in the immediate environment. to an extent, most if not everyone does this at some point: the visual background fades away, allowing for deep focus on the person across the table; standing in uncomfortable silence next to strangers in a public place; drifting off into a daydream and the cooresponding diminution of visual awareness.

how often does such an automatic mechanism take control of everyday perception? as the raw data of visual/auditory experience becomes warped, it is molded into something entirely different. the semiconscious 'individual' is possessed of various autonomous states of mind, acting entirely outside of his or her own volitional control over the world.

it is amazing that people find their habits and lifestyles so difficult to change, and yet insist that they are exactly, and only, who they say they are. i am not transparent, even to myself. how much simpler it is to state a fact than demonstrate its truth, when lying just below the words is an oppositional motivation that must also be dealt with, sometimes beyond the reach of logic and reason.

every day it becomes clearer that buried within the actions of today are years of learning, some lessons intentionally learned, most not; some beneficial, others destructive; entire paths defined, only to be abandoned; some well worn, none complete.

audio: terrase . phase 3 . arabic mix

instead of grounding
a foundation
it is a scaffold raised
toward the sky.

eyes turn downward from the top,
down, down and down
and the rickety windblown
realization


there's no building there at all.