Always.

Most of us don't really want to know the horrors that exist outside of our 'civilized' borders, and those who do are kidding themselves. Either naive but good-hearted, or adrenaline junkies maybe. The ones who want to know are the ones who think they can change it. But it's a dream of self-importance.
In the end, the horrors are always bigger than the man, always in control; and they will have their casualty. Sometimes the victim, other times the hero.
But there is always a casualty.

I like a girl and I can’t find it in me to write a thing about her. And it’s not because there is nothing to say, but because anything I could muster just wouldn’t seem right. Nothing would be able to capture the things I feel without seeming contrived.
It’s a shame that we can’t write about love anymore. That love has become entertainment over lifestyle; where we recognize it as a beautiful, but unstable and useless. How horrible it is that we are all taught to ignore so many aspects of a thing we all crave. We are taught to distrust what we feel, in favor of what is most practical and most productive. Yet it must be noticed that nothing innovative was born from the average. And maybe that’s what I wish to be, an innovator in love. Maybe I wish to take this old, tattered concept and breath new life into its very skin. No one wants to wear love like a hand-me-down. I might as well make it my own.

So that is what I intend to do. I intend on feeling this one out, without plan or lesson. By God! What a concept! FEELING in the realm of love? Who would imagine that ration and thought would have no place in love? But of course, we all know - in our true hearts, as hearts tend to be. We all have those feelings deep down, and we know that when we care for someone that we cannot just do what “makes sense.” You have to be reckless, take some risks, as long as you know that you are being true to every fiber of your being. Even if it’s too much, and the whole thing combusts.

Settle down. I know. I hear that a lot. I don’t care. Not really. Because I know what I feel and I know that it’s true. And I needn’t be proven that it’s right or wrong, because I know. I know.

Life moves along, constantly. Things come and they go. Only we can be the constant in our own lives, because we can be certain that nothing else will. I cannot be sure that she will love me back, or that we will be together for… however. But I can know who I am and how I feel. And I can be that for as long as I live.

And for now, I like a girl. This girl. She’s clever, and sweet, and very pretty.
But besides that, I have nothing else worthy to add.

Sick.

As I lie in bed, feeling unbearably ill from some virus or another, I tell the world to Fuck Off. I'm miserable. I have aches down my spine and into my legs, my body is chilled from what I assume is a fever, and I can't sleep. The one thing that very well might help is denied to me.
I think about the fairness of life, and how it isn't. Or maybe it is. That thought terrifies me. That maybe life is fair  in how impartial it is, how it doesn't pick or choose who succeeds and who suffers. It could be any of us, really. Everything is so picked at random. And I'm scared that maybe the world doesn't give a damn whether you are a good person or a bad person; to the world you are either living or dead. It sees you in, and it sees you out.

As I toss and turn and feel like crap, I think of how it would be to have something worse; something like cancer, or AIDS, or whatever else life could send to devastate you. It frightens me to think of how one must feel then, and I do not blame anyone for choose death when life is proposed in such a horrific way.

I know, this is bleak. I've been trapped in this tiny room for too long, and it's taken its toll. I need the sun, the fresh air, the company of friends. I need it to keep me of sound mind.
Hopefully I feel better in the morning.

You can't retreat in fear of the dark. You have to hold the light ahead of you and walk onward. Because if not you, who will carry the fire?

My Epitaph Should Read:

Here Lies a Good Man. Driven to Madness by a World He So Loved.

I Am Not an Artist.

I posted a picture on Flickr of sunlight streaming through a clear mug in my room-mate’s room. I had noticed it, and thought it was beautiful, so I thought I would capture the moment. On Flickr, someone commented, saying that the photo was an interesting observation, but that had I moved the mug, I could’ve made the composition even better.
The thing is, my moving the mug would change the reality of what I saw. No longer would it be this beautiful moment that I had found, but a moment I created. And I do not see myself as an artist, creating these situations; I see my goal to be a man documenting the world as he sees it; capturing the way of life around me. If I am anything, I see myself more as a documentarian. I’m a kid with a notepad, jotting down things I notice about the world. That’s all.
It seems to me that everyone these days thinks that they are an artist. But artistry takes skill, it takes vision; it isn’t just something that one is, because they are competent in one thing or another.
One can write without being a Writer, and one can paint without being a Painter. I know how to work a camera, and I use it, but does that mean that every single thing that I take a picture of is artwork? Because I know how to take a picture, does that mean that I am a Photographer?
There is no shame in using these tools, these mediums, as mere expression. I’m not saying that. I write, I take photographs, I make the occasional video - but I know that this is not art. Expression, maybe, but not mastery. Art is mastery. Art is the process of mastering one’s trade, and in turn mastering one’s self.
I am a dilettante at best. I am an admirer, who dabbles in what he loves. But that does not an artist make.
I am not an artist. And apparently I’m in the minority.

O the things we do to fall in and out of love.

I see you again, this time through new lenses. You seem more frightened than you previously did. Am I just able to see you more clearly, or are you frightened by how clearly I see you? You seem like your guard is up, like you have something to defend. I wonder what you think I'm going to do. You can find me insufferable, but I hope that you do not believe me capable of being cruel. I am many things, awkward being one of them, but I am rarely unkind. Or I try for that to be true.
We talk about many things: Books, music, movies, religion. Religion seems especially touchy. You cannot believe that science is a religion, too, where nothing is certain and facts are too often proven false. And I say you cannot believe that, instead of you would not, because I think you needed it. You need science to be reliable.  You need science to be without faith, to feel it is solid and provable and real.
I know it's scary. The world, I mean. I know that iti s scary and that you want something to be certain, like science. But it just isn't. The term "an exact science" is another oxymoron. You can know all the facts and figures, and somethings will always happen that cannot be explained.
So much fear in you. That's why we're not dating more seriously, and I'd rather it be from our incompatibility. I'd rather it be that you don't find me funny, or that I don't dress right. I'd rather it be any of that than know it was from what the world has done to you, and how unwilling you are to trust any of its passengers.