Blog 39: The Sea of Existance

All of existence hangs below the twisted form of the ocean. Each of the endless whirlpools marks an entrance to one universe or another and between them winds a path that leads to all, treading water at the edge of each. My boat is the simplest of vehicles to travel between those submerged enclosures of being. Life exists in each without a concept of the others and in some minds will wonder about the fate of all. I am a soul of indecision. I cannot chose a universe, a galaxy, a world, a home beyond this endless window onto all that is.

Blog 38: Outsourced Thoughts

Thank fuck for telepathy. Imagine a world where there were invisible barriers between us all that were impenetrable to thought. Where would people like me be if we couldn’t rely on the gratitude of others for use of our working senses. Those with sensory deprivation issues just need a friend like me in range to fill in their spectrum of senses with which to take in the world.
My hearing and sight are exceptional which is why Mark and Alan need me so badly. Mark was born deaf and Alan lost his sight in the war which means without sensory supplementation they would miss out on ranges of the spectrum of life. Mark has excellent vision which gives Alan plenty of angles to choose from and likewise his excellent hearing compliments my own to Mark’s benefit. Both of them take shots pushing my wheelchair and voicing the thoughts I can’t because were it not for telepathy I would be trapped inside my mind for I cannot move even my mouth to do much more than eat.
Someday perhaps there will be a cure for my condition which is the consequence of the lack of air I received during birth. I can deal with it though, I have my friends.
The only thing worse than being like me is being like me minus the telepathy. That would be a fucking nightmare. People who can’t broadcast their thoughts but can receive others tend to become very purvey but that might be just a rumour. People who transmit their thoughts without being able to stop or receive those of other people tend to lead very dull lives and have very red faces. I know that for a fact. My cousin can’t help what he broadcasts or tell what others are thinking about it. Whenever he thinks about girls there’s a strong wave of embarrassment that goes with it. That’s his problem though and I have too much to do to bother worrying about it.
I work as a lecturer at the local university but sadly only to telepaths who can at least receive my outgoing thoughts. Ideas are incredible things, in the lecture hall I can help along those who do not understand what I have transmitted to them and Mark, who is my scribe, helps. Ideas are beautiful creatures to watch growing. Even when students are off task sometimes I like to wander though the worlds of their mind. It’s a bit like trespassing but they often leave the gate open to me. When they do catch me I just point them back in the direction of my lecture.

Blog 37: Daily Renewal

Reincarnation proposes that if something dies some essence of it will be reborn in a new form. Perhaps as a metaphor for adaptation this begins life’s search for a suitable and sustainable vessel. Of all life the trees are longest lived. In them carnation seems successful more than elsewhere.
Life is the struggle against the endless death in the universe and rebirth the last hope against its reign. The great changes come often for me, life has not found my true form. Immortality is the truth of life I was once told. Death is the lie propagated to our misfortune. To realise the truth and believe in it completely is to transcend the trap of the lie.
Each day now I fall for the lie and watch the world shrivel before me to be reborn anew. I remain unharmed as the world fades to nothing as is reassembled in the dark of space. My belief in the supposed truth fades each time and I’m left with less time before to look for my place. Without that place I as the keystone cannot hold the world together preventing its daily reformation. I don’t always try, it’s harder and harder to find the motivation I need. I will find my habitat at some point and the world will live on eternally even without me. This is the aim of my life when I can summon the effort, to put an end to the cycle of destruction and restoration for the sake of peace. I want to rest for more than a day in one place to enjoy the beauties of a world. I’ve seen more than I can remember now.
Resting on one plane to see a sunset is so peaceful. I fool myself that it might remain so forever or at least return cyclically as it should without dying to return in a new form. The light looks different each time, subtly so, as it shines through a different concoction of gasses to the surface. The air is far from the only difference, the many suns I have seen burn with varying intensity. The surface I walk on may be earth or sand and even glass if the planet is swallowed by the sun before it dies. I want to linger longer here or there, anywhere in just one place. I am sick, so sick of the endless changes. I long for the true earth that will live on day after day amongst the stars and I hope I am believed when I say I know that this day is not the last for this world, life has found its home here. This is truth.

Blog 36: Balanced

I felt different. Like I was wearing nothing but that was not the case. I was weighed down by all of my heavy photographic equipment, not that I felt it. I was weightless, unburdened by my baggage and not sure why.
Detachment was close to the appropriate word but not enough. I felt not elsewhere but alternate. I wished I would feel like that forever. Blissful, Balanced. Not up or down but in a state of perfect equilibrium. Was I standing with closed eyes before the face of death or was life itself finally prising my eyelids open? Could both be accurate? Is that even possible?

Blog 35: Injections of Heroism

I’m twitching now, quivering. I’ve got the shakes and it’s not because of the crowd. There’s a few thousand people watching this stupid ceremony and all I can think about is the next injection. Where are they hiding it? The guards behind me don’t know. The General behind them might know. I could easily kill them both to get to him. The twitch would just mean that the cuts were less clean.
My hand keeps asking me to unsheathe the sword and kill everyone. I could possibly pull it off. If I killed them all there’s a chance that I would find a few vials, enough to keep me going. Nah that wont work. I’d better play along.
They’re roaring in their thousands, calling me a hero and until they’ve stopped, until this is over I can’t get another dose. It’s not like I even give a shit about our stupid little country. I fight because I’m on the drug and because it’s the greatest feeling ever. I hate thinking about what I do when I’m thinking straight but luckily that isn’t very often. They keep me tanked up for days at a time while I tear through the enemy conquering new ground for my dealers. I cut a bloody path through entire armies on my own and them some pompous git with a few stripes plants a flag in the ground and declares victory. I’m not even on contract, only my addiction binds me to this to this endless cycle of nonsense.
My life right now is ridiculous. How did they turn someone with a tendency towards addiction into a hero of the nation? I come in and they tell me that they have the cure to addiction to adrenalin and I say thank you, where do I sign? I didn’t sign of course, they knew that wouldn’t be necessary.
He’s here, the poncy general with the fancy blue suit jacket and all of the little badges and medals. Most of those useless pieces of fabric and metal are there because of me. He’s not a soldier, not really, he’s a con artist with a gun for an accessory. The drug’s were the convincer in this scheme and this celebration is the payoff. One of many payoffs, not the first or the last.
They’re so smug, so convinced they have me where they want me. They barely acknowledge my prowess in battle with fear. I hate them all and yet they breathe so freely. I could kill them now. Could but wont, they do have me, it’s why I hate them with such intensity. I can’t fight it but the addiction will override my better judgement. It’s started. The twitching and the visions, visions of death and destruction. Usually my visions are prophetic, calculations soon to see fulfilment. These calm tricksters had better hope the images flickering behind my eyelids now do now come true. If they do I will not be a hero, not seen as one. If I do as I think I will be seen in the light of day for what I truly am. I am a killer with a substance abuse issue. None of that will matter if I get my hands on another dose. Bring me battle, I need a break from my conscience.

Blog 34: Free Pass

Idiots used to say that crime doesn’t pay. No statement has ever dated so badly. That might have been slightly accurate when organised crime accounted for only one percent of the worlds economy. Now it’s more close to ten percent and they even invented the universal free pass. Anyone would kill for one of those cards, and be killed for their insolence.
Governments were once the highest authorities in the land but now they play second fiddle to the gangs. They are the caretakers who handle the business the gangs can’t be bothered with. I work in a tailors where I see them all the time and they hand me the card. I have to stop myself from drooling at the prospect of owning one of those cards. I just swipe it and the company takes the hit of whatever the costs of the suit were. I’d lose my job if I made any fuss about the freebies the local mobsters ask for. No company wants to risk reprisals from the ruling class. One there was the monarchy and the church, now we have the gangs. Triads and Cartels run the South and up here its Yakuza. The Italian Mafias were run out of town here years ago during The Invasion of the Eastern Gangs. Yakuza sadly don’t have the same taste in suits. They want their suits made from the most expensive material whether it suits them or not. It reflects poorly upon us what they wear whether they paid for it or not.
Consider as we never do just how ingrained the corruption has to be for a card to simply say to the till ‘this one’s on you.’ A company openly prints those cards and all of the tills know not to question them. It’s not like it’s even shoplifting, the card legitimises the whole process.
Everyone wishes they were in the gangs, with the Mafia you have to be in the family but the Yakuza often adopt children to join their crime family. Every small child wishes they were orphaned for the chance to join the gangs. I’ve spent endless nights imagining the how I would spend my days if I was in one of the gangs.
I’ve wanted one of these cards for so long and I have one in my hand it just scares me. I’d have to move hundreds of miles south just to use it and any slip ups would get me and my family killed. I’ve seen the burnt out shells of buildings where the families of those caught using the cards without permission. We all turn a blind eye to that, I did. We accept that which is too terrifying to change.
I could give it back, if I do it now then I might even get a reward. He just left it in the old coat, that’s how rich they are, he left a top quality coat in a shop for the new one. I spent days on that coat and the rich tattooed moron just left it here for the new one and walked away.
I will not pass up my free ticket to life. I have enough money to take me to another territory. My new life begins here. It might not last long.

Blog 33: Dark Matter Accelerators

I was asked the other day what the most important invention of mankind is. It’s a hard question to answer with ever more contenders but I would say few creations of man have done more to take us far across the universe than the Dark Matter Accelerator. Despite how little we still know about the endless fuel that powered our expansive journey towards the unknown horizons of space there is no destination beyond the reach of mankind. All other leaps in knowledge and human progress seem pitiful by comparison to Explorations Platinum Age. New maps are rendered in four dimensional models that can tell you where each rock formation will be depending on the rotation of that planetary body on its axis and within the rotations of the solar system it rests in and its galaxy.
Cartographers experienced the first boom in their work since the discovery of ‘The New World’ on earth. As well as colonisation and exploration mankind began to seed the universe with life. Panspermia is an old idea finally made not just possible but relatively easy by the leap in transport technology. These missions began as the paving stones for human life but quickly grew into philanthropic endeavours as collectives of humanity sought to repent for the sins of their forebears. We spread our seed far across the universe to begin the reign of life on distant world. What was seen as nature, life in its various forms, was once less natural than the cold emptiness of space. Life was one of the rarest commodities in existence but humanity may put an end to our solitude with these endeavours. Terraforming while much faster is a far less efficient or eloquent means of spreading life. We may become the mythical foregoing parents of life as was so often a theme in science fiction.
I’m not really a scientist, not professionally at least but I do have a keen interest in vehicular technology in the new age of frontier piracy. Most engines that use a D.M.A are piloted by machines that while efficient are hardly adaptable pilots. With endless reflex upgrades and some interface modifications I pilot some of the fasted vehicles ever built which travel without most of the decelerating safety peripherals.
Law enforcement is minimal on the frontier and rarer still are the pilots with the skill to catch me. My crew are more than up to the task of fending off enforcers that would follow us to our hidden base in the asteroid field above an abandoned terraforming project.
I’m not a scientist but I employ many to keep my fleet the fastest in the universe. They upgrade my trans-human crew. The scientists can’t leave of course. I don’t want my competitors and foes knowing where I lay my head. The base is a haven of sin amongst the rocks that look out into space. They can’t complain. I don’t let them.
As soothing as it is to race across the void between galaxies I love the rush of planet based chases. The best getaway vehicles available are at my disposal for the escape after a heist. I don’t pick the fastest racers but the most manoeuvrable. Powder bone speeds make the dodge between planet bound objects the fastest fun to be had. I like to tie my pursuers in knots before leaping aboard my ship to return home.
The oxygen generators haven’t grown to full size yet so the facility still has sealed breathless zones. For that reason I’m stuck wearing this stupid full body insulation suit with the supposedly miniature oxygen generator which is still the size of a large rucksack from the earthy second millennia.
The geeks have been using some of the empty zones as test facilities for void vehicles that work best in a vacuum. Having paid for the work I get to play with the new toys which is usually fun. Some of the archaic idiots still use imperial time. They’re scientists, why? Metric is so much easier to work with on timetables.
I’m hoping we can set up some form of orbital colony system around the planet below. A fleet of fighter ships crewed with good pilots could easily defend this facility against much larger forces using the dynamic asteroid shift predictive maps the geeks made us. Knowledge is king, it’s been known for years which is why I steal more boffins than anything else. Most can be obtained for the right price but others are held captive in the secure research centre at the heart of this base. We began a bail system for them to prove that as long as we know they’ll stay they are welcome to wander the base without limits.
Good pilots are hard to come by in the thinly spread realm of humanity. I run races and rackets on other planets to root out the best of the rest from the crowds. A race track here would be nice, the planet below is enough for now but a more local track would be a good means of honing the skills of our pilots.
The asteroid belt is a bit like my old home when I think about it. Aeris Ventura, one of the endless floating cities of my home world. My feet didn’t touch solid ground until I was fourteen. It’s maybe why I’m such a good pilot. The buildings work a bit like a zeppelin except they’re devoid of anything so fragile as an air filled envelope. That doesn’t stop the vandals, the outskirts are the worst place to live in those cities where the scum tamper with the engines and all too often the buildings rain down from the sky. Something of those days lead me here and I must praise the past for my presence in this time and place. This, my home, amongst the stars of space.

Blog 32: Dark Creation

I need no light to guide my sight
No confirmation makes me right
A growing force in every finger
Crushes foes and fools that linger
Not a single breath I draw
No vapours shall escape this maw
Darkness grows in depth as I in strength
And prowl the night at further length
My hands scrape the stars above
As existence begs to be my glove
Escape my fury some might hope
Others tie a noose in rope
And fear the call as I approach
Lacking every meal I poach
While they hunger I am stalking
My ears hear the weaklings talking
That I am no monster is the revelation
Just the worst result of their creation
The silver lice spread across my being
Accelerating everything I’m seeing
I shimmer and evolve
There’s no problem nanites can’t solve
I’ve forgotten what I was
And cannot see what this might cause
I’m something new from something old
And I no longer feel the cold
No pulse shakes my old heart
My rhythm is a beat to start
The firing of ideas in a mind
Behind which others fall behind
The moon is my torch to wander by
The blackened sky’s full blue eye
My genome is rewritten by fate
The cure just came to late
So still I wander growing stronger
The list of gifts grows ever longer
That’s the path I always take
Within the dream I shall not wake.

Blog 31: A Man Scrapping for Dogs

We wear masks for this. The masks are not for safety, they are for anonymity. I fight half blind but no one knows my name. I am known by the mask I wear in the ring. I would not wash away the best of my soul for this cruelty if it did not pay so well. I have yet to lose a fight. No one else’s mask hides desperation and abandon such as mine. I need the money my bloodied fists can make me from these mongrels.

This may be the lesser of no two evils but I have left myself no pure paths to take. I have debts to pay for poor decisions and there is no wage to pay them back faster than this hateful practice. Death taunts me from the ringside, betting on all others though I defy him. I can not afford the death that would take my debt to the doors of those I love. I plod the damp ground of the circle waiting for the next victim of circumstance to stand before me. Rage no longer blinds me but disgraceful destruction. I no longer have a face beneath the mask but a map of my various wounds. They will scream my pain to me if I ever have the time to head their voices.

Hours pass and bystanders tire of the endless stream of piteous opponents that are dragged from the blood red swamp the dust became. My regret sends its apologies to each victim that departs as I try to keep the balance of my victories. Three more to go, two more, one and I’m done now but do I have the life left in me to drag my corpse to my debtors? Dried blood holds the skin of my face to the muscle beneath as I hand everything I made away. The pain has found its many voices. They grow louder as my conscious dims. I was in dept where now the slate is clean and the balance set to zero just as the levels of my blood soon will be. Darkness beckons and I gladly wander into shadow that this might be the end of my earthly torment. That there is no god to punish my crimes, that I will cease to be is my final wish as I bid farewell to the land that misled me. I have no more to give or gamble, my hand is played.

Blog 30: Interview

In tie I sit, in suit you walk
And sir judge me as I talk
You’d fail the task to lick my boot
But still I beg you let me shovel soot
The job I’ll hate, the funds I need
For the food upon which I feed.

Blog 29: Wasting Time

I may be to old to complain like this
But I’m not to old to reminisce
About those lost days when things were done for me
And back when most things were fun for me
I always knew I was better off a child
Being carefree, not cautious but wild
Now I’m bound by the things I do
And now I’m bored ‘till my face turns blue
There’s too much washing that should be on the line
Too much crap and most of it mine
I guess I’m never happy, never done
Cause I can remember days I couldn’t run
There were no better times than now
I just need to get back on task somehow.

Blog 28: Restrained by Referencing

I’m supposed to be doing my dissertation right now. It’s all but there on the word count and I thought it’d be done by now but then there’s referencing to thank for a few more lost hours of my life. Format is the issue and the fact that even when I have the book in my hand the publishers seem to have put effort into making the edition and city of publication too much of a task to find. Referencing just feels like bullshit to me just now. It should be done but for that crap. I want to write a disclaimer at the beginning that states that unless expressly state no idea mentioned in mine. I want to reference my birth certificate where I write my name at the top. I might just do that anyway. Referencing seems to me like product of prevalent mistrust within academia. I’m not a physics student anyway. Why am I supposed to write an essay based on impartial and certain principles. I’m an art student, I work with perceptions that are not so simply categorised as right or wrong.

The obligation to create yet more commentary on art has always frustrated me during my pursuit of art as a career. How many people have reviews that aren’t of their work framed on the wall? Has a commentary ever been hailed as beautiful? I want to spend my finite time creating things that while not devoid of reference or inspiration are essentially new.

Horrific boredom in life can drive creation. A lecturer from another school of art told me that his most creative time period was while he sought to avoid writing his own dissertation. I have been writing more recently but it seems a sad reflection on the task that I would rather do anything else but. I have not been on such a writing spree since the dull days while I worked in the mine, manning the crossing point. I have other things to do. I want to be writing, drawing, taking photos or painting, pretty much anything besides trying to arrange the format of my damn references for an essay which I had been enjoying.

I want to enjoy my essay which is why I wrote it as two stories. I’m not passive, I want to create. If I can’t get away with a story as my dissertation then the ashes of my academically dull written essay will be posted to the marking box with a singular reference to whoever it was that burnt her work before marking in protest to that system of shit. Art is not right or wrong nor should it be.

Blog 27: Living It Up

I know how it came to this. I’m nothing, nothing yet. I thought something would come along for me. Maybe I had my chance, or maybe a few. I never had far to fall so I thought I’d be fine. I’ve only ever looked up. I thought my life could only get better. Now I live in a shit hole that I managed to make worse and I make the rent by robbing ticket machines with a crowbar. To everyone else I say I make my money playing guitar. We are the worlds worst band and it’s not just my fault. The gigs were always a con. Each venue we get kicked out of becomes a reference for our next show and we play another shit set before we’re booed off stage.
The flat smells like the washing I should have done months ago. My once white towel is a putrid shade of brown from the blood I wipe from my fists every time a bill falls through the letterbox. I don’t want to turn to drugs, I don’t have the money, but brain damage would be blessing right now. I started selling my epilepsy medication to the local drunks months ago but they’re getting wise now. I didn’t really need the pills anyway. My recovery if you can call it that is the best thing to happen to me in a long while.
I’ve got my girl. For some reason she hasn’t walked out on my poor excuse for a life and for that reason alone I’ll always run to the shops when she stats moaning about juice, even if the nearest open store is half a mile away.
I radiate an aura of criminal. Something about me puts all the right people on edge, all the people who would have been my boss. Old people keep crossing the street to avoid me. It’s so sad it got funny, I have to laugh at it. A grey haired woman will clench her empty ragged bag and drag herself across the road like I’m drenched in blood and holding a family portrait with all the other faces cut off.
On the flipside of that coin every junkie for miles has offered their help if I’m ever in a fight. As if, I run from anything that has a problematic odour. That’s probably why I’m in the sinkhole situation. If I ever get another shot I might strangle it by holding so tightly.
Until then I will endure the hatred of the crowd as my girl dances alone before the stage listening to her own music through earphones. Maybe if we can keep the façade up long enough we’ll be worth something one day and she’ll take the earphones out. Maybe I can get a job in some criminal fraternity, I know I have the look. I could fool the police, probably, I get new barmen to believe my band can play weekly. That wont last.
The girl looks at me sometimes with expectation, like I’m her shot at getting out of her own hell. She’s crazy if she thinks I’m on the road to riches but she can hold my hand in the gutter forever and I wont mind as long as she still believes in me. Someone has to believe in me.
People keep telling me to go home to run back to the parents who had the good grace to bring me into the world. Why would I stain their lives with my crap? I’m scum but it’s not their fault. They gave things a go with me and they’ve stopped asking how I am. I send them a letter now and then to let them know my hearts still beating but other than that I try to leave them to their quiet life.
I found my yearbook amongst the crap in my room the other day. Most likely to murder someone, what kind of premonition it that? No one had high hopes for me so I never really had any for myself. I keep letting life make my choices for me. I get swept along with whatever happens and it’s never the right thing for me. I’ll make an effort and make something of myself, if I can be bothered.