Part V – The Meaning of Everything

Life.

He walks through the park, his empty eyes flicking from object to object. Lowlifes are spread across the verdant green grass, feeding birds their metropolitan fast-food trash: poisoning the one thing man can be sure he did not create. Idiots of the corporate world stretch themselves out on wooden benches, while the wretched and the homeless seek comfort from a rusting telegraph pole and an emptying bottle of aging liquor.

And over there, in the distant corner, he sees that same beautiful lady; her walk as aimless as his, her shoulders hunched, her eyes permanently glazed with a shining film of sorrow. He does not know who she is, perhaps he never will. For names are only of relevance when each man is so empty he cannot be distinguished from any other.

The world through the eyes of the wise is bleak. Yet, there they sit. The happy men, rolling around in their own delusional minds. Drowning themselves in their own wealth as he ties concrete to his ankles. For only with naivety comes joy, and only with joy comes a life worth living.

Lies.

That is what they feed us. Lies to cover up the lies. Lies for the weak. Lies for the stupid. Lies for the few who believe truth ever existed. Reality – wrapped in a sugar coating and thrust into the printing press – is greeted at the golden sunrise by gold change, gold jewelery and ridiculously empty heads. And there our tabloids become uncontested fact.

Lies are what we live off. Lies that our loyalty has some meaning. Lies that her words weren’t as empty as they seemed.

Fabricate, fabricate, fabricate.

And which man is a fool enough to speculate and to scrutinise but the lonely skeptic? The man that ambles onto the bus from the same decrepit point by the park every evening. And look at him, they all say, friendless and heartless.

After all, isn’t it fun to pretend?

Love.

That is all I have left. Love for the small things that bring satisfaction in this big, big world. Love for what remains of humanity. Love for her faint scent. Love for her glistening smile and her beautiful soul.

Love, perhaps, for something I know I cannot keep.

Part IV – Lost in the Sound of Separation

A diary entry I tried to write from the perspective of a soldier in the trenches along the Western front in WWI. (Perhaps not so) happy reading.

Dear diary,

Last night when I crawled beneath my sodden blanket – my eyelids heavy, my legs trembling with fatigue – I knew that the dark of the night was little but a veil of uncertainty. I knew that my shallow and disturbed sleep, if it ever came, only preceded another day in this bottomless pit of death.

And now, in the golden light of dawn, my feelings remain unchanged. The stench of the deceased is nearly unbearable. The buzzing murmur surrounding me resonates with a sense of foreboding. Within minutes we will go over the top. My comrades will gallantly surge forth, and we will, inevitably, be greeted by round, after round, after round of bullets. Many of us, perhaps even I, will fall to our knees, blood pouring from our wounds, swallowed by the dissonant cries and lost in the smoky blur of our final moments – lost in the sound of separation.

They said that war was a thrill. They said that it was a rush. Instead, we are suffering down in these damp, rodent-infested dungeons. Instead, humanity is suffering in this age of endless turmoil, in this age where tomorrow may never come.

Part III – Abstractism

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!”

– Macbeth, William Shakespeare

He ambled down the train track, the street lights illuminating his wide, bloodshot eyes. His scarred face was shining with perspiration, his calloused hand clutching a quickly emptying glass bottle. His view of the world was blurred and double, the sounds around him ricocheting around the cold walls of his throbbing head.

He felt little but numbness and fatigue; numbness of the mind as his thoughts wandered through the realms of nothingness, fatigue of the body as his knees begun to weaken and his feet dragged along the coal. Every muscle in his body shivered and trembled as the blistering wind roared around him, carrying with it the debris of the natural world.

To him, the feeling was euphoric. The burning in his throat, the unwired, unstructured and inarticulate thoughts in his mind, the images of her glistening white smile dancing across the otherwise dark vista laid before him.

To him, this was an escape. An escape from a tempestuous past. A past of restless nights filled with senseless screaming. A past of shards of shattered glass, of helplessness and of a dizzying truth that tomorrow always lays beyond a shroud of certain uncertainty.

To him, this was life at its best. Living off little money, stealing, finding joy in seemingly insignificant things. Fits of anger, throwing chairs, smashing bottles and laughing a hysterical, drunken laugh. Hearing insults from aghast passers-by on the sidewalk, day, after day, after day.

It was almost dawn when Victor was dragged away on a stretcher, the train whose blaring horn was insufficient in rousing him from his state slowly going on down its path. Blood oozed from wild lacerations across his body, but he was still alive, reaching for anything tangible beyond the veil of tomorrow, for the light of the candle which was slowly fading away.

Part II – The Icebreaker

So I thought I should tell you a bit about me, you know, so we can get to know each other. So you can watch me watch the world through these skeptical eyes and laugh, like any nice kid would.

One of Shakespeare’s most lovable characters once said,

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

I don’t generally refer to that play, I don’t enjoy even hearing its name, but I thought that quote was strikingly relevant. It was my un-hostile attempt at saying that you don’t need to know my name.

Because as I watched Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” on DVD this evening, I realised that a name has no meaning. Strip Nixon of his name for a second. Forget that he was the president of the United States, and take a look at the guy. He was a corrupt, arrogant old man who thought he was above the law and his people. He was so proud that it took 2 million dollars to get the guy to spit out the fact that he’d done something wrong. Sounds like any old guy right?

So what’s my name mean to the few people who happen to come across this page? I’m a guy who likes things guys like: American politics, cars, donuts, ladies, American politics, punching bags. Now all I need to do is get famous – I can already see them sticking my head on a postage stamp.

Part I – Dealing the Hope Card

The White House, Washington DC, The US of A

The political capital of the world, the White House is a building not many are unaware of. Somewhere deep inside its West Wing, under the veil of the Secret Service and black Versace suits, the world’s finest bureaucrats work by day and by night to ward off the newest international crisis: bombs falling in gaza, tsunamis washing out hundreds of innocent people, and probably the president’s coffee being a little too cold.

Film-makers romanticise the place like mad (and yeah, im going to spell romanticise with an “s”). From Sorkin’s The West Wing, to Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” and “2012″, the big screen’s done everything from making 6-foot tall women the White House Chief of Staff to blowing the whole thing to smithereens.

But that’s what we do in the modern world, I guess. We take what’s familiar, and we warp it beyond recognition: friendship, culture, values, politics, donuts. That’s what this blog’s all about. Everything you think you know. Everything I think I know. In short, the mystery that is mankind. The search for questions to the answers we already have.

President Barack Obama was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The genii that were pretty cheesed off by the whole thing told the folks with the notepads and the chunky cameras that it was just an “award for potential”. Even the guy who announced Obama’s prize said that it was for his “efforts.” But I want to ask this. I know the guy lived a while back, but Napoleon Bonaparte said “a leader is a dealer in hope.” What happened to that?

I want to ask all them guys who make money by scrutinising the guys that make more money than them who they thought should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe the man that would have killed for the Nobel Peace Prize –  or the next door neighbour who killed your cat with a chainsaw – or the prime minister of some country where the children are soldiers and the innocent are made to feel guilty for dreaming of freedom – or “Krusty the Clown” and “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” or just Homer Simpson for reminding the people of our future that black humour is a way forward and that strangling your kid is probably the best way to entertain the guests at a family dinner party these days.

I agree, Obama isn’t the man that’s brought balance to the United Nations and fought the war to end all wars, but he’s given us the only thing people reckon we’ve got left these days : hope. So let’s all do the thing most unexpected of our species: let’s unite, and give the poor guy a break.