Wind beckoned the armada of children scattered on a plot of land in the fields, a small menace in the air of what their imaginations took control. There were gallant forts and, of course, everyone wanted to be the knight in shining armor to little Ava Adore on top of the hill. At this time, there were no roles antagonists to be forced upon, only a brief glimpse, a conscious wetting of the feet to feel that of opposition but no interest was maintained in that mindset.

And in the end, it would be little Donovan whom Ava allowed entry, away from the rolling hills, watchtowers and scouring windmills abandoned and broken to what was acknowledged as it is. A hill stood in the middle of a field.

“Do you ever wonder why the sun goes away and not stay for a little while longer?” she glimpsed at the small crevice lighting the landscape an eerie tan overture. He puzzled over the question while picking the straw from his jacket, ripped and smoldered but serving its purpose.

“If it stayed, how would we know when to leave?” and her eyes bloomed into flowers, daffodils deep blue in contrast to the marmalade sky. There were an exchange of smiles, a nip in the wind and a dandelion in hand extending outwards and as fate would have it, a response.

“When I grow up, I want to find a way to keep the sun from setting,” and a small pucker of the lips revealed her laugh lines, the dimples in her cheeks, the whiskers in her hair. “So that we would never have to go home. And we could sit here for a little while longer”.

“Or long enough to build that castle you’ve always wanted. One that could touch the sky and keep the sun from leaving so soon”. And what a passion in her eyes afterwards, a gleam of polished stones centered by freckles, a gift from him. Then a brush of the ears and the warmth of someone else’s hands, foreign lips warming familiar faces and for the moment, the fields gave out its glow to the horizon yet fireflies guided their way back home.

In Time, a road of some sorts.

Sifting, libel, slander of the wind

A discomfort of false footsteps.

Thrown voices in the opposite direction

Say to come back but ignored.

It’s weird.

All my life, I’ve seen these green encrusted leaves in decadence around life events, from the days I’ve pondered the world up to the birth of my daughter. This leaf, despite the brilliant shades of blue and vertical zigzag shaped etches, enticed me with sorrow; fear, the unknown, were of an immediacy, and in the days she had left my thoughts, I was the only one in the world that would look after her. I didn’t expect anyone else to help. At the same time, this was a continuation of heaven and hell. But this was something I chose. I felt like I made the right choice. She would always want to grasp on my forearm and see if I could pick her up and ask me things like how long it takes to go places and how everyone is doing. She never revoked a rhetorical gesture.

“I’m not sure as much anymore. She’s got that new job down over in Paris, so all her time will be over there for now”.

“Paris, you mean the place where the French live?”

“Yes, Ava, the city made of baguettes and all the cheese you can possibly eat!”

It was an exchange of spontaneous laughter for the remainder of the night, which not seemed so much to her, as her nights stood close to infinite. However, she knew that she would need the sleep tomorrow, so she would brush her teeth and tuck herself in her bed without my supervision. She hated being helped; she was eight and wanted to do everything herself, so I didn’t stop her. I feel like I raised her right enough to make her own decisions.

One early morning, she came up to me while I was in the kitchen. We had a one-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, right beside the train tracks that would always come minutes before the sunset, around our bedroom to a window we kept sealed for the sake of some fraction of the audacity. She knew when to get up, take a shower, laundry or take a walk around the block if she felt sick and avoid all the closed parts of town with narrow streets and subways. However this morning, Ava woke up before the trains paced around the rooms, hearing the jitters of pans and the creak of the floorboards instead and skulking around in curiosity. She stood for an amount of moments, watching me pull this metallic box of matches from the highest cabinet.

“Let me try!”

“I got it, hold on…”

Of course, I knew how to properly strike a match. After a few loud sighs of discomfort unmotivated attempts, I reluctantly hand the package to Ava, whom, for a moment, fiddled with the contents, seeing the simplicity of a small metal box, staring at the apple wood within, feeling the elasticity of each match. Her dazzling pupils lit as she stroked her first match. I noticed for a moment when the sparks ignited, her eyes blossomed into details with blue etched patterns, and for the eternity, we were surrounded by theses entanglement of leaves, encrusted to the tip with the same patterns from Ava’s eyes. The sound of the rolling winds were enough to extinguish me, her breath,  the rustle of the leaves somewhere off in the distanced led an eerie silence, and then the tremors. And then came the quakes that shook the foundation of the room and started spewing dust into the air. It engulfed the both of us before I could open the windows.

And then I noticed the saddest looking girl in the world, a small puppy who’s been thrown into a crowd and kicked too many times but still panting and curious as to what was going on, relentless to find her companion. She walked over to me, putting down what seemed to be her temporary world at the time, now touching my forehead and looking in my ears and mouth, checking for a pulse by pressing against my neck. The hands were somewhat ethereal, weaving images into my head and for a moment, I think I saw her again.

It’s weird noticing how low the ceiling was and how much of the wallpaper remained in decadence, cracked etches, loose floorboards and all It would never cease to leave my mind. I realized this and, going through a phase of guilt followed by a sense of peace. I couldn’t help myself but burst into smiles.

                “Are you alright, dad?”

Yeah, it’s getting harder at the moment.

Finding things that interest me is an anomaly. I mean, sure, I start off my day at 8am, take my meds and go about my daily upkeep. It’s sad to say the highlight of my day was helping my chameleon with his (or her?) shedding issues.

I wake up with no one in the house and sometimes I fall asleep the same way. I have access to a car, eighth tank of gas but it will take me anywhere I need to go. After the little intervention from the previous night before, I’m not so sure of anything that I do. Grant, the editor-in-chief at my soon-to-be college, accepted my ‘expertise’ in lending a hand for the newspaper. 

My mentality is that I can make most systems more efficient in terms of connections, members, product. You know, things that a newspaper should have.

Then there’s my other phase where I can make it more than just a newspaper. I could organize mock news packages, scout out for sponsors, advertise for businesses in the area… My mentality replies to itself as: “Why not?”

Why not. Others ask simply: “Why?”. As in, why bother.

That’s where I crumble and lay down in a hole of broken possibilities and ideas. Are they even good ideas? And if so, ‘why’ should I?

And for my research that isn’t worth a damn. Again, the anecdote sings its meaning. 

And then I forget the purpose altogether.

The little French girl with whiskers on the side

The overture of the eyes

The tremolo of her on the phone

Yet surprised

She spoke in a lonesome monotone

Of things she’s never seen before.

She thought of home for a moment

Yet surprised

She thought of you.

In the end, all motivations and aspects of success derive from my stepfather.

The intervention wasn’t lovely, either. To have both parents in a small Mediterranean restaurant, properly dressed as though both came from the working environment and me… Laced with house clothes.

And it peeked to my interest, the generic help wanted sign outside. 

“Maybe I could talk to Grant about sponsoring this place, for the newspaper. I could send  a graphics design team to take a few pictures”. 

“Is he still on the Concerta?” he spoke without looking up, I assume in response to me, but instead to Mother.

“What does that have to do with it?”

The dinner wasn’t worth the opportunity to come to an ultimatum later on at home. 

“From what we’ve seen, the signs, the psychologist… they make me sad”, he spoke after I called them both and stated I was ready to speak. “She,” the psychologist, I presume, “told me that you went forty minutes straight and made no sense. And these theories, matrices or whatever, that you shared with the therapist, they made no sense either. All the signs are here”. I didn’t see any remorse or show of concern in his gestures, however. 

Given anything in my defense doesn’t carry weight in this accusation, as the possibility of anything I said afterwards could not be what I mentally implied. I’m at a loss for communication, especially at my parents. Their litigation lie on my medication for neural stimulants.

I am a college drop out trying to re-attend the semester. I rely on these medication in hopes of propelling me to find a long term treatment, or maybe even a cure; a short term answer in order to catalyze progress for a more efficient answer, something more permanent. 

Am I considered someone who is dependent on these drugs? Am I to trust in what someone else has observed through inductive assumptions given that I may have a possible psychosis I’m unaware of?

I don’t think those patients are aware of their surroundings even, nor care about improving the world around them. 

There’s a fine line for eccentric behavior, I suppose. But no,  it’s not insanity.

Finding things to do gets harder each day.

I could read a book, that’s all and well. Do the dishes, clean the house. Work out every now and then. And then what.

People call me delusional.

The report I requested on my psychology visit stated my mind as one who “flirts with insanity”, given that the girl always wore one piece sweaters as dresses along with a giant diamond rock on the right pointer finger, and then her winding up for the Betty Boop effect: The intricate stare, body language of boredom on a date that made me nervous as all hell, so I spoke about nothing.

And all I could very well register was the blank expression above her lips. A part of me thought that she simply never anticipated someone as young to become one of her clients; Jennine who was the lovely receptionist at the front would always exclaim more traversed individuals, those with wrinkles like atlases across their faces and shimmering eyes like looking through a skyview window. But no. Just me.

“If two celebates fall in love and marry, what keeps the marriage going for thirty years?”

I spoke.

So much for the dinner and a show

Ill-prepared and attired with the 

ugliest dress ever sewn.

But the curls in lashes and the

aura that you’ve shown

has given me the bare minimum

a sense of home.

And yeah, for the record, you were pretty damn gorgeous

in an orange sundress.

How someone could get away with that is

beyond me,

Replied, the girl who was often

mistaken for trees.

early-onset-of-night:

Now that I’m all old, I know many things. I know for a fact “Losing My Religion” by REM and “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana are both the same song. I know that both are about being trapped in and by the flesh…heart-shaped box? Come on. A box is a material container…the heart? Well…it’s trapped in…

Nicolle, the one and lovely wearing the lovely golden cross on her way to the courtyard, smiling so sweetly, but not with her lips, just eyes like windows that encompassed the enclosure. She imitated that of Leonardo’s vision, whereas her face beheld these fascinating textures and evenly proportioned eyes in juxtaposition to the daffodils she tended to in the center. 

It was the grove, and she did have a beating heart beneath the white rags that encompassed, or perhaps delude her presence from those around. The one man of militaristic qualities, alabaster, mumbling. Dead. 

Anonymous asked: What are you currently doing with your life? Anything you're looking forward to? and do you have any suggestions of where in Dallas a musician trying to get into the local band scene could go. Thank You.

I’m puzzled by the first sentence and the fact that you’re trying to ask me for reference help and networking advice without presenting yourself, dear Anonymous. I’m also equally puzzed that, out of all the cities that you have picked, you decided to specify the major city that I live the closest to, which either signals that you know me in person or you thoroughly searched through my blog history for clues.

With that said, I have nothing to say to you unless you properly identify yourself. Your concerns require so.

Depression: 8/10
Stress: 9/10
Content: 4/10

I am not a happy person.

And the truth is, no one is natuallly happy, or ever really, starting from the day they were born up until the second you’ve exhausted your personal resources for whatever reason. Happiness, which has been revered as the prestigious ascension for any individual following the unspecified point of evolutionary conscious thought, in fact, doesn’t exist.

Given this case, I find the concept of happiness to be entirely misdirected and an inaccurate concept as to how to define your life.

The key word is content: the “job well done” feeling. Given that you satisfy your personal conditions of being content, your outlook on life (more specifically, you) will be more susceptible to branching off to more beneficial motivation, moods and relations.

The big question: What makes you content?

I feel like this is something that could be easily said, but not implimented unless documented and thoroughly analyzed. Everyone is capable of being content with themselves, for the day, the month, or an encounter. It’s the level of satisfaction you have for you, no considerations of others, family, loved ones, friends, relations, everyone else included.

Analyze your self and ask ‘What am I satisfied with?’ and ‘What am I not satisfied with?’.

One stradegy I have started is The Morning Phrase, which seems promising.
http://www.dragosroua.com/the-morning-phrase/

Of course, no one can be absolutely content with their life either. Your subconscience keeps you from doing so with the paradoxial human trait called ambition. Ironically, the trait implimented in all of us that drives our motivation and goals can also be the hindering emotion that can, and will, utterly destroy us. The most universally relative outcome for the backfire of ambition is simply: “There is nothing else I can do”. An anti-paradox, if there isn’t a better way to define it.

Do not fall into this trap. Instead, I’ve learned to tell myself otherwise if I do fall into the wrong side of ambition. Hopefully, at the closing point of your self-analyzation, span from now to some other predetermined point in the past (for my senario, I will specify ‘from the minute I woke up today’) and tell yourself:

‘There is nothing else I can do today’ and concurrently, ‘I have done something today’.

If you can agree with yourself on these statements, you have achieved a certain level of content.

I take it into consideration of

All the thoughts I’ve

Put into your head

The stupid things I’ve said

And a cluttery acquaintance

With two pairs of eyes 

That keeps a certain

Motion in check.

I have to say, I’ve never met someone quite like you before.

And I can say that now because there’s never been someone who’s spoken back to me in a conversation, along with other features, lips like a fish and eyes wide and lashes batting out intricately. You are a pristine machine, designed with all known sciences. Post-modern woman sitting in a table around old fashioned men, bored of politics and rising income taxes where they don’t necessarily matter to you yet and you fall into a complicated coma only to wake up hours later when it’s time to go. 

That’s the tragedy of the situation, too. Waking up.