Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if everything worked out?

Irrespective of the grandiose nature, and concepts that surround life and ontology; wouldn’t it just be wonderful if all the things we’ve dreamed in our heads, within reason, came to fruition. The simple things.

To wake up every morning, and have my first sight be the glow of your face. Where the first words to stretch my voice will always be “Good morning.”,  because I truly know it will be.

To look on the couch, and watch you read your book – with your toes wrapped in a winter blanket, by a fire that heats the fur on the back of our dog that we’ll have.  To see your hair fall over your glasses, and watch you, mesmerised, slowly pull the hair back behind your ear. To watch in slowed time, your eyes meet mine, and remember evermore; how lucky we are.

To sit in a house we call our home, with gentle anticipation of loving friends who’ll visit us the day after, and remind us why we all stay in touch. Where smile and laughter is not uncommon. Where bellies are full, and hearts are warm.

Where ambitions are always on the horizon, but not to fill some void – only to drive us towards tomorrow, where we can spend another day together.

And as the light dims, on each new day, we’ll huddle together for warmth; one that we can only find, in the curve of one another.

As a smile dawns upon my face, and I drift off to sleep – there is no doubt in my mind, that there will only be one thought that fills my heart;

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

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There Isn’t Enough Time With You

There was a time when as the stars passed by in the night outside my window, I would stare out at them with hopeful eyes. They were most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So full of potential, so full of life, so grandiose and yet so small in comparison to the black sky. I saw my future in them, every star a new possibility and awed at their very presence. And they filled my heart, with such great wonder.

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Isn’t it amazing that we share the same time as every other person on this planet Earth, and yet when we are together, each passing moment seems to move so unforgivably faster.

How ironic it is, that no matter how much time I get with you, each second still seems to shorten its length, and that the time I do get vanishes, more fleeting than he last. The more I love you, the more that time seems to slip away from me without my permission. And as I love you more, each and every day. And each and every day I come to realise, more so than before, that no matter how much time I get with you, it will never be enough.

How remarkable it is, that mundane tasks are now no longer taxing. As I make coffee in the morning; if it is for myself, my feet scuff along the carpet and my eyes roll around my head uncouthly. I loosely lift the kettle and the weight of it clashes against my mug. I rub my eyes and shield them from the light of day, as I consider returning to bed instead, and snoozing until I no longer can.

But when I make coffee for you, when I have the pleasure – my heels lift off of the floor as I walk to the kitchen. I select ground of coffee that look the freshest, I stir for longer than usual, to make sure the sugar that you like does not settle at the bottom of the mug that I bought you. I clean the rim with a dishtowel, to ensure it looks as good as I hope it tastes and then I carry it slowly, and I bring it to you with a smile on my face.

I will never tire, not for one day, at the look you give me when I enter the room. The way your resting body seems to come to life, and your eyes meet mine. The way your body rises, with new air, and the way you seem to brighten up the room with every breath. That smile that you give me… that beautiful smile that appears from nowhere. It renders me vulnerable every time.

As the day begins to pass with you, never once is there a moment when I am not completely and utterly in love.

Never before, could I imagined that a human so beautiful, so thoughtful, so kind, and so wonderful could exist in this world, let alone choose to spend their time with me. Never before, could I have thought someone could be so delicate and fragile, and yet so strong and fierce all at once. So caring, so clever, and so determined as you are. Never before could I have dreamed, that a room could be brightened, and that the grey of colours could dissipate into the background, just by your very presence. You bring about the sun to shine the smiles of faces. You are the warmth, through the night.

I could watch the hair fall over the corner of your glasses a thousand times, and still catch my jaw in awe of falling strands. I would watch as your curled fingers grasp around them, and pull them back into place behind your left ear. If I’m very lucky, you’ll smile at me as you do it. And just as in the morning, it will take me by surprise. Suddenly I’m smiling too; although I think I have been for a while and not realised it until now.

At night you sit on the couch with a blanket cradling your toes. Your legs are folded underneath you, and if a book is not in front of your eyes then you hand rests gently against your chin as you “watch” something on TV. Really, we’re both just trying not to stare at one another. Still, I play the game. I’ll watch random iridescent images flash in the iris of your eyes. A slightly skewed version of those images on your eyes reflects onto your glasses, dancing. You close your eyes. Slowly, your eye lashes begin to open, and you look at me.

I still melt. Every time. If I’m lucky, you’ll give in and look at me first. You’ll shake your head – same as I do. We’re laughing; we’re smiling. Because still it is unbelievable a concept to us, that we love each other as much as we do.

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There was a time when as the stars passed by in the night outside my window, I would stare out at them with hopeful eyes. They were most beautiful thing I had ever seen. So full of potential, so full of life, so grandiose and yet so small in comparison to the black sky. I saw my future in them, every star a new possibility and awed at their very presence. And they filled my heart, with such great wonder.

But that was a time.  Now, as I walk to bed, I do not stare up at the sky, and the splendour of the great beyond outside my window. I close the curtains; I don’t need them anymore.

I lie in bed, and struggle to stay awake for as long as I can; for the dreams I’ll have, could be no comparison to the reality of you. My eyes begin to falter, and I stare at your face as they do. I wish for just one more day; so that I can spend it with you.

And as sleep comes over upon me, I do not miss those days when I gazed out at the sky. For I no longer see my future in the stars, but instead I see them in you.

Hurt

If you think you are irreparably hurt; remember that at some point, you have lied to your mother.

You have broken the heart; of the person who formed yours, and stood steadfast staring into eyes that love you, and told lies and untruths. And as she watched you, wrapped in clothes that she worked so hard to put you in, she was torn and crying inside. All the while she had to remain resilient and strong, for little did you know that you were not brave, cunning, and clever – but instead small, weak, and deceitful. How very childish, that you cherished your pride in that moment, more than you did unconditional love.

How very foolish that would be? – If you were to repeat that again. Wouldn’t it be foolish?

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To let pride, and pity take precedence over someone, or a group of people even, whom love you unconditionally? To let such a small thing, as being right be worth the hurt you may cause?

It does not always matter that you are right. Many men and women whom have lived for pride, the knowledge of being right, and stubbornness have done so for a lifetime – and in return they have died sad and alone. And realised that being right, was not so worth it after all. That being right, or proving it, never did hold any value, and the hurt it caused to others only served to worsen their life, and yours. And the horrible, soul destroying fact of that scenario – is that if you were to do the same; if you were to live in such a manner, and realise only on your deathbed, that it was all not worth it at all, and that you are scared, having driven everyone who may care for you and love you – that you lived a life no where near as happy as the one you could have, you will then, after some time realise a second thing.

The second thing you will realise, is that you cannot undo it. There is no going back, and there is no time to fix it. You will slowly fall asleep into darkness, with tears in your eyes, and no one around you who truly loves you, as you turned your partner away and any children you had, and you will realise it was all not worth it. It was all not worth it, and you cannot change. You will die, knowing you are bitter. You will die, knowing you will be forgotten.

Think proactively. Do not build that future for yourself. Do not be the person now, that the you in the future will regret. If someone matters to you, let them know. And show them partly through words, but mostly through action, that they matter more to you, than pride. Do not lie, do not act selfishly, do not deceive, and do not degrade. They are worth more than that, and so are you.

We all make mistakes. We all act hastily. Rashly. Out of anger or pain. And you are human, so even the best will do this. But be sure to minimise it. And most importantly, if you do it, be sorry for it. Show that through changed behaviour, you will not repeat the same mistakes. Slowly you will build a life where pride is not a concept you hold important.

Understand that hurt to a loved one, intentional or otherwise, is such an abhorrent concept – you should not aspire to do it – especially for the boring sake of “winning”.

Show this to others. To loved ones, or otherwise. Spread it around. Hope it rubs off on them, and that next time they go to do something hurtful in the name of pride, they will take a moment and think of this. Your loved ones and theirs are worth more, than ego.

Discussion: Language, without barometer

Suppose that in ten million years, humanity has been long wiped off the face of the planet. Some life still remains, but it has regressed to a more primitive state, due to some cataclysmic event, caused by our own iniquity, or some element of chance.
No animal that could understand the basics of calculus has existed on the rock called Earth for a very long time.

When one day, entirely by chance, our no longer blue planet is discovered, by some nomadic civilisation, who managed to achieve travel into the stars without using that same technology to blow each themselves up. In the ruins alone, under the assumption that concrete has eroded into mere particles that blew in the wind, and pages from books lost their ink; this civilisation would be able to piece together very little of what we were. Even if somehow some homestead had managed to endure the withering of time – if it had been cocooned in a blanket of ice, for instance; where would you even begin to understand what objects were?

A slab of metal and glass filled with silicon lines, in the corner of a room, where every piece of furniture is pointed at it. Knives and forks on the dinner table, for fighting no doubt. Window frames on the second floor, because we could jump so high, and often used that for quick access. Cloth in wooden containers, powdered energy in glass jars, animal carcasses in large white frozen boxes. It would be a frightening world of guesswork without a basis by which to guess. Everyone has had that experience of trying to tell a story, that was funny at the time, but after telling it out loud you find the other person does not find it so. Think of this, except not only do you not speak the same language, but you share no history, no culture, no prospects, no allegiances, and perhaps not even the same galaxy.

Now let’s suggest that humanity as a collective decides that the idea of a future civilisation discovering our remains and not being able to fabricate who we were is just too harsh a thought to bare. So they decide to devise a solution to this, or at least to devise a means in which to help these future nomads. And as a collective, they have decided to accept applications from anyone on the planet, and accept any ideas anyone on the planet may have on how best to communicate with the future visitors.

The problem then becomes the focus of this article: How do you communicate with these visitors? How do you construct a language, without barometer? In our own world, translations of works are inherently different to the language in which they were originally written, mainly because there is no word which translates over 100% – but at least we have something by which we can vaguely relate it to. But with an alien visitor -you don’t even have a set of words, objects, animals, or plants, by which you could guarantee you share. Not only this, but you cannot even predict the senses this alien might use to perceive the world around them. It is not enough to suggest you could communicate in a language that is a concatenation of a number of languages that are most frequently used or most expressive; because you cannot guarantee this creature has ears. Or perhaps they do but do not hear in the same frequency as we do. Perhaps you wish to communicate in symbols? – Well it has taken us thousands of years to build up semiotics to the point we can look at something and register to which category it belongs to at a glance, and even now most humans struggle with all of them, they differ in time and they differ from culture to culture. Equally, as before, the visiting nomads may not have eyes. Or if they do, maybe they do not see colour in the same range that we do. Lets say that they do have eyes – well what do they even register as a note? Say they looked at English at a glance, they could interpret the white space between the letters as the symbols rather than the letters themselves.

The possibilities are near endless for interpretation. This would be fair to say of something that came from our planet, or even our galaxy. But this could be a visitor that we may not even recognise as intelligent life, and yet regardless, it is. So much so that it had travelled through the stars to find us.

Furthermore then, we have an obligation to protect intelligent life as best as we can. To avoid any kind of pain and anguish where we can. If something can intelligent understand the universe and perceive its own consciousness, it must be our responsibility to ensure it.
It is important then to have this discussion – say we are aware of what brought about our destruction. It is our obligation then, to warn these visitors of the dangers we could not avoid. Perhaps areas of contamination, physical or otherwise, should be left in the past and certain technologies either avoided or proceeded with caution. The question being, how do we do this?

How would you communicate to something that may not even perceive the world in the same way that you do? And on a more personal note… Would you? Would you personally make an application to share your thoughts on how best to do this?

Arguably our only efforts to communicate without language thus far, is music. For thousands of years, we have communicated celebration, happiness, fear and war to others through music. No lyrics required to communicate exactly how we feel. Perhaps this would be our best bet to begin. Perhaps the sound of children laughing, the rain forest, or the ocean reaching the shoreline. The times at which we as a species were most at peace.
But then, while this may provide an example of our environment – it doesn’t necessarily define who we were or are. When we were good or bad. When we loved, and when we hated.

If we continue on a scientific trend – would we leave behind a hologram of a child as an ark of information, to provide context to who we were? Would this be the most realistic option, to convey our messages of peace in as many images and as many words as we possibly could? Could this child hold out a hand, with the bumps on his hand spelling in braille, and his words echoed in every other language, and Morse code? Would what the child spoke even resonate on any parallel? Should we literally throw sounds and light in some form of pattern, and hope that something sticks? Data dump our history and languages in as many different patterns as possible? Perhaps an AI, that can use everything that we are currently to determine what COULD be encountered in the future? Statistically, this is probably necessary. As much as they would like to earn us, we may need to learn it first, in the form of some machine learning. To discuss topics not only do we not understand yet, but we may never even have encountered in our cosmically short lifespan.

What if we decided that we wanted to communicate, only that which we wanted to communicate. I.e. perhaps we would wish to leave out the horrid parts of our history, or tell much more embellished versions of it in myth, legend, and art rather than the much more hard to swallow science and objectivity. If we were to do that, how could we separate semantics from pragmatism? To say very clearly what is, and not what we meant to say. This applies to our language, and also our visualisation of our culture. Say we built, or painted, or sculpted a grand cathedral, and hid it in some frozen ark – we may try to convey how complex and grandiose we were in our architectural choice – only to find that our visitor friends interpret the use of space as inefficient. They may regard our distinct lack of compactness instead, as a sign we were not intelligent whatsoever. That we were too wasteful. Perhaps then, they would be right.

The questions are endless, and arguably you could discuss for the millions of years we are hypothetically wiped out discussing what we could and should do – if and when we should – why and where we should. In fact, this question, which its infinite possibilities seems to grand a task to bestow upon us, and too great a burden to endure.

But if something is important enough, you must always try. Even if the expected outcome, is failure.

However; the question remains: Would you? And if so, how? How would you begin to construct a language to speak beyond the stars, without barometer?

Go.

Home

Broken heart; and tired mind.

Useless body, set out to find,

A solemn place to belong,

Where you can dance, and write your song.

Where worries past, will not follow,

Torture you, obsess and swallow.

Where what you grow into; matters more,

Than what you were, from long before.

 

Companions come, and surely go,

And while where they went, you’d like to know,

Free they are; let them wander over hill,

And out of sight, forever still.

Love you’ve had, has left you to dwindle,

And still with open heart you’ve managed to rekindle,

Time again sparked hope from ash,

And time again, your body’s been smashed.

 

Bruised and cracked, imperfect and scarred,

Your thoughts and feelings, permanently marred.

Trust and expectation are always cautious,

Every bout of closeness, makes you noxious.

Never been given reason for kind,

Yet still your heart, and that word entwined,

And so through fog you wander on,

To find the place, where you belong.

 

It’s darkness out there, with fumbling hand,

You cast it out, searching for land,

In lieu of that, as you’ve found times past

Instead you feel somebody, at last.

They hold you tight, and pull you close,

You could not tell who needs who most,

But of course you would not let on,

Your defences are up, you appear to be strong.

 

You’ll try not to care, for fear of ridicule,

It will go unnoticed, that it’s yourself the fool.

You’ll talk and wonder, and eventually you’ll share,

And at some point you’ll come to realise you care,

You capsulise and notice, every detail

And while you try to find the bad, every time you fail,

While every other has given you reason to doubt,

You find yourself in wonder of what this person is about.

 

There’s hope and wonder now in your eyes,

And try as you will; you can’t disguise.

They’ve broken through; see who you are,

And they adore you still, for that every scar.

Through imperfection they’ll see you perfect,

They’ll see beauty where you see defect.

And as paths ahead split, you wish; nae you know,

They’ll follow you wherever you go.

 

Then at some point, as you both foot down path,

And you try to anticipate what could be aftermath,

You realise you no longer travel simply side by side,

But you walk hand in hand, and together you stride.

You don’t look ahead, and rather stare into eyes,

As the dawning sun, breaks the burning skies.

Together you slow, almost down to a crawl,

Amidst dewy grass, wild land critters answer the call.

You both seem to hear, you need not travel any more,

As together you understand, what you’ve been looking for.

Come away; take them in hand, and lay, for no longer you roam,

What you searched for was love; and so with love – you’re home.

 

Shorts: Bittersweet Sunday

A Sunday is such a bittersweet day,

Where joy is shadowed by Monday not being so far away.

Where you lie and the clock doesn’t seem to slow,

As the time and the dials pass faster than you know.

It appears to be the shortest day of the week,

And it never quite fulfils the relaxation you seek.

But nevertheless, you’re grateful still,

As it starts to recharge, some of your will.

If you’re lucky you lie, with the person you love,

And you cosy with blankets, and thank stars above.

Although time flies; you wouldn’t have it any other way,

For what would a week be, without this bittersweet day.

 

 

 

Shorts: Smiling for a reason.

You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?

A long time has passed, although for all you know, it could’ve been the passing of some moments. You don’t look at your phone, or to the windows, and the sound of the clock has disappeared. Minutes and hours flow past, like tiny brittle rock slipped into a gentle stream, the underbelly of the little rock coursing against the river floor. It too will travel with turbulence, to a place of rest, where it needs to be.

Light fills the room, although not so much as to cause you to look away from the source. Feet are intertwined hanging off the edge of the bed. The two bodies look merged into one from under cover.

By the pillows, her nose is tucked into your shoulder, under the warmth of the sheets. Her cheeks tingle at the softness against her face. The covers bring a comfort, surpassed only by the press of her body along the length of yours. She pulls herself close to you in small motions, like tide lines on the sand. Her skin warms yours, although she clings to you for the heat, and something more.

Her hand rests, fingers splayed out across your chest, lovingly scratching at your skin. She looks at you now and then, hoping to catch your eye; but her beauty is so stark, you cannot hold a gaze for long. When she does not catch your look, she smiles into your chest instead. Occasionally, she lets out a long satisfied sigh as she does it.

Her hair smells sublime. But of nothing you can identify. Your fingers scratch lightly against the small of her back, and your hand smooths out across her body, feeling every groove. You mark them in your memory. You focus on things to remember later; because you can think of no place where you’d find greater joy and comfort. Its your happy place, the place you’ll return to when you need it most. You pull her closer, or hypothetically you do, for there is no closer you could be now. As your fingers run through her hair, you lie and think how thankful you are, that she’s there.

Suddenly you realise the room was never that bright, you were tricked by the ethereal glow that seems to follow her. She has a habit of accidentally tricking you with that.

At some point, she pulls her body to you even more tightly; and as her breasts press against your side, you take a breath, and you sigh.

She looks up and you, with those amazing eyes, entirely piercing and completely vulnerable all at once. She asks you, in almost a whisper, “What’re you smiling at?” with a cheeky grin. She bites her lip and rolls her tongue over the front of her teeth, waiting for the response.

You return the pearly whites, “Nothing.”, you say. But you know fine well you’re smiling for a reason.

You’re happy. You’re so happy. You’re in love.

And that’s all there is to it.

Quote of the Day: Kindness

“You are never too important, to not be kind.”

Where Your Head Should Lay

In my room there is a double bed, in the place I’ve made my stay;

And on one pillow sits a book, where your head should lay.

As the light dims down low, in I tuck my feet;

And I stare at the empty space, where our noses would meet.

I think about you now and then, when you get in my head;

And at those times, I lie and wish, you were that book instead.