Life is so fragile.

Like a butterfly fluttering past, we may not even notice it nor pay it any attention.

It may flutter past us, without us even knowing.

But when one is crushed before our own eyes, they are flooded with tears.

We cry not because of the horror, but because it's in that moment that you realise how beautiful that butterfly was, and in that moment you know it's too late.

The truth is you never know how long your butterfly will stay.

It will leave whenever it sees fit, without your readiness and without your permission.

So we must cherish our butterfly, we must take in all of its beauty and embrace it with all the love within the hearts.

Because one day, without our permission, it will fly away, and all we can do is enjoy it while we are blessed with its presence.

Rest in peace Mitch, you were gone way too soon.

Wishes Don't Happen on 11/11

I know, it's been a very long time.

So dust off your eyes and look to the screen once more, for love has me writing again.

I hope you enjoy, and please savour the moment.

Because I feel that it will be a while until this voice speaks again.

Inspired by the works of Shakespeare, a girl and how sometimes, things just don't work out.

Wishes Don't Happen on 11/11

Ever since my first yearning breaths in this world

I have been told, by both the young and old

That the heart is the wisest and strongest

Of all that a man will ever possess

Ever since I could listen and hear,

People, pictures, strangers and friends have said

That one must heed to his heartly desires

Above and amidst, the roaring whipsers

Of reason and logic, as their guidance

compares not with the immutable cry

Of the infinite truth that lies within,

the yearning dark cavern of a man's chest

Ever since I could look forth and see

My eyes were bedazzled, with the beautiful vision

That one must follow what he sees as true

That which he hears as the voice of his heart

For love does conquer all and everything else

For the dim light of a man's beating heart

Can light up the greatest chasms of dark

So I listened and watched, I understood

That all that did matter was love, love, love

So the voices of reason and logic

Promptly silenced themselves, lending their ears

To the beating commands my heart did shout

And I chased and I caught what I searched for

But there were no fireworks, no hip hip hoorays

Just jealousy, sadness and copius pain

Soon as I thought, I'd finished the puzzle

The world came and threw it out of my hands

As soon as the final piece did fall in

Everything did so quickly fall apart

My friends and my brothers, those of my blood

Did cease to speak, opting to give instead

a painful treatment of silent detest

I'd walk past my brother, he'd walk past me

And we'd stare at the ground, not looking up

Him not wanting to see the man

that had taken what was rightfully his

I not wanting to see his eyes

For they would have been brimming with rage

And it was then as I stared at the ground

That I really did see, what love had done

And as I sat alone in my silence

I heard the fruits of my own hearts advice

I stared and I saw, I listened and heard

I looked and my friends were not there

Just pity and consolation from kind mouths

So I then closed my eyes, listened instead

But none of my brothers did speak to me

And it was within this piercing silence

That I heard my head say, its first wise words

"Why the hell did you listen to him?"

For whilst my heart beats strong, and much louder

Than the tiny voices in my vex'd skull

I shall cease to listen to its pulsing

and allow the voice of my mind to guide me

For the voice of my mind gives good counsel

And the voice of my heart only gives pain

And so forth, I then did come to decide

That the dead weight of my humanity

Shall give way to invincilibility

So with this statement I have come to say

That I renounce, reject and relinquish

the dumb advice of the voice in my chest

Though I am hoping that perhaps one day,

he'll speak and have something worthwhile to say

But until then, I will cease to listen

A Ray of Light Amongst the Clouds.

another dull day

repetition and routines

is this, what life is?

looking for escape

frantically I'm searching

my eyes, see nothing

a new thought hits me

my eyes open, the answer

is inside myself

A Nice Hard Slap in the Face.

Foreword:

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog and I'm happy to say that I've written something new. This piece is unlike anything I've ever written before. It's darker, sharper, wittier and hopefully a lot more powerful. If I predict correctly, eyebrows will raise, family members will worry and maybe even a hint of controversy will surround it. But please, don't worry, I assure you all that I am fine and happy.

This post is not my opinion or point of view on life, but I admit, some things I wrote do ring true to me. Instead I see this as maybe being part of a book that I might write, maybe as a monologue for a derranged, cynical protagonist. I might rewrite this again some day, make it more incitrate and elaborate, connect and interweave ideas a bit better.

But for now all I ask is that you suspend your ideas of the world, forget about about what you were taught was wrong or right and that for the duration of the piece, you place all your morals and principles on the shelf and simply, enjoy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my latest work:

CANCER PATIENT

I feel like a cancer patient.

Weak and decaying, slowly crawling towards his end.

I stare into the mirror and see myself slowly dying.

My life is ending one minute at a time.

And I can't do a damn thing about it.

I feel lethargic, I’ve got no hair, I’m stuck in the same spot, I can’t move, I feel as if there’s no hope.

All I’m missing is the damn IV drip.

Oh wait, I’ve just remembered that I do have that.

Every morning the cancer patient wakes up and clears his puffy bloodshot eyes.

He looks to the left of himself and he sees the IV rack next to him.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Every morning I wake up and look at the table beside my bed.

And I see the same clock that I’ve looked at for the past 3 years.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

One second of my life wasted, and another, and another.

The cancer patient gets out of bed so he can undergo treatment. So he can be “fixed”

I get out of bed, take a shower, brush my teeth, look at that hideous creature that I call “me” and I undergo treatment as well. I turn up at the treatment facility, I’m there for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. This wonderful treatment facility is commonly referred to as school.

Here you are given all the correct medication, they place all the good stuff inside you and this fights all of the bad things inside your body.

-There’s 2 capsules of fear to treat that infection called free will.

-A spoonful of peer pressure to make sure that you don’t contract something like a personality.

-A glass of left wing ideals adds to your balanced diet and allows your body to receive all important nutrients such as propaganda.

-And a few injections of useless shit keeps you occupied so you don’t learn anything dangerous, or in non medical terms “something worthwhile”.

I look around the room and see the other patients, their treatment seems to be going along quite nicely. Free of opinions, unburdened by intellect, clear from infections such as ideals or reasoning and most of all unable to resist or put up a fight against the good doctors who run our lives. The treatment has worked, these kids are cured.

I’m still sick.

But luckily there are still good doctors trying to help me, these doctors are called teachers.

Teachers.

They treat their patients quite well.

If you slip up and misbehave, they beat you with the bedpan of detentions, marks and phone calls.

Every time you waste a minute of the teacher’s class time, they’ll waste 10 minutes of your lunch break. Every time you and your friends speak to loudly, the teacher’s eyes go wide, her chest puffs out and she screeches as if every bone in her body has just been broken. Take the student’s action, amplify it by ten times, throw it back at them and watch them quietly soil themselves.

Revenge is the best option, two eyes for an eye. These are the great lessons that they will teach you.

They scream and threaten until you piss yourself, then they pick up the bedpan and throw your own piss in your face.

Drenched in your own piss, you go back home

Freedom at last. You drop your heavy school bag and make your way to the couch. You turn on the television and you hold down the big plastic button in the middle of your controller for precisely 1.5 seconds until you hear that all familiar *beep*.

Every afternoon you sit on your couch, fight terrorists and save the world. You feel so good, you feel like you’re fighting for something worthwhile. What you're actually fighting is all those teachers that you didn’t have the balls to stand up to. I know that every time you press R1 and you see +100 flash onto the screen, you’re thinking of that time Mrs. So and So yelled at you for being late. I know every time you pull those imaginary triggers on your imaginary Akimbo P90s you’re imaginarily blasting Mr. So and So’s imaginary piss back into his own face. You think you’re fighting everything you hate in you life, but you’re just fighting your own imagination.

But no matter how many times you press those buttons and think of everything you hate, it doesn’t make it go away. You got a 10 kill streak? Your team won the round? You’ve got the highest kill count out of all of your friends?

Guess what?

Your grades still suck, you’re still failing year 10 and Mrs. So and Ao is still angry at you for being late.

All your problems are still there, you’re just bathing in an illusion.

Sometimes I envy the cancer patient, at least he’s fighting something real.

You think that you’re free, you think that sitting on your ass and letting the light from the digitally rendered gore and explosions wash over you makes you a rebel.

What you don’t realise is that your parents paid 500 dollars for that Sony Playstation 3™.

What you don’t think about is how Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2™costs $120 dollars from EB Games.

When your grubby little hands clasp themselves around the nice black plastic of the Sony Dualshock™ Analog™ Wireless™ controller, you feel like you’re in control. You feel like you’re Sgt. Soap MacTavish spear tackling a bad guy out of three storey building. You feel like you’re Captain Price busting out of the Gulag and scaring stereotypical middle eastern terrorists with your awesome handlebar moustache. You feel like you’re Makarov mowing down hundreds of innocent civilians and delaying dozens of flights with your M240 light machine gun. When in reality, you’re just that average teenage kid who goes to school every day and doesn’t really know what to do with his life.

When in reality, playing video games until the whites of your eyes become overgrown with branches of bulging red veins does not put you in control of anything but a few pixels that have absolutely no bearing on anything but the momentary illusion of your imaginary war-driven world. Instead, you forfeit what little control you have left to the corporations. You throw your money and time at the feet of fat stubby men in overpriced suits, who are probably sitting in nice mahogany furnished meeting rooms smirking and Hi-5™ing each other over your stupidity.

You could have given that money to a charity and changed a little bit of the world, made a difference in the life of an unfortunate, starving child. You could have spent your time helping at your local soup kitchen feeding the homeless, or reading to the terminally ill kids in the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Instead you spent your money on a damn video game, instead you wasted your time trying to get 500 headshots with the M4a1 so you could get a cool looking title that no person in the world would ever give half a shit about.

Infinity Ward has placed their leash around your neck.

Activision owns you.

You are Sony’s bitch.

These companies have taken you by the wrists and handcuffed you to the bedpost of your exploitability. Every time a new game comes out or another expansion pack is released, the same sadomasochistic ritual takes place.

They strike their whip against your pale white skin, the slapping sound of the black USB charging cable hitting your flesh and bones becomes a pulsing rhythm, a reminder of who owns who.

“BUY! BUY! BUY! GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT! YOU NEED ME!”

The suit wearing Sony executive shouts from behind his leather mask.”

“YES! YES! YES! HIT ME AGAIN! I’LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING, JUST HIT ME ONE MORE TIME!”

Is what you scream back every time.

Gasping for breath, screaming for the next instalment, clawing for the new Call of Duty Map pack,

yeah, you’re totally in control.

After wiping the blood from your body, and applying ice to the big red welts that your sugar daddy had just slapped onto you, you go upstairs to take a break and relax.

You’ve had enough animated gore and sadomasochistic whipping for the day.

You drag yourself up the stairs, open up the door to your room and collapse into your bed. You reach over to the table and grab your brand new Apple iPod Nano, you just want to “chill” and listen to your generic pop music. And then you see it.

It’s in the furthest corner of your room, where you had thrown it so carelessly a few hours before. The jagged teeth of the half opened zipper send a cold chill down your spine. The mere sight of it wraps your body up in a blanket of cold sweat and goose bumps. Your heart has jumped into your throat, you nervously gulp it down. It’s your schoolbag, and its menacing stare beckons you to come closer. You cautiously pace towards the worn fabric, your heart beats faster with every step, you grab the zipper with your cold pale hand

and... BAM!

The long arm of the education system stretches out of the back compartment of your navy blue, standard issue schoolbag and slaps you in your stupid little passive-aggressive, brainwashed face.

Homework.

The government’s mental conditioning scheme even seeps into your home. The dark vines of the upcoming project creep into the walls of your house and wrap themselves around your neck. The house is the sanctuary of the family, and family is what the government cares the most about. After all, those politicians are all family men too. I’m sure Kevin Rudd is all about looking after his two kids and raising them up to be good and proper people who don’t break laws or say naughty words. The private jets and round the world flights are nothing but extras to his happy and complete family life.

And here is the government, all those nice family men who are meant to be looking after your families as well as they look after theirs.

And here they are pouring this mind numbing poison down all of our underdeveloped teenage throats.

Oh whoops, did I say poison?

I meant to say medicine.

After all, doctor Rudd knows what’s best for all of us.

So you stay up all night, furiously typing away on your laptop trying to get your project done on time. After several hours of writing and rewriting, of furious clicking and frustration, you finish it. You wait for that feeling of achievement to wash over you, but you’re too tired to feel anything. There isn't really anything to feel in this world anymore.

It's all just one big waiting room. We're all cancer patients, our lives under the thumbs of the select few who have the priviledge of running the hospital. The choking grip of the media, the brainwashing ideals pumped into us by the government, it sucks the life out of us just the way chemotherapy strips that poor kid of his hair. We all say that we're fighting it, that we're doing everything we can to get better, but they're just words, words that are never followed by actions. They are nothing but empty syllables that dribble out of our gaping mouths.

Because, in reality, we're all just waiting to die.

And that's why we treasure sleep so much, because those few hours are the closest thing we have to death. So you go to sleep, with big dark circles around your cold unfeeling eyes, signs that the treatment is working well.

Then you wake up the next morning, ready to undergo treatment again.

Afterword:

Is this what my life has become?

Is this endless sea of grey monotony all that I will ever swim in?

Maybe there’s nothing we can do.

Maybe it’s too late.

Maybe we’re too weak

Maybe we’re beyond hope.

Or

Maybe it’s up to us to break the shackles.

Maybe it’s up to us to tear down the boundaries.

Maybe, just maybe

it’s up to us to take control of our lives and breathe for the first time.

Yep, everyone probably thinks I'm gay now.

A few days ago I found myself sitting quietly on a tram in the city of Melbourne.

As I gazed out of the heavily etched windows of the tram, I got lost in a far away state of thinking as I often did. But this time, I reflected upon a topic that I don't usually give much thought to,

love.

And in my few moments of contemplation I came upon some fairly basic, but quite enlightening realisations.

I. Love is Power

The great philosopher Machiavelli once said something along the lines of:

"It is better to be feared than loved, because fear can be controlled, whilst love cannot."

Whilst this is true, I believe that love is much more powerful than fear.

A dog may do a trick, because he fears the punishment from a vengeful owner.

But he will risk his life to pull a drowning master from a lake, because the master loved him first.

A soldier may train hard, out of fear of punishment and embarassment.

But he will give his life for the love of his country.

But I cannot control love, so therefore I cannot use its power.

However, what I can do is allow love to control me...

No, I do not mean basing my life on lusty passions, or momentary desires.

I do not mean blindly throwing yourself around every time your pulse quickens.

This is the path to self destruction and the destruction of everything around you.

I mean to allow love be the driving force, and the goal behind the things you do.

If you allow love to be your motivation and reason behind your actions, you can achieve something truly great.

Take a girl out for dinner, not because you want to have sex with her, but because you love her.

Work hard, not because you fear punishment, but because you love seeing the results.

Fight, not because you hate something, but because you love something enough to fight for it.

Even at just a glance, the people that have achieved truly wonderful things out of this world, did so out of love.

-Nelson Mandela loved the idea of equality and a land free of Apartheid and he even showed love to his prison guards, so he found freedom and ended up becoming the president of South Africa.

-Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X loved their people, so they brought them freedom.

-Mother Theresa loved anyone and everyone, her love made this world a better place.

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Their actions may have had more influence, and it is debatable that they would have had a greater impact on humanity.

But their actions were based on lust, greed, lunacy and a senseless thirst for power.

While their motives seemed logical, whilst their causes can be argued as just in some senses....

They brought the world nothing but harm and suffering, they never achieved their goal.

They didn't get any closer to a perfect world, not even the twisted concept that they each possesesed.

And you want to know why?

Because they did not act out of love.

Act out of love, not out of fear or hatred.

And by doing this you can accomplish and become something much more powerful than yourself.

II. Love is Uncontrollable

Love is like the weather,

It can can be like sunshine, and bring a smile to your face,

It can be nice and warm, making you feel great inside,

It can be a gentle breeze that caresses you,

It can be a balmy summer's evening shared between yourself and someone special,

Or it can be rain, turning your smile upside down,

It can be a biting frost, leaving you cold and alone,

It can be hail, bringing you pain as it strikes against your flesh,

It can be a devestating hurricane laying waste to everything around you,

You can hide from love, like you can hide from a storm.

But be aware, if you take shelter from the storm you are also blocking yourself out from all the other things love has to offer.

If you hide from love you may never feel the cold rain, but you will never feel the warm sunshine.

But if you are brave enough to push through the storm, you will see the sunlight.

You can decide how you act towards love, whether you choose to hide from it or to embrace its pleasures.

You can take shelter in loneliness, loneliness will never hurt you as much as heartbreak can, but you can never know true happiness without someone else.

But however you choose to act towards love, it still remains out there. Even if you try to hide from it, love still exists and it is uncontrollable and unstoppable.

Like the weather, you cannot control love,

at best, you can predict where it will go.

You cannot choose who you love or who you like.

There might be someone who's best for you in every way, but you don't feel for them.

There isn't that pull, that attraction, your mind adds up all the pieces and that person is perfect for you.

But your heart screams to be with someone else.

When it comes to love towards another person, we cannot choose where it directs us.

Love grabs us by the wrists and throws us around as it pleases.

We are left helpless, like puppets to an unseen master.

The uncontrollability and unpredictability of love is an everlasting and unchangeable fact, just like how the sun must rise and set and how it must rain on some days and shine on others.

The only thing that we can do, is hang on and enjoy the ride.

Colourless

This is an interprative response to a video entitled "The Carnival is Over". The reponse was originally posted on the Teenwaves blog, but the owner suggested that I place it on my own as well. The original post/stimulus material can be found here:
http://teenwaves.blogspot.com/2010/01/opinion-piece-6-carnival-is-over.html


I believe that “The Carnival” is a metaphor for all the things in the world that are vivid and fascinating. All the things full of colour, life and vibrance. Most people that are intriguing and different are generally regarded as freaks and made outcasts in society. These freaks are the members of “The Carnival”. The song mourns the loss of these people, it weeps over the fact that people are becoming less interesting. It is a melancholy protest against the loss of personality and the need to fit a certain mould.

There are still people out there who are regarded as “crazy” and “different”, but most of them are missing a certain shine, a certain vibrance.... they are missing colour. Not in a literal sense, but most freaks nowadays are eccentric just for the sake of the attention. The “colour” is that uniqueness inside all of us that we keep hold down, in fear of judgement from the other faceless drones around us. It’s that genuine individuality in us, not a manufactured and forced desire to be “different from the rest” for the sake of personal benefit, but a very deep and honest aspect within us. That’s what I believe the video itself was representing. It was a circus complete with shapes, acrobatics, amazing feats and dazzling visual sensations, but it was missing colour. It was quite a sensation to the eyes, but it was dark and dreary. It had all the requirements, but it wasn’t natural, it didn’t have that “colour”, and without colour there is no joy.

Raise or Fold

Foreword:

The following piece is a descriptive passage, which could possibly end up becoming part of a short story somewhere down the line. It describes a pivotal moment in a game of poker between the hero Michael and several other characters. The game has boiled down to two contestants, Michael and the unreadable man who sits across of him.

Raise or Fold

Michael stared across the table, the man's dark, emotionless eyes met his piercing blue-eyed gaze. Emotions, mannerisms, facial expressions, it seemed that the intimidating hunk of flesh that sat before him had none. He towered above the green table like a bear attending a child's tea party. The red backs of the cards looked miniscule in comparison to his grizzly hands. Michael wondered for a second how many lives those hands had brought to a screeching halt.

The faint amber light of the chandeleir shone on his dark marble like skin, it exposed his facial features. The distinctive scar under his left eye, a nose that looked like it had been broken far too many times, and most of all his eyes. Those dark, unreadable eyes. They were devoid of any emotion, absent of any colour and most importantly, giving no indication to what was coming next. The man never spoke a word, but he managed to say more than anyone else on the table.

The man's chips lay in the middle of the table, mocking Michael. It's as if the small plastic ellipses were whispering to him, interrogating him, asking him what he was going to do next. Michael removed his gaze from the blue chips and focused them on the cards that he held in his hand. It was simple, raise or fold. Michael glanced once more at the frightening mass before him. He took a deep breath, and pushed all of his chips into the middle. All or nothing. It wasn't just a saying anymore, it was now a question. The cards would give the answer.