Capricious

30 - From Amsterdam With Love

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
- Thomas Edward Lawrence

She was unbelievable. That saucy little creature, hair like fire, mad as hell. Already dwelling in my mind with a night's flirtation and a candid text. Beautifully crazy, sharing challenges like my sun of old. Nothing did come of that chanced encounter though, and now I can't help but dream of her so outrageous and buoying allure, I can't help but hate myself for missing that balance, I can't help but wonder at how such a thing can mean so much when it was barely anything at all.

The world goes on. Always waiting for something. An arbitrary frame of time, detached from the real world with all the flavour of a five course meal; sweet and sour, bitter and divine. From one city to another, a taste of a life in each, with bus and train and car and foot. The waves of Canterbury. The games of London. The parties of Brighton. Journeying through the night. Then awake in this city of red, of sex and drugs and all things vice, in Amsterdam. Tortures and tastes and travelling on by, little regard for sustenance, just flying through these streets. The aged hippie commune bathed in sunlight and trees, drifting near the lake and tripping by the fire. Mind exploding from its rest to tessellate, twist and shout and spiral out of control. It had a certain comforting quality to it, a home against the wind. Then trailing back to the city without a clue what to do, improvising our way from smoke to smoke, more than enough for ages to come. We get lost in a blaze of fire, fuelling our drive or sending us into darkness. Whenever, wherever, it is a constant now, no time for considering anything outside of this. Among grass and trees, or amid cushions and flashing lights, smoking it on and on, consuming our brains, fading from the cycle, but rarely transcending even with so much to burn. Stripped of it all, all responsibility up to what will get me through this day, what excuse do I have to dissolve emotion even further? Just take me away, far, far away.

Thick blue veins wind together to support my floating corpse, held from Earth, held from sky. The sun burns me but I do not care. I love it. As long I am blind to it, I let it take me. Laughter of birds and the singing of children caress my war-torn ears. I inhale a shot of glorious haze, it takes me, removes my mind from my body and melts it, shocks it, saves it. The ground drops loose. There is only my mind. Yet never did I realise how dark it has gotten. It plays upon distress, a trip to suffering I had not expected. I consume more and more to escape all thought. No cares or worries to hamper me now. My mind splits, my ego lost, there is just this magic, this freedom, this lack of need or want I haven't experienced in an age. As far from the world as I dare drift from, then pulled back as the world collides into my mind, a reminder by links that have followed me here. I am bursting. The subtle ache of my body a welcome compliment to this here beautiful death. Return I do for the sake of others, pulling myself away as reality hits me one punch at a time. I am left gaunt and empty, a mind locked away once more. I know the secrets of the world, I can tell the future, I know why and how and all we are. I play along in some foolish hope that I may change, but the deeper mind is harder to manipulate, still I make the same mistakes no matter what I know or how I think. I can only hope that things may play my way, or forever I will be dead, until the day I choose to die.

Is it because we have so much in common, or nothing at all? Common souls living different lives, or contrasting souls living similar lives? It doesn't matter. I am more me. I am tested in ways I never would have thought, in every way possible. From politics to economics to philosophy, to psychology to sociology, to literature to music to sex. Reassuring my delicate mind that I am something after all. This is me in my purest form. What I know, what you know, the want to know everything. Is this what it means to be understood? All ending in a series of flirtatious drunken parades with innocent flies, short but savoury, for now I know what buttons to squeeze. Dancing in the sprinklers to play a guessing game. Not a moment to rest. Not a moment to regret.

Innocently flirting with all I meet to find flowers among the sand.

Life is a journey. Full of lefts and rights, bends and straights, millions of steps along the way, travelled with every breath we take. Every journey different regardless of what we share. And then there are the things that send you higher: music, sleep, yoga, sport, drugs, beauty, love. And then there are the things that send you lower. Yet often you must go down to head up, and you must travel backwards to go forwards. Life is not easy, when lives collide they can build, but they can also destroy, they may spur you on or drag you back, you simply need to know what you want your next destination to be.