From Krakow, With Love - The Goodbye Letter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e19eKdorSkg

The Kids Are Playing Outside

I can hear the sound of laughter, of children playing, of happiness. It’s like joyous youth in a can. I don’t know what they are up to, and as long as they are not in danger, who really cares? The sound is kids, outside, enjoying the green fields and the gardens and nature. It sounds like the olden days, sounds like years gone by, the times of yore. Maybe in the village, here, surrounded by forest in the vast Polish countryside, the modern cyber network has not grasped, drugged, hypnotised and conquered a whole generation of youth, like some impossible-to-combat plague. These kids are free to roam and explore and breathe and develop, in a manner not manipulated. The trees and creatures of the forest, the wood that heats the homes and water, the food, the method of cooking, so many elements of village life, all impacting on the young lives of these children, all stealing them from the torturous cyber universe.

I lived in the suburbs of the city as a child. I had a dream, of trees, and space in which to roam and uncover the gems of nature. Fast forward all these years and here I am, surrounded by forest, some eternal green network of God’s wonder. It’s intoxicating and all-consuming. The noise, the voices, the yells of joy and surprise and fun, it all makes perfect sense. Some lucky kids live here, knowing not they have some priceless thing that city kids don't. Long may they go out into the streets and fields and play, maybe even learn about the trees and plants and flowers that grow all around them, filling gaps and painting the scenery so beautifully. I reckon this is what childhood should be like, this is what has a soul and might just mean a kid grows up a little unoccupied by the city, and its financial pull, the drugging. But, it will probably win in the end. It's not a bad way to start the days. Long may the kids laugh! Long live the forest, indeed.

I Wrote A Blog Today, Oh Boy...

... it's called 'Robot Religion.' It's about a great many things in life. The pain and glory, the travesty and honour in many of our life events. It's about the rows and rows of hypocrites, that we can encounter at every turn. It's about the horror and joy of even tiny little journeys, we make on our way to the stars. It is inspirational, it is a damned curse, it is love and hate and a gigantic spectrum of sensations.

I came to find you and I found you here. How foolish to have been looking elsewhere, over there, anywhere but here. To stumble and observe the beauty upon which I tripped. Lucky man am I. When the treasure chest is open the eyes cannot adjust, don't know where to look, what to focus on, it's too much to take.

I want to believe good will conquer. I have an abiding sense that it is often too difficult. Never should hope be lost regarding this though. Never should we turn out the lights. Even the dimmest of lights is the brightest of hope.

Boldizsár

I've written about this family before. They have some magic weaving its way through the air in their house, or even carried upon it. Maybe they don't know, but I've witnessed it. The way they do things, the way they share their love, the manner in which they are effortlessly kind. It's cinematic, all I can see.

Boldi has a birthday today. Tells me he is sat there at his computer, and therefore, how could it possibly be a great birthday. I can see him there, in my mind. It's how he chooses to spend his time, so perhaps although it is a little too similar to all the other summer days, spent with freedom, it is what makes him happy in his early teenage years. He is a wonderful boy. He has so many great qualities, and his English gets better and better, and every visit I pay this family we have more and more laughs together.

On his birthday, I hope he can realise that he is amazing. I also hope he can understand that everything, all these days and the events therein, are what we make of them. How we look at things defines who we are, what we can possibly achieve. So, my dear young friend, the spectacular can grow from nothing, it can be in your arms, and even if not, you can find it as easily as it can find you, because it is everywhere, it simply depends on perspective.

I hope you have a wonderful evening. Bless you, and enjoy the times at home, for one day they will be gone forever.

The Tortured Dog

The torture of animals. It’s hard to watch. It pulls me in. The longer I watch, the harder I feel some pain attached to this sorrowful event.

It just lies there, as good as dead. It’d be better off dead. Its spirit could roam freely. I ponder for what it has four legs, for what it is alive if it cannot experience anything but complete turmoil. It has a beautiful shaggy coat of hair. It is on a chain. It has a kennel and a patch of grass, only a short distance from its kennel, and that is its entire life and existence. It remains chained 24 hours a day. In my opinion, the owners are abusing this animal.

It howls sometimes, tormented as it is. I can hear it now, in fact. The poor creature creates a level of sympathy within me, rather than distress at the sound, which if I think selfishly it does send any listener. It looks and sounds just like a wolf howling, looking for some moon.

Hard not to think a bullet through its brain or heart would be a kindness, but I wish I could somehow release it from that specific existence. I am told the animal is half wild now, which would make sense. I have watched its owners ignore it, as if it didn’t exist. Maybe it’s a ghost dog, maybe only I can see it and hear it. I know others who can hear it too, but they don’t seem to feel the pain of how wrong it all is. I guess it is for us to respect the lives of others, but such people shouldn’t own pets. Especially not ones that were designed to help what look like fat slobs to get fit and were abandoned within days.

I can find a place, some dreamland, where such an animal can devise a plan to escape, to unchain itself and find a safer place, a place away from neglect and tragedy. Where it can even find some help of other such animals and create a masterplan. One night it would return with its newfound friends, bide its time, and attack its owners and devour every last morsel of flesh from their selfish bodies. The instinct would come from having been kept as a caged animal, beyond all necessity, becoming wilder and wilder through abandonment and a final violent explosion that leaves a bloody picture of some war. The battles of life, unnecessary and endless. When one comes to pass another one commences. It’s an ugly part of our world. I can only wish for some salvation for that creature out there, on the other side of this window. I can still hear the howling as I release this piece of work in your direction...

The Second

I remember a visit you paid me, how we spent the time rather well. How we had been in different places, how the same things don’t matter at all.

The invisible words too, they vie for the attention, spilling out from unknown quarters. They are the heaviest ones. Many know the power of those most silent of words.

Maybe you are loved, there where you are. I can only hope that the days are good to you, that you can grow to see their majesty more and not forget the unseen roots.

The clock ticks, we breathe in and we breathe out, only for a short time. I nearly heard a last tick. You were nowhere in sight. I wish you well though, hope you come back to soul, to the selfless self, for it attains the greatest wealth we can possibly know.

Birthday Boy

Out there somewhere in London is a man who celebrates his birthday today. Somewhere out there is he. I know him. We once shared a pod, as my father would frequently reference, even though I was a soundtrack of music inside a pod, my siblings were peas in a totally different one. In actuality, the incubation space had been the same, and nothing more. He worked with words too, they really meant something to him as well, though I doubted they could possibly mean as much, even if we saw them in a completely different way. He was good at shaping them in certain areas, he was good to read.

There you are, moving, with thoughts, going someplace. Here I am, writing to you. A gift on your birthday, a magical bullet piercing the air, aimed straight for the land you live on. Is your sun shining as mine is also today? Are there feasts and banquets for the senses for you, especially to fill you up this mid July afternoon? For me it is to wish you well, to ponder why the wind moves as it does and blows it all apart. We are lucky and blessed to have such freedom that we have these days. Who really analyses it and feels the weight of this glory?

I wish you a happy day, beautiful boy. It isn’t your light, perhaps I can shine one your way. Candles and cake, the days are complex and multi-layered.

There’s a box. Inside the box is something. Outside the box is much more. It’s possible, easy even, to take the contents for granted, as with anything. Perception, a gift, defines the gift itself. Call you as I do, no answer received. There are no rules, but the games are go.

Always I have wished I’d known you better. Always for you I had more time. Always doesn’t last forever, but my voice at times must speak words for those who appreciate it, and those who understand what makes it sound and move that way. Always I send you my love. 

Letter From A Ghost

To whom it may concern

I died. I did die. Now all that's left is you, regret, the words I wrote, the songs I wrote and recorded, and perhaps you don't care at all, but it cannot be undone. Yes, anyway, it is there, some kind of haunting, surely to want to erase.

I'm not here anymore. I left you behind. Some soul of mine might protect you, watch over you, if you believe in those things, or otherwise I am gone, and gone, and forever gone. Contemplate me in my passing, how I manifest myself in the chill of a breeze. You swallow, it almost gets trapped in the throat.

To find some answers, to understand what it is all for. I found you. That feels like some oceanic success, growing, blossoming beyond me and my resting body, my perfected soul. I, just a ghost, still in awe of the things that have no simple conclusion. I was opened by love, by you, and I took that with me, to remain here, wherever I am, consumed by glory.

I look forward to staying with you, ever lodged where you cannot remove me.

Kind regards

Your ever-loving ghost

Remember

Like the song said 'remember me when I'm gone.' You didn't do it while we shared this place. You abandoned so many important things. 'Important?' I hear you ask. 'To whom?' Precisely the flaw. Falling through the floor. Who will catch you if you threw everyone into the rubbish heap? Questions to never find answers to, whether they should search for them or not. How my memory used to seem so fatally poor, and yet now I somehow hold together so many pieces of a puzzle, when nobody can even comprehend that there is only a chance, only one, to solve this. You in your tunnel, never going to find a way out, even with your so limited, your single way forwards. The tunnel never ends, I can see the fear. In your eyes, selfish eyes, deer. Running scared, the way you move so gracefully.

I am a tunnel, closing in around. There is no way out, so you may as well look around, above and beyond. We are all brothers, heartattack siblings. Lose yourself to others, bless the floor that holds us, supported by each other. I can hear the darkness calling, I must depart for now.

The Nearly Ones

The nearly ones. They nearly got together, nearly bathed each other gently in turns, only changing over when skin began to resemble that of a raisin, and they nearly conquered the earth and existence.

They nearly breathed life into each other that nobody else could have managed and shaped each other out of love. They nearly walked everywhere holding hands and consumed by their loving bubble.

They nearly passed the days just looking at one another. They nearly travelled to and made love in and laid their eyes upon a great many places. So very nearly. So many times. The nearly ones, all of us, over and over, and when finally the penny drops and completely disturbs the water, well who knows...

An Ending

I can't wait to leave you, this place, here. I cannot wait. I have that rush. Gonna leave you to my memory. I don't want you. You hurt me, revealed your darkness. I gave you a chance (where others would not have). One too many. But how can you know how good the water is if you don't dive in? Precisely.

The lessons that lead to learning. I know more than I did before, know myself a little better. Even came across some treasure, in a heart, that would live on forever. So, an ending is no reason for sadness, it signals great hope, white and shining, as if catching the sun's rays. Gorgeous and ours. All it feels like in the end is a totally new beginning, when I finally emerge from this limbo. With you. Hand in hand. At the start of it all.

The Death of the Cassette Tape

So much has passed, fallen by the wayside in my days. I watched you live and breathe and vanish before my eyes, when once you were a stunning part of my existence. So many things, all of you, in some graveyard, to live only in memories, ghosts of our pasts. The cassette tape, the technology, the loves, the absolute everything. We move so fast, leaving behind all that goodness, and oh, what for? I never really know the answer.

I am addicted to music. The vinyl which was my first real experience with music, and then the cassette tape. I loved the way you had to turn them over. An album was two halves. It had some meaning, it was tangible, it was edible, you could taste it, you could really consume that music. Now, that is gone, until I can get my hands on a record player, a turntable and vinyls, which thankfully and rightfully are still being made. It was replaced by the CD and now updated with digital music. I have purchased (downloading illegally means less to me, and I have never done it, even as a man who never has more than a little money) music in 4 different decades. I have even bought it on all those formats and yes, something about the modern methods alienates me. It isn't as exciting as it once was. It has lost the spark, the truly exciting feeling attached to music and the whole experience attached to diving into its pool. The essence of the hunt for music, or the simple purchase of it over a counter still exists, almost vanishing as it has though, and it doesn't feel the same anymore either. The remaining stores are part of a large chain, normally, and they are so geared to making every penny possible from those who pass through the door that you can sense the 'sell-out' of these companies.

Maybe what I want is a time machine, and I don't like change, and I want to keep things as they are, and return to a happier time (at least, of my life). I am a man who has lived in 4 different countries, I can speak more than two languages, I have no place I can call 'home' and I constantly challenge myself and my own personal evolution. So, I really don't think that the start of this paragraph could ever be the reason. I feel the great value of music, how it is packaged and delivered to me. Yes, the cassette tape is dead, she died a while ago. She lives on still, of course, the memory has not passed the stage of remembering how beautiful you were. You weren't so simple? That is almost certainly why I loved you and will continue to love you so, whether you are here or not.

It's strange to think that I remembered you by seeing some odd painted blocks with two nails through them, that lined the footpath by the river Wisła. Those two nails, right in the centre at a length apart that just reminded me so precisely of the holes in a cassette tape, and the way when the ribbon got jammed I would stick a pencil through one hole and turn it to try to return the tape to a playable status. Those were the days, the flawed brilliance and beauty. God, I love her face. She isn't perfect, and it makes her about as good as she can be.

Kto Wie? Rubik Wie

Some might say he’s just swimming around a tank, yeah, but I get the sensation at times that Rubik knows the secret to life. Maybe knows pure happiness, owns the gift of true sight, like we only dream of. Rubik wie.  There's something about that fish. The backwards swimming, the upside down games he seems to play with himself, and me, and my partner, his mesmerised audience. This fish is better than TV. Tomorrow we shall part. I am giving him to a friend as I prepare to leave this here city, much as I found it, though I myself am different inside. 

He has been an incredible pet. Perhaps he was too good for me, I was not enough. I didn't talk to him as much as I might have, I didn't show that little goldfish enough love and energy. It's a remarkable little creature and I hope he may long continue his train of madness, far into the night and beyond. Somehow, from that little tank I kinda feel like he kept the world turning.

Good Morning, Limbo

Welcome one and all. I can only present things that leap or form in my imagination, from the things I absorb and the way that I feel towards my surroundings. There is always hope and joy and love, if we allow it into ourselves. Bleak days won't last forever, there is always sunshine waiting somewhere to come in our doors. If I stay here it will find me. If I leave I might find it sooner. Be brave, my darling.

So, for now I reside in limbo. I am still here in my Polish cave. I am where I wrote my last blog from, but I am in limbo, waiting for some great journey, which I hope starts sooner rather than later. Cheers, here is to the next part of the adventure. I hope it transforms what the heart becomes in darkness.