The Circle of Eternity (A Short Story)

"I am a cosmic exception." He chanted.

The sun now set behind the forested mountains as Terrance sat, crossed legged, upon the small sand dune composed of refined beach glass and stone-age pebbles born of ancient volcanoes erupted during the age of the dinosaur, sculpted carefully by the master-craftsmanship of Earth over the course of all human history.

It was all accented by the movement of the ocean which caressed the eclectically-colored dune like a lover silently caresses the hair of their loved one, with a passion and love so absolutely unconditional and infinite, it transcended the transience of distracted human affairs as if to say,
What's the rush for? What are you afraid of? You have all of eternity. Why do you waste it in fear? Why do you waste it in confusion? Why do you attempt to capture it and frame it and pretend to understand it? It's all here. It's all now. Don't waste eternity pretending time exists. Don't waste your time wasting eternity. 

Like Terrance, these rocks had been around for what was, quite possibly, an eternity.

"I am a cosmic exception."

And he did not mean this in a sense that suggested he was some sort of a religious messiah; nor in the sense that he held special privilege as compared to the average human being.
His reality, and what had occurred to him over the course of forever was nothing that other beings hadn't experienced;
He was simply an exception insofar as he remembered it all.

Absolutely all of it!

And now, as he approached what he sensed to be an end to his current existence to enter a new, and quite similar experience, he looked back on his past lives.

He looked back on the life he had lived this time around.
Pulling his small notebook out from his back pocket, he began to jot down the minor changes that had occurred. And he noted what significant changes had taken place as a result of his actions.

4 lifetimes ago, Terrance remembered being born to a Samuel and Mary Thomas of Liverpool.
He had been so deeply in love with them, he remembered. It had been the only lifetime in which his death and birth had been so fluid as he didn't lose consciousness and forget who he was.

It hadn't even felt like he had blinked.

It had all been a solid flow.
He remembered sitting in his lawn chair outside of his mountain-side estate, watching the sunrise, and closing his eyes.
There had been a light, and Terrance watched it with a deep conviction to remain awake.

To remain completely and entirely conscious.

It had been an absolutely blinding light. And with whatever strange eyes his soul wore, he did not blink. He did not slip into darkness even for a moment.

And the light began to flicker and fade as he continued to watch it.
It flickered until the world came back into a blurry focus, and he coughed and sputtered and began to howl with confusion and ecstasy. He was tugged gently out of the womb and into the hands of a doctor draped in white, save for what looked like sky blue gloves which now caressed his new being with a confident compassion.

He was handed-off to a young man.
That man was smiling from ear to ear, and by God, Terrance immediately recognized that young man to be his father! And there was only one slight difference that Terrance could make out from his blurted sight; his fathers hair was red! No longer brunette like it had been in his previous life.

But he was still the same man. Still the very same essence.
He was still Samuel Thomas; however, later in that particular lifetime, Terrance noted a slight change in spelling that had occurred throughout the past 3 lifetimes in his fathers name.

It had started as Sampson Tomass, evolved to Sampson Samuel Tomass, and then simply Samuel Tomas, and finally, it had become what it currently is.
He no longer possessed a middle name.

Terrance continued to write in his notebook.
Not for the sake of keeping it; the notebook would be forever left in this being when he passed. But for the sake of giving it all a coherent form in his mind as so he didn't forget moving forward into his rebirth once more.

A gift or a curse, he had decided long ago that he would nurture his awareness of it all. And that's when he felt his heart skip a beat. His body choked on one last sharp gasp of air, and his vision began to give way to that overwhelmingly blinding light.

He stared it down, once again, with whatever eyes his soul wore. And he moved towards it, already knowing what would happen next.

Had he still been wearing his mortal eyes, he would have gone blind long ago. But for what seemed like hours, Terrance continued to move towards the light until it enveloped him entirely.

And once again, it began to dim. And it all gave way to his being tugged gently from the womb by a doctor draped in white wearing sky blue gloves. Reality was a jumble of colors overlapping each other without fixed boundaries, and once again, he began to wail in pure confusion and ecstasy.

And once again he was funneled into the arms of a young man.
And once again, he looked, as best he could, into the eyes of father who now wore a ginger beard and whose hair was much redder than it had been in the previous lifetime.

"Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson; it's a beautiful baby girl."         

All That

The sunrise swept me right under the mat
As the night kept me sleeping with thoughts of 'all that.'

I understood questions like I understood answers,
And the denser the wording, the darker the mountain of thought and elation
I kept still and patient
As all I could think of was what was adjacent to the fire inside me
Don't you confine me!
You may stand beside me if what it is that you want

Is a question to answer your question and answer;
It always did take an attempt to transfix the great trance of condition;
Fill me with emissions
Of your concept pollution and speak to coalitions
Of dying musicians, wrought with inhibitions
As they realize they're just a bit late for auditions.

So cry me a river!
Life's an Indian giver
And don't shiver with the thought that in mind you will quiver with fright,
And consignment
What kind of words could be used to
Prove
It's not all
Just a dream.

And the gleam in your eyes, I will always remember.
They glowed in the bright misplaced sun of September,
Which carried on well into the month of November.
To live, you must sign your unconditional surrender,
To 'all this' and the rest of our world in this cloud;

The bliss of a kiss and a fist that speaks loud,
We understood what we could as we held hands with the crowd
Of the distant, indifferent, aware, and unsaid;
It's strange when you consider 'all this' while in bed.

So rip me the bits and tape me back together,
Like I'm an arts craft you work on in bad weather.
Forget the instructions and make me whoever;
Use your imagination; be bold, and be clever!

Because the sunrise swept me right under the mat
As the night kept me sleeping with thoughts of 'all that.'

I understood answers like I understood questions,

And discovered 'existence' is just a suggestion.

"Intrigue"

is officially back this Friday night with a fantastic new timeslot- 10 PM to 12 AM! So if you're sticking it out late-night on the first official day of the weekend like a majority of the Western world.. tune in for some brand-new slam poetry, under-the-radar news, philosophical discourse, and music! Also, I will be introducing 2 new hosts to the show- Christian Bailey and Anton (whom I don't quite know the last name of, and is obscure enough not to have a Facebook; just think of him as the 'mystery man,' I suppose).So tune in to 90.1 FM CJMP via FM transmitter or online stream this Friday night from 10 till 12!

This all feels like some weird, cruel joke. I just can't sleep cus my heart is beating too fast, and the restless, hopeless sadness and anxiety in the pit of my stomach lets me get an inch away from finally falling asleep before it reminds me of everything, my heart starts beating, and I sit up in surreal disbelief because none of it makes sense, and everything is blurry with fact and fiction again.

So sleeping on a freshly broken heart, with absolutely no answers and a feeling like whatever love was fine only hours ago is now suddenly unrequited, and the dull pain in my chest from the stress of the confusion and the loss and the thoughts of, "Is this the end? Is this it? Could it really end like this between us... so abruptly and suddenly? None of this makes sense."

I'm in a state of mind where the details are so muddled, so absolutely unclear to me, that I couldn't help myself from making 4 attempts to call her cell at 1:40 AM in the morning. I mean, this is the most absolutely confused and destructively sad and angry and just generally distressed I've felt in probably forever. Although I've been through tough breakups, they've always been somewhat foreseeable and have always been explained in novels-worth of paragraphs back and forth between me and the former lover.

But now, the day after Valentines day when everything between me and my sweetheart was more than okay, and we had long conversations about our future together and sorted out little issues we were having, as well as spoke sweat nothings (which are starting to feel like 'everything's' in immediate retrospect) to each other over Skype, her heart seems to have given out under so much of the stress she's been experiencing that she decided to give up on us.

Just like that.

No ticker tape; no in-depth explanation and, seemingly, absolutely no regrets (as her friend, when I spoke to her wondering if my sweetheart was okay, said that she got a casual text from her saying she was simply watching the Big Bang Theory and eating nachos.. in my mind, making it seem like her losing me meant nothing to her). It came entirely out of left-field, and although I'm beginning to wonder if she, perhaps, had indeed premeditated it all, seemed as though if it were premeditated, it was only premeditated starting this morning at most. I know her well enough to have been able to pick up hints otherwise.

Now, she is going through very much lately, and when she ended it, it wasn't with a "you've been a bad boyfriend" or a "I don't love you anymore;" it was with a "I don't think I can function in this relationship anymore with everything that has been happening to me lately." And although I am not at liberty to go in-depth, as its certainly not the internet's business, my attempts at calling her for quick answers on her well-being (as I wanted to make sure she hadn't done something in her deep despair that was completely irrational) were met with absolutely no answer, and I had to climb through hoops getting her friend to text her before I knew she was physically alright, and was simply ignoring me.

That gave me peace of mind in that sense... but then, as I correctly forecasted, the confused heartbreak hit me full-on; hence why I'm up at 20 to 3 when I work later this morning.
I have no idea if sleep is even a possibility at all tonight. I feel like I need some sort of more coherent explanation before I can properly just be sad over all of this as opposed to desperately confused and incredibly hurt. It hurts even more, even if she requires the space, that she wouldn't respond to my attempts to make sure she was alright. Or even get someone else to do it for her.

In a few short hours, it started to feel like the girl I knew and fell in love with was completely and utterly gone. Where she's gone, I don't know, but I'm hoping she finds that girl herself. But I just need some more rational, clear-headed explanation before I can sit at ease with it, no matter how melancholy. And I need to either know this is just a phase.. a break.. while she attempts to recollect herself, or I need a more coherent and reasonable explanation as to why this should or would all simply come to a crashing, tragic end.

I've been recommended to simply back-off entirely and let her figure it all out herself, and in theory, I do agree... but my emotions are so over-powering that they demand some sort of answer.
Hence why, despite assumptions in my own head that this would come off as obsessive or clingy, I called her at 1:40 AM in the morning and in fact feel the irrational pull to keep calling her all night till she picks up and explains what the fuck just happened.

She may interpret it as me caring, and therefore calling so late to want answers... or, perhaps, she'll see it that way in retrospect.. or she may also, just as likely, think of it as exactly that; obsessive and clingy. And either way, in my mind, I simply want answers, which is beyond understandable; it's expected.
However, perhaps she's backing off for my sake as well. Or perhaps she simply wants to escape entirely to think about that and everything else she has to deal with on a daily basis.

Partly in response to this confusing break-up, I decided to delete my Facebook (however, I'd been planning on doing so for awhile). But only a couple of hours later, I decided to return because I wanted to show my friend something I had down on my timeline, and then thought that, perhaps, at least for a couple more days, it might be wise to keep Facebook in order to give my sweetheart a chance to respond to my messages. A downside to this, however, is my sending her more messages before she has responded due to my muddled, heart-broken brain. Which I did. But it was simply a short, poetic summary of how I've been feeling: like this all has to be some cruel sort of joke, or a dream or nightmare of some sort. Because that's what this feels like.

Her ending it was the last thing in the world I ever expected would occur. And honestly, part of me hopes it was nothing more than her in a confused, absolutely drained irrational mindset, because the message she sent me sounded absolutely nothing like her.

It was dry, mechanical, final, and absolutely to the point. It was like robot-her was doing something real-her didn't and never would have done because robot-her told real-her that this was the only thing she could do to make anything better. It was like, in some deep pit of raw emotion, her muddled logic decided she needed to shut something off, because she simply couldn't function in it properly.

And I can see it from the perspective and I understand.

But it's not enough! And I need more answers straight from her mouth before I can properly back-off and give her the space she needs.

So I've been recommended to drink a glass of wine to get to sleep, as it causes drowsiness, and I do need sleep. So I'm going to give that a shot.

Goodnight, planet Earth.
I hope you're fairing better than me on this very strange, painful, rainy night.

The Game

Looks like I missed work for the day.

Having misread the schedule during my previous shift on the Friday of last week, I was sitting quietly on my computer in my Medal of Honor pajamas, unshaved and unshowered, watching Ram Dass rants on LSD trips and listening to what is apparently the 'original' and 'real' kind of Dubstep, Phaeleh's The Cold In You, when I got an unexpected call from my boss.

Sounding perturbed, probably due to the fact that I'm still a 'rookie in training' and I had failed to show up for work, he told me that I apparently worked today, and not tomorrow as I had originally believed.
Turns out, I read the schedule... which was strangely unlabeled in terms of days... as if it started on Mondays, when in fact, the weekly schedules start on Sundays, causing me to be a day ahead. Checking bus times, I scrambled out of my seat and upstairs, coffee in hand, to shower as fast as humanly possible in order to catch the next bus which was leaving in 12 minutes.

There was no way I was going to show up like I was, having not showered nor shaven for 2 days straight. I had to at least make an attempt at blitzing hygiene; so I stripped down, stuck my head in the shower, lathered my hair, rinsed it, realized I hadn't grabbed a towel, bolted it downstairs, naked and wet, dripping water like the blood of an injured horror movie protagonist who, being the last alive, had finally managed to get hurt and was now making an attempt to limp to safety.

Drying my hair as I ran back up the stairs with a towel in hand, I checked the clock to see I had 4 minutes to dress, grab the rest of my things, shave, and get out the door.
Instead, I decided to take a bit of a leap and simply call my boss.

Apologizing profusely, I explained my mistake and how there was no way I was going to make the next bus, and would instead have to wait an hour before I could head to work. I attempted to make amends and see if there was any shift I could fill instead tomorrow, but apparently, there had been a trainer organized to work with me this shift and therefore it would just be better if I didn't worry about making it today and instead just showed up at my next scheduled shift on Thursday.

Still apologizing profusely yet in a calm, 'oh-well-I-made-an-honest-mistake' demeanor, I said that worked for me, and bid my boss a friendly farewell before I hung up and then began to chuckle a bit.
Although I thought it was a shame I had missed the shift, both in terms of money and making sure my bosses know I'm actually quite a responsible young man, I didn't feel bad about it. It really had been nothing more than an honest mistake, whereas if this exact same scenario had panned itself out 2 months prior, I would have felt a sort of dead-weight fuck-up causing my stomach to tie itself in endless knots. But this time around, I realized that, although I had inadvertently broken the rules, it wasn't such a terrible thing because all I'm doing.. all any of us are doing as part of any society anywhere in the world.. is playing a strange, intricate game. And although breaking the rules and making mistakes are no way to earn a high-score, you lose nothing but a few symbolic points in the process of rule breaking and mistake making. Sometimes, if you're skilled enough and know how to play the game well, rule breaking or, in some cases, rule making, can lead to incredible success or, in keeping with the metaphor or points and games, lead to an incredibly high-score.

However, I'm going to hope this is only a first strike, and that I won't be fired over it. And in keeping with playing the game correctly, I'm going to make sure I don't make the same mistake twice.

Since I'm missing work, I may very well get around to writing.. or, at the very least, starting.. a brand-new full-fledged article for my blog. The first in a very long time.

So keep your eyes peeled! It's a Friendly Inferno! is back, baby.

The Observatory for the Ordinary and Extraordinary (Which are Both One and the Same)

Some of us never see beyond the veil.

Some of us live constricted
And act rough and unafflicted
Like a crocodile caught in the choke of a boa constrictor

Dying
Everyday
We wish to live.

Some of us never feel beyond our television set

And when the bet is on for the black stallion
We watch with eyes gone wide
And wide
And wider still

Until

The race is won.

It's done!
The illusion was fun,
But it wasn't your win.

It was symbolic and yes
Yes
Yes,
You took sides.

You thought you could know who was wrong,
Who could ride...

But that tide was a movement far distant from you.

And you laughed
And you cried.
You were born
And you died.

In your blank, black worn stare
You decided to confide
In the screen.

A box, a machine
Representing a reality you ceased to believe
Could exist.

Some of us never manage to truly face a challenge

Because life exists freely upon great silver platters,
And the whole great wide world waits like a buffet
Free of line-ups
So all food and thought is conveyed
To your brain

Like old, stale bread.

Somethings not right;
Beyond thought, left unsaid.

And through all doors of suffering,
You kick and you scream!

"This is not how they said it would be on TV!"

So despite all the knowledge,
And your free Goddamn college
University never taught you to truly acknowledge
The great Godly cosmos
Or the holy osmosis of truth and contraption of stars spread like roses
In minds
Afflicted by
The human condition.

We're all on a mission.

Some of us say there's a great old technician
Who paid our tuition
To the great school of life
Yet admission
was granted
to few.

Contradiction, I find to be honest contrast
Like AdBusters right next to old capitalist class
Or a pet on the cheek to a slap on the ass,

Now the bell rings;

Nothing good ever lasts
But the point all along has been to learn how to dance

To the music.