I may sit here, thinking of the world and all it holds, of new roads that I might trod, and never know if one should take me further than another. Yet it seems that, with every footfall firmly placed, the path I'm on is better-laid than one I've never seen before.

Hope

Sometimes, when it’s all you can do just to touch another’s pain,
they’re still miles away from your comprehension.
If one person’s experience is so unique, so untouched,
what else can you do but listen while they bleed out their heart,
singing a swan song to the sky?

When all your endeavours to take away their pain
would amount to nothing, accomplish nothing,
the finality of circumstance the stony destination of all Rome's roads,
you have to take a step back from the brink of disaster,
and save yourself, giving thanks for hope.

If all else is lost, unknowable, or damned to feeble empathy,
take heart in the unknowable. Not all is lost.
What comes next around that street corner may be death;
it may be a second chance for you and yours.
In chance lies comfort, strength, and hope.

Thank the laws of nature for our shortsightedness.

There's Blood on the Air

How can you say
that all your love's drained away,
you've kept your hands cupped for far too long?

You filled my head with your song,
now how can you take that away?
My love for you is far, far too strong.

And I want you,
and I need you,
but every time I reach for you you're gone.

I turn my head in my bed,
the silken scent of your perfume
still lingers like the pale light of the moon.

You rocked my world,
I saw a flash of Jesus when you
came, his arms open to our flames.

And I want you,
and I need you,
but every time I reach for you you're gone.

And you just run away, run away,
you just run away child,
and you just run away, far away,
just run away child,
and you just run away, run away,
just run away child and you just run.

We Are Made from Stardust

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
What’s supposed to happen if we only live once,
We work, we breathe, we struggle to believe in something, anything but ourselves,
But what if there’s no heaven, what if there’s no hell?

We’re all looking for someone to hold through the night,
To meet in dreams and talk of what lies on the other side,
Though waking may be painful, as I gaze between the stars,
I find my dreams come easy when you’re laying in my arms.

If our star ends tonight,
I want to be right here with you, standing by your side,
Take a leap of faith with me, face the blinding light,
Holding hands we'll wave and die laughing as we did in life.

Our time has come, we’re worlds apart, fighting for what we had at the start,
We left behind our falsest friends, both reached out to take a hand,
And forged a new beginning in the moonlight, made our promises
To make our love complete; by God, we did a daring thing!

We’ve sailed between the heavens, now our ships come back to earth
Let’s go our separate ways less we forget what we are worth
To one another; trust me now and I will show you what a friend can be,
I want you at the helm of us for all eternity

So if our star ends tonight,
I want to be right here with you, standing by your side,
take a leap of faith with me, face the blinding light,
holding hands we'll wave and die laughing as we did in life.

Though our love may never die, it’s better if we say goodbye
For now, and start again when things get better for you my friend,
I’m a slave to your desire, you’re the fuel for my fire,
And I’ll always burn for you the brightest of them all.

Like the North Star you can find me in the same place every night,
you have my heart as long as you can see it's shining light,
And though you’re in a black hole, I want you to know
My love for you went nova a long time ago.

If our star ends tonight,
I want to be right here with you, standing by your side,
take a leap of faith with me, face the blinding light,
holding hands we'll wave and die laughing as we did in life.

Heartstrings

Here we are. Week's end, rich from labor won hand-to-mouth,
and channeling Bukowski. Playing with the poem as the night turns into day,
reaching for wisdom, grasping stars captured in champagne,
grip numbed by chilled glass.
The wrist falls low, abandoned, heartlessly sluggish,
and still your kindling burns, yearning to be set alight.

A converted southpaw lends a hand.
Two folds by the jaw twitch, signaling
the changing of the guard. Two molds of hands,
set aside for the pianist, hold wine,
Rachmaninoff's bust staring listlessly,
while light lingers lazily just outside the bedroom door.

These are the nights of the old,
the nights of the restless,
the nights of the dreamer's dead reality,
where passion gives way to experience and withers
in the face of all the things that pull a heart's desires
like a puppet dancing, unaware of it's strings.

You never know what people might be thinking,
even you, who's known you all your life.
You never fully trust another, even though
you've let them in, given them warmth,
and let them in on every secret of your life.
The one you wish to marry better be the one you're with,

or else you've given up on passion, leaving a gaping hole
to fill where once lived your inner child who's
still screaming for attention, since they're put below the rest of life's
deficient, callous nonsense. Who first told you that you had to pay attention,
never do this, never do that, never live amongst the stars
that you once gazed upon without the help of glass?

To all those hungry, weary souls who must be fed with grains of dream,
awaken now. Live out the dream and let yourself
be filled to breaking with the innermost desires of your heart.
Be glad you have the opportunity to persevere
and never let yourself be scared of monsters hiding in your friends
who'd rather give you steam than rip you apart.

Continue on this path of Mabb, allow yourself to be consumed,
and somewhere, something, someone, will be awaiting you,
and say, "Come close; partake of me as I partake of you,
and let me fill the void you've yearned to close
since you were just a child. I am here for you.
Allow me to be free and I will show you life as you've never seen before."

Working Saturday Nights

Too late for a drink, too tired to think,
too lazy to sink in the bath and relax,
too dirty to stagger to bed and collapse,
too bored to complain and too full to snack.

Guerilla Posting

Now and then, when night falls deep and dark,
and dims the recesses of my broken heart,
I heat the pass with thoughts of you,
and beat the blackness back,
with Cupid's darts.

Bossa Nova Nights

We bounce around the room, two children in overgrown bodies;
laughing at our jokes and screaming at our laughter,
like two old women swapping stories from their youth,
and I cannot love you any more than I do right now.

A Year of Weird

I've been in southern California now for a little over one year. This is a list of ten things, a very small number of the total amount of weird, I've seen that can only, and often do, happen in Los Angeles:

1) Police arresting a man fully dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker; 3 a.m., Hollywood blvd.,

2) Transsexual prostitutes; very, very obvious transsexual prostitutes, the kind of obvious where you think, "There's no way that is a woman" and feel a twinge of guilt for thinking it,

3) Diane Keaton with several children, looking exactly like she does in every film, covered in clothes from head to toe, complete with fashionable hat and white gloves,

4) A homeless man making "blessing" gestures to everyone else on his street while simultaneously smacking his lips and making farting noises,

5) Watching Slash shred at the Viper Room my first night out on the town (once again proving my ignorance of pop culture as I turned to Nikko and said, "That guy looks a lot like Slash!" to which she replied, "Uh, it IS Slash.")

6) A thirty-second choreographed martial arts fight in a pedestrian crosswalk while I was stopped at a red light,

7) Stephen Fry (particularly thrilled about that introduction!) out at a noisy dance club full of young, trendy, and very drunk people, wearing a full tweed suit, looking like he'd just stepped off a plane and being very, well, British, simultaneously seeming incredibly out of place and yet comfortable in the environment,

8) Huge columns of smoke from the severe summer fires of '09 forming cloud-like images in the sky reminiscent of the imposing clouds of doom caused by the UFO's in Independence Day,

9) A Hollywood character impersonator in THE WORST Wolverine costume I WILL EVER SEE,

10) A juggling mime on stilts, outside the El Captain movie theatre, not promoting anything but just being himself, a juggling mime on stilts.

The Fourth Kind

All right. This movie was successful in one thing - going into it without any knowledge of it's plot, any of the claims of realism made by the trailers, any without any research on the 'actual-case-studies' depicted by the film, it left me incredibly open to the possibility that the story was plausible.

HOWEVER, anyone with access to basic internet and a little inquisitiveness will soon find a host of information online concerning the case studies in question. Universal Studios has already admitted to falsifying much of the details, and controversy surrounds the character of Abigail Tyler (who is shown during 'documentary' footage throughout the film), namely if she exists at all.

An excellent article by the Rural Alaska Blog throws much of the story depicted by The Fourth Kind into sharp relief, and I highly suggest giving it a read before drawing your own conclusions. Here's a direct quote concerning Dr. Abigail Tyler:

"Ron Adler is CEO and director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. Denise Dillard is president of the Alaska Psychological Association. They said this week they’ve never heard of the Alaska Psychiatry Journal, or of Abigail Tyler."

The full article can be found online here ----> http://community.adn.com/adn/node/143292

The First Artist

Dream strong, and wake with sand heavy in your eyes.
Boldness leads you forward.
There are no barriers in life but fear.
An opportunity is a challenge to prove yourself;
lost opportunities diminish life, extinguish hope, crush dreams.

Dream a waking dream, and share it with others.
There is a secret world in everyone, larger than life.
No one is truly without hope.
Imagination is an iron key, unbanding iron locks
keeping you closed to yourself and the world.

Dream a dream together, and we all become sronger.
As one entity united by elation, we can accomplish anything.
Beware of parasites in your midst; they will drain you dry.
An enervating rebellion matched strength for strength
is the only cure for a vampiric state of mind.

Dream alone, and dare to live like no other.
There is comfort in solace, but not security.
You have another option.
Let your vision expand, become ever-wide, encompassing all that lives,
breathes, pulses and beats, and welcome it with your smile.

Not For a God

I see a spark.
It lights up the night like a firecracker
and fits in the palm of your hand,
like a small, soft animal, warm and wet from birth.

You smile when we fan the flame;
we smile when you smile, and when you open it's warmth to us.
There is no-one you cannot touch; your spark burns in us all,
and makes our night a little lighter,
our burden of sleep a little easier to bear -
making it through the night isn't always easy.

We laugh to think that if you touched enough people,
you'd set the whole world alight with the sweetness of your passion,
one crimson sun setting into another as night turns into day,
one joyous night of wild revelry in the face of all that's worth defying.

Never is one night enough. But for us, tonight,
the night is all we have, and that is always more than enough
to keep pride, hope, and our love of you alive.
You will never burn us, leaving scars to tell the tale of your brutality,
would never even singe the hair of one caterpillar-like eyelash
by accident or choice.

Though you hold the power to spit in the eye of your fellow human,
you will always rise above temptation and lay waste to the carrion of a corrupted soul.

Weaving lights through our mind's eye with your fingertips,
a banner blowing gently in the hot air, signaling hope for humanity,
stroking the cheek of a tear-stained child smiling for joy of your touch,
lifting the melancholy sorrow that touches the hearts of billions,
one booming laugh the sound of dozens dancing, clapping at once,
asking not what you would have us do but what we would have us do,
loving every minute of our presence and taking it all in - the good, the bad, the ugly,
the sad, the joy and tears all as one, and never asking why or judging good and evil.

With open hands spilling sparks, you show us what we might become,
and from your dream we conjure a hope that we can learn about ourselves,
become ourselves, and create ourselves anew.

Dark Beauty

Certain music (Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" cover, Radiohead's "Reckoner") falls under this category, as well as film ("Donnie Darko", "Requiem for a Dream"), and art ("Scream"). What is it about them that is beautiful? What region of our pysche relates to the profound sadness to make this connection with beauty?

I think it's interesting how Americans are drawn to these seeming downers. I always wondered if our fascination with violence, death, therapy, etc. stems from a lack of exposure to these things in our day to day lives. I don't think a lot of Indian children would freak out at the drive through when they're served regular frieds instead of the curly ones they ordered.

Then again, maybe they would. Perhaps having the choice of curly vs. straight is something else we take for granted. And if I was given my first McDonald's experience, and was brought up having no money, had never seen a french fry, had never tasted ketchup, I might be massively disappointed if my order got screwed up.

I've been listening to Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah" pretty heavily for the last couple of days, and my mood tends to get a little colored. Nothing overtly dramatic. I've been more wistful, which can be a rut, but I also noticed how much I started hating people today at work. Nobody really even gave me shit, but the general selfishness of people was really eating at me. I think if someone had been extremely demanding, I could easily write it off as a one-time-thing, but everyone's requests seemed to be petty and without point.

The cure? Turn my speakers up full volume and blast Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill."

Work in Progress

I broke a note and it struck a chord,
a fingernail scrape across a board,
my empty head is filled with thoughts of you girl.

You tied me to a bedroom chair,
cut my head and left it bare,
and smiled when I gasped my love for you, girl.

It goes like this, from time to time,
for every one I draw the line,
but now it's me who's played the fool for you.

I notice things around the house,
the small tear in your favorite blouse,
we never did too much to fix oursevles.

Said you believed in me and you,
it turns out you're a liar too,
you up and left the day I married you.

Our love is not a simple thing,
it hurts just like a scorpion sting,
your tail drew back to hit you in the back.

The strand of hair in the shower drain,
the bedsheets bear a lover's stain,
and you forgot to call the kettle black, girl.

Deer Valley, Utah

I've been looking forward to this week for a few months now, and I'm extremely happy to say that it's exceeding my expectations.

Deer Valley's situated amidst four top-notch ski resorts, each of which have a multitude of different runs. The first day we arrived, I was reminded of Texas. "Oh crud," I thought, "there's no snow at ground level and everything looks dead." It was true. The shrubs, plants, and grass were brown, thoroughly exposed, and didn't look like anything you'd want to ski on.

Then it stormed. And it was good.

All night and all day it flaked down, little by little, until the air looked like a cloud had descended and there were inches of the soft, white stuff blanketing the ground. Dav, Clay and I hit the slopes yesterday and discovered the joy of powder snow. Unfortunately, it was only a thin layer over ice, but there was joy involved nonetheless.

After a half day yesterday, Dav and I decided to go hardcore and hit the intermediate/advanced slopes at Park City Slopes for a full day today, starting at 9. For some reason, I woke up at 5 a.m. Because my body hates me (Hey blog readers! Andrew's a raging insomniac for no apparent reason! See previous blog posts Dreaming fans!) Don't ask me why, but for some reason my boots were a little too loose and I lost a good deal of control and maneuverability. Meanwhile, Dav's snowboarding down the slope like a giddy kid (yesterday's Deer Valley slopes don't allow snowboarding - too snobbish? - but he was a good sport and tried skiing for the first time) and I'm eating his dust. Snow. Powder. Whatever.

Luckily, we broke for lunch around 11:30 at this restaurant on the side of the mountain, and lo-and-behold we encounter the Jumbo Kobe Beef Hot Dog special with fries. Now, I consider myself something of a fry snob, and American frites tend to come in just short of European fatty snacks. BUT, much to our surprise, THESE fries were GREAT!!! ...or maybe it was the fatigue and hunger. I'm no doctor. And what hot dog would be complete without relish, hot mustard, ketchup and mushrooms?

At this point, we promptly fell asleep at the table for a good twenty minutes. 9,000 ft in the air makes you tired.

Finally, one brownie later, and after I'd figured out how to properly adjust my damn boots, we headed out. We found 8 amazing runs, all nicely groomed, and spent the next three hours battling our own muscles as we tackled the speediest and most fun slopes of the day.

We've been too tired to move since 5 p.m., so we spent the night resting up, working on my script, catching up, watching "Whose Line", and leaving Susan one really silly message. We'll see if I can get to sleep before 2 tonight.

I've had one fall so far, and expect at least one more (just to be realistic. I can't be perfect ALL the time.) Tomorrow we do another half day and then make pizza for the family. Stay tuned for more updates as the week progresses!

A Rush of Crud to the Head

Here's a thought everyone can relate to.

How many people do you know - intimately - who often allow their emotions to completely control them?

Now, we all do this from time to time, but there are always a few people who I describe as "Body Junkies". This term refers to people who derive immense pleasure from the intensity of their emotions.

Some people seem to act helpless, victimized by their own bodies, almost like they've been hijacked by the chemicals rushing through their brains. It's as if they seek validation from this rush of emotions.

Do the world a favor, and pick one day of the week. On this day, if you encounter someone who's allowing this to happen to themselves, give them the gift of your compassion. Say nothing, smile, give them your grace and allow them to make their own mistakes.

Since Feeling is First

Since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

- the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis


e. e. cummings

Cobwebs

If your guitar sits cased in the corner of your room,
and your piano top is dusty from years of neglect,
while your easel stands cracked from constant sunlight,
and you haven't sharpened your pencils in years,
then your art is sleeping; and no matter what people say,
it hasn't died - it needs dreams to carry on.

Five Great Ways to Freak Yourself Out

1) Read "American Psycho" while stoned.
2) Watch "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" highlights and porn on the same screen.
3) Focus only your shadow while jumping up and down on a trampoline.
4) Compare the similarities of Dick Cheney and the fat Cenobite from Hellraiser.
5) Eat heavily-sauced spaghetti while watching "The Passion of the Christ".

Paper Boots

I have a pair of paper boots.
They get soggy after puddle-jumping,
and we make new ones from old newspaper.
Inhaling the inky smell, our laughter louder than the crinkling,
we steal kisses even as we dodge thrown mittens, still wet from brown snow.

Hung to dry over the mantle, bursting into flames,
we notice only the ashes later as our twin fires burn low,
exhausted energy spent on one another.
I kiss your fluttering eyelids to sleep,
and you murmur softly in your dream-world,
far from snow and fire,
while I marvel at the stillness of your face,
the slight part of your lips,
the soft curve of your back in my hand.

As many lights in the sky as sparks from a log;
the bricks stacked to shape our fire glowing with an inner heat;
we two make more light than God
in this moment, our moment,
and rest when our day is done.

This is a world where few are found,
and we are a privileged few who dwell here.