Full Circle

Tottering in, clipped-winged and near lifeless, wide-eyed from psychosis and mistrust, we find ourselves sitting in the strangeness of a full circle, with many blinking pained, similar eyes staring back at us. The first step towards a life unbeknownst to us yet that we crave and hope it will be our saving grace. We listen intently or not at all, to only find ourselves back in the generous warmth of the circle. Only this time, we have begun to shed the cloak of unfamiliarity and begun instead to rub ourselves with the mounted up ashes of similarities that were caught and burnt in the fire of pain from broken families, marriages, pockets, selves; dead dreams, friends and babies; misguided relations, detached emotions, the drudgery of isolation, the seclusion of adoption, the hell of incarceration. We continue to come into the circle, even though we may do this half-heartedly, with some of us missing half our bodily organs. Yet with a glimmer of an illuminated light we may observe in the eye of our neighbour, we stay in hopes for our own paths to be brightened against the dark.

Progressing from being the newcomer in the circle that gave us life, we now stand fairly grounded in our welcomed respite, while gaining strength to look at those things within ourselves we’ve for so long despised.

Clear-minded, fully aware – the harshness of our past deeds aim straight at us, threatening to clean out the time we’ve had devoid of the toxins.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes we don’t end up back in the circle. Sometimes we end up square-fitted in a dusty box, remembered only as yet another sad statistic. Sometimes the grace of life allows back in.

Wounded yet grateful for another chance, the road of recovery can only fork so many times until we ultimately have to choose the road less travelled, to our salvation, or the familiar road, brimmed with Trojan promises that leads us back to the bitter hell.

So, in this circle, even if we sit here for the first time or have been here a decade, our true intentions are what keeps us returning, to receive the key holders, which are our faith and trust in our new lives.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk about this shit in third person or as an observer, but as I struggle with heightened anxiety that comes with cutting the losses with those people, places and things of my old self and I stand awkwardly, tongue-tied and excited in front of my new friends, in my renewed life, I stand in awe of the goodness that is my Higher Power, whose love shines through in all their faces – and I come to believe, over and over again, that no matter what, no matter what, I have come full circle in the glory of Life.

Attempts At...

Attempts at reaching the turning point in my life has been but a series of winding roads, seemingly always taking back to the beginning of the core.

The core that holds an enormous splice of hurts, uncertainty, insecurity and all other weak blind spots that I assumed had dissipated.

Yet they remain, clothed like the benevolent missionary, whose intentions result in inappropriate insults, digging the grave of despair far deeper than its’ initial hate.

This abandonment and open confusion, allows mines’ core to become susceptible to anyone who has an opinion, to spit venomous strikes at my BEing, lure my vulnerability with lewd suggestions disguised as love, shit in the abyss of the mess that I have allowed to drench my spirit…

Yet on the attempts to clear out all the useless gore, attempts to refresh my lense and take a look at my brighter Self, whose smile touches a million souLs, the closest bloodsuckers swoon to drench out the shining light that soars.

The bloodsuckers that my naivety wants to believe in all their goodness yet are reminders of my once knackered core.

So, in attempts to reach the deafening silenced peak of internal silence, I shall never stop journeying…in attempts for my right resolves.

Girl Uninterrupted: A Visual Diary

                                                              



Note To Self:

Most of all, be true to yourself
Stand firm in your beliefs even if you stand alone
Allow others to experience you without becoming dependent
Always acknowledge your good feelings and your bad
Know your worst self so you can always be your best
Love your fucken smile because everyone else does
Oh, and most of all, BE TRUE TO YOURSELF+

SHANTARAM - Quotes to share!!

“The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men. It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do or refuse to do that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, everyone of us, every atom, every galaxy and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God”.

“Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God”

“Suffering is happiness, backwards”

“Suffering of every kind, is always a matter of what we’ve lost. When we’re young, we think suffering is something that’s done to us. When we get older – when the steel door slams shut, in one way or another – we know that real suffering is measured by what’s taken away from us”.

“People always hurt us with their trust. The surest way to hurt someone you like, is to put all your trust in him”.

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end, that’s all there is; love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold tight until the dawn”.

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“Are we ever justified in what we do? When we act, even with the best intentions, when we interfere with the world, we always risk a new disaster that mightn’t be of our making, but that wouldn’t occur without our action. Some of the worst wrongs, were caused by people who tried to change things”.

“Shame gives exultation its purpose and exultation gives shame its reward”.

“What characterises the human race, cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it? I thought the question acutely clever then, when I first heard it, but I’m lonelier and wiser now and I know it isn’t cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive”.

“There is no meaness too spiteful or too cruel, when we hate someone for all the wrong reasons”.

“The most precious gift you can bring to your lover, is your suffering”.

“Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they’d never happened”.

“Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart, and every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved”.

“The worst things that people do to us always makes us feel ashamed. The worst things that people do always strike at the part of us that wants to love the world. And a tiny part of the shame we feel, when we’re violated, is shame at being human”.

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“People say that money is the roof of all evil. But it’s not true. It’s the other way round. Money isn’t the root of all evil. All the money in the world is dirty, in some way, because there’s no clean way to make it. If you get paid in money, somebody, somewhere is suffering for it. That’s one of the reasons, I think, why just about everyone – even people who’d never break the law in any other way – is happy to add an extra buck or two to their money on the black market”.

“Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t let ourselves become. Sooner or later, we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love”.

“Missing the people I loved was a kind of grieving for me, and it was worse, much worse, for the fact that – so far as I knew – they weren’t dead. My heart, sometimes, was a graveyard full of blank stones.. But there was nowhere to go: nowhere that wasn’t emptied of meaning and identity and love by the vacuum of those who were missing and lost forever. I was the fugitive. I was the vanished one. I was the one who was missing; missing in action… We can deny the past, but we can’t escape it’s torment because the past is a speaking shadow that keeps pace with the truth of what we are, step for step, until we die”.

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they’re dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart. And sometimes, my friend, the love I have and can’t give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep”.

“The tears, when they come to some men, are worse than beatings. They’re wounded worse by sobbing, men like that, than they are by boots and batons. Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often, and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbreak. We know that crying is a good and natural thing. We know that crying isn’t a weakness, but a kind of strength. Still, the weeping rips us root by tangled root from the earth, and we crash like fallen trees when we cry”.

“Anything that can be put in a nutshell should remain there”.

“You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own, and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die”.

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stich of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be”.

SHANTARAM - Book Review

In the wake of everything mundane and languid, that continuously pushes its existence upon our everyday lives, causing extreme boredom and occasional mischief, shines through a glimmer of hope, a ray of syntactic brightness, a narrative that gently nudges at your spirit and shocks your moral standing – a nine-hundred odd paged novel that is based on a true story of a heroin addict, with a 27years prison sentence that manages to escape from an Australian prison into the full belly of Bombay in India. Shantaram is a brilliantly written novel by Gregory David Roberts that comes, not only as highly recommended but as a necessity to the even not-so-avid reader.

The story begins with Lin arriving in India, after escaping prison, to the wide open smile of a Bombay guide, Prabaker. Manouvering their way through crowded streets, fast-moving cars, spice-smelling air, body-hugging humidity and incense-filled shops at every corner, Lin and Prabaker become tied by their initial trust in each other. Their friendship intertwines them through disease infected slums, black market dealings, love lusts and dark secrets, mafia brotherhood and heartless killings, lice crawling India prisons and heart breaking deaths.

Through the eyes of Lin, you will be left wondering of the intense pain one human can feel in a lifetime. Similarly, the greatest lesson that one can take from the book is the power of forgiveness, the over-reaching hand of love, the never-ending saviour that is hope through bloody wars, bitter backstabbing and irresponsible choices of man.

Unapologetically exposing the cut-throat underworld of India, the author also piquantly delivers philosophical messages that find their core in humanity and spirituality at the end of every chapter.

Shantaram is a book that will make you devour every word with your third eye, whilst gently forcing you to look at yourself in relation to the world. A human story with a universal theme – forgiveness and love.



Life on the road

So here I am, straddling along the quiet landscape, a world new, a world embraced. I am on the road, stamping my way through the harsh reality of nearly being arrested by Lesotho border officials for car theft to being released into the starving hands of music lovers that accept me due to association.

Trekking down the brown plains of the Free State terrain, I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the silence. Something that I envisioned for so long which now stands real to my gypsy soul. The wheels of the green micro bus roll on and on and on, the silence escalates and I am hit by the obtrusive sound of nothing. I think, last night, I was surrounded by multitudes of appreciative good-wishers, today I face the emptiness.

For the first time since being on the road with artists, I understand how they can easily jump the rope, cross the line into a bare protectiveness. How do you deal with the ferocity of the lights? They call it the limelight. What a mind fuck!

I was at the beginning stages of a very bad breakup that lasted a year beyond then and I was yet to still understand the psychological impact that the life of a musician has.  I say this from an introductory level of being in the music industry. Many people don’t understand. Many people expect. Many people have opinions. Many people don’t know the creative process. Many the process engulfs.

Performing artists are dead and alive. Many tour managers, I imagine, relate to this conflicting internal feeling.

I believe in where I’m at any given time, and in this moment, I feel loneliness beyond measure. My insecurities are heightened. My relations are fucked up. How does one maintain the normality of a family life? Friendship? Self?

Perhaps I give too much thought in everything I do. My downfall inwardly but my greatest asset when entrusted in contribution to the picked out artist.

Someday, my struggles, my unnoticed effort, my love for the minds that stand barren in their destitute creativeness, shall be seen. Or not. I don’t care. I did what I wanted. No one can take that away from me. Not any artist that I’ve worked with or still shall. Not even myself because I am an artist in my own right. We have all been blessed with a wretched curse. Let all our souLs fly free.