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Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
.wow, i never thought it would ever be possible,
i'm sorry, i have no empathy for these youtuber "creators",
any idiot can regurgitate the news,
venture into vulture journalism,
  then again: gone are the days of closely associated
with people like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein...
they are really gone: what the hell was gamer-gate
compared to watergate? gate after gate,
and all i'm hearing is response videos,
it should have never come to this,
whereby journalists are as untrustworthy as politicians,
and of what remains, come the saturday and
the sunday editions, when the petty bourgeoisie
come out of the woodworks of a week,
album reviews, book reviews, t.v. reviews,
restaurant reviews: real, real journalism,
all the grit you'd expect from a warzone...
           journalists forgot they were not kindred spirits
of politicians: but immediacy historians...
the front-line history chroniclers...
i find... these days, esp. these days...
    you know why i like heidegger so much,
and forget the fact that he joined the **** party?
in 1938 he was already disillusioned by it...
so the ad homine fallacy bites the dust...
   even a **** deservers a redemption...
but i find that these days, of all days...
   man, as a historiological creature has to bow
before the unshakeable facets of the biological man,
esp. in the english speaking world...
    in terms of history and biology:
     history has all the fun stories,
and a sensible "concern" for time,
   well... if not "concern" then at least a bearbable
time-frame...
                  after all, i am the one who said:
all the great deserts of the world,
akin to sahara? they were once great
mountain ranges... you already know where
to look between a mountain range akin to the alps
and a desert... bound to h'america...
   monument valley: utah...
  a mountain becomes a rock after a while...
while the desert expands...
    ayers rock (uluru)... but monument valley (utah)
is a transition period between a mountain range
and a desert, if we're going to stand outside
of all space and time, and look back in...
we have plenty of time to catch-up on...
           just like i believe that black holes
are actually 2-dimensional objects:
   that spin really fast, giving an impression
of them being 3-dimensional objects:
as usually represented by a gravity dip associated
with them pulling matter into themselves...
i think that black holes are paradoxes...
since how can a 2-dimensional object
actually exist in a 3-dimensional space?
   that depends on the size of the "3-dimensional"
object / space... the universe is a medium,
it's defined as a "space" but to me...
      it's beyond space... it's only space on the grounds
of isolated time, 365 days,
the time and space it takes for the earth
to orbit the sun... which is an isolated example,
outside? well: there's atmosphere on earth,
outside? vacuum!
who's going to prove my theory wrong?
               not anyone in my lifetime -
besides the point with these youtube content
"creators": where credit is due, credit is due,
but once might have cared for their vulture
journalism... two old farts akin to felix (black pigeon
speaks) and sargon of akaad talking about how:
the youth are congregating to youtube to listen
to music: that's what i've always done...
  i discovered these youtube "creators" by accident,
i just wanted my jukebox back, man,
i wanted my algorithm back, my imprint back,
now that the devil's dozen scenario took hold
of the platform: 1 video playing, 12 back-ups...
and they're all the same, unrelated, *******...
        talk all you want, please, just give back
my algorithm imprint, where i can discover new music...
again... i never thought i'd see another
compilation video, 173 videos bound to one...
and, mind you... after finding about 6 googlewhacks
(googlewhack? when you use the sort of
language that provides you with only one search
result on the behemoth platform of billions
of results, 1 is grand, but 6? it's becoming too
predictable)...
                        so here's what i found
   (band - song):

wooly mammoth - mammoth bones / kyuss - space cadet,
rainbows are free - last supper / grand magus -
                                                mountain of power,
zed - lies / om - cremation chant I & II,
    smoke - hallucination / weird owl - white hidden fire,
orchid - son of misery / witch - seer,
               unida - you wish / black mountain - old fangs,
b.r.m.c. - ain't no easy way /
              jack daniels overdrive - ****** to death,
shrinebuilder - blind for all to see,
                   datura - mantra / the heavy eyes - voytek,
the machine - infinity / clutch - the regulator,
   colour haze - mountain / maligno - son of tlalocan,
dozer - twilight sleep / gomer pyle - albino rattlesnake,
blockback - dead mans blues / greenleaf - witchcraft tonight,
cactus jumper - right way / borracho - bloodsucker,
alabama thunderpussy - motor ready,
                    earthless - sonic power,
my brother the wind - death and beyond,
   zaphire oktalogue - carrion fly / siena root - reverberations,
unida - slaylina / pothead - toxic / sungrazer - mountain dusk,
   rotor - costa verde / blizaro - it's in the lighthouse,
planet of zeus - woke up dead,
     kongh - pushed beyond / ufomammut - smoke,
high on fire - to cross the bridge,
              the secret - bell of urgency,
      unida - wet pussycat / dozer - big sky theory,
cavity - chloride / brutus - swamp city blues,
the grand astoria - something wicked this way comes,
sasquatch - the judge / pharaoh overlord - skyline,
baby woodrose - love comes down / kamni - **** of satan,
lay with me - the flying eyes / cowboys & aliens  -
                                                out of control,
sons of otis - liquid jam / hainloose - recipe,
    ridge - rancho relaxo / bongripper - ****** sutherland,
skraeckoedland - cactus / grails - satori,
    lo-pan - chicken itza / five horse johnson - people's jam,
blind dog - don't ask me where i stand,
     wiht - orderic vitalis / hisko detria - nothing happens,
liquid sound company - leage for spiritual discovery lives,
   goatsnake - black cat bone / gandhi's gunn - rest of the sun,
the egocentrics - wave / propane propane - it's alright,
heliotropes - ribbons / mother mars - price you pay,
che - the knife / annimal machine - condenado,
   earth - tallahassee / the whirlings - delirio,
orchid - heretic / maeth - horse funeral,
siena root - rasayana / graveyard - longing,
           tia carrera - hell / hainloose - recipe,
      burner - five pills (and a bottle of whiskey),
dala sun - guilty for ****** / vulgaari - lie,
        slo burn - muezli / stonehelm - zombie apocalypse,
smallman - evolution / spiders - fraction,
         shakhtyor - e. jaspers / earthmass - lunar dawn,
evoke the lords - dregs / colour haze - silent,
     sutrah - el septimo viaje...

  

who are "these" people,
who: "supposedly" live for the future...
they always cite it,
as the one motivational
momentum of the present -
it's as if they've never seen
a bull itch the ground
with its front hoofs -
   imitating building up momentum
before a charge...
or how a slingshot,
or how a bow works...
   to these people,
the ******* sideways movement
of a bow against a violin...
sometimes...
      you do not retreat into
the past, to hide, to amount
to nostalgia...
     sometimes
the only reason for the reflexive
affirmation, confined to maxims
and aphorism, nay: even poems!
is to look back...
     to reap what was once
sowed, rather than sow blindly,
and reap: what no one wants
to reap...
    drunk? getting there...
       it felt so relaxing paying off
a 100 / 250 part of a debt
i owe her...
            while buying a russian
standard liter,
   asking for a 100 cash-back
of the supermarket cashier,
- the limit is 50,
   but if you buy something else,
i can give you another 50...
- oh... ok...
   so me went to and took a bottle
of shveedish cider...
   rekorderlig...
   mind you? the swedish,
what they perfected fermenting
better than what the the irish claim
to fame is?
    sorry... magners:
               irish? stick to the guinness...
(it's actually the only cerveza
i'd go into an english pub to
drink from the tap... bottled? canned?
not the same)...
     but with such swedish delights
such as the above mentioned,
  ålska and K  ö   nigsberg
                            *œ
?
no competition... the suede(s) just
do one thing grand...
    cider...
- what was i talking about?
  ah... the "dreaded" past...
     the people who say:
  but you can't live out a life,
   holding onto a private past,
a memory...
    so... these other ******* were
allowed to implant a false
past, unrelated to me,
teaching me whether it was
Newton, or Leibniz who first
invented the infinitesimal calculus
method?
                i'm betting on Leibniz...
after all... he took the position
of a ******* librarian...
   and he wasn't buried with pomp
& circumstance at Westminster Abbey...
sometimes...
         one person can't have it all...
but if the education system
is a system that is indicative for
the erosion of memory, esp. private
matters... and juggernauts in
with these selective rubrics of science
and history...
fair enough the basic
implants: numerical arithmetic,
and lettering arithmetic -
    and then... lessons in mental
entertainment... when applied
           to menial labour...
memory is: supreme...
          i can't give my memory up...
that's what: killer proteins
eating the fat tissue of the brain
like starvation in reverse
        of a case of Alzheimer's?
memory is: cameo cinema -
    however distorted it might be,
although i beg to differ on
whether time per se,
  is not the better psychedelic
component
when coupled with memory -
esp. the cinematic aspect of memory...
there was never a "living" in
the past -
      there was a point about memory
to sharpen the edges of
    "dasein"... all speculation and
questions regarding consciousness,
as championed through
a chimpanzee's *** are somehow
pointless:
    given there's a higher tier of
conceptualization -
   working from dasein...
            hierjetzt -
      or in english?             presence...
- because why would i treat
a personal memory,
like some inorganic entity of
a schooling system,
under Catholic measures,
  that made it necessary to include
Pythagoras... but not Horace?
that's inorganic memory...
and unless i turn into some
inorganic entity -
   the organic aspect of my psyche:
my past, my cameo cinema?
   that's going to be a leech,
attached to me...
  and i'm not going to give it up,
just like... when i walk about
my door, and enter the england
that i know on the peripheries...
i'll speak the lingua franca -
     but with my privacy?
    you'd better cut my tongue off
before i stop speaking
my western slavic heritage...
    and it pains me...
when certain groups of immigrants...
don't know the POINT
where immigration becomes
insensible... self-lacerating...
           i once hated their approach...
now i just pity them...
anyone ****** can juggle
     two oranges rather than three...
p.s. old school cure for a cold?
forget the pills...
   glass of warm milk,
  an egg yolk,
     and a good scratch of butter...
  (on the rare occasion,
  milk infused with garlic)

mixed together...
before bedtime...
  if the ****** won't sweat out
the bacteria during the night...
     well... stick to the synthetics...
i'm pretty sure i know why i drink...
certainly not to: PARTY PARTY PARTY...
i always aim for
the one safety net of "pharmacology"...
ssssssssleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

p.s. so much for children loving their
parents...
        in vitro and the whole
m.g.m. debacle:
so, sweet little *******,
       no *******, no chance for your
for a quickie satellite launch date from
Tehran, under all the weight of
monotheism turned secular...
christianity: the only "monotheism"
with overt tinged of polytheism,
lutheran, baptist, catholic, orthodox...
just today i opened my door twice...
once to a confused curry house delivery man:
did you order some food:
i too replied with a confused look
and the word: huh?! no.
then a black woman with a a white ol' granny
came by with a leaflet...
the jehovah's witnesses were on my trail...
lucky of my grandfather,
   the profanity brigade of the hebrew name
i will not dare utter came by...

  and if you have lived a good enough life:
memory? memory beats hollywood
technicolour and CGI...
at least in the cinema of memory i always
get to play the cameo (role)...

oh i get the youtube creators:
   living with his parents... still. aged 33...
funny that i don't mind them,
since they're getting older they're settling
into their solispsism,
        annoying as ****, but i stand them,
thank god the protruding caduceus veins
on my phallus protected me from
a circumcision...
  i can ******* like a girl with a web-cam...
no scented candles:
the no. 1, 2 & 3 on the throne of thrones...
the toilet, simultaneously masaging my ****
and prostate...

men were not exactly supposed to derive
pleasure from ***: they were,
supposed to give pleasure,
and in giving pleasure to one outlet,
they were subscribed to finding out what
best pleases them: ergo?
women would always derive more of
the people from *** than men would ever...
*** is not a story of bragging about
a harem... the woman lies flat...
the man pumps her...
after all... she is the one burdened
to carry a child, why wouldn't she be
the one deriving more pleasure from *** than
a man could ever?
72 virgins! ha ha!
   ah ha ha!
             what's the ratio?
   last time i checked... a 3 hole caravan...
of a woman's worth...
   mouth, ******, ****... and man?
only two points of entry, well...
"entry"...
                    seems that the tomatoe,
really is a fruit, but is treated like a vegetable
nontheless!
homosexuality in the 1960s...
william burroughs in Tangiers...
                    when Islam was quiet radical...

well... i cook, i clean...
                what are my other options of continuing
to write and living the ed gein "lifestyle",
i tried getting social housing in england,
but, i'm not a somali with two wives and a dozen
kids...
              rent, in london?
extortion...
                   housing shortage...
                 well there's me hating my parents,
the outside world just needs to see
an ed gein imitation...
               or there's me living off acorns
in the woods, or rummaging on the streets,
making the N25 bus from oxford st. to ilford
my own personal mobile hotel as a homeless
man in london...

   i think it's time to succumb to your
parents prejudices, if only for the jokes,
no point in making ethical high judgements
to fit into a zeitgeist narrative surrounding
yourself with people: you'd never eat a meal with...
that's how i define the highest form of respect:
if i'll eat with you: implies that i respect you...
i drink alone...
a high school fwend once thought he could
bribe me with his company,
that i "had to" drink with him...
      no... not really...
          i much prefer drinking by myself...
these days you're not expected to honour your
mother and your father,
i.e. make them proud...
               honour is a double-edged sword...
just don't be ashamed of having
a mother or a father...
not that hard: given western divorce rates...
i.v.f., frozen eggs... yadda yadda yadda...
lucky me in having went to university...
oh... really? so much cooler in a cosmopolitan
environment with your contemporary
flat-mates?
               get the picture?
                 paying rent while literally living
in a diguised cardboard box?
i can't help the fact that poetry doesn't pay...
that there are economic factors beyond
my control in play...
   maybe if i was the grandson of my parents,
born in england, and not elsewhere,
there would be some sort of + leverage...
for a bricks and mortar start-up...
plus... i hoard...
         books and music...
                     mind you:
neither of my parents spoke english as their
mother tongue...
  neither did i...
they didn't teach me this tongue:
i had to teach this language by myself:
for myself...
           aged 8: thrown into the deep end
of the pool: now swim ******, swim!

i just feel sorry for the immigrant parents
who gave birth to their children into the *****
of the land they immigrated to...

two days ago i found a heartbreak,
a romanian couple, with a child...
the father was stubborn in teach his daughter
his / her native sprechen...
romanian... but she was already speaking
perfect antithesis of accent kindergarten english...
and almost non-responsive to her tongue
alligned to her biology...
    clearly she was born in england,
but her parents were both romanian...
i've had that conundrum in my head
for a long time...
   what if i married an english girl...
and i was unable to teach my offspring
my native language,
what if i had to silence my native tongue,
"forget" it, or only speak it by myself,
via reading a book in western slavic?
what if the woman i married:
wouldn't see the benefits of bilingualism,
outside of the mainstream economic
mantra of ensuring your children
learn either german or mandarin or arabic?
that worried me...
          oh believe me, i enjoy my lapses
into english: since i am providing the groundwork...
but in the case of having offspring...
e.g. teaching them the western slavic tongue
so they could speak to their grandparents
(i.e. my parents)...
       even my grandparents lament
the scenarios when a woman would marry
an austrian... and she wouldn't teach
her children her native tongue,
and when the grandchildren would visit their
grandparents... they'd be speaking
a crude variation of braille, morse,
   sign-language: na migi...
               i know that my mother is alive
in me even under this veil of english...
because she's more than the womb,
the genitals of my conception, the breast fed off...
she's also the Atlas of my vocabulary
of the "hiding" tongue beneath this one...

i already knew the "game" was rigged from
the get-go... i've seen how one hindu woman
suffered being married to a scouser...
she never managed to pass on her language
to her children,
she bought a library, thinking her children
would succumb to learning: however poor
they might end up being...
but she was suffocated by the english
tongue of her husband...
and her children didn't express even the most
vague of desires to learn their mutterzunge...

that's what worried me to begin with,
marrying an english woman i was afraid
of the ignorance that someone bilingualism
was en route toward a psychiatrist disorder
i was diagnosed with: schizophrenia...
this anglophonic ignorance still scares me...
like: everyone is expected to speak the revisionist
globalist lingua franca: this anglo lingua...
if i didn't meet a bilingual / polyglot woman,
i'd return to rearing idiotic children...
anglo lingua was only supposed to be a middle-ground,
a "no man's land"...
             a language of trivial economic transfers...
a language primarily orientated around usage:
rather than an ethno-centric basis for "englishness"...
to **** with: god save the queen...
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
                 old scot dragoons': auld lang syne...
those where my forever anthems...
see...
        what gave birth to a jihadi john?
his mother "forgot", his father "forgot":
his "mother" forgot, his "father" forgot to speak
the "ancient" tongue...
there's a point to integration of the immigrant,
an immigrant is a forgetful creature,
an ever pleasing creature...
never to mind himself as an ex-pat...
you ****** forget your mutterzunge...
you'll be speaking in cockney accents
with broken affairs of arabic beheading people
for zombified reasons of grandeour!
*******...
          you, you: you are to blame!
you were so ashamed of your parents that you
delved on honoring them to the point
of thinking giving pride unto them was very
much akin as keeping shame away from
their girdle of the wedlock of your own existence!
death has not made your a martyr...
i guess you deserve those 72 mishaps,
those 72 annoying voices...
and i pray to god that you receive your reward!
i hope that among the 72 you will never find
a chance a repose to find your: self!

integration is one thing,
pandering to the "elites": plebs who think they
are kings among the plebs,
is quiet another...
plebs who go places and think english
is a universal tongue: just because
uncle sam says so...
of those i respect:

y cymraeg: pwy dal eu tafod...
an gàidhlig: cò fhathast bruidhinn an cuid teanga...
i nawet moim: co ma mówić
to nawet tyle: co znaczy tak niewiele!

there are boundaries... learn the customs
of the natives, but ensure you retain the customs
you were born with...
a child, born in a foreign land,
ought to ensure his parents teach him
the words to speak to his grand overseers...
complete immersion,
this cultural abortion,
this cutting of the umbilical chord
from: i have never met a people so
content at having been subjugated outside
the indian sub-continent,
cricket... for ****'s sake...
       as to demand other europeans
to treat them as superiors,
when sitting alongside an englishman...
****-bud-bud, the **** are you on about?!
once again: england has become the circus
for the grounding of what began
with engels and marx...
   wasn't communism born from
engels and marx observing english society?
sure... first experimented en masse in
mongolia... but its origins?

   so of course i had problems finding a suitable
mating partner... i was afraid that my nativ-zunge
would die a slow but solemn death...
that an english bridge would not consider
the worth of a bilingual child, or a polyglot,
or that she would repress the chance of my
"biological continuum nuance" to respond outside
of the anglo lingua refrain of: beside the english language?
there are quiet a few one might want to learn...

it's not easy being a first generation immigrant,
esp. if you moved aged 8, mute as a wolf
to a domesticated dog's barking...
but hey, no jihadi john in me...
           jihadi john should have been raised
bilingual... i wouldn't be the one speaking broken
tourist arabic while beheading someone...
jihadi john spoke tourist arabic...
the dichotomy of the mind to the biological
reality, beside the current, western,
"biological relativism" debate...
      clearly darwinism was "wrong"...
man is, these days, left with neither a biological
reality, nor a historical reality...
              but there is a historical reality:
but it's so knit-&-picky...
come on... philip augustus of the capetian
dynasty?
                 casimir III...
                        jeremi wiśniowiecki...
konrad I of masovia...
                           kuno von lichtenstein...
alles ist gott: und gott ist alles -
  gott mit, uns!

              mit eine leben wert leben:
    erinnerung ist die nur kino
             wert sehen eine film beim;

hell... could be worse:
   i might have translated some latin
of horace into pig-trough comfort food.
Alex A d r i a n Jan 2018
Love is a memory,
Forgotten in time.


Love is a memory,
A story, that I left behind.


Love is a memory,
Of all the lies that I ever knew,
in lie of truth.


Love is a memory,
On the digital analogy particles of my soul.


Love is a memory,
One I choose to lose.


Love is a memory,
That I will give back to the dark.


Love is a memory,
That once little a silent spark.


Love is a memory,
In the wastelands that is, I.


Love is a memory,
In a forgotten corner of my mind.


Love is a memory,
Like that of a forgotten dream.


Love is a memory,
The forgotten and unwanted parts of me.


Love is a memory,
A battlefield, in which I stand alone.


Love is a memory,
That has left me out in the cold.


Love is a memory,
One to which, I now choose not to know.


Love is memory,
Burned into my soul.


Love is a memory,
That I choose not to know.


Love is…
Love is…
Love is…
A memory.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
as any tactician, of any sort, there must be
an introduction into what becomes and expansion
that lasts the entire length of the night,
a liter of whiskey requires a decent amount
of hours to be drank in,
              ensuring that any moth that flies into my
"ivory tower" can loiter for the night,
imploring it: you better not be pregnant
with your moth larvae, otherwise...
     i will have to catch you with my hand,
and release you back into the night...

                        so... an atypical drinking session
begins with a few side orders or
sharpshooters (mix of 3:1 whiskey to ginger
ale)...
      and a few readings of, say,
             heidegger...
                       i already mentioned:
           dasein is more than an event,
          to me it's the equivalent of a crucifix...
it's a word associated to an object,
        rather than a recurring subject...
                  after all...
                          to objectify,
to work wonders in the objective world,
one still cannot escapes being a subject...
   esp. if one becomes a subject of one's own
subject-ive              experience...
     it must be such a boring, lame,
***** almost realism of object-object
          interaction...
                        to­ have:
       but to be unable to appreciate...
                i own about two dozens of vinyls...
but i don't really, really own them...
yes, i "own" them in the sense:
         but they might also be stolen...
        but i appreciate them more than i own
them...
              even if i "own" them,
and one day, do not...
        i owned something more than the object-reality
of the object per se,
       i appreciated them...
the ritual of the needle and the initial
scratching before the music would begin...
plus, not even a CD and esp. not
an MP3 file can give you the sort of ground
gravitational pull toward something
so physically exposing as...
   a... water-mill effect...

i digress...
              of all the three pillars of the mind:
thinking,
          memory and imagination?
i appreciate memory the most...
          you really know you have lived
a reasonably good life
   if your memory faculty is overtly present...
when you remember so much
of your, however mediocre / unspectacular
life...
           thinking can become scrambled,
you have to sometimes associate yourself
to writing when thinking is concerned...
no wonder so many philosophers after
socrates didn't have the patience to
resort to dialectics,
     to talk...
                     at least writing gives one
the capacity to organize, or rather...
devise plans for the labyrinth...

      imagination? plagued by images...
  i do not appreciate conjuring images in my mind,
thinking up dragons and demons...
imagination clouds the mind,
and the ability to concentrate on the skeleton
of man:
                    ⠇⠑⠞⠞⠑⠗⠎
plus, imagination promises and does conjure,
sketches of what an actual reality could
somehow provide...
    i'm not here, bothered about the nature
of "reality", i'll leave that whimsical notion
to english speaking physicists and neurologists...
but imagination clouds the pristine vision
of looking into the abyss,
   and by that, i also imply: looking through
the abyss back onto this world...

and should you think there's anything
profound about that statement?
there isn't...
         but memory...
     to be able to reclaim memory...
    to not seek relief / exodus / escape by
means of the imagination?
     i, frankly, would rather reclaim
the faculty of memory, above all else...
before it was stolen by the indocrination rubircs
of pedagogy...
before schooling set in...
     before, my years from the age of 8
through to the age of 21,
   the faculty of memory was made circumstanced
to "entertain" the bogus threats from
the education system...
             calculus: hardly used in everyday life...
you name it...
           what was the point of discussing
the ethics of abortion to children aged 15?
to scare them, if anything...
  euthanasia discussed aged 15? really?
the moral judgement regarding
   th "right" from the "wrong" was already
settled in the catholic school dogma...
maybe that's why i didn't want the seal
of being confirmed...
   what confirmation name would i have
chosen?
  at first i thought i would have chosen
Michael, as i made my not-to-be-"hope"
of a church wedding...
                 i would have settled on Lothar...
which would fit nicely with my already
second name, Conrad...
maybe even Otto... and dropped the hebrew
name Matthew...
          sure... reading heidegger...
like all philosophy: there's the reading
of a reflective prose, with the immediacy
of a reflexive poetics...
like the ancients: not confined to high school
curriculum of standard poetics:
rhyme and the etc. of techniques...
narrative: pure and simple...
    
              like when heidegger writes about
war (polemic / πoλεμoς)...
                 truth about either war,
or, peace (dialectic) is to chose between
what deserves our attention:
   either being (per se) - or beings...
                 and being (per se) isn't even relegated
to a subjugation to the self...
  a self-improvement, a self-help guru
mentality...
                   it's what the stoic doctor ordered...
there seems to be no fluidity with
an overt-association to a self,
                     self-worth is not exactly
akin to: the worth of being, is it?

        again: coming back to celebrating the faculty
of memory, above thought,
and certainly above imagination...
after all, i remember a period in my life
where i would have celebrated thinking per se
to be above memory and imagination,
when i attained some sort of synch.
   of a lived life of experiences,
that coincided with an equally fruitful
experience of thought that coincided with
the lived life...
            but not since a fateful event...
where memory became elevated above thinking...

so, memory? i have this one particular memory,
i was visiting Venice,
stayed in a hostel with about 15 women,
which, at times felt more intimidating
than sitting in a brothel with 9 bulgarian
prostitutes who i asked: one of you choose me,
one replied that i was not supposed to ask
them to choose, that they indeed were to be chosen,
so i said to her 'you talk a lot, you'll do!'
argentinian, australian girls, a swedish woman,
and two h'american girls...
leigh... and i can't remember the other girl's
name... visiting europe like any
h'american pair might do,
revising the ***** dancing stereotype of
finding "lost heritage"...
all over italy...

              the hostel was run by a h'american
girl and a h'americana boy...
first night? 15 women,
and you're the only man...
and one of them drops a bombshell:
well, as someone as handsome as you...
we took a group trip, via a ferry
to the Venice beach...
  we drank absinthe shots...
   don't ask me how,
but drunks have this GPS system built
into them when drunk... like bees...
i stumbled back to the hostel, alone,
on the ferry, and had a decent night of nod...
me, first time in Venice...
just like me stumbling back to
the hostel in Athens walking from
a strip-club... after having my fill
of smothering two strippers' bosoms...
having ****** my trousers prior,
tantalized by the fact that i was escorted
by a gorilla of a bouncer to the nearest
cash machine... since i ran out of money...
and then sneaking out of the hotel
that had a cash machine...
  first time in Athens... 5 ******* miles...
i made it back to the hostel...

i don't get it... drunks and in-built GPS...
navigated Venice, navigated Athens...
bee in me...

second day in Venice?
         of course... an argument between
the girls... leigh, the jewish girl wanted
to sight-see...
   a bunch of girls ganged up on her...
even her friend...
            so i said...
             well... **** me... if Solomon decided
to settle for the queen of sheba...
between me herding this quasi-tourist harem
of a bunch of australian girls...
   the argentinian etc.,
and this one h'american jewish girl leigh?
so i said: i'll do with you.

                      the numbers looked at me
like frankenstein jr.,
                        oh we had a hell of a time...
a few museums, getting lost in the Venetian
labyrinths, talked and talked...
explored the many flavours of gelato...
i think, i think i had the famous pistachio...
she had the capuccino in st. mark's sq.,
   and then she wanted to show me
the famous Venetian synagogue...
   so sure, we went there,
      but when we got there, it was closing...
boy, she was ******* that she couldn't
allow me to see it...
   instead... we saw the last tourist party
leave...
   and we huddled with some orthodox
students...
           one had a miniature shofar on him,
i told him to blow it, he blew it...
then i sat in a jewish cafe,
finding about the existence of the 613...
mitzvot...
             i wrote some of them down...
and then the weirdest ******* thing happened...
leigh started freaking out...
she was in such a hurry...
        she said she needed to get back,
she needed to get back...
          hell... she even paid of a Venetian taxi,
and Venetian taxis are not cheap,
motorboats on these rat canal aren't cheap...
i wanted to pay half the share...
she didn't want my money...
   next thing i know... she was booking
a flight out of Italy and on her way home...
she and her friend had still planned
another month touring Italy...
  phoom! off she went,
   then the quasi-tourist-harem of girls
came back from their day out...
leigh's friend inquired:
- where's leigh?
- oh, she decided to go home.
                   the next two days were weird...
it's not like i even pulled a ted bundy fast one...
but i remember the h'american girl
running the hostel...
  i ate the most amazing burgers which
she prepared... as if...
i staged some sort of neo-**** scare tactic
on poor leigh...
                rarely does a girl,
who planned this whole summer trip
with her friend, from h'america, all the way
to Europe... decide, on a whim...
to bail...

             Venice... oddly enough i was
not mesmerized...
           Stochholm didn't impress me either...
Amsterdam was just a cafe segment
and the chance to escape police-state
paranoia of England when i still smoked
marijuana... oh... and that one Dutch girl
who turned her head as she rode past me...
Cracow was a... eh... third time i went there?
just a transit point... London is too familiar...
Warsaw: again, transit hub...
Athens: squalor...
only two cities on this earth gave me
                 inspiration: Paris and Edinburgh...
mind you, Macedonia, amazing coach trip...
Belgrade looked stunning, imposing even,
during winter, seemingly a city on a hill...
on the flat-plains of Serbia...
but you need the snow,
   and ******* into it... and shaking from the cold,
because you're under-attired for the trip...

Katowice: but only at night.

   - and that is why i posit memory to
be superior to thinking these days,
  esp. imagination as a mental faculty...
memory has become a cinema to me...
        no wonder i'm bored with movies
these days...
         memory has become a form
of cinema for me...
            sure... it's not much...
but you can work around the "not much"
by fusing all the minor,
"insignificat" details of "skimming"
the narrative...
                       and thank god:
               i'm only given a cameo in all of it...
i'm not an over-bloated stage
actor with a protagonist role...
      in my cinema...
        i'm always the cameo!
                it's so liberating to have lived
a life that doesn't leave one feeling
ashamed...
                         it's hardly petty heroism...
but sure as ****...
     it's worth rememebering things
you can never be ashamed of.
-e- May 2018
Somewhere in my memory there is a smile
One that has to hurt cheeks, one that barley fits a face
Somewhere in my memory there is a dirt road
And there is you
just ahead of me, you, looking back
You are wearing it with the streaming sunlight
Dazzling, moving in slow motion, my memory,
Gliding looking back at me smiling
And I can feel it, the tension of my own cheeks
The pull the of the moment
That somewhere in my memory I go to
when someone says your name
Like a small second long movie clip
Projected in front of me
While it folds into reality
The edges yellowing in the blue sky
And gravel road, the bubbling of the scene
Like a film roll burning mid show
Shaking me back to whatever in the present
Demands my attention

Somewhere in my memory there are fast food wrappers on the dash
They are faded and forgotten, sun bleached
Somewhere in my memory there is you cradled in the passenger seat
Leaned back, sipping on a slur-*** cup
Laughing at joke I cant remember

Somewhere in my memory the parking lot lights
Are only stars we were gonna get that night
Somewhere it starts to rain
I smell it through the open window pane
Thick and filled with nostalgia
The way every moment I have with you ever was

Somewhere in my memory you are crying, folding in on yourself
Knees to chest head buried,
somewhere I am sorry
Somewhere back there deep there are things I cant change
Somewhere in my memory, I'd like too

Somewhere in my memory I am posing cliff side
Crooked smiled and sun burnt, somewhere you have that camera
Pushed to your face concentration hidden beneath
Lens adjusting hands, lip bit and beautiful
Somewhere we ask for someone to take one of both us
Where it hangs not just in my memory but on our wall

Somewhere in my memory there was a time when you are not
Somewhere there are good memories that are missing you
And although I wish you could have been its not the truth
But From now on I wont have too

Somewhere in my memory there will be this moment
Me, wide eyed breathless and hanging on it
You beautiful and smiling through it

-e
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.ludo savis... play nice... ludo savis... play nice:

i knew the relationship was over when i encountered her ex-boyfriend sitting in her st. petersburg flat drinking ***** with me, no, wait, it was when she started questionning me using cosmopolitan magazine quiz about perfect girlfriends on our way from st. petersburg to moscow to see metallica, while all i wanted was to listen to bob dylan and appreciate whatever rural russia had to offer... beside that? it took me quiet a time to fiddle through and find the glagolitic alphabet, the slavic alphabet before the learned greek came across "my" people, given the romans never venture that far... good luck finding an african phonetic encoding system, beside the hieroglyphs... i won't bother looking right now... not to insult, though: so much for a large phallus megalomania contra envy... Ⰶ: życie (life) is not the half of the caron ž in the form of: the acute... (ź): ździra (don't ask, seriously, the word implies worse than ***** / szmata)... źródło (source)... eh... the one-armed caron (ž)... ź... i can't explain it any further: you need to speak the lingo to keep the "nuance" alive... southern slavs treat the caron akin to ž = ż... how beautiful... given the english language has no diacritical marker application: can't exactly claim diacritical markers using only the automated hovering decapitated heads above ι & ȷ... i'm not english i'm tired of looking up h'america's *******! i don't need not fancy pants to debrief the people i'm concerned with to mind, not giving a **** about them... thanks for your jeans: subtitle made in canada... beside the whole mao shitshow of: made in china.... back in the 1990s! *******... even in terms of music h'america isn't really relevant.. it just is... and "whatever" this "is" is to be, will remain... but only as an r.e.m. ref. pointer, that requires the physical translation of the lyrics: the one i love... a simple prop: to occupy my mind.... fire! the silesian vampire... because... said so... learning about monsters is what i could only fathom, which included me... but, sorry... the glagolithic script... ⰄⰀⰏ: dam... i.e. i will give... fun fact: r.e.m. didn't sell their: it's the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine) to microsoft for a commercial break.. glagolitic script... where are the africans? oh, right, nowhere when phonetic encoding is turning heads... **** me... even the blind are onto the affair...  i went as far back as the glagolithic script: pre cyrillic, about the same time that the latins incorporated the northern "savages" with applying the chisel to the ᚱ / R... ᚠ / F... copernican "up-side down": why do all tree (beside the pines) resemble a Y shape, a gamma? why did god compensate his existence with opiates?! refresh my memory, though, why am i drawing blanks at african phonetic encoding? **** me, the blind drew something, the deaf too... if you played the guitar, forget about reading braille... you need tender, french, fingertips.... you can't play the guitasr and read braille... mind you... encoding morse overshadows braille... but even the european blindman overcomes the fully ****-naked butter-cup sprinting *** of a black man every day of the week: i'm not here to compensate for a leprechaun's sized *****: mind you... in the hands of a porcelain ***- beauty? everything looks like a hiroshima... i just started to entertain an asian fetish... 4th knuckle mizzing... missing... the most ****** aspect of a female aesthetic? her hand... when *** & the city cited trimming ***** hair (no circumsion, really?), so no asian porcelain hands, no 4th knuckle missing?! i hate what the anglo-speaking world has become, it's this, this, this quasi-Islam.... at least i respect the Quran... but 1984, by the secular prophet of the western world? why do people still calling it: silicon vallyey... it's a ******* curtain, smart-you not seeing the replacement mechanisms of the silicon curtain: now wow... ******, where you're getting-to-go get from? any ideas?! a tehran baza?! ******. 1960s homosexuals fiddling their way past the tunis police, happy? loitering sucker-****** pansie? again... entertain me... where is the african phonetic encoding system... this is my "i.q." avenue masterpiece... i don't care about i.q. but a ******* blind man beat the african at phonetic encoding... personally?


one just simply falls, tired of the right-wing momentum regarding beauty, it's such a bothersome crtique of its generic foundation if beauty..... i hate it, this objective classicism: back to the future take no, 4; *******...

             again, where were the africans sorting
out their invetement in the slave trade...
ONLY WHITE PEOPLE
WERE BAD, CONCERNING BLACK PEOPLE...
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin ....
******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
   ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i said: ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i'd love to see an african-h'american
in africa... mouthin-off their stature...

                   african phonetic encoding....

debussy                                       chopin




satie                                              schumannn...

­and?
              there's too much of loon'don....
                   had enough of it, ****'s....
too much ***-kissing,
too much of the h'american swindle...
carelesss buggers; these brits...
******* ****** jolly-tribe
               ****-ups....
  
i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

oh sure sure, the uncircumcised man,
crucified when all the orthodox were
drunk,
                   פור day,
       drunk cruxion?!
                 lovey purin "misgivings";
what's next?

   oh sure sure, the jews would hav e crucified
me on the hill of: tel megiddo
****-heads throwing up their kippahs
into the air in some skewed form
of celebration...
       like bacchus entering
Valhalla asking: where's the mead?
    i've had too much wine...
where'y the whiskey?

   i'll keep repeating...
              talk about jews among the polonaiase?
hush hush: ****, dont want to bring
bad luck... jews in poland are very much akin
to roma gypsies: lucky charms...
but... do you see any ******* leprechauns
around? look at me: i see none...
  let's tell the joke in verse,
not the stadard: a priest a rabbi and an imam
walk into a bar...
****... is that even a joke?! muslims don't drink!
what's the imam having; cranberry juice?!

and englishman a scot and an irish walk
into a bar... the three of them walk
out on stag-duty with inflanted sheep and
speaking cymcru... terrible joke...
as all my jokes were to begin with...

         i am currently navigating,
my uncle's ex girlfriend is sleeping downstairs
on the couch,
blah blah Tuscany... blah blah prosecco...
i'm becoming suspect: she's a gemini,
isn't she? all the geminis i ever met where
extroverted self-absorbed louis XIV types...
they need to, they need to self-absorb themselves
in order to extract the sort of energy
associate with rhetoric,
   and how they constantly digress,
there's always a sub-plot to the plot... nay,
there are always sub-plots...
          great company, i mean...
when a person speaks all the time there are
no awkward moments of silence,
until the said person tells the "eager" listener...
play some music...
she's a warsaw girl, so she's a pretty learned
in the ways of the world,
i'm just an ostrowiec commoner...

    oy vey! oy vey: she'***** 40 and lamenting...
i too complain about my uncle...
she had an abortion with him...
i once talked with my uncle about music
while he surfaced at mrs. roshandler's back garabe...
we ate sri lankan fried chicken wings and
chips and listened to californication
for the very first time...

   abundance of hope in Tuscany...
"apparently"... but if you have ever watched
a woman, borderline on asylum incarceration?
i was looking at one just example...
  it's not a pretty sight...
even when she asked: how's *** and business?
i'm a monk...
          or at least i tend to...
even if she came from a stock of
failed relationships: fine fine...
            now?

i served up decent food,
a malvani and a tikka masala curry...
          naan bread,
     turmeric infused rice,
vanilla cheese cake with strawberries...
she enjoyed it,
i like to please people...
    mind you: ever see a slim chef?
i wouldn't trust a slim chef,
i never have, i never will,
you need some chubby chub chub rounding-offs...
mind you: i much prefer cooking
food than eating it,
but i would never trust a chef associated
with a c.o.d. associated with counting calories...
never have, never will...
two noteworthy proverbs:
1. too many cooks in one kitchen =
no decent meal is being made...
  one cook, one couldron, that's your best bet...
2. never trust a slim, athletic cook...
those ******* can shove their kale
       smoothies....
they can slurp up those smoothies
turning their ***** in straw ******* vortexes!
i'll cook on lard trimmings,

em....
  [9] - [2] - [6] - [3] - [8] - [1] - [4] - [5, 7]?
that's when the sudoku puzzle was filled...
all the nines... all the twos... etc. became filled
in the 9 grids...

well...
     "apart" from: my uncle's girlfriend:
i've been living in englamd
for nearly 30 yeasrs...
i've dated a french girl,
an australian, a russian....
but u've never dated an english
girl: i guess they much prefer
aged pakistani grooming gang
members....
            i guess:
**** gasoline on them,
they're all readied and geared up!

braille contra morse?
if you want to play the guitar?
forget the braille....
you need tender fingertips
to read braille...
morse? nit so much...
here's a comparison...
i see!

    a.:   ⠓⠑   ⠺⠓⠕
                       ⠎⠑⠑⠎
    ⠊⠎       ⠁⠃⠇⠑
                   ⠞⠕
                                     ­   ⠗⠑⠁⠙

b. play the guitar and learn to....
read finger tip braille, ******....

· · · ·  ·         
· − −  · · · ·  − − − 
· · ·  ·  ·  · · · :
                  · ·  · · · 
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ · − · ·  ·  (a / b)
      −  − − − 
                   · − ·  · ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ − · ·  (a)

(he who sees: is able to read)...

           i can attest...
             i would find myself readily reading
morse in braille,
than braille by itself...
                far more easier.

finger-tips... i'd sooner read your morse
as braille, than braille as morse..
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2017
and what boredom would arise - if man's mind could
teach of overcoming this sometimes woken oddity
self-inherent in our surroundings -
what materialistic bombast,
what atheistic pomp of
argumentative "certainty" -
       what a firm hold of the heart,
whether guided by the sway
of either love, or doubt -
  what purpose, what adventure
would man make of,
this: be but nothing, other than
something resembling a zoo?
   from what i heard: in terms
of the development of the brain:
imagination comes first -
   thought comes second -
but memory comes last -
imagination at such an early
age is not the ability to conjure
make-believe:
   but a was of refining the image,
or shape, or differentiate them,
in order to later integrate them...
if imagination clouds our sight,
then memory blinds it...
  i believe the new-born is born
"blind"... all and every single one
of them...
            as thought enters through
a sense of hearing second,
   it then translates itself into
     optical scrutiny,
    whereby there's a difference between
the literate T... the word table...
and the actual geometry of a table...
but there is a hierarchy:
   imagination... not something akin
to the imagination of children
inventing games...
  after all... the elders of the child also
invent games:
   profitable games,
      using nothing but geometry -
a sphere, a ball...
               two H goals either side
             of an egg-shaped inflatable.
strange how memory is both
a tool to remember, but also to forget...
memory has the capacity
    to "create" while at the same time
erasing, either lived: or thought out content...
nostalgia: memoria est res non grata -
                memory is not welcome -
and how does the collective approach work?
well... it begins in
the education system...
      you have to memorise!
                 and given the already self-erasing
nature of the cognitive faculty
that memory is...
      pneumatic drilling...
              and the self-imposed "censor" -
                        the brainchild of dementia...
but if you want to attack and collectivise
a species: attack what develops last: first!
teach the unit rubrics of alphabet,
   of names without limit of being contained,
rebellious in ****, but hardly
comprehensive, rather fickle, given
any linguistic fashion, zeitgeist and later
extinction as you might...
        transparent etymology, or that: lost
forever and never unearthed in this
linguistic archeology...
               but attack the faculty of memory
first...
   by the time you've done that,
and people are taught to be fickle -
   to have to remember, then to automatically
forget, to have to remember for an examination:
then to later automatically forget...
what comes later?
    what never actually came: thinking!
what came later was "thinking" as in
delving into the abyss of the narrative,
or could always and would always be waiting
for narration...
      but then imagination descends
and mingles with memory...
          given that memory is the faculty
  that "writes" what-is-and-was,
                         memory enters and mingles
with it (akin to the idea of space-time unison dip) -
to "write" what-isn't-and-what-could-be...
             but the byproduct is hardly
what-isn't-and-what-could-be, bur rather:
     what-was-and-what-couldn't-have-been...
by now thinking is a bemused spectator...
   hence the idea of philosophy:
  begins in awe: ends up with empedocles
jumping into mount etna...
        and if diogenes of sinope died
by holding his breath?
     he must have died while holding his breath,
but also being cross-eyed (trying to look
at the tip of his nose): to imitate the idea
of being underwater.
but that's how it appears to be:
1st comes space, and the differentiation and
later integration of it, to establish the medium
of immediate-spacial coordination without
the geometric abstract -
as does 2nd come neither space, nor time,
but some sort of medium, which is goverened
by impulsive forces, the 6th elemental,
   a vibrating impulse to stagger into motion,
a type of music, the impregnation of the mush
of soap like basis for the brain guiding
an "electric" shove: listening to words -
   making the ears hear -
              euclid and the second stage of
the woken pentagon -
                but 3rd comes memory,
        and this is where time enters the awakening
of the ranunculus alba (white tadpole) -
and society attacks this first,
drills people with abstract memory attacks -
    coupled with the ontology of memory being
that akin to natural selection: in that -
it's rather random...
                   we have nothing but
                 selective memorisation -
perhaps what we choose to memorise -
or having a natural knack for the ability
      to memorise, and become skilled workers -
whatever it might be...
    memory is the least of the three stated
cognitive functions automaton-based -
                  hence school... revision, revision...
the fact that it is the most lazy cognitive
faculty, is because it has an implosive demand
for existing: to erase itself...
          when imagination is like a vector,
i.e. from today (coordinates 0, 0) -
where do you see yourself in 5 years
                                  (coordinates 23, 70)?
and thinking really has to mediate these two
bothercome faculties, all the time,
while also dealing with its own selfish effort
to coincide with them...
                    narratives - at its own peril
     of hiding a degeneration process that comes
to some, but not all...
   but comes nonetheless, in one form
or another...
                            man was never to be blessed
with old age...
                       perhaps blessed with
a mortality and the hope of immortal craft -
but never, with old age;
i can't remember how many times
   i've listened to my grandfather tell the same
stories...
                 memory is a fickle *****...
i prefer that idea than the english version
of: life's a *****, and then you die...
               i prefer what i already
stated... memory is a fickle *****,
   imagination is sometimes like
       a dried out lake or a tug & pull game
with a camel...
   and thought is just one step away
from dreaming / a lazy ******* that waits
for someone with a name like alexander fleming.
Raven  Feb 2022
Drown Me
Raven Feb 2022
Nik
Drown me in the memory
Of your touch
On my body

Drown me in the memory
Of when it was a yes
Not a no

Drown me in the memory
Of being high
In your arms
With lovely kisses

Because I don't wanna drown
In the memories I have

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
Your arm around my neck
And your leg between mine
Forcing submission
Without permission

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
My nails digging into
The back of your hand
Doing anything I can
To remove it from behind

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
The emotionless expression
And lack of remorse
When you look at me as I lay
Hitting myself and screaming
Mentally in too much pain
As you never even said
"I'm sorry"

Monster
Drown me in the memory
Of when you were gone
And I was free to just
Be me

Drown me in the memory
Of all days I was away
At a friends place
Or camping peacefully

Drown me in the memory
Of when all you did was yell
And hit me
But never said you love me

Because I don't wanna drown
In the memories I have

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
All the nights I lay awake in wait
Waiting for you to come in
And use me as you please

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
All the times I'd avoid the shower
Because when I didn't
You had to come with

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
All the times you'd ask me
To come watch a movie
Because that wasn't all it was

Zeke
Drown me in the thought
Of meeting you again
And being happy
That you know me

Drown me in the thought
Of the movie theater
And hoping no one sees
As you mess around with me

Drown me in the thought
Of sneaking glances
And passionate kisses
Full of love

Because I don't wanna drown
In the memories I have

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
My no's going unheard
And never noticed
As I push you back

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
The pain as you forced your way
Inside of me
Into places I never wanted you to be

I no longer wanna drown in the memory of
When I told you what happened
And all you said was
I'm sorry but that was a long time ago
And I never even heard you

To everyone else
Who ever touched me
When I never said yes
And even said no

LEAVE MY MEMORY
And please
Just let me
Live in peace
Auguste/23/2021
Poeta de Cabra Feb 2018
Tried my darndest to forget, but should have known
That doggone memory of yours has a mind of its own
Never lets up, forever haunting me like a megalomaniac
Peace for day or two, then without warning it comes back

Take some pills or get drunk to forget feeling of being sad
But, next morning your memory is back and twice as bad
Keep busy at work, think positively and try not to feel blue
I relax and unwind it takes over again, **** memory of you

Up and left without notice, you ran off with another man
For weeks crying myself to sleep, not able to understand
Wasn't enough? piercing my heart with a venomous spear
Please take your memory back and just make it disappear

Had some fabulous times with you, there's nothing I regret
Please keep your memory to yourself now and let me forget
Mind becomes a bit clearer each day as apart we have grown
Home alone at night your memory comes back, mind of it's own

To get on with my life now would make me so very very glad
Even the fondest memories of you now only make me feel sad
Nothing I would love better than to meet another woman one day
Won't happen if you don't take back your memory and pack it away

Need to do things properly, don't like to do things by halves
Got rid of your clothes, belongings and all the photographs
Now at night when I can't sleep I look up to God and I pray
Ask if he'll get you to come and take your dang memory away

Always thought your memory would be something to keep
Not now! it gives mixed emotions and keeps me from sleep
There's nothing worse I reckon than having a grown man cry
With your memory bugging me I just want to curl up and die

Heartbreak and pain is worse every day, so I've discovered
Please help me, by keeping your memory home in a cupboard
Keep it to yourself and don't let it loose to wander and roam
Please control that memory of yours, it has a mind of it's own
A poem about a tormenting memory
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
i said to her, prior -
i've just found a gem of a song...
alterslied by walther von der vogelweide,

how would it not remind me
of the time - the spring on the balcony -
the suffocating perfume of
the marrow yet to be or just born
in the calf -
         or the perfumery of mahogany
of cherry not yet a chair or
a table... in that: her blossom as if...
more tender than any japanese
porcelain or for that matter: geishas'
milky leather... warm: for still worn
cloaking the sinew, the **** and spew
of intestines...
            and the last signature in bone...
still walking... calling the moon
a... fickle dunked biscuit...

  she was blooming beneath me...
this cherry tree - and but one among
the rest of the plethora of scents...
      still that book i was reading:
Henryk Sienkiewicz - knights of the cross -
the teutonic knights -  Krzyżacy -
          and of course the screen-adaptation...
one by Aleksander Ford...
    
the veneer corpse riddle -
                haunting as glass
with its imitation of water
                  or see through
as a veil of Baghdad's exquisite harem
of an abiding: sheikh or imam -
            piercing eyes that know no
depth of sleep -
                   stolen light: as what i call
dreams -

but i was "thinking" along the lines
of...
             neoplatonism came from
Plotinus reading Plato - basics...
         Bertnard Russell can cover the rest...
but i was "thinking" of... a neo-cartesian model...
way before it might become ideological
and an 'ism...
                      how does the original begin?
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
   not much of doubt these days...
to doubt these days is to almost entertain
belief: or at least: the plethora of emotions
that hitchhike their way for the heart
to carry... it's not an outright negation...
doubt, that is...

           then again: doubt is a double-edged
sword... it cripples those that believe
as it does ******* those who disbelieve...
        
   but i can hardly want to begin from doubt...
i've heard it somewhere...
like a hindu or a buddhist mantra...
i remember...
i remember...
    i remember...
                 i did link memory to a sort of...
cameo cinema of my place in this world...

perhaps... if i begin with: dubito - i doubt...
i don't see how i can translate myself into
a concreteness of: cogito - i think -
therefore into: sum - i am...
        by now thought is a fickle aspect of
my summa summarum...
i'd very much like to begin with...
at least one aspect of time being invoked...
doubt... is timeless -
                        thought is timeless and spaceless...
existence: is both...

i'd begin my neo-cartesian route by
stating an alternative route...

memoro, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
i remember, therefore i think, therefore i am...
doubt is a fickle creature...
a pretty creature... a peacock...
which... is hardly a phoenix...
     can any so-called editorial section journalists...
the opinion pieces journalists...
the dialectical-phobia-prone saturday journalists...
be called... journalists?
      
  are they really journalists?
to have... opinion columns in newspapers?
just asking...
i never thought they were...
   ideologue ditto-heads comes to mind...
how can: thinking translate itself into:
the pivot of out of every instance:
this insistent paraphrase...
      
       i never find myself shackled to thought...
esp. not by doubt...
           the labours of the liar to think...
when all has been thought...
but i am gladly thinking when shackled
to memory - when there's some narrative involved...
when there's the cameo cinema of memory
and i find myself: a good man...

i was once accused of "liking the sound
of my own voice"...
god forbid - but with regards to liking
my given names?
how doesn't this sound:
but it already does: Conrad von Heiligkreuz...
second name at baptism -
and i am... von heiligkreuz...
it's a region in Poland...
       there is a Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship...
i have a fetish for german...
and it's not like matthew isn't a loan
name to be given - origin in hebrew...
but at least i have a past -
to live under the guidance of the names
bestowed upon one...
in good company with ol' von Wallenrode...
C... K... does it matter?

i do like my given names...
hell... i'd like it even more if i was
Ezra rather than Matthew...
more so if i was a Nikita...
fluid non-binary names... don't you think?

because i am thinking of germany
from the medieval period -
             or at least: what became of barbarossa
drowning and being pickled...
and how... prussia and lithuania were
just gagging for a stab in the dark
for an already adrenaline fuelled junkies
of the passion of the cross...
or *****... i never know which the jester,
marquis the sade asked for...

foundation of knowledge: yes...
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
but i'm not here to know more than what's
already known - where does knowledge
lead these days? pub-quizes and trivia...
regurgitation of facts...
i want to find an alternative to knowledge...
a: transcendence of morality -
a leverage of my remains that cannot
be confined to a bone -
to a name - i'd wish for an escape
with and through an epitaph...

                     or - anon.
                       as some works are cited...
prompter of the theatre -
     in the prompter's box when the actors
would forget their lines...
ah... the critique of the proposition with
the presupposition of a "i"...
                  "it" is also a presupposition -
nothing can be a pronoun...
                                but i'm not here to make
a genesis of man via: dubium...
nor via reverentia...
     i'm not a child any more...
i've visisted the underworld and came back
with dreams -
and to the world i left and came back
to... yes... i have been here before...
    to begin with... memoriae... though...
that's enough to subsequently think,
to subsequently be...
   otherwise why would the powers that be...
make it a crusade in the realm
of pedagogy
to pour corrosive juices into our brains
with all that encyclopedic *******,
arithmetic when there are calculators,
to exhaust our very personal capacity to
remember?
travesty i yelp!

                   hell: i'll even yarl!
                save your memory...
it will give you more than doubt in what
has to become you -
   or whatever happens to thinking -
insert any number of blanks when a concrete
translation of thought into will was lost
to "thinking" / day-dreaming...

but at least: the cameo cinema of memory...
10 very focused memories...
enough... and these to be kept unchanged...
sharpened like flint...
polished like silver...
             bitten like metal...
                     worshipped like ink poured
into chiselled labyrinths of timber...
                            
                      to wake from having to inherit
the 20th century from others...
              my 20th century begins circa 1989...
but it also begins circa 1944...
and circa 1937...
                        circa 1982...
                                            circa 1998...
             circa 1994...
                           but it is never...
the history of a people that is...
             but my slot... memory: as personal
as thought... i have seen how memory can be
usurped... can be... the focus of saboteurs...
          i'm missing two nouns at present...

to remember something from aeons beyond...
i cannot doubt these two words i am thinking of...
but i don't remember them...
then again: is memory such a fickle bride
of thought?
            isn't doubt more fickle?
                    
ah! subverters! well... saboteurs...
         and that second word?
it's a psychiatric term: of implanting false
memories... regression!
                 or something... but if psychiatry
is making an attack on the faculty of memory...
and pedadogy has already poured
carboxylic acid into our brains with education
that's... only for the purpose of ensuring
there are pedagogues...

                       yes... and the prospect of me becoming
a father, let alone a grandfather...
is for mickey mouse to become a ******* nun...
but you'll never know...

memory is under attack...
doubt... well you can doubt whatever the hell
you want: deny or believe whatever you want...
mind you...
if it "all" begins with:

    memoro, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
and psychiatry and the great psi (Ψ) of psychology...
what sort of: "critique of the proposition with
the presupposition of a 'i'" is there?
when you have the practice of regression /
false memory implants? and all that pedogogic juice
to boot?

better keep yourself to memory...
you never know: doubt can take care of itself...
it doesn't have to translate into thinking
into being...
but sure as **** and sherlock 'olmes to boot...
your memory needs defending...
to be sure... a + b + a + c + u + s = ?
                         well... sure... 1 + 1 = 2...
        to put to memory... how something sounds...
into writing... onomatopoeia...
well... it's not one of those: knock-knock...
who's there jokes...
                  ghosts don't knock on doors...
they slide their chains across the wood...
rhapsody in any ghoul's adventure of:
revision of the taste of morello cherries...
there will be no revision of the taste of morello cherries!
that sort of sour is one and only,
and it would better define someone's last
breath on this rock and couldron of constellations
come night... than...
                              an adieu with a kiss.
Johnny stood in the dark alone.  High above everything he would now leave behind, he took that last step — the one that would define him forever and reshape in an instant who he would then become ...

Johnny was a diver.  His father had first thrown him into the pool when he was three years old. A loud clap and enormous splash announced his second baptism.  Instantaneously, in the dark wet silence, he sank beneath all that he had previously known, and in the strange umbilical fear that now surrounded him ¬— he knew that this was for him.

Throughout his childhood, Johnny then spent much of his life ‘at the pool.’  First, at the public swim club at the corner of his street in the summers, and then later at the downtown ‘Y.’ Johnny competed on all the youth league teams as both a swimmer and a diver from ages 5-12.  

It was being a diver though that would shape Johnny’s future. When he finally got to middle-school, he was old enough to try out for the school team and made the team on his first try as a diver. From that time on, everything in Johnny’s life revolved around his time at the pool.  He was always the one to try everything ‘first’, no matter how difficult, and the team always looked to him to come through in the end when the score was close. To do that, Johnny not only needed to dive well, but he needed to pick dives that came with a high degree of difficulty.

He was proficient at all three diving events, the one-meter and three-meter springboards, and then his favorite, the ten-meter- high platform. On the high platform, Johnny was more than just proficient. It was when he was towering high above the water, with his fans watching from below, that he truly excelled.  

His specialty dive, and the one that won most competitions, was an inward two and a half from the ten-meter platform in pike position. Pike position, popularly called jack knife, was when your upper body was bent straight-forward and almost touching your legs.  This dive was the clincher that won consistently, often scoring high enough to allow his team to win too.  It was his favorite dive, and also the one that almost ended his life one fated afternoon almost a year before.

    His life Had Almost Ended Thirty Feet Above The Water

That afternoon, and from the back of the platform, Johnny set in motion a routine that he had done thousands of times before. He walked to the platform’s edge, turned around, and set himself with only his toes and the ***** of his feet on the concrete surface. He then bent his knees and threw both of his arms upward trying to launch himself toward the lights in the ceiling high above the pool.  This time though, something was different.

                 And Something Was Terribly Wrong

Johnny’s right foot slipped as he jumped causing his body to become unbalanced.  The strength and propulsion he needed from that leg was now gone, and he should have aborted the dive and just fell to the water below.  He didn’t. Driven by habit, instinct, and force of will, Johnny continued to try and complete the dive. He rotated forward in spite of his flawed take off while hoping he had enough height to be able to clear the platform on the way down.

                                     He Didn’t!

Johnny doesn’t know what happened next. All two hundred and fifty spectators below were awestruck and deadly silent as they sat and watched his failed takeoff from the platform so high above them.  Johnny woke up four days later in Memorial Hospital with his head totally wrapped in gauze and both legs braced in traction from the bottom of his hospital bed. As he stared hard at the ceiling above, he struggled to remember what had happened. He also had no clear idea as to who he was. This blank spot in his memory would continue to dominate his thoughts and bother him even more as the days rolled on.

Johnny had hit the platform hard, first with the back of his head rendering him instantaneously unconscious and then with the small of his back as he rotated forward and slammed into the front of the platform’s edge. This caused him to momentarily hang there, thirty feet above the pool, before rolling off the front of the platform and falling straight down into the thirty-foot deep water below.  His seemingly lifeless body appeared to bounce off the surface before it continued to slowly sink toward the light at the very bottom of the pool.

Luckily, Johnny’s coach and his brother Tom were lightning quick in their reactions, getting to him before he was able to submerge more than five or six feet.  The concussion from the dive, and medically induced coma to reduce the swelling, kept Johnny unconscious for four days.  When he finally did wake up, all he knew was that his head hurt. It hurt with a pain he had never felt before, and the room that he now found himself in looked very strange.

His nurse told him that hitting his head and losing consciousness may have contributed to saving his life. His relaxed body, when hitting the platform and then the water, was much less prone to injury in this state than if tense and contracted.

For six months Johnny stared up at that same ceiling. The memory of what had happened, or specifically lack of memory, haunted his waking and sleeping hours.  No matter what the hospital staff or his family did to try and distract him, he couldn’t help thinking about that dive.

            He Couldn’t Visualize It, But It Was Always There

Over and over, he tried to relive it in his memory, or what little memory he had left. The doctors told him that memory loss was normal with these types of injuries, and he would probably recall what had happened as time went on. His only previous injury had occurred when he scraped his elbow on the front of the one-meter springboard, reaching back while performing a half-gainer in layout position.  He asked his coach why, why had this happened after all the times before?  Did I not do everything the way I had been coached, and the way I was taught, he asked?

His coach said “Yes, you did, but accidents can and do happen, especially on the high platform, and even more so when your back is to the pool and your dive is executed so close to the concrete surface.” Johnny thought about the coach’s choice of the word execute, and how close he had really come.

                       So Close To It All Being Over

After six months in the hospital Johnny was finally sent home. He left on a ‘walker,’ but the doctors assured him that after three more months, the most he would need to get around with would be a cane.  Johnny had other plans.  He would have a two-week rest while he acclimated himself to being home, and then his outpatient therapy would begin. Johnny’s biggest struggle would not be his still ailing body but the lack of any clear memory. It continued to weigh heavier inside of him than any real memory could.

Johnny’s parents had a gala celebration waiting at their house when the ambulance arrived home.  All of Johnny’s family and friends were there, but the one he was most anxious to see was his dog Revo. He had been separated from him for over six months, and the memory of Revo was one of the few things that Johnny could recall.  Revo was a Portuguese Water Dog and got his name from shortening the word revolution. Revolutions were what Johnny was always working on as his dives got progressively more and more difficult. His coach was always including more revolutions to his dives as his talent and proficiency developed.  Revo seemed to know by instinct Johnny’s state of mind and would not leave his side for the next three months.

Johnny looked up on the family room wall and stared at all the medals, trophies, and ribbons that filled the space over the fireplace from end to end.  He didn’t remember winning any of them, although he knew that he did.  How can you know something with conviction and still not remember doing it he wondered?

He thought most about the one medal that was not up on that wall. Missing, was the one from that meet six months ago, the one that almost took his life and the one that would continue to haunt him until he could stop asking himself, why! On that fateful day, in spite of his failed dive, the team had still accumulated enough points to win.

Five days before the end of the third month that Johnny was home, he was again walking on his own.  It had been almost nine months since his accident, and he could once again leave the house and resume an almost normal life.  Except to him, normal had always meant a life centered around diving and his time suspended high above the water.

Johnny walked and he walked, until he could walk as far as the township pool —the one he knew he had been in many times before, and the one that looked back at him now from across the street and seemed to smile.  Was it a smile he saw or laughter that he thought he heard?  He wasn’t sure, but he was sure he didn’t like it, any of it, and somehow, he had to make it stop. Very isolated flashes had started to return to his memory about his last dive, but every time he focused on them, just as quickly as they came, they were then gone.

Part of Johnny’s ongoing (post hospital) therapy involved the pool.  He first started swimming by trying to complete one lap and then increased his distance by one lap a day.  After a month of swimming Johnny thought he was back to normal.  He did everything a normal kid did at the pool, with one exception…

Over a month had passed at the pool and there was still one thing Johnny had not looked at or faced up to. He had still not looked up at the thirty-foot high platform that extended out and over the far (and deep) end of the pool.  He would avert his eyes as he walked by it and always breath out of the side of his mouth that faced away from the platform as he swam his laps.

               There Was One Thing He Still Could Not Do

It was Johnny’s senior year in high school, and his mother and brother had been bringing work home since he had gotten out of the hospital so he wouldn’t fall too far behind.  One day before Johnny went back to school, his brother Tom had brought his lessons home as usual. It wasn’t the amount of work in the stack of books his brother carried that got Johnny’s attention, but the brochure stuck between two of the lesson plans that stopped him cold.

The brochure announced that in two more months that same swim meet would be happening again. It was actually on the same date as last year’s meet, and his name had inadvertently been added to the list of contestants. All that was needed now was his signed confirmation. This was Johnny’s senior year and his last year eligible to compete for the city medal, the one most coveted by all high school boys before they moved on to college or adult competition.

For the longest time, Johnny stared at the brochure until it seemed to burn right into his hands.  He knew in his heart that until he got past this, nothing else in his life would matter. He walked to where Revo was sitting patiently and looked deeply into his best friend’s eyes. He then sat holding him for what seemed like an eternity before he got up and walked back into the kitchen. Johnny then picked up the phone and called his old coach.

Coach Brackett said, “I think it’s too early, but I’ll let you know when you’re ready. I’ve been watching you swim, and no-one ever expected you to come back this soon.”  Johnny said: “This is my last chance, Coach.  In September, I’m off to college. I don’t want what happened last year to follow me there or to have the failure of that day be the last thing that anyone remembers who watched me dive. Mostly though, I have to complete that dive for me.”

                  He Had To Do That Dive For Himself

Johnny’s memory had also started to come back, but his recollection of that dive, and last year’s meet, were still fuzzy inside his head. “It’s your choice alone Johnny, Coach Brackett said, because at eighteen I can’t stop you. But what did your parents say when you discussed it with them?”  “I’ve told no-one else but you coach, and I’d like to keep it that way for now please.”

After hanging up the phone, Johnny walked deliberately to the mailbox.  His future and redemption were now enclosed within the envelope in his hand. His memory might still be spotty, but the determination inside his heart was never more resolute. He wondered why he felt so strongly about doing something that he still had no clear memory of …

Johnny’s strength and body weight were now almost back to where they were before the accident. He was able to sit upright in a chair for long periods, and it was decided that the time had come for him to return to school. His time at the pool swimming laps had worked wonders, and everyone was glad to see him back. They encouraged Johnny with his rehab as he left for the pool each day, but no one expected him to ever compete again.

If the faded memory of that day almost a year ago had plagued Johnny’s psyche, the anticipation of doing it again was now ten times stronger than before the accident. He would go to sleep at night praying for his amnesia to remain and keep the memory of that afternoon at bay for at least two more months.  As the meet got closer and closer, word started to leak out.  Well-intentioned family and friends started calling Johnny’s folks, concerned about his safety and welfare.

The tension at home became almost as bad as the trauma of what had previously happened.  There seemed to be no place for Johnny to escape, least of all inside his own mind.  He started spending more and more time alone. Through all of this, he remained respectful but refused over and over again to back off and withdraw when his parents asked.

Johnny thought about the one-meter, the three-meter, and then it would happen again.  He could see himself walking to the platform ladder, right before his mind would go blank.  Would he slip again on something that for years he had always stepped through, or would he climb the long ladder to the top and only have to turn around, and in his fear and humiliation, climb back down? He thought he knew the answer, but just thinking it was not enough. He had to make at least one more dive.

Johnny’s coach told him that he could do any dive he liked as long as it was facing forward off the platform.  That way he would be almost assured that if it wasn’t a high scoring dive at least it would provide a safe pathway to the water. The coach knew what Johnny might be thinking, and he wanted to take the pressure off by making his only choices perfectly clear.

Johnny listened.  He liked Coach Brackett very much and didn’t want to disappoint him, but he knew a forward entry dive just wouldn’t cut it.  That’s not the way you enter the water from an inward two and a half.  That dive had been his signature dive, and only by making it his dive again would he achieve the peace he so desperately needed. It would then release the freedom inside of him, liberating him from always looking back, and allow him to finally move on.  

He practiced the dive over and over in his mind until he thought his head would explode.  Every time his memory would go blank just as he jumped up and back, after pushing off from the platform, and always before starting his rotation forward. He couldn’t actually practice the dive because someone was always watching. Many nights he thought about sneaking into the pool and getting it all over with but never did.  He wanted this dive to be in front of the same people who were there to watch a year ago. What seemed only twelve months ago to them felt like a lifetime to him now.  He continued to visualize both the dive and the future it foretold.

He wondered to himself; why is the thing that used to seem the easiest now the hardest? He wondered until he could wonder no more.  No answers would come, and the hardest part was still out in front of him.  Would he be able to climb those rungs to an uncertain future— one that called out his name with a snicker in its voice?  He knew the answer was in only one place and in only one performance.  He knew things now that he never wanted to know again. He trained incessantly on the two springboards for the next seven weeks while doing only front entry dives from the ten-meter height.

The day of the meet came, and his parents were livid. Both had been hoping and believing all along that he would finally step down and their wishes would be obeyed.  With a kiss to his mother and a look in his father’s direction, who was now looking away and would not say either goodbye or good luck — Johnny walked out the door.

All was quiet as Johnny entered the pool through the southside door.  His coach was at the judge’s table, and all looked normal.  Johnny changed quickly in the locker room and started his warmup.  He had a series of three dives he would perform today, but he would only practice the first two.

After the one and two-meter springboard competitions, Johnny was tied for first place.  There would be a twenty-minute intermission before the high platform competition would begin, and Johnny used this time to sit in the locker room’s whirlpool and gather his thoughts.  It seemed like a really fast twenty minutes when he heard his name come over the pool’s public address system to report immediately outside.

When he got there, he saw a great commotion and at least fifteen people standing around the judge’s table.  He saw his coach in the middle arguing vehemently with the head judge.  When Johnny approached the table, his coach told him: “They’re not going to let you dive from the high platform. They said it has something to do with insurance and your being hurt just a year ago. In their minds, the springboards were one thing, but the high platform is something entirely different.”

“More arguing won’t do any good” the coach said, “I’ve tried every tactic I know.  You’ve had a good meet Johnny, and everyone knows you tried.” With that, Johnny went back to the locker room. He felt like his entire life had been pulled out from under him. He went into one of the stalls and closed the door behind him, sat down with his arms folded over his head, and cried.

All time seemed to drift away until Johnny heard a door slam and a loud bang as if all the lights had just been turned off. He didn’t know how long he had been in there, but when he opened the door all he heard was the quiet.  When he walked through the door to the pool it was almost totally dark, and everyone was gone.  The only lights in the building were the one’s shining from the very bottom of the pool and the single light attached to the platform railing at the top of the ladder. Johnny looked up at the platform which was shrouded in almost complete darkness.  He now knew, unlike ever before, just exactly what it was that he had to do — and he had to do it now!

                              It Was His Moment!

His entire life flashed in front of him in that instant. All that had ever mattered to him surfaced within him now.  As he climbed the ladder and finally arrived at the top of the platform, he looked down at the small pile of clothes that he had left on the floor.  As he walked slowly toward the dark edge, he thought about them and smiled.

For the first time he realized that it was much more than just his clothes that he had left down there behind him. He had stripped off something that for almost a year had dominated his waking and sleeping thoughts, something that had held back everything in his life up until today, and something that was almost gone …    

As he stepped forward, his future was released from his past. No fear had made it to the first rung of the ladder and what would happen in a few more seconds only he would ever need to know.

    
In the darkness, only wet footprints led to the southside door. All fear had dissolved powerless in the cold dark water behind … and there it was to forever remain!
Today is the day
That all the things that I fear
Will disappear
And I will be just a memory

Just a memory
I don't understand
Why don't you look at me
I am not invisible
I am here, I am here

And though I call you
I seem to just disappear
I want you
Why are you looking away
Please just tell me that everything's gonna be okay

I can't feel
I can't see
I can't do anything without a key
I want you
I want you

Today is the day
All my worries have slipped away
I can sleep well without the fear
And I will be a memory

Today is the day
That all my hopes will fade away
All will seem like just a dream
And I am just a memory
I am just a memory

I won't lie
I won't cry
I won't die and be alone
I want you
I want you

I can see you but you can't see me
I don't understand
Were did I go wrong
I can't be just a memory

I want you
I want you
Don't you see
That it's just me
Not a memory
I want you
I want you
I am not a memory
I can't be dead
I can't be dead

I am a memory
I am just imaginary
I am in your wounded eyes
I am the reason for your grieving tears

I am just a memory
I wrote this many years ago...It's not that good but I thought I'd share.

It may seem kind of repetitive but the repetition is more of thoughts rather than words...if that makes sense.....

— The End —