Light a Match, Watch it Burn

Clasped hands in the darkness
Lights
Billboards
Endless highway
Time in motion
And with blurred edges
Lines become indistinct.
Heartbeat
Engine's thrum
Thoughts
So many thoughts,
Not enough time.
Is it a dream?
Squeeze of the hand
reassures it's
a moment unfeigned
existing
in the flesh.
Feelings
Impossible to discern
Take to the air
like seeds in the wind.
And the eyes
Mirror to the soul
two flames
smoldering
in the darkness.
That squeeze of the hand
Brings a surge of emotion
a question
a realization
How can someone understand you
if you don't understand yourself?

-C.S.

La Luna

An uneven cluster of frost lines the bottom of the windowpane and the reflection of the glass wall opposite this window lingers as an illusion somewhere in the depthless glass. But otherwise, the windowpane is a perfect extension to what's on the other side, what they like calling 'A Winter Wonderland.' Not really. It feels more like an extension of Narnia, peering through this sheet of glass to a world I don't normally live in, a world almost magical in its untampered beauty.

A white light filters into this room in the cabin, tame and mysterious at the same time. On the other side of the street stand the neighboring cabins, looking smart and smug. Yet they are not in charge. Snow is the one in charge, and he is an absolute ruler. Snow, in his glistening white glory, wraps his cold embrace around the wooden structures. He dominates the evergreens, burdens their branches. Every so often a cascade falls earthward, so heavy is the weight, and it is as if the trees heave a great sigh.

I see the source of the white light. It is the Moon, casting her illumination over the scene. She resides over the forest, keeping watch as guardian of the earth. And I realize I was wrong. She makes Snow look like a blithering fool in her eery yet beautiful presence, outshines him tenfold. She is mystical, she is captivating, she is a mix of the unknown and the familiar, and I can't tell where one ends and the other begins. It isn't a matter of radiance, it is a certain clarity, grace. She personifies all that has no distinct lines or edges, of the undefined.

I turn away for what seems a moment and a golden hue films the snow, the cabins, the trees. The moon has begun her retreat back into the depths of the sky, where she will wait, alone, until night falls once again. For now, the Sun has taken his turn to rule the horizons of this endless stretch of space we deem a central part of our universe.

It's Not That You Finish...It's That You Had The Courage To Start

The cold air stings my skin as I bound down the incline. My feet dance off the ground with the momentum, the wind caresses my face. My footsteps are a dull thud-thud against the cement, my breathing the steady inhale-inhale, exhale-exhale, and when the two lock into place I know I have found my rhythm. My pulse drums in the blood of my ears. I focus only on the sidewalk. I feel a rush of exhilaration, a thrum of energy. I am an oscillation, I swing to the beat of time itself.

And right now, It can't stop me, I have slipped from its grasp. It doesn't matter that it'll always be a part of me no matter the distance I try to put between us, or the stacking of the odds. I just run.

A Short Trip To Musicland

A pile of pages strewn across the table, a sea of black dots. But that's all they are--splotches of ink, hundreds of these dots and lines, blurring into a black and white mosaic of contrasts. It could be meaningless. These ledger lines are a mysterious language unique to themselves.

Laquered wood. Fluorescent lighting, the reflection of light in the laquer of this wood. Metal strings on fingertips. This violin, this music, this path through the garden stretching around the corner. A path, beckoning, pleading.

The bow moves across the strings, but the eyes give away their complete distance from this dimension, the reality that so many people cling to for fear of the unknown. The path comes into focus. Motion, walking. The bow is still moving, but the bow is only an extension of the arm, the arm an extension of the body, the body an extension of the path. And this person, you, is still walking.

You can't tell where one world ends and the other begins.

They Say You Can Always Find Your Way Back Home (No Matter What)

The fog is a thick blanket hanging suspended from the sky, veiling our vision with a film of obsurity and muting the clarity of the image before us till it melds together in an unidentifiable blur of ambiguity. We see the street before us, but there is a certain fuzziness that toys with our sense of perception. The headlights of the car barely have the light crucial to navigate this vague darkness. We stop at the stop sign, turning right onto our street. It is apparent the fog has found its preferred resting place here. It shrouds the houses' facades, expands itself leisurely into the cold night air. It seems to think it has all the time in the world to tuck itself into bed. The street is held captive by this haze...except for, it looks like...a single house. Its hanging icicle lights shine through the opaqueness with a fervid yellow glow, contriving an alluring, mystical illusion. It is a timeworn castle from the Europe of the past, protected by its ever-looming moat (dare you cross?), its needlelike spires, its thousand layers of mist. We pull into the driveway of this magnificent fortress, none other than the place we call home.

The Birth of the Whimsical Mind

The beginning is never easy. There are a million different thoughts dancing on the edge of the mind, but it is another matter completely of which ones will find themselves ink on the surface of the blank page. These thoughts come in the form of words and are curious sparks or bursts of brilliance that we call ideas. Are these words the right ones? Who knows. But they are the ones that make themselves tangible things, and that must count for something. I like to contemplate life, to blend and mix the colors, shade in the outlines, change the perspectives. And part of the contemplating is that the words cannot be distinctly right or wrong, they are simply how I see it all. Welcome to The Whimsical Mind of a Blue-Eyed Violinist.