Saturday, June 25, 2005
Aspects
"The aspect of external objects is often a mysterious guide communicating with the fibres of memory, which in spite of us will arouse them at times; this thread, like that of Ariadne, when once
unraveled will conduct one through a labyrinth of thought, in which one loses one's self in endeavoring to follow that phantom of the past which is called recollection."
-- Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
Just thought that was quite a meaningful quote.
In other non-related news, the number of people too lazy or too dumb (if that's possible) to google things they want to look for is indeed appalling.
And my social spectrum is still very limited, as i have found out from RMUN.
[Edit] Those who bother to read my wishlist, most of the albums are gone. Heil, Mein Azureus. [/Edit]
Desideras Diabolum 1:05 PM!
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Friday, June 10, 2005
En Passant
The young boy wrapped his gray cloak around himself, as he shivered with the bitter cold of the wintry gusts. His teeth chattering, his face a pallor of grey-blue, he stumbled along the dry cracked pavement. His boots were torn, his clothes were in rags, and his cloak but a piece of sackcloth, stained black and gray by the ravages of sleeping in dark alleys, and finding scraps in the dumpsters that littered the sordid alleys of this rude backwater. His grimy fingers were black and blue, frostbitten from the bone-chilling winds that surged across the streets, forming eddies and spirals of dust, kicked up from the disdain of time.
Yet for his ragged looks, he bore the face of a cherub, lit by a pale unearthly glow that shone through the layers of dust and detritus, a look of puerile innocence that brought a smile to all those that passed him, that shimmered during his moments of peace, and radiated during those rare times when he found a little joy in the small things along the way, in a fascinating new game, in a cute little animal, in a generous gesture from another, in the little things.
And everyday, he brought a little smile to those who glanced at his countenance, a little ephemeral beauty that flared and faded even in his passing. Those who stopped to admire, to pity, felt a deep stirring of their hardened hearts, a warmth within their souls, that compelled them to toss a few glittering coins to the boy, if only to bask in the coruscating glory of his little angelic smile, his evanescent peals of joy.
Perhaps the others in this ghettoish outback did sometimes wonder, why no change ever came to this boy's stature, why the long years of hardship and aimless wandering through the danger-fraught streets never seemed to leave a trace on his wondrous countenance. Year after year, he brought beauteous light to those, encouraging them on, bringing hope to their hopeless endeavours, strength to their wearisome existence. Yet they knew him not - and no one ever thought to stop and enquire his name. Perhaps the awe of his everlasting purity put all suspicion, all curiosity from their minds.
Then it came to that a rich vein of oil was discovered, right next to this forgotten shanty town. All at once, the ravages of industry, the avarice of capitalists, the boom of modernism, descended forthwith, rushing after the black gold. Within a week, scaffoldings shot up, tankers were rumbling through the streets, and wealth was flowing richly, and blackly, through the veins of the inhabitants.
And amidst the hustle and bustle, the descent into the great rich morass, the boy was forgotten.
Yet as all things come to a close, as the plants of the past raged in the fires of factories and in the greed of men's hearts, the vein dripped its last drop, leaving only the black corrupting bile in the blood of that town. And as dust arose to power, so power was deposed to dust.
Amidst the now-desolate pumps, the greying bitumen-paved roads, they searched again for the boy. Frantically, desperately, then destitutely, then resignedly. The glory gone, the empire fallen, they could only return with the irrepressible longing, of having tasted the fruits of glory, and yet forgotten the seeds with which they were grown.
But one day, they found the boy's clothing. His tattered clothes, his rugged sackcloth, his wayworn boots. As they lifted up the sackcloth, a single feather, long and white, floated gently to the ground. And as they stared at the feather, it shone with a dazzling brilliance, one that spurred their minds, renewed their sprits, and made their hands burn with alacrity.
And so the feather drifted slowly to the ground, fading even as it glided.
A parting gift from one who was only in passing.
Desideras Diabolum 10:46 AM!
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Thursday, June 09, 2005
Hymne Noveau
The new anthem of the masses.
Something indecipherable, a sylph floating amongst the pillars of definition - yet even then, some undercurrent runs through all of them. Yes, it is not just a single song that forms this anthem, but a rush, a cavalcade of torrential thematics that threatens to turn our simplistic emotions into convoluted menageries. Yes, thematics, and not genres. For even if one should closely disseminate the screams of punk angst (which can be rather facetious at times), the rasps and bestial growls of black and death metal, and even the variegated tunes of rock, they all bespeak a primality, a primality reflected in the lust for independence, the breaking of the law, the reckless temerity of our youth, that daily plagues the news.
Anger. But yet, a distinct form of anger, one tainted with the writings of Sartre, the destitution of choice, and fused with the obloquys of nihilism - a rage against the empyrean, a curse upon unbridled authority. Not the simplistic rage that would compel a man to take his brother up in arms over some sensitivity, but a confused strain, a misdirected barrage, against the self, against God, against every sacred institution.
Depression over bad decisions, anxiety over the future, questions about their own existence, questions about a good and compassionate God, fear at the state of the world, all amalgamated, all constituted, perforce into a perdurable rage, that seethes at the core, ever stoked by the pain of emotions, building its foundations on the detritus of crushed and tattered dreams.
So this anthem, euphonious in cacophony, mellifluous in bile, bold in diffidence, it asseverates itself in the mischief that we so vehemently stamp out, the mischief of vandals, of shoplifters, of petty thieves, of the broken youth of today. Drifting from one existence to the next, they are nobodies. Great dreams in pieces, they are untalented, uneducated, and often, unwise and imprudent. And like so much chaff, they pass through the rigours of violence, prison, perhaps even torture, to repeat it all again at the first opportunity. Perhaps we pity them, perhaps we despise them. Perhaps yet, they are only reflections of ourselves, ourselves in poorer conditions, in more adverse circumstances, in more turpid societies, in more nefarious times.
So perhaps this anthem, is not only that of those to whom little is given, but is to all, to all who live, to all who experience the pain and tempestuousness of this ephemeral timespan on this terrestrial ball.
Hymne de la Malhereux Fureur.
Desideras Diabolum 5:13 PM!
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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
The Voice of the World
A new beginning, a new panegyric to the tempestuous nature of this individual's life, and them recherche inspirations that plague his prosaic and pedantic self.
One part of a duality that must exist, between prose and poetry, between the mundanities of everyday proceedings, and the inner psyche that conjures up delusions of grandeur, between the noumenal and the phenomenal, between the outer manifesto and the inner dissemblance.
Yet not in the style of others, others who should contrive to note down in archetypal form, the chronological march of events, nor in the style of those who unravel their own mysteries, exposing deep soliloquys in all their unfledged glory, to only provoke the laughter of cynics.
Instead, one prefers, in the style of the other muse, to remain, if not under a cloak of anonymity, then under the mask of ambiguity. Perchance thinking then, that specifics lead only to semantic debacles, with caustic vituperation over the smallest words.
So it shall begin thus.
Desideras Diabolum 12:38 PM!
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