27.11.12
These nights (written 12/10/2011)
I’ve had heavy nights where I fell the gravity pull my soul
down into my body condensing it thick at the bottom of my heart until it spills
out into my lungs and I’m coughing myself up. These nights my thoughts escape
the dungeons of my brain brandishing swords made of ghosts screaming of
nightmare memories, surrounding me, capturing my peace and replacing my blood
with questions I thought I once had answers to but that I lost in the
translation of becoming a man.
I shake and convulse as I fall through the floor and forget the
space I’m in trying to grasp on to the little bit of strength I have but
canyons form beneath me running rich with rivers of trials. Desperate to
swallow me like a ship in a storm the ocean pounding like my heart. I can hear
my grandmother in the river telling me she will beat her cancer so she can hold
my children in her arms. Her eyes there and gone, innocent and simple like
Christmas lights on a tree. So beautiful that they need only exist to know the
secrets of the universe. I can feel the road escaping me beneath the wheels of
my car where inside I take home a friend. The night so wrong, his house no
longer his home, his mom no longer his mother. I still know exactly what it is
like when my chest collapses and my bones surrender. The way my heart crawled
into itself where it cried knowing that I had let my love down. Every muscle
that it took for her to frown condemning me to a black box where words and
light have never existed because there was never anything worth hearing, never
anything worth seeing in that darkness I’ve filled with these empty thoughts of
divorce, damnation and death. I don’t feel these pasts, I remember them. Their
life was cut away from them, a knife slicing through the middle removing any words
from my mouth any sound from my ears.
It is these nights that beauty is taken hostage and men can
become mortal again. Where dreams most die and the world spins slightly slower
to let you catch up to it. These nights when I see the world through my brain,
cold, systematical, and alone in a flawed and dystopian life. It’s these nights
when I decide I want to spend the rest of my life seeing through my heart.
The graduation
Two years ago I wasn't who I am. The days have come and gone and come and gone again and I'm still not sure I'm even on the same map I sat staring at when I began the journey. It's not all wrong, but I don't think I ever knew which way was right.
I can't pause life, but I could pause this blog. Pause my thoughts and ramblings. I could leave you suspended as if though that could interrupt my present when all it has done is changed the theme. Am I better now? Absolutely. I'm not alone. In location or spirit, I have guides and hands and hearts in my head. They join my voice singing the anthem of not-quite-teens and unyet-adults. So many areas were explored, ideas that never came to be. But the variety that came of it was astounding. How many times I've commented on the vastness of our planet.
Mirroring these words line by line my life unfolds. Unsure of the direction of this rant I stumble forward. Currently in a fore-word in the novel sure to take place. I will find exactly where I need to be because I know where I want to be. She is where I am, that's all I need. Where we will be, that's what I want.
My feet step forward. The days keep on. The nights remain aloof. She smiles at me. It's these things that will keep me going. I will remember the things I've lost or left behind and keep dear the things I can hold. Tangible or not, my future is where I'm going and I'll be damned if it isn't everything I've always wanted.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
-Forward-Bound
I can't pause life, but I could pause this blog. Pause my thoughts and ramblings. I could leave you suspended as if though that could interrupt my present when all it has done is changed the theme. Am I better now? Absolutely. I'm not alone. In location or spirit, I have guides and hands and hearts in my head. They join my voice singing the anthem of not-quite-teens and unyet-adults. So many areas were explored, ideas that never came to be. But the variety that came of it was astounding. How many times I've commented on the vastness of our planet.
Mirroring these words line by line my life unfolds. Unsure of the direction of this rant I stumble forward. Currently in a fore-word in the novel sure to take place. I will find exactly where I need to be because I know where I want to be. She is where I am, that's all I need. Where we will be, that's what I want.
My feet step forward. The days keep on. The nights remain aloof. She smiles at me. It's these things that will keep me going. I will remember the things I've lost or left behind and keep dear the things I can hold. Tangible or not, my future is where I'm going and I'll be damned if it isn't everything I've always wanted.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
-Forward-Bound
Mr. E (An unpublished post from years ago)
Dear Mr.E,
What selfish internal reason allows you to keep things to yourself in the way that you do? What kind of self arrogant bastard isn't willing to share among fellow humans, the answers that plague them among a continuous cycle of questioning. In a system so ultimately pointless and futile that the fulfillment of understanding is crucial to a meaning of life; and you're the one who knows it all. Do you feel self important? Are you proud of yourself for keeping steadfast to your privileges? A mock opression that looks down upon us all because for some cosmic reason (which I'm sure only you know) you were selected to be the one with the answers and as such became more worthy than your weight in gold. The world has eyes on you, waiting on you, waiting on your screw ups but expecting your solutions. The heroic Atlas. And I hope throughout your infinite wisdom that you'll eventual remove yourself from this quasi-pedistal you appear to live on and join our level of utter chaos and confusion, because ultimately I am the jealous, selfish one of you knowing the obvious solutions to the complex problems. I want to be you. I want your talents, your knowledge, your background. And yet, I hate you for all of it.
-Sincerely,
Taylor J. Pridgen
ps- Do you ever miss asking questions?
7.11.10
The Dreamers
She was a dream once.
Something simple, an idea. More like a hope.
Of a girl with brunette hair who would roll around on the ground with me.
Play like children do.
A distant dream a long time ago of a future that I never could be sure of.
She was an answer.
The resolution of a journey. A reward of sorts if we think in that way.
She became more than a new beginning. She was a complete rewrite.
The game changed. The rules changed. Everything changed.
She was a teacher.
A molder of thoughts. A betterment of myself and a listener of words.
She told stories, she held my hand. She shared her big dreams with me.
We slept in the same bed and sang the same song.
I knew her favourites, I knew her flaws. Thought I'd never call them such.
I wasn't afraid to share with her. Share who I am, and who I will be.
She's kept every secret. She's held every weakness dear to her heart.
And she proved that she could do anything.
Including falling short.
And even then she made that beautiful too.
It was potential for perfection.
It was as close as we could get.
Two dreamers living a dream. Creating it out of nothing.
Not sure where the story is going. Not sure they want to know.
Just happy.
As long as one is with the other.
So long as they are together.
The world isn't as big.
The future isn't as scary.
The dreams aren't as far away.
And while issues never go away.
All it took to change my life,
was for her to say yes.
- Taylor J. Pridgen
Something simple, an idea. More like a hope.
Of a girl with brunette hair who would roll around on the ground with me.
Play like children do.
A distant dream a long time ago of a future that I never could be sure of.
She was an answer.
The resolution of a journey. A reward of sorts if we think in that way.
She became more than a new beginning. She was a complete rewrite.
The game changed. The rules changed. Everything changed.
She was a teacher.
A molder of thoughts. A betterment of myself and a listener of words.
She told stories, she held my hand. She shared her big dreams with me.
We slept in the same bed and sang the same song.
I knew her favourites, I knew her flaws. Thought I'd never call them such.
I wasn't afraid to share with her. Share who I am, and who I will be.
She's kept every secret. She's held every weakness dear to her heart.
And she proved that she could do anything.
Including falling short.
And even then she made that beautiful too.
It was potential for perfection.
It was as close as we could get.
Two dreamers living a dream. Creating it out of nothing.
Not sure where the story is going. Not sure they want to know.
Just happy.
As long as one is with the other.
So long as they are together.
The world isn't as big.
The future isn't as scary.
The dreams aren't as far away.
And while issues never go away.
All it took to change my life,
was for her to say yes.
- Taylor J. Pridgen
31.3.10
The Self-Apocalypse
Apocalypse From: apocalypsis < Gk apokálypsis revelation, equiv. to apokalýp(tein) to uncover, reveal.
If a dream were reality we'd sit proudly and boast the ability to fly away with sullen wings. If life were unique we'd all be the sun. A blast of overwhelming modesty lost with the bonds that make the harsh and cold.
If everyone was truly excluded from one another and lived inside their own head we would interact with what we see those others to be and how they live would just be a figment to us. We see what we want to see and nothing more and somehow it always gets lost in translations between worlds.
To you it's reading and words on white and to me I describe in personal proximity to those who read the words suspended in air that I etch meaninglessly onto cave walls as a way to track something, progress? Anything. To you it couldn't be.
Waiting for the disaster to reveal is like life; living with the seconds that tick away and die, one after another filling their purpose faster than we and we feel foolish to waste them. It will come for us all. And to everyone it will come differently.
I've experienced apocalypse many times in my life and can remember a few of them vividly. I didn't die; the world ended as I knew it and blossomed again in something unclear and not absolute. Like love. Like school. Like death? I wouldn't know.
There's a social understanding taken for granted amongst the massive assembly. The Unveiling needn't be taken negatively all the time just for what it's associations are to be. If you fear its name, it gives it power. If you personify and/or mortalize it within your individual reality, you can reveal something world changing.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
If a dream were reality we'd sit proudly and boast the ability to fly away with sullen wings. If life were unique we'd all be the sun. A blast of overwhelming modesty lost with the bonds that make the harsh and cold.
If everyone was truly excluded from one another and lived inside their own head we would interact with what we see those others to be and how they live would just be a figment to us. We see what we want to see and nothing more and somehow it always gets lost in translations between worlds.
To you it's reading and words on white and to me I describe in personal proximity to those who read the words suspended in air that I etch meaninglessly onto cave walls as a way to track something, progress? Anything. To you it couldn't be.
Waiting for the disaster to reveal is like life; living with the seconds that tick away and die, one after another filling their purpose faster than we and we feel foolish to waste them. It will come for us all. And to everyone it will come differently.
I've experienced apocalypse many times in my life and can remember a few of them vividly. I didn't die; the world ended as I knew it and blossomed again in something unclear and not absolute. Like love. Like school. Like death? I wouldn't know.
There's a social understanding taken for granted amongst the massive assembly. The Unveiling needn't be taken negatively all the time just for what it's associations are to be. If you fear its name, it gives it power. If you personify and/or mortalize it within your individual reality, you can reveal something world changing.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
31.1.10
The Odds
There's something about the exchanging of months that leads me to believe that if I don't write in January I'll be sorely upset and can't take the chance to miss out on the opportunity of anything.
Humans have the most silent, beautiful, elegant and yet hidden metamorphosis out of any living creature. The way we can change, grow and adapt ourselves to any situation breaks any aspect of natural. We are a logical impossibility. The fact that the human race, even the Earth, exists is a matter of Universal-Scale Chances. And yet we broke that expectation too.
So how does each of us exist. Solace, a bus ride, isolation in expectation and a curious eye wandering through the motions of a more curious brain examining the brief touch of a meeting between individuals. Is that what we are? We are individuals of each other.
How is it we crave for individuality and yet hate to be alone?
There's a theory pertaining to the end of the world (as we know it) that more or less states that eventually our entire collective consciousness will be compiled into one big being. We will cease being unique minds and share a brain. Like an ant colony.
And all I can think about is how will this affect me.
Are we able to live in a world without that catalyst of uniqueness. Are we able to live in a world that isn't lonely? Can we survive as a race in a world where you, yourself cannot play violin on the Great Wall of China or dance in Ruins of Rome?
Is it truly possible to find yourself and grow, and change and adapt in a world that's uniform on every level?
Aren't we already one in a billion odd?
How can we not be unique and rare,
on a world that is itself unbelievable.
- Taylor J. Pridgen
24.12.09
The Future Doesn't Scare Me At All
Span the year and fit it in your pocket for easy digestion and this may be the only way currently to depict the efforts we push against ourselves. We play along every time because to consider the difference would be to create. We can't measure progress on creation.
So if the only thing we know is to look beyond the mornings and sunrises when half the world is quiet and alone, than when can we be sure of possibilities and where yours can be?
Is it the big questions? Illustrating the one common phenominon of our kind and the ability to perceive the impossible on an impossible scale? Why is it so much easier to see the future with your eyes closed?
Sometimes I like to put in my headphones and turn my music up loud to watch the world go by in sudo-silence. As if every action I'd expect to have a noise suddenly illustrated itself in a silent world. A ballet of motion appears. That perspective is more than just angles and the third dimension. There's plenty more ways of looking at the world.
Maybe that's what this next year is for.
This is how I see.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
4.12.09
The Cold
A 12 hour binge indoors, I danced with lines on paper and procrastinated the best of times, only to end where buses begin in the cold heat of night where midnight hours left me stranded alone with my breath. I silently watched it glide over my head, twirling and playing with the air, feeding the trees and sparking catalysts of curiosities about the smoke from buildings overhead and how it could glide without wings.
Will I ever be that? Gentle and free it rides the currents it so creates, shifting and shaping its experience in the world is has undoubtedly created an unspoken agreement with. Fearless, it jets forward without worry in its direction because it knows that as soon as it fades into invisibility that it has served a purpose.
It's only fitting that the mountains greet me home. Illuminated by the sudo-effect of light off the snow. Only ironically casted by the moon that always seems to be following my en devours no matter where they happen to fall within the countless number of people awake and wandering.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
6.11.09
The Potential
I had a dream which included a good friend of mine. And without this friend I don't think my life would quite be the same. Because of her, a lot of good things have happened to me. She was my very first friend in college and is constantly causing me to reconsider things. And today she was sad.
It's incredible the opportunity that the world presents us with.
Here we all are, sitting on this gigantic, sphere in a unfathomable amount of space and we still consider ourselves so alone. I like the think that the world spins slowly enough to connect everything within its tucked safety. Our own blanket of clouds.
Within it is everything you could ever want or need. And sometimes it's hard to find the exact right ways to go about things. It's hard to discover the one thing in life that will make you truly happy. Because generally it's never just one thing and that is the true beauty of the world so why can't the realization of something satisfy its need. Is thinking of a glass of water curing thirst?
And it's troubling to believe that we're stuck in the spin of the world. We need to go to school, jobs and everything is so organized that anything off the train tracks becomes disconnected from the world but I am the one here to say that the world isn't made up of train tracks. What is the one thing that connects everything else? Not language, not emotion (rocks can't think), nor is it simply the Earth everything sits on.
Perhaps its the opportunities we share everyday between uncountable numbers of abilites.
The possibilities held within a single day and the potential to break the normalities of life and burst free from the atmosphere, and before jettisoning yourself to better things (whatever things may be) we still have that ability to turn around. Look at everything we have, everything we have done and everything we are and smile because everything is possible.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
1.11.09
My Extra Hour
We run our lives by the clock. Wake, shower, eat, work, eat, sleep. And in this chaos of regimented schedules, we try to find time for joy. For happiness. For love.
What can you do in an hour?
Can you fall in love? Explore a city? Read a short story? Meet a stranger? Make love?
Our days are split into twenty-fourths. Our days tick and tock and tick and then are gone. Lucky for us, the clocks froze on November 1st. We were free to do whatever we wanted for one untamed hour. Free.
Most of us spent it sleeping, dreaming. Our twilight hour passed unnoticed by many, and only the clock's error showed us what we missed.
Time is invisble, intangible, noticeable only by the sun's travel and the clock's tick. Today, it was gone. Someone opened the door in our cage and let us free, even if only for sixty minutes. Minutes for sketching and scheming, kissing and writing, reading and exploring. The door that was open led to the world, free of obstructions. It closed again, though, and time was king once more. Yet that taste, the taste of timelessness is on the tip of your tongue now. The door calls to you now.
The best part?
You've had the key the entire time.
-Kyle McDaniel
What can you do in an hour?
Can you fall in love? Explore a city? Read a short story? Meet a stranger? Make love?
Our days are split into twenty-fourths. Our days tick and tock and tick and then are gone. Lucky for us, the clocks froze on November 1st. We were free to do whatever we wanted for one untamed hour. Free.
Most of us spent it sleeping, dreaming. Our twilight hour passed unnoticed by many, and only the clock's error showed us what we missed.
Time is invisble, intangible, noticeable only by the sun's travel and the clock's tick. Today, it was gone. Someone opened the door in our cage and let us free, even if only for sixty minutes. Minutes for sketching and scheming, kissing and writing, reading and exploring. The door that was open led to the world, free of obstructions. It closed again, though, and time was king once more. Yet that taste, the taste of timelessness is on the tip of your tongue now. The door calls to you now.
The best part?
You've had the key the entire time.
-Kyle McDaniel
24.10.09
The ReView
We have had this discussion before; you and I. We've gone through the motions, and arguments and witty dialogue thousands of times over. But the magic is in the fresh feeling it carries every time. As if every time we used the same words in the same orders we've forgotten we have already done so. Despite our souls know better. They send us signals, and clues, Deja Vu's, to help us clear up the repetitive monotony that we forget whenever we start over.
We live moment to moment, attempting to soak in that second's meanings. And once we've drained it of its contextual, potential use we move on to the next second and next second. Then, with all of this data we've collect we group things into terms called minutes, and hours, and moments, and periods, eras, years, stories. And once we have finished categorized them into human ideas we leave them be in the giant shelves of our minds where most tend to get lost, fall, break or disappear entirely.
What if we didn't live moment for moment? What if there are periods in our life that if we don't get the right idea, or the right conclusion that we were supposed to gather from that moment, we forget it all and start the entire week over? Essentially we repeat time, time and time again, until we get it right. But we could never remember all times we tried before. We only remember the time we got it right.
It would shed new light on the meaning of fate, and free will. The idea of optimism and pessimism. If we had infinite chances to do things our own way, in order to reach a desired goal? That's free will within a fated system. And if every single event in your life, including the ones that were considered bad or negative, were the correct and appropriate outcomes for that time period? I feel like it'd be much easier to overcome your past and set hold onto your future.
Cause if this be the truth. Who knows how long you might take?
-Taylor J. Pridgen
1.10.09
The Destiny
Alone I stand in the middle of the living room surrounded by cold air lonely and abandoned by the world once awake. I watch myself sleep in silence. Unaware of the lingering hours that slowly pass through me as I am motionless within my self. The darkness overwhelms the setting of sense and creates an unused space. Void of life, movement or use. A closed space. A dead space.
How can we ever see this empty world when it only exists when we are most unaware? A counterfeit opposite made up of reality and habitual memories.
The metaphorical anti-day lingers and loiters. Here dreams are shaped into fantasies and broken down to hopes and desires. The factory for destiny occurs when we absently invite it. We all have desires and dreams to live out and what better place to create them when allowing the mind to process and create. Despite its consistent problem-solving.
Where do we go when we sleep? We know where our bodies are, but where do we go? As if the only true break and rest from life is a rest from reality itself. We find new ways to counter act the impossible. To fulfill every natural human desire to be great, and break the rules, fly and to simple be happy.
Maybe that's why we have dream relationships, dream jobs, dream cars. These are the things that we wish to have to make ourselves a little happier. Our dreams are our only goals. And we have an overwhelming desire to merge our reality and our dreams and live our dreams. We add "Dream" to our desires for a reason.
We all waste that time alone during the silent nights. Time that could otherwise be spent in pursue of whatever we may be reaching for. But without those eventful nights, inspiring happenings, our simply reflective moments, how would we know what to reach for?
In the head of at least one destiny-bound boy in a bed, there's still so much to do.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
4.9.09
The Reason
Departure strikes and sinks in the burrows beneath my skin. A week long fade of everything beautiful ends in nothing more than strange street corners at late hours where not a waking soul ventures. Street lights illuminate nothing here. Out on the streets are so many possibilities to not be alone. This is Death Cab suited.
8 Hours reminds me just how long the maps stretch along the walls and how big the bed beneath them grows. We all have living room. Border lines the space between times I didn't know and couldn't breath. I'm reminded of dreams by late night, waited, phone calls. These are my air.
With wet cheeks I regret the substantial inability to include among those dozens of tiny notes this entire thought process. That you're the part of the world that is bright. And you're the part of the world that sings. That you're the reason that while I'm where I've been before, I'm suddenly lost within my own evaporated thoughts. And, above all else in this world, that you are my love.
Now more than ever.
-Love,
Taylor J. Pridgen
25.8.09
The Timeline
I live at the threshold between the possible and uknown. The line daring to be crossed and tested and often redrawn within the lifestyles of those stable enough to miss it.
And should today I reach my hand out the crooked door and into the dreaming wake of a world I easily recognize as my own throughout the countless numbers of memories and universes so called dimensions swim in our minds and make fools of our eyes.
I've traveled through space a multiple time and found of things to pass that while I am ghostly aware I am scarce.
The timeline is false.
Within everything that can be accomplished with the span of a day you fix your eyes and tighten your blinders to the secret wonderments only found when exploring the adventure. To those stuck in a rut of original modernism may you remember the nostalgiac feeling of stacking blocks. Because there was more than there that you saw but don't remember.
And that while in any given moment your confidence of your ability to control your life and steer your future exists, it is lying. There is no such thing as autonomy. We are the ancestors of generations prior and prior to generation is the world around you.
If you could stop time at any particular moment. The lists of possibilities to any related action for any thought could in itself be infinite before ridiculous by concerning the logical progression of aftermath of each subsequent event. The butterfly effect creating a imaginary shockwave capable of growing and altering any level of detail in your life without you realizing it. There is a reason for everything.
And accepting that I have now written these words down somewhere intangible I am considering through literature that I might be making a difference in the world in which I have no control. I am both creating and distroying. And by my saintly heinous acts I have opened the crooked door or shaky window. I have now frozen time.
And should today I reach my hand out the crooked door and into the dreaming wake of a world I easily recognize as my own throughout the countless numbers of memories and universes so called dimensions swim in our minds and make fools of our eyes.
I've traveled through space a multiple time and found of things to pass that while I am ghostly aware I am scarce.
The timeline is false.
Within everything that can be accomplished with the span of a day you fix your eyes and tighten your blinders to the secret wonderments only found when exploring the adventure. To those stuck in a rut of original modernism may you remember the nostalgiac feeling of stacking blocks. Because there was more than there that you saw but don't remember.
And that while in any given moment your confidence of your ability to control your life and steer your future exists, it is lying. There is no such thing as autonomy. We are the ancestors of generations prior and prior to generation is the world around you.
If you could stop time at any particular moment. The lists of possibilities to any related action for any thought could in itself be infinite before ridiculous by concerning the logical progression of aftermath of each subsequent event. The butterfly effect creating a imaginary shockwave capable of growing and altering any level of detail in your life without you realizing it. There is a reason for everything.
And accepting that I have now written these words down somewhere intangible I am considering through literature that I might be making a difference in the world in which I have no control. I am both creating and distroying. And by my saintly heinous acts I have opened the crooked door or shaky window. I have now frozen time.
20.8.09
My Class
Stepping off the lightrail, I felt like I should be breaking a long line of tape.
It was my first day of college. And there I was, all prepped out, ready for class. I had all the things I thought were neccesary for college: my laptop, several pens, a 500-pound biology book, a cynical and all-knowing attitude, the works. I felt like I was done, that life was a race that you won by entering college.
So much to learn.
I finally shuffled my way to my biology class, and settled into my seat as the professor, short-haired, grayed, and earringed, began class.
"Today," he said, "is your first day of medical school."
I stifled my laughter very quickly once I realized the room was silent.
I wasn't at the end of a long race; I was at the beginning, all over again. I was on a track that loops in circles. You run, run, and run, ad infinitum. Four years ago, I was a freshman. Now i'm lining up at the start again, without even enough time between races to take a breath.
To be honest, I'm getting a little sick of these starting blocks. I'm worn down with all of the hurdles I've jumped, and now they're getting higher. So is this is? I just keep sprinting towards what I think is the finish line, realizing it was simply the beginning of another race?
Race to college. To med school. To a job. To a promotion. To a family. To getting my kids to college. To retirement. To death?
It was the lightrail home that saved me. iPod buds in each ear, I stared forlornly at the map painted on the ceiling, waiting for the pleasant female voice to announce I was home, when the giant metaphor I was riding hit me.
Life isn't the race. It isn't in the hurdles or the turns or even in the finish line. It's in you. Your will, your passion, your goals that keep you going when you're lost past your ability to move. That's life.
The question isn't who finishes first, who you beat, or even where your finish line is.
The question is, what's worth racing for?
Figure that out, line up at the blocks, and wait for the starting pistol. Run fast. Run hard. Run with love.
Bang.
-Kyle McDaniel
It was my first day of college. And there I was, all prepped out, ready for class. I had all the things I thought were neccesary for college: my laptop, several pens, a 500-pound biology book, a cynical and all-knowing attitude, the works. I felt like I was done, that life was a race that you won by entering college.
So much to learn.
I finally shuffled my way to my biology class, and settled into my seat as the professor, short-haired, grayed, and earringed, began class.
"Today," he said, "is your first day of medical school."
I stifled my laughter very quickly once I realized the room was silent.
I wasn't at the end of a long race; I was at the beginning, all over again. I was on a track that loops in circles. You run, run, and run, ad infinitum. Four years ago, I was a freshman. Now i'm lining up at the start again, without even enough time between races to take a breath.
To be honest, I'm getting a little sick of these starting blocks. I'm worn down with all of the hurdles I've jumped, and now they're getting higher. So is this is? I just keep sprinting towards what I think is the finish line, realizing it was simply the beginning of another race?
Race to college. To med school. To a job. To a promotion. To a family. To getting my kids to college. To retirement. To death?
It was the lightrail home that saved me. iPod buds in each ear, I stared forlornly at the map painted on the ceiling, waiting for the pleasant female voice to announce I was home, when the giant metaphor I was riding hit me.
Life isn't the race. It isn't in the hurdles or the turns or even in the finish line. It's in you. Your will, your passion, your goals that keep you going when you're lost past your ability to move. That's life.
The question isn't who finishes first, who you beat, or even where your finish line is.
The question is, what's worth racing for?
Figure that out, line up at the blocks, and wait for the starting pistol. Run fast. Run hard. Run with love.
Bang.
-Kyle McDaniel
16.7.09
The Already
So many things can go right and wrong in a lifetime that it's difficult to remember which ones are important. There's always the chance that something unexpected can go awry.
But for short periods at a time, it's as if you've forgotten everything and somehow that makes it all worth while.
People don't live in the past forever. If they know what's good for them they try and stay away from the future. But the truth is, none of us truly know where we are going and how we will get there and exactly what will be waiting for us on the other side.
I have my hopes. My dreams. And the free set of pilot wings everyone gets after their birth. But I only have one real sense of security. And it's funny that that security is a part of the now. Maybe I'm more comfortable knowing that no matter what happens, if I keep the now secure, than whenever that impending future comes for me, that I'll be following the same philosophy.
And judging by how much has changed since I've started keeping track. Is that truly impossible?
You'd think that by finally knowing what has changed, it would make it easier to see and plan for the future. But what I've found is that in a world where the outcome of a process changes by the mere observation of it... I found that nothing is ever really set in stone.
And for a long time that has been my true philosophy. That yeah sure, things might change. And yeah sure, I might not have the same life in a few years that I have now. But the matter of fact is that fate isn't some grand game. We aren't puppets to a will already predetermined. To me, I've made fate out to be a set of rules that life follows. The reason that paper will burn over fire is because of fate. And as long as I can understand how things work, I can write my own future.
It can be whatever I want it to be.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
But for short periods at a time, it's as if you've forgotten everything and somehow that makes it all worth while.
People don't live in the past forever. If they know what's good for them they try and stay away from the future. But the truth is, none of us truly know where we are going and how we will get there and exactly what will be waiting for us on the other side.
I have my hopes. My dreams. And the free set of pilot wings everyone gets after their birth. But I only have one real sense of security. And it's funny that that security is a part of the now. Maybe I'm more comfortable knowing that no matter what happens, if I keep the now secure, than whenever that impending future comes for me, that I'll be following the same philosophy.
And judging by how much has changed since I've started keeping track. Is that truly impossible?
You'd think that by finally knowing what has changed, it would make it easier to see and plan for the future. But what I've found is that in a world where the outcome of a process changes by the mere observation of it... I found that nothing is ever really set in stone.
And for a long time that has been my true philosophy. That yeah sure, things might change. And yeah sure, I might not have the same life in a few years that I have now. But the matter of fact is that fate isn't some grand game. We aren't puppets to a will already predetermined. To me, I've made fate out to be a set of rules that life follows. The reason that paper will burn over fire is because of fate. And as long as I can understand how things work, I can write my own future.
It can be whatever I want it to be.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
29.6.09
The Missing
Tonight the moonlight hid behind the mountain tops and cast an illumination of an archipelago of clouds. Ripples in the sky expanded and distorted the things we thought we know, making an obvious statement of dreams. Whales swim here and make homes of the stars. But the current pulls and swirls around specific points of interest merely interested in being interesting. Systems of order proves hierarchy's strength and the lights are messengers to the invisible but alive. They sit silently behind veils plugging wires and connecting the dots left behind in the inevitable rush that we go through just to live our lives. Reflecting the ground below in an eerie vast nothingness. Merely commentating on all the things we miss.
So tell me why the car drives are better with the windows down. And when all it takes to enjoy a moment is by smiling, where is the challenge. With a combination of joy and tears, I find what's worth living for. The perpetual anxieties that plague our existence day after day are strong enough to make us ponder their extremities for lifetimes without any real advancement and that is what's special about them. They co exist with our insecurities and abilities that we use ponder their very reality. The disasters are coming at full speed and nothing can slow them down. But when the only true reason to life is to live. Why would you want to?
-Taylor J. Pridgen
So tell me why the car drives are better with the windows down. And when all it takes to enjoy a moment is by smiling, where is the challenge. With a combination of joy and tears, I find what's worth living for. The perpetual anxieties that plague our existence day after day are strong enough to make us ponder their extremities for lifetimes without any real advancement and that is what's special about them. They co exist with our insecurities and abilities that we use ponder their very reality. The disasters are coming at full speed and nothing can slow them down. But when the only true reason to life is to live. Why would you want to?
-Taylor J. Pridgen
27.5.09
The Soul
Power's out.
Inside the walls foundations creak and darkness invades. When is a house not a home? What is it about the loss of functioning that makes a house a building. Destitute and alone.
And how does the sudden acknowledgment of the always lurking knowledge suddenly shake you to your core and dissect everything you once knew into brand new ideas separating them into categories once nonexistent? Birthing something from the loss of everything.
What does it mean to wrap arms around another and hold them closely? Why do we feel the need to be so close that our lips can touch and should only our hands hold? What are eyes made of? And when they're closed is the power out? What makes a house a home?
The world follows trends. Or patterns?
- Taylor J. Pridgen
Inside the walls foundations creak and darkness invades. When is a house not a home? What is it about the loss of functioning that makes a house a building. Destitute and alone.
And how does the sudden acknowledgment of the always lurking knowledge suddenly shake you to your core and dissect everything you once knew into brand new ideas separating them into categories once nonexistent? Birthing something from the loss of everything.
What does it mean to wrap arms around another and hold them closely? Why do we feel the need to be so close that our lips can touch and should only our hands hold? What are eyes made of? And when they're closed is the power out? What makes a house a home?
The world follows trends. Or patterns?
- Taylor J. Pridgen
17.5.09
The Nuts and Bolts
It feels as if the sun came out at night to simply watch over me. But I know how that is impossible because the moon is forever my lighthouse in life and it's done such a great job lately.
I've never been close to death.
People die and I'd rather not mourn. A startling chemistry inside me builds up to let me know that I'm not sad as I should be. Maybe we should celebrate the life of the death. And we really are only being selfish in mourning those being left behind.
But if a heaven is everything you could ever need to be truly happy. I couldn't imagine anything better than interaction and discovery with everything the world has to offer. Am I living a heaven and what could be better than waiting for the disaster?
If there is no life after death than I'll die anxious, but accomplished.
And in the meantime, I find it funny how saddled I am with everything Big. I've long since ignored all the little things that while important never held sufficient space in my attention.
And still, each star is its own sun, possibly bigger than ours, occupying areas in space unimaginably far away.
Yet, I can hold them in my hands.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
I've never been close to death.
People die and I'd rather not mourn. A startling chemistry inside me builds up to let me know that I'm not sad as I should be. Maybe we should celebrate the life of the death. And we really are only being selfish in mourning those being left behind.
But if a heaven is everything you could ever need to be truly happy. I couldn't imagine anything better than interaction and discovery with everything the world has to offer. Am I living a heaven and what could be better than waiting for the disaster?
If there is no life after death than I'll die anxious, but accomplished.
And in the meantime, I find it funny how saddled I am with everything Big. I've long since ignored all the little things that while important never held sufficient space in my attention.
And still, each star is its own sun, possibly bigger than ours, occupying areas in space unimaginably far away.
Yet, I can hold them in my hands.
-Taylor J. Pridgen
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