05 Sep 2009
What if life is death is life.
And happiness is really unhappiness is happiness.
And love is really hate is really love.
Maybe we wish and hope for good because we are bad because we are good,
and living – even dreaming about being good is enough.
Maybe we’re all living in death, living, waiting for closure;
waiting for a start, for a glimpse at something different.
What if life is our way of coping; a way to make the intangible tangible,
because to feel the tangible pain
would validate and make life real and death real,
so that love and happiness exist and are true.
And then we wake up, realizing nothing is really as it seems.
That we are all happily alone and unhappily together.
And we’re enlightened that both good and bad,
happiness and sadness,
are created to conflict and to feed off one another.
To make each other real.
To validate life, to validate death.
Having seen Synecdoche, New York for the first time last night I was blown away by the truthfullness of it. It was ugly and beautiful and sad and happy all at the same time. It emphasises the imperfections so much that the perfections become imperfect because they’re abnormal, if not rare, if not non-existent. It makes one realize the beauty in connectedness and it awakens the soul, the mind, and the heart by shoving the fact that, unless we as individuals make life meaningful, life won’t mean anything. It’s bold, brash, and to many probably quite offensive.
It makes you realize that every second counts. I know I take seconds as nothing. Like pennies I usually toss them out or throw them away because they’re pointless. But what if I put every penny into a jar rather than tossing them out? I think that pennies are such a small amount that I’ll never acquire enough to use. Life presents us with a limited number of seconds to use. The more we throw away and toss out or pass by and the more we don’t use is a second we’ll never ever be able to reclaim.
Call me emotional, I’ll admit it. I think people tend to shy away from emotions these days. They stuff them in bottles, or bury them or hide them… It’s emotions that make changes in life. Emotions are the start of anything great and anything terrible and it’s the emotion that people remember. I’ll definitely remember this film. It’s truly life-changing, but only if you let it. I’ll close with some quotes that really stuck out to me.
“We’re all hurdling towards death. Yet here we are for a moment – alive. Each of us knowing we’re gonna die. Each of us believing that we wont.”
“Knowing that you don’t know is the first essential step to knowing, you know?”
“And they say there is no fate, but there is. It’s what you create.”
Life is beautifuil because it’s ugly because it’s beautiful.
20 Feb 2009
Enter today – a sunny morning with near perfect temperatures hovering around 50. I woke up to the sun pouring in through my windows, bundled up in a mass of white 300-count cotton. Exhausted from a busy, emotional, challenging, yet enlightening week and refreshed, energized and excited to begin the day and enter what looks to be a promising and fun weekend.
I’m going hiking and camping this weekend with a group of people, one of whom being one of my best friends and favorite people, Melissa. We’re going to Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. It’ll probably be in the teens at night and in the 40s during the day if we’re lucky. Nonetheless I imagine it will be a nice time. Challenging to say the least, but fun.
The weather channel was saying how there’s another cold front coming through Saturday evening that is likely to dump snow on higher elevations. I haven’t seen snow in years, and I miss it. Granted, I’d rather not sleep in it, but how many other times in my life will I be sane enough to go camping in the dead of winter at six-thousand feet up? Actually, I just got word of it being 1.2 degrees there last night. Crazy? Maybe I’m not so sane after all.
Winter brings many things, the cold, it stings
chapped lips, and often, tired hearts, weary
just wanting the warmth of the summer again
During the fall and winter, things die. Animals bulk up with food and go into hibernation, birds fly south for warmth, and leaves and trees shed their foliage, wither in a struggle for survival – to hold it out until spring. Frozen leaves crunch underfoot as gray skies neutralize the colors of everything. It’s cold, and it’ll be hard, but spring is near. Spring is near.
10 Feb 2009
A secret escape to the promised land,
where saxophones play and the piano man
conjures delicately crafted ripples and
among the smooth Terra was his hand.
A promise made never to be shattered,
sealed with kisses and all that mattered
to them, never left to become tattered
her heart given to be never battered.
They transcend all that binds,
unified and together in both mind
and soul and will, there they find
that beneath it all, they’re one of a kind.
© 2009 Chris Rodriguez
09 Feb 2009
It was a dark night last night
for this dark knight with no right.
Might and mighty then
for that, but mightier now
for this. This, the same
this, always this. You.
Always you.
Arms splayed and afraid
plans dismayed and waste laid
by the fool.
Repercussions and reprimands
Your hands, softer than
the hands of time, hands
of mine, for you.
Always for you.
© 2009 Chris Rodriguez
09 Feb 2009
Fifty bucks a go, she said
as he pulled readied wadded up
bills from his lint-filled pockets.
Bills just as used as her
and as worn as his heart.
He closed his eyes,
he always closed his eyes
because in the dark
she became a memory.
The story played again
on and on it played like before
like every other time
that dream, lost.
She wiped her face, stood up
and shook out the wrinkles.
He never watches her leave
but he looks down, slowly
buttoning his jeans
trying to keep the memory
of what could have been
alive as long as possible.
© 2009 Chris Rodriguez