Sprinting with Purpose

It’s rare that I take the time to stop and recharge my batteries. Everything is always go, go, go. I hate my lifestyle some days, but other days it all falls into place and there’s nothing that puts a bigger smile on my face than knowing that I’m doing something.

My life is late nights crashing into early mornings, fighting the alarm and already formulating my excuses for the start of the day as I jump into the shower. “I’ll go to bed earlier tomorrow night.” Rushing through breakfast as I pack my bag. Hurriedly fixing my hair and ironing my shirt before I sprint out the door, wondering if I took lady luck’s fancy today and she’ll deliver me to my destination on the good side of the hour. Everyday I’m forced to interact with people, to learn and to earn. Often there’s barely enough time to go around but it instills me with a purpose and a strange manifesto: “Money is freedom, knowledge is power and sleep is the enemy.”

I like my life because I’ve been forced to live a lot more now than I used to. You can spend so much time theorising but you learn so much more in practice. Every victory, every failure, every argument, every apology, every discussion, every new situation and every new idea, all offer something not available in the theoretical world: real emotion.

I look at myself today and I feel like the best person I’ve ever been. More comfortable but also more open to change, more powerful but also more fragile, more decisive but also more flexible, more commanding but also more understanding.

Some days I feel a restlessness whose strength I have not felt in my whole life sweep through my entire body. I struggle to explain it but I think it stems from the fact that I expect so much more from life now than I ever have before: I’m no longer content with a day just being another day.

A good interview

Christopher Hitchens is one of my favourite minds at the moment. I think it might be that I recently finally got around to reading 'God is Not Great' and I always seem to go giddy at the knees when someone takes the battle to religion or the fact that he wears his admiration of George Orwell on his sleeve as much as I do.

These videos are a two part interview with Christopher Hitchens from last year, when he was in Australia promoting his recent memior Hitch 22 (that has been at the top of my 'to read' list for a while now). I think it serves to humanise him a bit, while also serving as a good introduction to who he is. The first half is absolutely gut wrenching, a bit intense for morning radio. His talk of the Iraq war here is interesting as well.

Thomas Hooper

I figured if I one day want to start putting my blog out in the open again, I should try and post on it regularly with things that are somewhat interesting. I saw this today and thought it was so cool that I should post it.

Thomas Hooper is one of my favourite tattooists in the world. His detail is INSANE. I'm sometimes not the biggest fan of tattooists without colour but his blackwork is ridiculous, so I'll make an exception. He works in NYC and one of my dreams in life at the moment is to get tattooed by him if I ever get a chance to go back to NYC. I'll save like a grand and get him to tattoo my side or something.

The blog post I'm linking here are some healed shots of a sleeve he did a while back, anyone familiar with the band Hope Conspiracy will notice that their latest 7" artwork (that Hooper did) is part of this sleeve. How cool it looks tattooed is half the reason I'm linking this, but the rest of the sleeve really shows off how good he is in general. Suss the rest of the blog, lots of cool stuff to look at. So many big epic pieces that make me go 'wow'.

I like how he makes an effort to put the whole person into all of the photos he takes. He said in an old blog that it's important to capture the person in the tattoo as well because it adds so much more to meaning of it all. I like when people believe in the ultimately personal nature of tattooing.

http://meditationsinatrament.com/2011/04/17/doubt-can-only-be-removed-by-action-2/

Drinking

A friend of mine linked this on facebook tonight, it's such a good article (and not just because I don't drink). I'm going to let it speak for itself...

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/high-sobriety-20110409-1d8gz.html

Betrayed

for some reason I had an urge to put the Betrayed 'Addiction' EP on this morning. They got a bit shitty after this EP, but these 6 songs were gold. Understand and the next song A Light in the Dark are some of the best hardcore lyrics I've ever read. I saw Betrayed in 2006 when they toured with IA and Champion, they were amazing. I saw them play at Burning Fight in 2009 and wasn't really that into it. I think their time past. Maybe releasing an album with a production that sounded extremely flat and dead and sucked the life out of all the good songs they re-recorded for it didn't help? I've never bothered to buy their new EP. Here is their best song and it's lyrics though:

'A Light in the Dark'

Searching for a light in the dark
So much loss in your life, you're feeling left behind
And there's a struggle going on inside
Yeah I saw it in your eyes tonight
It's got you thinking like there's nothing you can do
But there's something you can do
You live
Burn all white flags to the ground
And know it in your heart that you can never surrender
Can't just get back up, you've got to look inside
Because you're searching for a light in the dark
Don't just carry on, because there's something more
And you're searching for a light in the dark
I know you're feeling like you can't go on man
Yeah I heard it in your voice tonight
It's got you feeling lik there's nothing you can do
But there's something you can do
You can light the way
Can't just get back up, it's time to look inside
Yes, you become that light in the dark
Can't just carry on, I'm asking you to light the way

Everything Went Black

I wrote this this morning on the bus and since I got home I've debated whethere to post it or not. It's certainly not very positive, let's put it this way. I do like it though, I'll probably end up putting it in my next zine, but for now, here it is. It's obviously about feeling betrayed and left for dead. The mature answer to that situation is of course to just get out of it and not care. It's obviously never as easy as that though, this is my testament to when I kind of lost the plot I guess.

If there's one thing in life I'm glad I've forgotten,
It's what it feels like to be cast away and left for dead by people that you thought cared
It stomps on your self esteem and then throws it to the dogs,
And you just sit there, not even knowing what to do, wondering what fatal flaw you must have to be treated that way
You'll be sad, you'll be angry
You'll want to cry and you'll want to scream, sometimes at the same time.
You'll certainly make excuses in your head for people that don't deserve it
Youll spend so much time trying to fill a void, while not really having the foresight to understand how to do it sustainably
You'll try to define yourself by any little thing that lets you feel a bit less shitty than you do every other day
You'll build things on bad foundations and then be surprised when they fall apart
Your emotions will make a fool of you more times than you can count
Some days it'll feel like you're holding onto your sanity by nothing more than a thread
You'll think you're fine and happy, but look back in a year and know you weren't
And in all the bullshit and frustration it gets hard to remember which parts of yourself were actually important in the first place
You'll want to pick up the pieces, but you'll struggle to remember what the puzzle looked like before the pieces were scattered
All that you can hope, is that you don't alienate too many people while you're out trying to put it all back together in your own way

On Sunday night I wrote a zine. It's only one page but I think it's a cool start. Plz hit me up if you would like one.

Beauty

As an atheist, I think I've often struggled to explain to people that a world that has only evolved by chance is not devoid of beauty. There is a beauty in how rare it is that we exist at all. and similarly, there is a beauty in the uniqueness of human interaction.

One of the best examples I have found in literature to explain the beauty of our world is in the graphic novel Watchmen, during a conversation between two of the main characters, Doctor Manhattan (a superhero created from radiation basically, a man that can control physics with his will and generally fails to understand people because of his inability to think without logic) and Laurie (his estranged wife) on the planet mars. After losing Laurie, Doctor Manhattan decides he has noting else tying him to the human race, so he retreats to Mars, Laurie hopes to convince him to come home. Laurie has just found out that her father is in fact a man she has hated her whole life.

I've taken this conversation from a script on the internet of the Watchmen movie:

          LAURIE
          The comedian is my father. I guess my
         life is just one big joke.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          I don't think your life is a joke.

          LAURIE
          Well, of course you're going to say that.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          But I've changed my mind. There are
         miracles in your world that are worth
         preserving.

          LAURIE
          What? But you were saying--


          DR. MANHATTAN
          I tried to explain. Thermodynamic
         miracles--events with odds against so
         astronomical, like oxygen turning into
         gold. I have longed to witness such a
         thing and yet I neglect that in human
         coupling, millions upon millions of cells
         compete to create life over generation
         after generation: Until finally, your
         mother loves a man--Edward Blake, the
         Comedian--a man she has every reason to
         hate. And out of that contradiction,
         against unfathomable odds, it was you,
         only you, that emerged. To distill so
         specific a form from all of that chaos;
         Your creation is like... turning air
         into gold. A miracle.

          LAURIE
          But if my birth is a miracle you, you
         could say that about anyone.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          Yes, anyone in the world. But the world
         is so crowded with miracles that they
         become commonplace and we forget. I
         forget.

         They stand there in silence. Connected for the first time in
          years.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          Now. Dry your eyes.
      

          DR. MANHATTAN
          And let's go home.

Fighting

I wrote this tonight after thinking about arguments. I've written about before (and then later taken the post down) about how after fighting with some people, I've felt like I meant nothing to them because of how hard we'd fought. I felt like if they wanted to keep me around, maybe they would have been a bit more restrained. I then thought about some of the arguments I've started in my own life and how often I fight to the death as well. I just hope people understand that I do care, I just believe in honesty more than I believe in keeping the peace/things being easy.

If there's anything I've started to realise these days,
it's that by nature I'm more fighter than lover, you could say.
I've spent a lifetime trying to change it,
but I still can't always beat it.
I doubt it helps that I have this chip on my shoulder,
from a year spent living as a constant fold-er.
It all fucks with my head,
and makes me lash out when I sense a threat.

Because so often it gets lost in the storm of the day to day,
there's something important I want to say:

That just because I fight with you and I fight hard,
doesn't mean that I don't care immensely.
I may hate it sometimes, but I believe in our honesty.
It's rewarding, even if it isn't easy.

With Every Intention