The Philosopher’s Attic

I have been a tweeter (= user of the twitter service to post quick messages of your everyday life about what you are doing, listening to, writing, reading etc.) for quite a while now and while the micro blogging idea is still fresh and a good thing from where I am standing, twitter has failed to live up to it’s own success. After the first hype about a year ago, the people still kept coming. With right, the service was simplistic and easy to use even through text message from a mobile phone or your IM service. The service however always had notorious bandwidth problems that made you lose tweets, replies etc. and resulted in nasty downtimes. A problem that still isn’t solved yet. (How hard can it be with the exposition they have?) And lately tech bloggers have complained about their complete refusal to open the API for more extensive use. And as usual when someone refuses to evolve, someone else will pick up the job.
For the more extensive use such as quickly sharing your latest pictures on flickr or the latest bookmarks you made on delicious. a new site and service called friendfeed quickly gained a lot of members and switchers from twitter. Again the service is simple, straightforward and does what people would like the most. Quickly offer a look at what their up to during the day for their friends to comment on or simply follow from a distance. (I won’t go into the philosophical side of that phenomenon yet.)

The newest and actually nicest playing kid on the block however is Plurk. And even if the name is slightly odd sounding to Francophone ears (we have an expression in familiar language: ‘to feel blurgh or blerg’ for not feeling too well) , it is without any doubt the funniest way to microblog. The comments are organised, the building of a small community with you at the centre is quick and easy, bringing RL communities together in a fun way.

So join me and plurk away

There’s gravel under my feet,
making the sweetest and most chilling noise ever to be heard by dead ears and a dead mind.

Amongst that flawless beauty and this awful turn around,
I can’t seem to find the pearl of your light that used to guide me.
The one thing to ever make me whole again.

The one sound I really need to hear.

Your whispering in my blood and bones,
your love forever to protect me.

There is dying in the world today,
Somewhere in the world there’s something lost and someone losing,
while I am here listening to the silence waiting for God’s word to reach me.

Someone’s lost and eternally found while I walk over the bones of the dead,
the most chilling noise to be heard.

To bring the fire back into your eyes,
to make the walls around your heart tremble and then break,
to see the life in your eyes once more,
to feel your trembling touch on broken skin once again,
to solicit that special blush, that unbearable shudder,
to light the sky with one single look,
one single well placed kiss,

I will love you without a word or look,
without touch or nearness,
with a passion that will remain,
painful, eternal and unreal.

I will love you while you will conquer the world,
your fear and darkness.
While you become the one you were meant to be,
go where you’re meant to go and
love who you’re meant to love,
and sparkle the world with laughter.

To die in solace,
to suffer in twilight,
to end it all in one single thought,
to choose what cannot be found,
to hold on to your dying look,
to love at last.
With every heart, every fibre and every inch of my mind.
With every seed of heavenly lyrics and harmony,
with every eye and tear…

I will love you.

For all the people unconsciously wishing me the best,
for all the thoughts sent into this direction,
hoping for me to finally get up and make that choice.
For all the well mannered and discrete inquiries,
the undecided and unwanted partaking,
for every whim and expression only barely disguising that one last question,
for all it matters and all it doesn’t, this is what anyone would have to say…

Get out and turn around, because you’re not helping anyone.
Breathe out and let the projection rush out of you, because you’re not bringing any clarity.
Keep going and don’t come back.

Let me tear myself up into the tiniest pieces,
without rhyme or verse,
my future and my past.

Let me cry my soul down into an endless pit,
into the depths of what you would call your hell,
and I simply call… my own heaven.

- To an absolute Extreme, an Idol of Inspiration, D.M.

There’s something that needed exploring: the theme of an unrequited love that has been loved and been precious for such a long time that it is like an old friend in your mind and your way to look at the world. And what if that old friend suddenly changed in the face of hope, even the smallest one. That’s what needed to be discussed and that’s how I fulfilled the premise.

What do we actually aim for?

In life, in work, in our inspirations, our… end products? Our interactions, our contacts, our friendships, our helping and our longing?

Depending on your occupation, your passions or your likings the answer to everyone of those parts of a question can be varied and different… and ultimately meaningless to anybody else than yourself.

Of course we convince ourselves that this is not a basic truth and that whatever we’re doing ultimately holds some kind of sense, use or meaning for people around us, society or the greater good. Sand in your eyes, my friends…

This becomes a most apparently fact when whatever you are doing and whatever sense you convey upon it, is not met, acknowledged or even picked up upon by the people you aimed it at in the first place.

I’d have some problems to call myself a poet or even a writer (even a philosopher for that matter) outside of any reference of convenience for the action that I am doing at the moment. It’s linked to the conflictual relation I entertain with my passions and whatever I create. For reasons of simplicity however, let’s say I’m a poet.

As such I aim at people’s emotions. Like, dislike, love, hate, accept, concurring, disagreeing etc. are all emotions I try to bring up. The picture of the reader’s soul as a violin on which you try to strike the right cord or at least a certain cord springs to mind.

From that follows as a matter of logic that if if I don’t manage to strike that cord, I failed the ultimate goal. If poetry cannot bring out emotion big or small, then it’s lukewarm, dispassionate… and in the end meaningless.

It’s the worst thing that can happen to anything artistic is being met with indifference.

For the poet or the writer, the actor or the painter, it’s the end of all things.

In the end, when all is said and done, and if we are not lying in our own pocket, then it shouldn’t matter. If we are right in stating that ultimately we do it for art’s purpose, for some hgiher meaning, then the appreciation of anybody around us should not matter one single second.

And yet it does, doesn’t it?

Appreciation or at least reaction is just one of those things the human being depends on. Not because we’re weak, or fishing for compliments to bolster our own being.
But because we’re ultimately social beings. A reaction to you and your being and the things you put out there, is a way of simply stating ‘I see you and hear you’, add to that the ‘I don’t agree’ or the ‘I love it’ and there you have the whole spectrum of human interaction. It’s part of who we are.

So let’s stop kidding ourselves and simply confess that the reaction does matter.

If there is no reaction to be had, the world would be governed by silence.

Rwanda - but a name. Foreign, far off and yet it should be so close to our heart.

There are no words to express, no words to describe.

It’s not the horrors of a foreign country that should humble us. Nor the thousands of dead.

But our own ignorance, disillusionment and disregard.

14 years for uncountable souls tortured, lives lost and lies of a universal brotherhood of Nations exposed.

Our Western silence and forgetfulness kills again today. The memory of the dead innocent.

NB: I find it absolutely unbelievable that French or German media can’t seem to be bothered to issue more than one article on the 14 year commemoration of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It leaves me angry and speechless. English speaking media seem to pick it up a bit more.

In a decade or maybe even a century where women have finally reached a place in society where they no longer are simply associated to their husbands’ name, someone is trying to win a vote, by doing just that.

For a long while in our world, spouses used to have no name of their own. Women all over the western world were just, Misses John Smith. Not Misses Alina Smith-Johnson. There are places in the world, where it still is considered the peak of knowing your place if you introduce yourself like this. (For instance France has still a complete nomenclatural system in place for wife of high placed functionaries and dignitaries. Wife of a General? It’s the Madame le General. Wife of an Ambassador? Madame l’Ambassadeur. Only if she is the Amassador is she now called Madame l’Ambassadrice. A change I have witnessed and thus is no older than 15 years.)
Of course - we are tempted to say to day - in these times, the name association was only an exterior sign of worse condescending of women and wives behind strong and influential names.

How odd that the first woman to run in a race for the US presidency uses exactly the same techniques without blushing to further her chances at sticking the POTUS pin on her lapel.
Mrs. Bill Clinton, who could have had all the sympathies of feminist movements of all colours all over the globe, finds nothing demeaning in the way she associates herself with the accomplishments of her husband’s administration. “Of course, behind every big man stands a strong woman” they say. And I am sure that during all the Lady’s programs she must have done when accompanying her husband on an official visit abroad, must have taught her how to do international or global politics.
And I am sure that when the pundits explain why she won Florida (“Well, voters are afraid of the impending recession and they feel that Clinton had a good way of balancing the economy, so they voted for her.”), she only finds it natural to use her husbands work for her means. It’s a line of thought she seems to be encouraging these last few weeks.

I can only wonder how low this woman is ready to sink in order to get this job. But what is worse, is the voters eating up the idiocies she serves them out of her hand. What woman that really respects themselves, would use the image of the husband that had one affair after the other and had been publicly exposed to further her own career? What woman that values their own sex and the advancements that have been made in the name of equality of the sexes in all aspects of society, uses the well seated name of their husband for their own power lust?

And the most evident question. What woman - if, how she claims she has made her peace with her husband’s escapades - uses his accomplishments over two legislatures as their own?

Wait. That is the best image of emasculation that I have ever seen. It’s a public castration.

And with that she managed a catch 22 of major proportions.

On one hand she uses her husband’s work for her own means instead of showing of her own successes (probably because there are none) and on the other she manages to behave as a strong feminist by publicly relegating her husband Bill to the rank of pure puppet for her means.

Lady Macbeth anybody…?

There’s a hand lingering on my brow in a forgotten idea and the sun on the walls.

When I look at you, that look holds all the world.
When you look at me, I believe that I could be that other woman.
The stronger one, the lighter one. The fighting one. The one that I am not.
The one I wished to be … for you.

Loving you is like a sweet spring rain on cold ground,
more refreshing and resourcing than anything physical can ever be.
Loving you is like a prophetical air that never comes to pass,
where newness and expectation never cease.
Loving you is the closest thing I get to the divine.

Whenever there’s that hand… your hand… resting on my face, I almost believe that I could take on the whole world.

Nothing is easier than loving you.