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Motion picture dreams
Feb 23, 2013

Sometimes you see a movie
Where the guy is somewhere, missing his love
He stares across whatever it is
A garden, a strange city, a prison cell, a battlefield
Wherever it is, he can conjure up an image of her

A mirage of you, at will
I lie here and think that I'd like to be able to do that
In a dream or just in a quiet moment

To see your face, your hair
Your eyes and that beautiful smile of yours
Or the sparkle in your eyes and your small wave when we meet unexpectedly

Maybe it'd be like threading an old 8 mm film
Through the rollers and guides and pulleys or whatever they're called
And seeing the film show up, just where I wanted it

Maybe the colours would be a little faded
Or the sky too Kodachrome blue
And when the film skipped a bit, you'd make an akward jump
With the words you were saying jumbling a bit

But that wouldn't matter
Just being able to see you
Would be all that mattered

But I can't

There's one good thing, though
I don't really have to
'Cause I can just turn my head
And look across

And there you are
Right there.

(No replies)

A dream about longing and friendship
Dec 16, 2012

A deep hollow cavern
Opened itself in the middle of me
Heavy, dark, throbbing with nothing

My head turns, my eyes search in all corners
But, for reasons I cannot grasp
You are not here

And the dark cavern slowly fills
With the simple, sheer, solid
Emptiness that is longing

A feeble light shines
Coming from outside towards me
I hold my breath
Trying not to stir the air so it dies

I recognise the light
It is a friendship that comes to me
I let the light shine
Welcoming its glow and warmth
And the cavern closes again

Leaving me
With the thought that as I have a friend
My eyes now again can see the light
And my heart is warm once again

But also that I need to find you
To make sure that the darkness
Didn’t just sit back to wait
But rather wrapped itself in its black cloak
And left me safe in the light

-----

A hard one to pen - most of it I dreamt last night and I got some of it down this morning. Finished - or tried to - just now, to the extent that I could, given I am a day's worth away from when it was in my head...

(23 replies, Latest reply: Dec 22, 2012)

Road of time
Apr 27, 2012

How fleeting time is
And not only fleeting but fickle, too
Even when you’ve spent probably half of yours
It still seems as if there are aeons of it
Stretching out in front of you

It does go on forever, that road
Second by second as meters, hour by hour as miles
Dusty, sun-washed, rain wet, flat and easy, hilly and hard
As you travel along it, whether crusing or struggling

But – because there is a but
Even if the road stretches to the horizon, unbroken
There is, sadly, no guarantee that you get to go that far

Stray off it’s course too much
And you may strand in the ditch
Focus all too much on the one goal at the end of it
And you may well run short of fuel way before you get there
Whether fuel for you is success, love, friendship or just simple quiet

And maybe you have achieved the balance
You are doing just fine, not too fast and not too slow
Only for somebody in front of you, by sheer accident, to drop a nail or a shard
And suddenly, pfffft, puncture and you’re not going anywhere

And the thing is, on this road
You cannot stop
If you do – whether you wanted it or not
There is no starting again

You’ll just stay where you are
And everything else moves along
While you fade away
And becomes the dust on the surface
That the next ones travel on

The road doesn’t care
Whether you’ve come far or just started
If you travel well and in style
Or if you crawl labouriously along
And it doesn’t know the meaning of fair and unfair

It just continues and continues
And all that’s left to you is to make the best of it
While you travel along

So, dear fellow travellers, remember to enjoy the view
Remember those next to you on the road
Remember yourself
Be sure that you collect what you want in your heart
As you go along

Because you don’t know
Where or when your stop sign comes up
And the road, your road, isn’t any longer.

And you’ve run out of time.

----------

- just what came out when I heard the sad news yesterday about my cousin fighting for his life in the hospital. How I’d like to see him back on his bike and rolling further down his part of the road.

(crossposted from my cobblestone blog)

(5 replies, Latest reply: May 1, 2012)

A light for my inner eye
Feb 24, 2012

I had been looking at the candle for a while
Then, for some reason, I closed my eyes
In the darkness, I was still swaying to the music
Until I saw the small red dot

I followed it with my eyes
Behind closed eyelids
And felt the music recede

It was taking me somewhere, the small red speck of light
And I didn't hesitate
Just followed

Now I know that it probably meant to tell me something
Like calling you or at maybe looking to you for a guiding light
But I just followed - for the first short part of the way
Then returned to my own life
And opened my eyes to the music that still played around me

And had me sway in time to the beat once more.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I honestly do not know where this came from - except for the candle and red dot bits that were real enough. Funny - when looking at lights, getting that shining dot when you close your eyes is rather common, but this was just small, red and rather intense.

The rest of the words just poured out rapidly. As is.

(2 replies, Latest reply: Feb 26, 2012)

Stockholm - and an impromptu micro-meet
Feb 16, 2012

I realise that the last time I met "somewhere" with just one other researcher, I named it a mini-meet. Today, we just touched on that nomenclature - is a mini-meet two or at least three meeters? Or, is a meet with just two participants a micro-meet? Let's settle for that.

Whatever it was, today over lunch a colleague was mentioning that he had been staying at a hotel in central Stockholm and that (insert widespread and wellknown hotel chain here) had a few of those.

A bell slowly started to swing somewhere in the back of my mind and after some time met with something else and a nice, satisfying "doiiiiiinngg" came out of it. Like in "Hey, I know someone who works at (insert ...etc)!"

So I texted Ti and let her know that I was in Stockholm with a little time to spare towards the end of the afternoon. And lo and behold, Ti could shuffle bits and bytes and year-end numbers and what have you around and away.

So we've just had * at a nice café at Centralen, the central station in Stockholm, accompanied by a good amount of chatting

And even if it had the side effect of thinking "why am I not packing to go to Manchester ?**", it was really, really nice

-----

* Latte macchiatos, in fact
** Because I already have been on two w**k trips to a total of three countries this week and have a UK trip planned week after next and ... and the family actually also carries a little weight still in my life

(5 replies, Latest reply: Feb 18, 2012)