For a moment

For one moment,
try to see the world for what it truly is.

I lie back, look up
Tufts of silver and white streak the crystal sky,
Radiant sun shines through the emerald leaves which quiver delicately in the soft and fresh breeze.

Inhale,
Exhale.

We breathe,
drawing in air,
Filling these sacks of flesh we call our lungs.

Essentially we are all a series of reactions occurring as a means to fulfill a larger purpose.

Disagree?

Consider then, the alternative.

Life and existence, devoid of all meaning.
A life with no supernatural purpose other than biological existence.

What are we against the backdrop of all eternity?
Eternity,
An infinite span of being
stretching across all conceivable dimensions of space and time,
limited solely by the confines of our own imagination.

The universe is held within our own minds.
For when you break it down to the essence of all we know,
It's simply just light reflecting off of matter,
being processed by our brain.

I feel so alive

Eloquence,
Rhythm,
Flow,
The romantic within begins to stir.

Eyelids flutter and senses heighten.
Oh how this buzzing still tickles my skull.

Passion,
Question,
Desire,
Concealed beneath this flesh and bone.

Prison.
Mortal and tangible casing,
Confining all the thoughts
Bottled in my brain.

A series of neurons fire.

What are these thoughts? I think
Do they exist? I think

Holding a place in being and time?
Shaping the world around us.

This is who we are.
Thought, our soul.

Fire,
A flash of thought.

Combustion,
Turning being to ash,
Strangely enough,
a strikingly similar process to life.

To THINK,
In the span of all there is, all there was and all there's still to be
we are all but a flash amongst the span of all eternity.

My slumber shall be broken.
Upon this page I write my thoughts
Upon this page I've borne a soul.
This feeling which consumes me now,
Creative thought or loss of control?

Pulsing veins,
Expanding lungs,
The beat of life that hammers at my chest.

"I think, therefore I am"

Ebony Drops of Oil

The clouds of fury gathered
and hovered overhead
The stars of night were blinded from the blood which had been shed

The smoky blanket grew
with every rain drops fall
The question had been thought that day “shall love prevail o’er all?”

And we’ll fight your war today,
And we’ll trust in what you say
We know our lives are worth more than ebony drops of oil

The shaded dusty brown
had slowly stained to red
The grounds on which this tempest fell screamed and writhed and bled

The clouds soon part for sunshine
And light was shed upon
The nature of this awful act and the reasons it begun

But we’ll fight your war today,
But we’ll trust in what you say
We know our lives are worth more than ebony drops of oil

The raindrops turned to bombshells
Clouds thunder turned to planes
The screams made by the ground now all belonged to names
A man upon his throne
Now smiled a little grin
It was the product of his desires that made this war begin.
Our soldiers fought their hearts out
And many died in toil
Under orders from one man with a heart as black as oil.

We can’t fight your war today,
We can’t trust in what you say
We know our lives are worth more than ebony drops of oil

To all of you

Standing out against the sea of otherwise nameless and forgotten faces in our minds,
there remains a place for those who we will always love.

The memory of those who helped us to discover who we truly are inside will never fade away.

When an individual is able to affect us to such a degree that they help to establish who we are,
a piece of them becomes embedded within us and they live on forever
Through the lives that we lead and the people whom we touch.

To all of you who have helped to shape me into the person I have become,
I Thank you.

I only pray that I may do the same for someone else.

What is Love

I've come to realize,
That what attracts us to each other is pain.
It's the rush, the drama, the emotion we crave.

In love
Something has to go wrong
Before we truly realize
Just how much we love one another.

In life
One must die
Or accept the end of life
before one can truly live.

As we reminisce upon the world through our rose colored glasses,
The sweet, simple times that we once shared all seem so far away.

It makes me wonder now,
at that moment in time,
did I know that I was happy?
Was I aware of the beauty in my life and the fragility of the world around me?
When perfection hung upon thinnest of threads within the billowing air.

Did I notice that the seconds which ticked by were to be the fondest I would know?

Did I simply let the moment pass me by, oblivious to the splendor before me?

No beauty hath the power to conquer this yearning within me.
This desire and greed for more.
More than what I already have.
This insatiable hunger which inhibits me from living before life has passed me by.

For,
If reason is a converse for romance and normality leaves little room for passion,
Pleasantly Plain Perfection
May Patter at my window
As I shut the blinds
and create my own disaster.

A love story

“I Promise.” – December 2005

We lay upon my parents’ bed with our legs intertwined and our bodies sprawled out across the delicate rouge of the sheets. My head lay settled upon her chest as I stared blankly at the image of Anakin Skywalker sauntering about a platform above Coursaat or something to that effect. Hell if I knew what’d been going on this movie. For the past hour I’d been focused more intently upon the subtle inhales and the sighing warm breath which I felt upon the nape of my neck than on the irrelevant banalities of a green creature and his Jedi companions. Nothing but her breathing seemed to matter at that moment, not the movie, not my work, not my friends nor family. Nothing. As my head rocked gently back and forth with the rising and falling of her chest, I altered each breath I took, hoping to reach a state where it became natural and I would no longer have to work for our bodies to breathe in unison. I would no longer have to work for things to be the way that I wanted them to be. Perfect.

“Trav?” I heard her say in the minutest of a whisper, “I promise that I’ll never hurt you.” She said as she clenched my hand in hers. I lay still and pondered in awe of what I’d just been told. I just wish I could accept it to be true. A part of me was dying to disregard my better judgment and reasoning but I couldn’t help but find myself saying, “Angel, as beautiful as that sounds or how convinced in yourself you may be, if you truly love me, then there’s no way we can be together without hurting one another in some kind of a way.”

Is there such a thing as an Angel? – June 2005

I glared up at the figure which hung before me. His prim, sagely face and deep blue melancholy eyes seemed to loom down upon me. The compunction cut deep and I averted my eyes from the cross. I shuffled around in the cold wooden pew and attempted to find something else to focus on to drown out the trivial sermon being given by the priest. The long brown hair of a girl sitting about 4 rows up from me to the right of the church seemed to catch my eye.

She was wearing a sea shell necklace around her slender neck and a white element shirt with jeans. She appeared to fit the model of my dream girl and after just moving to this country about a week ago and knowing absolutely no-one, I was absolutely enthralled. I was fascinated to not only see someone my own age, but she happened to be gorgeous too and I couldn’t help but stare. As the minutes ticked away, I kept my gaze fixed upon the girl across the room. Then it happened. She turned her head and happened to notice me staring straight at her. I looked away quickly, evasive of her gaze so as not to seem like I’d been staring at her for too long.

Sitting there, beginning to feel slightly embarrassed about what had just happened, I tried to keep my eyes fixed firmly on the priest in the center of the chapel. The dreary lecture continued and I tried to forget about the girl, but there was an insistent nagging in the back of my mind which kept telling me to look over at her pew once more. No longer able to fight my impulse, I glanced over in her direction and happened to notice her staring right back at me. She quickly averted her gaze.

Maybe Not. – June 2006

June 3^rd 2006, just 13 days away from our 6 month anniversary, we broke up. The break up hadn’t really come as a surprise to be honest. For about a month before this day I’d found myself choking up on the words “It’s over” at least 5 times over various different disputes. Things had been shaky, really shaky in fact. The pure and trusting feeling of a fresh and new relationship had now dwindled and decayed from our impurities and faults over the past 6 months, and at the heart of all our problems was the issue of trust.

How many times do you forgive the person that you love?

Esc. – June 2006

The chatter of keyboards being pounded upon, editors commenting on article ideas for the next issue and the blend of weekly gossip from the two girls who sit beside me all infuse to form a cacophony of sound as I sit facing the computer and try to write my article for the school paper. I felt like shit. I thought that breaking things off would make it hurt less, but obviously I was wrong.

I felt a hand reluctantly tap me on my right shoulder and I swiveled around on my chair to see Ashley Scorbello’s arm held out before me. In it she held a note. I slowly took the note from her hand; gave her a forced, empty smile and swiveled back around to face the computer. The words “Ti Amo” were emblazoned across the front. This was from her.

I stared blankly at the neatly folded piece of paper within my hand, debating whether or not to open it. A circular outline protruded from the otherwise flat plane of the paper, creating the figure of an object. Giving in to my curiosity I unfolded the note and a gold ring dropped down onto the desk.

I quickly gathered up the ring and placed it in the palm of my left hand, hoping that nobody heard it fall. The note read as follows.

Ti Amo.

I know that we aren’t together anymore and I know that you probably don’t want to see me at the moment, but I just wanted you to have this. It’s my Fathers wedding ring. He gave it to me after my mom and him got divorced and he left. I want you to have it. Please just wear it for me. I know that we can’t be together right now but I’m still hoping that someday we can work things out and be together again. I know that we can be perfect and just seeing you wear this ring will let me know that you still care about me and you haven’t given up on us.

I will always love you.

Your Angel.

I felt my eyes begin to swell with tears but I bit down hard on my lower lip to try and stop myself from crying. I opened the palm of my hand and looked down at the ring within it. Contemplating on the storm of thoughts raging through my mind, I picked up the ring and placed it upon the escape key of the keyboard. This action seemed symbolic to me, or at least it made me smile for the first time days. After proudly examining this piece of art that only I could ever understand, I picked up the ring once more, placed it on my right ring finger and tried once again to write my damn article.

Burning in life, ashen in death.

[ __WITH__ ] COULD A sYMBOL WHICH STANDS FOR DEATH,



[ __EACH__ ] BE A mETAPHOR FOR OUR VERY LIVES?



[ _BREATH _] AN EMBERING STICK IN A TRAY.



[ ___WE___ ] INDULGE IN oUR DESIRES,



[ __DRAW __] CHOOSING TO CHOkE,



[ __CLOSER _] BURNING AWAY,



[ ___TO ____] LIKe LIFE.



[ death ]

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce myself...

Have you ever looked back upon a life changing moment in your past and watched as an infinite number of pathways and possibilities branch out from the existence that we live in and delve deep into new and intricate realities built solely upon “what ifs” and “could have beens” rooted firmly in our minds? As if you can see it all, stretching outwards along this tremendous, tangent line, twisting and turning as we make our way towards the eventual ending which turns out the same, regardless of the paths that we take. An entire lifetime lived within a second.

As we come back down and awaken to the stark and sudden reality that is the path we once took and the lives we now lead, we can’t help but look back over our shoulders and wonder, as we feel ourselves being pulled further and further away from that turn back down the road, entrapped in something that’s completely beyond our control.

Since day one, the path of my life has never stopped turning. Being the son of a representative for the South African Department of Disarmament and Foreign Affairs as well as attaining all the diplomatic privileges such as the extensive travel and duty free shopping which goes along with this title may sound like a dream come true to some, but unfortunately for me, being posted abroad every four years of my life and uprooting myself from everything that I know; my friends, my family, my school, my security and my niche, has without a doubt been the most significant hardship that I have faced throughout my life.

I remember how it all seemed so easy not so long ago as I reminisce on the days where I would sit in the airport terminal and watch as my mother broke into tears as she hugged my Aunt goodbye. The apathy that filled my heart that day left me with a longing curiosity as to how a person could care so deeply about simply leaving a country. It’s what I’d been doing my entire life and as a seven year old I was practically indifferent as to where I’d be reading my next cat in the hat book or who I’d be running around with on the playground at lunch.

I also remember at age fifteen how all of a sudden the fact that I was moving again was devastating. The constant reassurances from my friend Monique that she’d be strong once I left and the promise that she’d be ok when I was gone, were the only things that I needed for me to be ok. The feeling of absolute and complete dependence upon another person and the comfort in knowing that regardless of what might happen to me; there would always be solace in knowing that she was ok was the most beautiful feeling that I had ever known. Before that day, I had never understood what it meant to lose someone who you truly loved. Only now do I understand as I reflect back on that day in the airport when my mother said goodbye to her sister, knowing that my four year old cousin had just been diagnosed with leukemia and not knowing if my aunt was going to be ok, as I replay the scene in my mind, I understand and I feel her pain.

Throughout my life I’ve continuously been told how similar my mother and I are, that we have the same blue eyes, the same Roman nose, the same wavy, light brown hair and the same delicate empathy for others. I’m eighteen years old now and soon I will no longer have to follow my family if they are ever to move again. I’ve decided that when I graduate from high school, I’m taking control of my own life and attaining the one thing that’s always managed to elude me, stability. It’s the reason why I want to go to college in America, it’s the reason why I want stay in New York, and it’s the reason why I intend on spending the rest of my life in this country.

As I look back upon the stratified layers of my past and see myself as an infant in a hospital crib in Tel Aviv, a curly haired kindergartener in Stockholm, an aspiring young cricket player in Pretoria, a snowboarder on the Swiss Alps in Geneva, a musician in Auckland, and the person who I am today as an accumulation of all the places that I’ve been and the people who have touched and influenced me throughout my life, I don’t regret a thing. I love my family with all my heart and I’m thankful for all the friends that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve been through, but for the first time in my life I’d finally like to settle down and have the piece of mind in knowing that this is my new home and that I’m not going to be leaving it anytime soon.