Neon Writings

Captain's Log

2013-08-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

After staring at the screen for more than five hours and falling in a permanent typing - deleting ad nauseam whilst trying to find something pleasant and semi optimistic to talk about, I have decided to let the whole thing go.

I wish I were five again
And have all the time in the world
To sit on my front porch
And watch the sun go down
Covered by the shade of the cypress trees.

There is no time all year round
Sadder than a summertime afternoon.

There was a time i could speak of nymphs and satyrs
There was a time I believed in myths, heroes and martyrs
And as a kid I used to cry
Both when sad and happy.

How things have changed
We all think, feel and breathe alike
Senseless machines in a motionless struggle
For the neverending repetition
Of anything pointless, tepid and downright ugly.

I seem to have forgotten the day
when I last cried
And this scares me the most
since there is nothing left for me to write.

Is this the time
when we bid farewell?
Or do we save our goodbyes
till we meet again
To fool ourselves
about feelings, joy, beauty and life?

Random thoughts

2013-01-14T22:14:00.000-08:00

Most people are like well polished gemstones. As is the case with any gemstone, they need the right beam of light to shine. We all keep our little secrets, those which make us special in our own way. It's up to us to make ourselves shine for all the right reasons.

Sometimes the desire for greatness is there, but our spirit will fail us time and again ...

For a man known as N. Cane.

2012-12-31T16:17:00.003-08:00

A man's life can be described in exactly 8 minutes and 13 seconds. That is how long it took me to compile tonight's entry and it was all done while listening to one of my favourite songs, written by a band called Jupiter Ace.

Adversity, to my despair, has been one my life's main characteristics. Rejection was abundant and violence came in a plethora. On my 33rd birthday however, I have come to realise that all this adversity has turned me into an elitist and plunged deep inside me the firm belief that I and I alone (per Friedrich Nietzsche's sayings) had to fight with monsters.

Therefore tonight's log is not about me but goes to the man by the name of N. Cane; a man rejected time and again but who learned to love those who rejected him by appreciating life. Citizen Cane taught me how to try instead of fighting, how to strive instead of succumbing to grief, how to love instead of hate.

What a strange thing, life is citizen Cane. In all your humility you seem more glorious and courageous to me than ever, since you've ameliorated a despondent man and turned him into a man who hopes for a different dream.

Keep loving your children the way you do. And all this was written in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. A bit longer than it usually takes you to drop me an email and buy my wood ...

New Year's Eve was meant to glorify the unsung hero. It was meant ... for you ...

For my dear friend Shawn and his family ...

Quo Vadis Domine ...

2012-11-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

I watched your steps disappear on the sand
by the endless movement of a lingering wave,

Quo vadis Domine,
I cried
and my voice echoed through the mountains,
but to no avail.

Because you could not hear
or I could not see your tears.

Quo vadis Domine,
Deserted by your children
on a vast wasteland of no tomorrow.
You taught us to love
and we chose to ignore.
You taught us to forgive
but we chose to forget.

Quo vadis Domine,
Our peril is near
Your children decided that deities are obsolete this year.
We live our lives through digital lies
mischievous environments and treacherous careers.

I still ask you,
Quo vadis Domine,

I am here,
Extending my arm,
awaiting for your grasp.
Yet shy away from your sight,
in fear of seeing your tears.

I once thought,
It's hard not to hate,
In our state of self inflicted solitude.

How wrong was I,
since solitude is never self inflicted ...

Captain's log

2012-11-04T11:32:00.001-08:00

Oh the dreaded moment of creation. How have I come to despise you. However, my life seems to come to a standstill, each time I fail to satisfy my personal urges for you ...

I have reached my thirty third year on this planet and it already feels like a lifetime. Whatever I may have tried seems to have failed miserably. Mankind is beyond me ...

We have our moments, us human beings, those deceptive flashes of brilliance. But these moments are what usually end up plunging me deeper into my personal melancholy.

At times it seems to me that we currently relive the dark ages. These are the ages of individualism and no matter how many superheroes I create, no matter how much I dig into my imagination, so as to build scenaria where people end up truly loving each other, in the end, it all proves to be futile.

They all have their own petty hidden agendas. The all weave their web of deception and if you cannot go with the flow, you end up looking from the outside. All alone ...

This is how I say I'm sorry. For who I am and what I believe for.

2012-09-09T22:53:00.002-07:00

Personal set. Hope you enjoy ...

Nemesis. This is how I say I'm sorry

What we neglect ...

2012-07-24T16:01:00.001-07:00

... is what usually we end up missing the most.

Once again, thank you for reading ....

Black cat, white cat ...

2012-05-06T13:13:00.002-07:00

Black cats are known for bringing the greatest of misfortunes.

After all, it is only customary that we blame what we fail to explain on the less fortunate.

As much as our standard of living might have changed, our ways of living remain the same. Same customary actions, in a society of wolves and sheep, all living in the same pack.

Fear not, for I do not wish to inspire anyone.
I merely seek to share,
What others wouldn't dare ....

For Emir Kusturica. The alternative perspective of the human culture and a constant source of inspiration.

Exploring people

2012-04-24T13:36:00.001-07:00

We live to pretend. And then we believe what we pretend to be living ...

Captain's log

2012-04-21T10:59:00.002-07:00

The past few days have served as a perfect reminder as to why art is rapidly becoming an endangered species and I'm using this figure of speech here knowing that it will not bode well with quite a few.

The above may have sounded artsy, however I cannot place enough emphasis on the fact that artistic expression is in peril, vastly because people nowadays are disinterested and unmoved from the alternative and are easily bored from the flashes of creativity. Creativity perplexes life because it requires of you to think, in order to comprehend its innovation and worst of all it requires of you to feel.

People tend to repel emotions, unless we are talking about their daily hit of joy, wrath, anger and bitterness of course. But art is, more often than not, above all that. Art is about complexity and for those who doubt, reflect for a moment on "the Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by William Blake.

Lastly, art, serves nowadays as the last bastion for those who wish to remain different; for those who wish to strive to seek fractals of perfection; for those who will not bow down to mediocrity.

Society will not accept its outliers. Alea jacta est. Art will die and all us demented thinkers will go down with her ...

Fortis cadere

2012-04-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

Dreaming, as frightful as it can get sometimes, it should still be thought of as a blessing. It is our daily chance for a trip to oblivion, the magic touch which instantaneously takes us to a better place, a place where shades of gray have never looked so pleasant and colourful before.

Remove a man's dreams and you take away his hope. And then his life is filled with fear.

And since misery loves company, the men and women at the sweatshops worked night and day, powerless to rid themselves of the demon who took away their dreams.

A pale old man, would stroll around the southern projects, never leaving the sweatshops and the workers there from his eyes. Oh his eyes. When you looked straight to them ... you could see the abyss and you could feel yourself sliding into an never ending fall.

The art of detachment

2012-04-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the blog for quite sometime, seeking alternative ways to communicate with people. I can assure you that the conventional ways of conversing and interacting have failed both me and the postmodern society miserably.

Communication is our failsafe way to survive through society, our means to learn, cope and dream for a better tomorrow. But what happens when your safety net, fails you time and again?

Through the roads of Babylon I wandered
And I pondered to myself
What was it that kept people from seeing
The pale light of day
Warning them for the darkest night of the year.

In the roads of Babylon I wandered,
but to no avail.
The dimming light passed away
people went blind
and couldn't hear
the warning echo crying change

J'ai Fait Une Promesse

2012-03-23T20:11:00.002-07:00

We live and die in an approximately same manner ... that is alone.

And then we realise it's all a lie.

Social norms, the search for our other half, all a bogus plan to make us go through a lifetime of deception.

The art of magic is to turn the audience's attention to where they think they want to look at ...

As I listen to the last song, I ponder ...

2012-03-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

We spend a life trying to be unattached. Unmoved and unfazed by what is happening around us. We call this freedom, or so we are told ...

The defining moments are scarce but they are there. Yet we choose to ignore them, since the safety of mediocrity is reassuring.

Can one live in society and at the same time manage to live outside its boundaries, its social codes of conduct and the everlasting feeling of decay as days wither by?

If only we could remember, the day we chose to forget, what it was like when we could still dream of a better tomorrow. If only we could still remember, the last day we wished to be different.

And in case you are wondering, this was meant for everyone who wishes to listen ...

Ego sum qui sum

2012-03-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

What was it that held those people back from looking for a better life? Was it that they hoped for a better tomorrow? For a day when the sun would shine brighter for them? Or was it that they had no hope left anymore?

Drake started to observe the sweatshops more carefully. He would visit them every night and observe from afar. People were working silently there, non-stop. He asked to be assigned to the southern projects for his daily cop patrols and since there was no high demand in the task force for those areas, the patrol shifts for the projects were all his.

It didn't take Drake long to notice that some of the people working at the sweatshops were doing 10 and 12 hour shifts day in and day out. What was it that forced those people to work that hard. The sweatshop owners were supposedly running a legit business and Drake's reports about the workers' exploitation were completely ignored by his superiors until at some point, they decided to rid themselves from his nuisance and got him transferred to the traffic department.

Well, Drake was as stubborn as a mule. And being a traffic warden during the day, was not going to stop him from being a superhero at night ...

Iniurias oblivisci

2012-03-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Drake was back to his old self. He was back to saving people in despair and having his underground fights again.

He was leading a normal life by his standards but at times he felt unrest. He could not decipher his recent dreams and they kept coming back time and again.

All he could figure out from the dreams were some dark alleys which seemed to fit in the southern parts of town.

He started scouring the alleys in the southern projects. They were some of the nastiest parts of town. They were packed with immigrants and criminality there was on a rampage. The police was not even bothering to patrol those areas.

The sweatshops in the southern projects were working day and night. The workers there were treated like slaves and were working practically for nothing. Just for the right of living, eating and sleeping in the city of lost promises; in the city of New Atlantica ...

And so they wept, as night went by, for all their dreams were lost. And life is not worth living anymore, when you lose your will to dream ...

Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit

2012-03-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Drake wanted to meet up last night but he wouldn't say why.

"I just want to talk for a while, you know ..." he said when I asked him what it was all about. He talked of his childhood.

"Even cloudy skies have their days of sunshine. My days of sunshine were those I spent with my uncle, from my mother's side. He was adopted by my mother's family before she was born but they were as close as any two siblings can be. He would come and take me to the seaside and he would sit by me for hours, just gazing at the waves. He taught me that sometimes it's better if you listen because a person who knows how to really listen, bears no arrogance. He taught me how to love myself and accept myself for what I was. Those were the days I hated myself and my father would see to it that I hated my existence more by the day.
Small details can change a whole life. My uncle always strived to make me love my father. In the end he got me to accept the fact that my father and I could not lead separate lives. Maybe, that's the reason why I'm still looking after my old man.

Eventually my father learned to accept me as well. But that is a story to be told in another day. And it's not as peachy as the one you've just been told ..."

Occasio aegre offertur

2012-03-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Drake was working on the docks that day. He was monitoring the ships, and the fresh bunch of immigrants arriving at New Atlantica.

They came from all over the world. Immigrants from Africa, Asia and Europe, all looking for a better life. An opportunity, their personal breakthrough to a life they were dealt the wrong hand.

A new group of Serbian immigrants were arriving at the port that day. The had been arriving in small but steady groups for the past few weeks, after God knows what trouble had been brewing in their country.

They were all arriving in families and were placed in pick up trucks as soon as they set foot on land and had their papers cleared. A guy from the Union, a Serb himself, was getting all the details sorted, so that the process would move along real fast. Who knows what sweatshop in town needed those poor souls' hands for work.

A fight broke in the docks. Some of the families were squaring off and all of a sudden a girl was pushed in the water. Drake heard the splash and raced towards her but she was sinking fast. When he got her out, she was already dead.

I could have saved her, he kept saying to himself. If only I had reacted faster, if only I could have seen that coming. He couldn't sleep that night. After all, the only way he could get to sleep after he stopped seeing his dreams was by drowning himself with booze but he didn't want to drink that night. The alcohol was making him groggy and slower at reacting than usual. He kept saying that he could have saved that girl. But he didn't ...

When he finally managed to sleep that night, the nightmares, his twisted allies from the past, were back. And the city of New Atlantica got its guardian angel back.

At spes non fracta

2012-03-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

The sun sets and rises when we least expect it,
as if time was never meant to touch a star as bright as this.

When we least expect it, beauty passes by,
it touches us and glorifies a moment which we might consider lost.

If you ever were to touch me ... time would stop
All would wither, as would I ...

But I would finally see beauty passing by ...

Before I died ...

Ama Nesciri ... Ars Amandi

Llorando

2012-03-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

Drake did as he was told. He dropped the first two rounds, then came back to win the third round on the third minute of the fight. He dropped his opponent with an overhand right, as the crowd was booing his performance. Nobody saw that coming, appart from Mr Caceres and his daughter who managed quite a profit that night.

He was crying when he went back home. He was crying like a little child and he couldn't stop. He just wouldn't stop.

That night he went back to his old habbits. He drunk and drunk until he fell asleep. But his nightly visitors who he came to feel accustomed with did not visit him that night; neither the next one; nor the night after.

His dreams had deserted him. There were times when he wished they would seize to torment him. But in the few months that had passed prior to the last fight, he got used to his nightmares. Deep down inside, he wanted to dream, he wanted to find out more and more people who needed his help.

He felt like a man who had it all and now he had lost it.

And that's how Marcus Drake and his archenemy met.

The city of New Atlantica was about to live a rivalry like none other it had lived before ...

But for the time being, my superhero was weeping bitterly as night fell, because the visitors that were haunting his dreams, would appear no more ...

Nemo sine vitio est

2012-03-11T16:01:00.001-07:00

As time passed by, Drake started getting at ease with his life. He started accepting things and he felt better with himself and with what he was doing. At times, he was even content with the police tasks he was assigned at.

But things were soon to change. The war amongst the crime families in New Atlantica was about to seize and that wasn't a good thing for all things good and just. As the dust settled the new force of sovereignty on town was Anthony Cacaveras. And now that his ruling over the city was unquestionable the city's new crime boss would never accept hearing no for an answer.

Mr Cacaveras caught wind of Drake's success in the fighting circuit. So, naturally, he asked for a meeting. Whenever he asked for a meeting, it was almost certain that the outcome of that meeting was going to be mighty dubious ... at best.

"How certain are you of yourself?" he asked Drake the minute he saw him. Drake paused and pondered what that question was all about but the crime boss carried on and explained himself. He needed Drake to fix a fight. He needed him to take a beating for 2 rounds and then drop his opponent on the 3rd minute of the third round. Sounded like a painful plan, yet simple.

Drake told him right in his face that he was not interested. As the situation started to get tense, that was when fate kicked in. He fell in love with her, the minute he set eyes on her. She was exotic in beauty and her voice was captivating. She smiled at him and asked him with her sweet voice: "You wouldn't want to disappoint my father now would you Mr Drake. Your fame precedes you, but so does my father's and I believe that men of your stature shouldn't be enemies but friends. Let me escort you downstairs so as to speak matters in private and I will then let my father know of your decision."

Which man could say no to such a woman. And Drake naturally agreed. He would set the fight as Anthony Cacavera's, Tamara's father, asked him to. He was now in the kingpin's pocket, but he wouldn't mind. As long as he could make her smile and see those brown eyes with the long eye lashes gaze upon. Her looks her deadly. And now he was at her hands.

Cum grano salis

2012-03-10T10:06:00.001-08:00

As time passed, Drake learned to get accustomed to his dreams. The dreams always followed the same pattern. They would show the person or people in distress and the person who was hurting them.

All Drake had to do was find the criminal and rain punishment on him. He found a mask to cover his face and he would wear it whenever he would endeavour himself in one of his superhero escapades and this would make him look mythical to the people he saved. Slowly but steadily, he started building up a reputation for himself. Some would call him "The masked Avenger", others "The Unbreakable Punisher", whereas the press would portray him as "The Vigilante in the Black Mask".

Drake did not particularly enjoy the attention he was drawing but he was not detesting it either. He didn't mind really, what the people were saying about him. He was all so satisfied, just as long as he would get a good night's sleep and usually that meant him freeing up a person in need, saving someone's life or crashing a villain's head up against the wall. With him serving justice, the nightmares would stop for a day or two and as soon as they re-appeared, he knew what he had to do.

It was a messy and bloody work but he was Nemesis's sole adversary, so I guess the Goddess of Justice would take this with no complaints.

But at some point, Drake realised that the attention he was drawing, was bound to cause him troubles. And he was soon proven right ...

Deo volente

2012-03-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

Drake stormed into the cabin like a raging bull. He saw the guy and picked up from where he stopped by literally picking him apart.

The three boys kept in there were meant to be sold in the black market and shipped abroad. The organ market was at a peak at this time of the year and the three boys were going to produce a handsome profit for the man in the cabin and whomever else he was collaborating with.

"He saw your face" I told Drake cynically the minute he stepped out of the cabin.

"Take the kids out of here. Get them straight to a police station. We will meet again tomorrow. I have some unfinished business to take care of."

We met up the following day but we did not exchange a single word about yesterday's event. Actually, Drake never really discussed what he did in the woods after I took off with the kids. The only certainty was that the man in the cabin, was not seen in New Atlantica ever again.

Nil sine numine

2012-03-07T14:15:00.000-08:00

That night, Drake's opponent was the man from his dreams. Drake would see that man in his dreams, locking up three boys in a small hut deep in the woods.

Drake had a really bad feeling about him and beat him up viciously during their fight. But that wasn't enough.

We followed the man after all the fights were over. He stayed up until the end, wanting to collect his purse and speak to the promoters about booking a future fight most likely.

After we all left the slaughterhouse the mysterious man stopped for a quick meal at a diner and then headed to a small apartment downtown. It was in the projects, in one of the nastiest neighbourhoods of the town and I was getting more worried by the minute whilst waiting for him in the car.

Drake insisted that we waited. And he was proven right eventually. The mysterious man, after several strenuous hours of driving and then walking into the muddy woods, we were led to a small wooden shack, much like the one in Drake's dreams ....

Cedo Nulli

2012-03-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

Prior to that night's fight, Marcus Drake was quite on the edge. Be it the sleepless nights, the haunting nightmares, or knowing that this was going to be another night of pain and anguish for him, he could not find a minute's rest.

The crowd was raucous that night. The atmosphere in the southern slaughterhouses, were the fights were held, was heavy and the fighters felt that blood was to be shed if they were to quench the crowd's thirst.

Drake was going to face a guy from the projects. He was bulky and twice Drake's size but the superhero had built up quite a reputation for himself. So his opponents grew bigger and scarier the more he would win.

Drake finished the fight in the first round. He was fighting like a wild animal and at some point he was pummelling the guy's head to the ground. The referee stopped the fight and had to pull him off the sorry bastard since he was beating the living daylights out of him.

"What got into you?" I asked him when he got out of the ring?

He just said, "It's him ...." and walked away.