Literature: Yesterday's Tomorrow

Yesterday’s tomorrow has faded into today
Sitting here alone gazing at the setting sun
There’s really not that much to see
Just a rosy sky fainting…
Fainting bit by bit into darkness…

A fading sun like our fading minds
Where has yesterday’s dreams flown to?

We were promised tomorrow’s glow
Where has tomorrow’s glow flown to?
When did the spirit of tomorrow
Decay into the monotony of today?

Yesterday’s tomorrow has faded into today
Sitting here alone gazing at the setting sun
There’s really not that much to see
Just a rosy sky fainting…
Fainting bit by bit into darkness…

Yesterday’s dream was a brilliant sun
A shining vision, a world changed anew
Only now we can truly see
The same world has changed us

Our dreams were but idle illusions
Reality smeared our childhood fancies
We tried so hard for a better tomorrow
Only now realizing

Yesterday’s tomorrow has faded into today
Sitting here alone gazing at the setting sun
There’s really not that much to see
Just a rosy sky fainting…
Fainting bit by bit into darkness…

A fading sun like my fading mind
Where has yesterday’s dreams flown to?

Literature: Flight of the Dandelion

 
This is an allegory of the battle between the immortal dream and the temporal world. Every dream has an associated cost. Saints hardly ever marry; to reach aspirations, they have to sacrifice worldly concerns like individual love for a greater love. For better or worse, I'm no saint but being an idealistic dreamer at times, I'm hoping to capture some of their spirit in this simple story:

My scholar's robes swished back and forth across the stone floor giving off a silent display of impatience mirroring my mood. The pendulum chime at the corner of the workshop showed that there's still ten minutes to the hour but that seemed like an eternity to me.

Today was to be the start of a glorious period of my life; it is also the end of a long painstaking period of my life. In the season of life, I will have passed into the glorious state of summer where the blue sky and white clouds will give me boundless freedom. This is not allegorical for today I will have finished the Dandelion.

Five years of ingenuity and hard work and we have finally done it. Our shared dream of flight will finally take flight, if you'll excuse the pun, once the last component arrives and the ornithopter completed.

DONG! DONG! The ding-dong of the pendulum was punctuated by the opening of the door. In came the most intelligent if not also most beautiful lady in the known world. Her blue and purple robes gave an air of impatience as she approached.

Ciela reached into her robe and held out a sparkling gem. It shone with an unnatural brilliance that even the glass mirror in the sunlit room failed to match. I realized that I knew what it was and exclaimed, "A soul catcher!"

"Indeed," Ciela corrected. "With a worthy soul soon-to-be in place I can finally fly."

"Don't you mean we?" I laughed and said. "No need to be egoistical at this stage."

"There was no mistake," Ciela said with eerie calm as she slowly approached me.

When I saw the knife it was already too late. There was a silent slash and then I saw my reflection in the mirror falling. That was me with my throat cut, my mind thought with alarming disbelief. I struggled to ask why but what actually came out was a bubble of blood and spit.

"I have always loved flight more than I loved you," Ciela replied guessing my inquiry. "And you are a worthy soul for this dream to bear fruit for out of all in the kingdom, I have seen that only the soul of you or I are fit to power this flight."

I tried to say that I would never do the same to her but once again nothing came out. She guessed my thoughts and continued, "If you say you'll never do the same to me, that's only because you're foolish enough to willingly throw away an immortal dream for temporal love. Know that whatever love I felt for you never for a fraction of a second could compare with the love I felt for what's up there."

My life was slipping away and there was nothing I could do. My last thought which never found voice was "I love you and always will". She must have sensed that for when she turned away there was a hint of sadness and the trace of a tear.

Literature: Red Light

Don't ever let people decide how you should travel in this road of life. Wrote this poem as a simple message of that:

Red light of the sun

Fading into the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

I breathe in sorrow

The slave of your world

Every little action

Only falls onto me

To follow your words

Is to just wait there

At the crossroads of life

Stopping at your red light

But do you know?

On this journey

Only change can happen

When I change myself

Red light of the sun

Giving away to the night

I'll shut the shutters

I'll sit and just breathe

Breathe of peace

The ruler of my world

Courage of conviction

In everything I do

So I say I believe in you

Do you believe in me?

Literature: On a Blue Day

Note: Just another exercise in dramatic writing. Just to let you know that I'm honest and will never go anywhere I shouldn't be, I never did any of this. All imagined in my mind and expelled henceforth from it!

I'm not in the library for its books or its "esteemed" educational value. I'm here for it offers me an expansive solitude that I can find little of elsewhere. This was the feeling I had even before I found a key to the roof top. I was in the elevator going up.

Second floor. The only person beside me in the elevator was a short girl with a large backpack. We were in a pseudo-comfortable silence. The backpack was pink. I glanced at her shoes. They were also pink. I turned away and silently counted in my head waiting for this pink monstrosity to leave.

Fourth floor. The door opened and the eyesore thankfully departed. I quickly punched the button to close the door before anyone could get in. Not that I could see anyone waiting in front of the elevator but you could never be too careful ensuring zero disturbance.

My current mood was an unstable system and the slightest perturbation may cause it to fall into the more stable mood best described as handling reality. Rare moods have to be preserved in a state of unstable equilibrium for as long as possible. It's like taking psychedelics once in a while to connect with the universe but doing that too much will seriously impair with handling reality. But regardless these rare moods must be preserved for how else could you experience the spectrum of your mind?

Sixth floor. Philosophical musings shoved aside, my mind returned to the practicality at hand. Leaving the elevator, I surveyed the area next to the stairs. No one in sight. Climb? Yes! My internal voice had to shout.

I went up and saw a door with a keyhole. Glanced back again and saw no one. I turned the key and walked out into the sun. The roof top was empty as expected.

I chose a boring day to be up here. No clouds. Just an aimless infinite blue. No wind. Just flocks of crows or ravens flying aimlessly. A slight breeze? Probably the downwash from their wings or more likely my imagination.

I sighed and walked towards the edge. Funny how there's no guard rails. If someone falls off though, they'll be all over it with regulations and whatnot. That's the funny thing about this country. One person's carelessness instantly means everyone else has suddenly irrevocably turned stupid.

I walked along the edge. If I fall off, there may be some interesting consequences. Quick images flashed through my mind like a film fast forwarded X16. I lose my footing on my next step and I topple over the side with a yelp. Good that I already have numbers prepared in my head in case something like this happens. Every floor is ~3 meters tall. There's approximately 7 floors making it 21 meters tall. Terminal velocity for a skydiver of around my weight is about 50 m/s. Obviously, I won't reach terminal velocity but how many seconds will I have? Every second my body is gaining velocity of ~10 m/s. This means I have about two seconds to think of anything in my last moments. This approximation isn't good enough, some part of me wanted to say.

I told it to shut up. Am I really going to squander my last moments trying to resolve the time of flight before I can no longer model myself as a rigid body or point mass? That's somehow comically absurd.

Third floor. Time does slow down in your last moments. Somehow I was able to think all that and I'm still just half-way there. The windows are rushing by at an accelerated pace. No one has noticed me yet. I hear the wind howling by. Maybe I'll suddenly sprout wings and fly. Will they be a mechanical contraption or magical? I spared a moment to ponder on which one I preferred. I decided that I'll go with both for redundancy. Saving myself should be a system with no single point of failure.

First floor. Sadly, daydreaming really doesn't help with developing powers in reality. The grey ground flew towards me mercilessly. I saw two people glowing white standing close to where I was soon to land with a crunching splat. They were smiling. Are they angels?

Odd, I almost did think I saw two glowing entities down there. I blinked. There were just two students there talking. I stopped my daydreaming on the edge of the roof. I stepped back and turned around. Either I have briefly entered the twilight zone or I really needed some sleep. Either way my mood was gone and this short venture was done. I went back inside and closed the door quietly behind me.