Vendôme

The Fishbowl Effect Shifting into a mature mindset is to hone in on forgiveness. Society tells me to forgive, and I will do away with all the wrongs it has since introduced to me. Every motive, every projected situation, every hostile encounter originates from society, not from the individual. We are but children of the culture, lacking in some forefront knowledge that restricts us from complete empathy. By some quick wistful thought we impose our values to our proximal neighbors, and by this transient nature births society.  How can the fish lament on the water that gives it life, however dirty and filthy the water is?  They say that when you forgive, a physical weight slips from your shoulders. So let this message find me, let this moment wrap around me: let the warm light in!

Giuseppe Galli Bibiena The blundering moral question. Examine the ignorant evil-doer and the apparent evil-doer. One disregards the severity of the evil act, crossing his moral boundaries, and commits evil. Next, the primitive man whose consciousness does not factor into his evil-doing, the act itself is at once cleansed of moral attachments. Now, our current justice system treats the two man with the same punishments. It evaluates with logical deduction, the crime comes before the motive behind the crime. However, there will always be a time when we commit a crime out of necessity. This sense of urgency, no matter at what time in our life, will be paramount. Crime is inevitable. It is at the mercy of one's socioeconomic standing that one can yield moral relief from the crime.

  I dreamed about a single Camphor tree by the cliffs. Towering mountains clashed together behind a gaping river thousands of meters below. The field grows knee-high rye, it was a field of gold that stretches beyond the horizon.  The rye clears in only one region: where the Camphor tree is. I could see a figure, recling by the tree. The figure remains idle, back against the auburn tree bark and his eyes shut. The ground tremored when he sluggishly welcomed light onto his outstretched arm, face, and into pupils.  From behind the tree he withdraws a transparent vase. In the act of upending it, the rays of midday sun shot into my eyes and I was temporarily blinded by the brilliance of the boy and his vase.  He sees me now, he takes me as an intruder. I wanted to say I mean no offense: I will bring him no harm. His delicate body sank, shaking his head as he went down.  The vase, containing all that is glorious, explodes and glass propelled forward across the rye fie...

//Happiness hangs tantalizingly close, if I reminisce far enough along.  Winter of 2012, I was in Toronto. I was deathly afraid of social interactions, frightened that my broken English would be mocked again. The indoor ambient felt restricting, I would find myself on the snowy fields often. Trampling over the white dandelions on the field became my recess activity. Seeds, white as snow, flew in the chilling November air. I read about the International Space Station that winter. Chris Hadfeld had sung with his acoustic guitar in zero gravity, his guitar pick floated across the screen. I followed his gaze past the pale blue dot, I need to pick myself up. As demoralizing as the Canadian winters are, I frequented the field with children's books. I needed to build up my vocabulary. $9.99 lobster tails from Loblaws, fiction novels from Chapter, new boots from Roots. Putting on four layers and then taking them off. Learning about baseball and building suspension bridges models. Buses tha...

A Coign of Vantage, by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema The bright souls in your encounters wait for you temporarily, for a transitive amount of time. In your frame of mind then, holding onto their influence will ever be enough. Wonderous flashes of your kaleidoscopic episodes they are. I hope they hang garlands around your neck, like sunsets dripping auburn; I hope their words bear some resemblance to sages' discourses. Once every lifetime, at their sentence's end, you will feel the earth shake. 

  Each dawn a savage republic grows here it upholds lopsided values smoke will fill up the dimmed, desolate chambers  until our dreams are fickle and speckled Perhaps a spring shower will remedy the youths  take them to the creeks of Idyllwild  cloaked beneath sundress' fluttering ruffles they  will finally heal all their ails  It wasn't a matter of realism or romanticism  the truth becomes distorted, artificial in both lights  thus singularity adopts plurality  and in its act, loses purity