Walking By

I have not written for a while, not because I have nothing to say, but because life has so much to give right now. I'd rather live to the full what comes my way, then reminisce back at what just happened and write down what, in those fleeting moments of awe and self-fulfilment, built me into a new self.

Tired

I am tired of acting as if I do not care of what other say of me. There comes a point in life when all the hills that you have climbed come crumbling down on you as you dare stray too far off the beaten track.  Be a man they said. But what is a man? Man is respect. Man is trust. Man is affection. I am tired of doubting. Doubting of others and being in doubt of myself. The truth is, I am tired of all of this work, of all of this insentient persistence to want, to fight for something more, for something lacking. For how long can we dream before dreams condense and drift away and we wake up?

A critical moment of awareness is all it takes for the vivid dreamer to shake his disillusioned mindset far away into the vastness of the past. I am tired of living in the future in my present form. Moments fleet as they transcend my conscious self and into my mind, which sleeps in daylight.

I am tired of all this. I am tired of thinking, of trying. Have a break Ryan. Yes, I said to myself, have a break.

My Scribbles

Sometimes I go back
To what I've said
And to what I've wrote
I read and ponder

And in them I find about
How I looked at things
I now despise
Or at things that I now love

For there's change in life,
In me and in you
And what has been
May not yet hold

But in two lines
Of what I wrote
Or in two words
Lies a sea of vivid memories

For every moment captured
And every word I uttered
Lie dormant here now,
In all these things I've scribbled.

There's sadness here,
And words of solitude
Of darkness there's written, with
A tattered sense of perception

Yet there is also hope
And compassion and wonder
Of colours and light is written
A character in awe is living

For then I wrote and now I write
To have some self-indulgence
And to myself and memories
I owe, respect and growing gratitude.

El'Duran: A Dream and a Memory

"I am a paladin of Tyr. A follower of the light, of what is good and just. I serve my people and my church; The Hand of Tyr. My brothers and I have taken an ought to defend the poor and fight for what is good in this world. We fight to cleanse the lands from the un-living and preach to abolish all evil. This is what I, El' Duran, live for. By the glory of Tyr and the power that he bestowed upon my brothers, I shall help you in your quest. In their name I shall serve and lead you, so that we will walk in the light as the world around us crumbles into shadow and chaos."

By El' Duran - Letter of acceptance to his excellency Joaquim The Golden Hand of Tyr, for taking on the task of travelling the world with a group of mercenaries, in the aim of assessing the chaotic status of the world, while spreading the light upon blighted lands.


A Dream and a Memory

I saw her face. Silver gleaming eyes and a stern look. She placed one foot forward as her battered sword came crushing down on the inanimate bones that walked relentlessly towards her. I was there, behind her, my back supporting hers. The sullen look I had contrasted with the fierce stupor she held. Her sword swung forth again. With each blow dealt I could see her fade deeper into this hatred that now clearly surrounded her.

"Do not fear death El'Duran! Conquer it!", she yelled at me. I could see a blazing fortitude in her eyes that was now changing into rage and fury. Blood-soaked locks of hair that once glistened bronze in the light of the sun now lay on her shoulders as she turned to face another undead. They came by the hundred, bold and unforgiving. This seemed to be a tragic setting of which I could not recall the memory. Did this actually really happen?

"El'Duran, my beloved!", she warned, "Look out!". A claw slashed at my metal shoulder-guard, and slipped downwards with force. The monstrosity before me moved clumsily but with a force unreckoned. It fell to the ground as its heavy hand carried its own weight to the earth. Roscelyn span around my body and lay bare the rotten guts of this walking corpse with one blow of her trembling hand. She was getting tired, and so was I, and we both knew it.

"The Hand of Tyr has abandoned us El. They are cowards.", she said with resentment.
"Do not lose hope. We must fight for the good of this land. For our people!"
This was what I truly believed and held dear for these past years. This is what I was here for, to purge the not-living and I was doing so with the only person I really trusted. A person I loved.
And yet, my last efforts to instil hope in her proved futile.

"You are a fool El!", she cried in anger. Her swings never seized as she tried to make sense of all of this.
"We were sent here to die. They will never come. The Hand of Tyr has made us her sheep!"
I feared of what was to come, of what was to become of my beloved Roscelyn.

"Fight for good Ros!", I cried. A dozen other corpses swayed in the west, as they marched against the wind towards us.

"Fight for our lives, my beloved!", she replied.
A rotten hand came crushing sideways into my gut. The world turned black and I fell to the ground. Through the darkness I could hear the yells of rage and desperation as Roscelyn witnessed my fall and fought around me with renewed strength. However, I could also hear the footsteps of the dead. Alas, a creeping march, a dragging of feet and bone close by and far way, as far as I could sense. This was surely to be the end of us.

Then, some trickles of light managed to enter my eyes, and I looked to the horizon. Just then, as the undead took over Roscelyn and trampled her down, from between the rotten bones, I saw seven horsemen bathed in light, marching towards us.

This was it. The Hand of Tyr had finally come.

An Unfinished Life

I'm not afraid to die, to watch the candle lights fade away, to see my life being sapped, my fragile bones shaking with ache. I'm not afraid to go to heaven or to hell, or to dim to darkness and never return. But I fear a nightmare, that with my death, I have left none of an effect upon this Earth, that my life was a futile existence. I'm afraid that I will be forgotten, that the daughters of my third generation will have not but a single clue of who I was. That their sons will walk upon lands where my ashes lay, and know none of their brethren's unfinished life. 

I'm not afraid to die, yet I am afraid for other people dying without understanding the beauty of life. They die expecting heaven or hell, or a place in the void never to return, yet they do not realize what they are - a miracle of existence. I'd rather live in awe at the things around me than in turmoil of thoughts in trying to achieve a place in the heavens, for the joy of inner peace - enlightenment - of realizing what is and what is not lingers in eternity, beyond death.

In Another Universe

In another plane of existence, in a universe unknown to mankind there is a God who is one and the same with the universe in which it resides. The intelligent races of the seven realms of this universe know thy God as the One and often call him by names such as; the Shaper, All Knowing or most often as the Great Being. 

The Great Being is in every rock and every wave of every planet in this universe and speaks to civilizations in various ways, yet the people of the realms always know for certain that thy god has spoken with them, for they are bestowed by an inner sense that enables them to understand and be able to communicate with the All Knowing when required. 

The god of this universe is omnipotent and all knowing. It has no boundaries in time and does not live within it. For the All Knowing, the past, the present and the future are a manifestation of self-conciousness within intelligent beings, yet for thy god, time is not existent. Thy god, however, has no power to control what the beings of our land call fate, nor does this god has the power to determine a person's path in life. 

Even though the god of this plane of existence is limited in the power it possesses as described by the people of our lands, it is nonetheless revered as the absolute perfection of this other universe. It is the reason why civilizations in this realm are ordered and peaceful. It is the start and end of every creature's life, whether intelligent or not. All the crawling worms and the flying beasts of every planet in this other universe bathe in the knowledge of their god. They know it exists, and they live and are sustained by this realization. 

The Great Being is eternal and immutable. Thy god has no emotions nor any imperfections associated or characterized by mankind. The Great Being is merely observant in its behaviour, yet always present and influential in the lives of the people of this plane of existence. 

What goes against the order of this universe would be what the people of our lands call sin. Such acts as killing for purposes other than feeding,and stealing create chaos within the universe and are thus not adhered to by the races of the realms because all the intelligent life forms evolved within the universe in the knowledge of their God, which is ordered and not chaotic. As such, no civilization lies or exploits one another. There are no wars and no intelligent being within this universe can feel isolated and alone, because every creature is connected with one another through the knowledge of their god. 

Civilizations have prospered and grew and let other life forms prosper and evolve into other intelligent beings for millennia within this universe. Most civilizations have ventured into space and conquered celestial bodies other than their mother planet. A good number of them have come in contact with one another, and they live peacefully in each others presence for they bathe in the knowledge of the existence of the All Being. Their knowledge of the natural world is far superior than that of the humankind, yet they still learn and search and discover more information through the aeons. They do not teach or require the need of Philosophy or religions within their society, and they never seek to understand what god really is because they evolved within the knowledge of their God and they are part of thy god as the cells of our bodies are part of us. 

Even though they are highly intelligent and technologically advanced, certain physical laws impeded them from overpopulating their universe. Their morale status and intelligence also enabled them to control their growth and to stop themselves from harming their environment. Their societies' order is reflected in their architecture and education systems. Each newborn is bestowed with the knowledge of the Great Being and manifests an urge to learn about his world, and so the infant being is left to ask and discover new things in his world at his own will. As such, no indoctrination of pre-set forms of knowledge are imprinted within the infant's mind and he grows with a constant fascination for learning. 

Most of these mentioned points and others have created within this universe what mankind would call a utopian paradise. It is said in some legends and tales of ancient scriptures of mankind that when a person dies in our universe he is reborn in the light or in paradise. Little does mankind know that the true facts about death within our universe are directly linked to this other realm of existence. For when a self-concious creature dies within our universe, the electrical signals that once fired and made that being self-concious transfer through upper dimensions into this other universe, and they find themselves within the realm of the All Being.

Without physical form, they dwelled in this realm for aeons. The so called 'souls' as described by the people of our lands rested in the plane of existence of the Great Being since they ever came into being, until now.

For somewhere tucked away, hidden in a corner of one of the seven realms of this other universe, a civilization has managed to identify the link between our universe and its own. They have managed to create a device which would capture floating shapeless bits of information, the so called 'souls' of our universe, and transfer them into physical shells.

Little did they know about the consequences of this discovery, and how their ordered universe would soon change and be shrouded by an impending chaos. 

Mountain Magic

There's something fascinating for me at the thought of living up high on a mountain, in a remote village where everyone knows each other and the only contact you have with the outside world is the occasional tourist that dares to venture so far up.

I experienced this feeling a few days ago when I visited Taormina with my family. Taormina is a tourist destination, a bustling village up high on a mountain range in North-Eastern Sicily. We took the easy way up, a cable car, which landed us two corners away from a busy road full of ice-cream shops, souvenir vendors and the like. Up here, the drop in ambient temperature is immediately noted as you get out of the cable car. Amongst all those tourists, however, the village looked nothing different from any other famous place around the world. Yet, there was still something magical floating around the place.

As we walked the busy streets, we passed by three different churches, all of which had marriages going on at the time. There were people dressed up in suits and gowns outside and a lot of tourists taking pictures of the bride and groom as they walked down the isle and then out of the door into the plaza. Marriages in Taormina seemed to be idyllic since as we walked back down the same roads later on in the day there were yet other marriages taking place still. Maybe they all felt that magic in the air.

Further up the road we came to a large open area with a balcony hanging from the hillside. From here I could see the beaches down billow and the red houses dotting the landscape, becoming denser as you moved towards the coast. From up here it seemed as if there lives were different from the lives of the people around this place. It was as if the people living down there were temporally stuck in an unreachable place.
There were so many questions rushing through my head as I looked down at the sea and the waves and surf left by the boats. How did they build up here? or who was the first person to decide to settle here? It was all very fascinating.

This feeling, somewhat magical, I am trying to describe has come to me each time I went up on mountain ranges. I felt it in Italy, in Spain and in Switzerland and now it happened to me again in Sicily. I am not very fond of heights, yet, when my feet are on the ground but I know I'm above the rest of the world I feel ecstatic. Call me a mountain dweller, or a crazy man with Heidi's syndrome, but I know I'll be visiting some other mountain very soon.