the unknown/the downpour

life seems decidedly strange when you're looking into the downpour. when it rains so hard that all you've known and experienced and all that you have yet to know and experience blurs, and washes into a single moment. when it rains so hard the landscape is streaked with doubt and worry. when it rains so hard, it hurts your eyes. you know which way you were coming from and which way you should go, but the rain makes you hesitate. it makes things so unfamiliar, and the world is suddenly a drenched canvas, with all the colours running. what are these unknown shapes, and hues, and phantoms. where are those things that you were sure about: that sheltered forest or that secret road or that past experience...

the thing is...they're still there. with or without the downpour, everything is right where it was; either how you remembered, or hidden in a million slivers of water. the feeling, and the forest are still there, and getting wet may be necessary to see them how you remembered. working through the doubt may be necessary to experience assurance, or to realize assurance once had.

so when you think you can see the trees, the past, or the future through the unknown, through the rain, and through the downpour, it might just be worth exploring...

the journal/the opener

this is not the definitive journal, nor is this the extent of the media. this is you, the reader, engaging with a kind of mask that you see only through one of your own. this will not so much help you understand me directly, as it will help you understand the mask from which i write directly behind. all writers and actors and painters and journalers conceed to hide behind their work...maybe not so much conceeding to as being forced into disguise by the medium they choose. how can a verse convey the extent of the depth of a colour, and how can that colour show even a part of our soul? how can the pen, the easel, or the stage, contain the mind, no matter how desperately the mind tries to be understood. every word, every colour, every thought is only a guide to the mask, behind which i am forced to hide, despite how desperately i try to place myself onto these pages. art is only a guide to a mask, which is only a guide to the mind, which is only a guide to the soul. art can be everything.

sometimes, however, art gives you a glance, maybe only a glance, directly at the soul. it is times like this that the writer, the actor, the painter, and the journaler succeed. maybe the work exposes their hands, their face, or their eyes, but for whatever reason, the mask slips exposing, for only a second, someone desperately trying to be understood.

i hope i can give you a glance...