cacophony

「 epilogue 」

it is fair now to call cacophony completed. 

is it 'complete'? probably not. there are never ends nor new beginnings; all events are simply a continuation of the past: a stream that cuts ever on through stone, flowing, extending itself. you could say it is what we all do, to walk on through time, to 'grow'. Our memories are our wealth.

so much has passed along this journey. it's been a year, somehow both the longest and the shortest in my life, since i began this book. again i guess that time isn't measured by the ticking on our wall but by what happens between those ticks; heartbeats, ups and downs: so much to grasp all at once. the world has shifted; i have shifted with or against it, discarding one god after another, always looking for something. chasing some place far away, exactly as the pianist said. i wrote, dried up for a while, then again picked up my pen and keyboard. four times, four voices each feeling different (is my poetry improving, or are my perspectives merely melting and floating around? i'm volatile) and yet, as i newly realized when reflecting on cacophony, all being attempts to capture the same idea i could never quite pin down. discarding one god after another, searching, searching, searching.

the stories, strange and bittersweet memories of both sleepless and restful nights. my work found resonance in a few people, somehow, and i caught myself in more than one case of infatuated friendship that came strangely close to love. here, in this place. how could i not? when someone understands me, at least a part of me; appreciates what i perhaps value most in myself, i fall ever down into that spiral until the sweet mist fades off again, and stories end by never reaching an end. i have never truly loved, of course, and i could only laugh. i remember a time when i was scrolling through youtube comments on a music video, reading "when you've found your soulmate but you're both immature teenagers..." but hey, immature teenagers see a soulmate in everybody. and soulmates are perhaps a little like happiness, as Lana told us:

happiness is a butterfly

try to catch it like every night

it escapes my hands into moonlight

and its wingstrokes sure do magnify themselves, putting ripples through my writing. (hah, the butterfly effect.) but anyway, Lana didn't actually invent this analogy. i searched it up almost two years ago because i loved it so much. it was Nat Hawthorne (a really old man with a romantic-sounding name; i'm bad at literary history), who said:

happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

so i hope. or rather: so, i hope. there, better.

still: there will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet... as the daily noise and troubles ebb and flow, i find myself with less and less time to ponder, as we all do; i'm growing up on yet another axis, as strange as that sounds. reinstalling the operation systems in my head, changing, changing, changing, i still couldn't find the answer to my questions. i'd think i found something, but a longing still sits there, ever quietly, almost staring. trying to understand myself, to understand understanding, receiving no answer.

i came around to decide that that in itself is the answer. in what way is it not, after all? there is never a destination, only a path: the river through stone. perhaps there's a sprinkle of campsites by its side for the occasional night of rest, just never an terminal station; there's some strange beauty to it, the same i find in the idea of a nocturnal siberian road trip. the glow of a certain rushing in my neurons. the feeling of freedom from chasing it, knowing the highway is never-ending. it is in such a pursuit that meaning, is found: not truth; nothing eternal, but significance in the otherwise meaningless. a sort of clarity for the moment, an answer in the shape of a new question, like uncovering a new layer on our way to peeing an infinite onion. our ache, our longing, that place far away: summertime comes and summertime goes and we wish for winter, when we would sit by the fire and reminisce on the summer. perhaps that's exactly what makes us human: the desire for something. there is always a piece missing, becasuse a hole in eternity is exactly what lets the universe run its thing. water cannot flow when all cups are filled; completion means end. there will always be a piece missing, and within that piece, another, and another. like nine point nine repeating. because to pursue means to live. 

so, cacophony is not complete; the lines stray ever on, each word a continuation of the last. i still write, because thoughts always plead to be given a home. publishing is a much greater commitment, but it will happen. until then

know that you are loved. seven octillion atoms have converged into a shape of your likeness, holding past and future within the space between two eyes. you are the kwisatz haderach. that is reason enough. (Dune fans, rejoice. :P)