Category: Writing

Peddler of Dreams

She’s peddling, peddling dreams
By the seashore
She’s showing you, showing you things
You’d always suspected
But never known for sure
Saying the words you’d only heard in your mind.
She’s a wanderer,
Simple dreamer,
A soul led on a whim
She’ll be gone before the day breaks
Leaving only your dreams in her wake.
But she’s infected you to the core,
From just a look your way,
You don’t remember anything from before.
Because she’s peddling, peddling dreams
By the seashore
She’s showing you, showing you things
You’d always suspected
But never known for sure.
Saying the words you’d only heard in your mind.
She’s a wanderer
Simple dreamer
A soul led on a whim
She’ll never tell you what it takes
To keep her
But she’s a whim away

When you need her.

-AJ Sandhu
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Paradise

You asked for another voice in the silence

Cause it was deafening in your mind
But in the sounds you heard
No words could be found.

Far up above me
Slower than my mortal coil;
Though faster than I’d ever understand,
Are galaxies colliding
With lives I’ll never know

It doesn’t mean I don’t want to
Just a consequence of this life
Born to die only when
We start to understand

If I could hold you though the darkness
We’d shine a light so bright
I’d have to deal with 
The shadows that we’d cast.

How can I hold something I’ve never had?
What is this unspoken understanding
Between two worlds hell-bent on colliding?

What the sun wouldn’t give
For a moment in the darkness
Only caving when her life is ending

I’m done with shallow words
Of what we should be
Lead me like inescapable darkness
Leads the light.

I’m here for the morning
Ever burning for moon’s light
Reflecting but never returning

I’m on the verge of surrender
Giving up on paradise
I never knew I had.

Is this the tragedy of our lives?
To fade away only when
We learn how to live?

I’ll hold on
To this precipice of hope
That maybe one day
A paradise will be mine
To hold again.
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Disconnect

There is refuge in unwritten words still draped in the golden glow of magical possibility. A story in the mind is perfection, untainted by the imperfect words needed to craft reality.
How many wonderful worlds become contaminated by the disconnect between mind and hand? I can regale you with a dozen or more imaginings perfect and pure, until tested by the litmus of reality.
I’ve written before of ideas that ravage through like aches; stories that so thoroughly disconnected me from reality, I awoke weeping over the banal mundanities of a world without magic.
I create so I can escape from what I cannot control.
Finding release in my mind from what I cannot yet be free of in reality.
So consumed by the worlds over which I reign, I forget to paint them with the brush of truth. Falling to traps of perfect heroes without consequence. Heroes always in the right place at the right time with the right words. Never a moment, or even days, too late. Never human.
Doing so would acknowledge the faults I see in reality.
Sometimes words aren’t enough. No apologies or validation strong enough to ease the hurt. Sometimes you can be and are too late. If I refuse to show such human error in what I write, how can I expect to change reality?
It complicates the narrative, but I’ve been running from complication all of my life. If my escapes don’t teach me to cope, nothing will.
My characters, like myself and the people I’ve chosen to surround myself with, cannot put out all of the fires; cannot contain all of the damage. But we can learn to repair that which is in our power.

So can the people in my mind, if I would just give them the chance. 


Stay good and keep transmitting.
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UPDATE

Blogging Sundays will be back this Sunday and I will try to create a backlog of posts so I can have this up and regular again. Thank you all for your support, it means the world to me. 
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Vice of a Million Faces

When do people blur into numbers? Where exactly is the tipping point that turns good intentions into could-have-beens?
There is a limit to how many individuals one human can imagine. Call it a flaw in our evolution. Never in our history have we needed to comprehend the value of numbers greater than those in our physical proximity.
It stands to reason, the smaller our personal circles, the less we understand. Simply “growing” these circles cannot prepare us for the sheer number of people there are. Cannot stop us from categorizing and labeling in ways that strip the individual from the digit.
There is no cure for that.
It compounds itself exponentially when those massive numbers, an unfathomable group, declares itself a collective, or is declared such. A collective is easier to imagine than a million faces. Easier to control.
And simultaneously, harder to live up to.
Especially when this group is yours. Parades the name you chose for yourself as it’s moniker of community. How does a person become an idea?
What was done to those millions of faces is done to you by them.
The leader, the only measure for a group, becomes a symbol.
Unfortunately, humans are fallible. Humans can’t be symbols.
If you want to change the world, you have to wander it. In silent acts of kindness and courage. In whispered rumors and gossip.

A thief in the night will do more for change than a good person in the sun’s light.

Stay good and keep transmitting.

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Rumination 13

Constrained and managed lives are difficult to lead. Entire industries are built around the projection and public cultivation of image. The higher you go, the greater the spin. Eventually your individuality, your humanity is stripped away and only a caricature of a person remains. You find yourself defending the idea of what you should be.
You don’t know why you don’t want to give it up.
The faster the ascent; the more basic the idea.
It doesn’t have time to form. No chance to cultivate in heartbreaking anonymity. Its black and white; no range to be a vice you can live with. Anything that flies in the way, any small indiscretion is an attack on the image itself. It starts to suffocate.
So, how do you escape? How do you stop hiding in front of the world?
You don’t.
If you want out, you have to burn it to the ground. Even if it is everything you have ever built over the course of your consciousness. Your whole life.
Even if it burns you in the process.
Start a fire and raze the foundation.
Then on the blackened ground where your life used to shine, build it again. Slower this time. Of your own volition. Take the old lessons. The immature missteps, learn from them.
Move forward.
Sometimes the life you should save is your own.

-Stay good and keep transmitting. 
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Catharsis

This should be Rumination 13, but hey, like much else in my life; we all know how that will go.

I will start by admitting I don’t exercise this catharsis as much as I used to; unfortunately, there have come to be a greater number of eyes on these places than before. I would chalk it up to anxiety, however, even I remember those days before, when this space was more frequented than ever. 

So, let’s dive in.

I’m in a rather strange place. A few interesting turns of events have somehow dropped me into the midst of people I never knew about and somehow now do. More personal attacks have put upon me choices I have dreaded for longer than I remember. The last eight months have dredged up memories I would rather leave in the past.

Until a few months ago, I would have called this the worst year of my life, no matter how adamantly I attempted to salvage it.

I can’t now. Too much has happened. To call it the worst would mean there was nothing to be learned from the fires burning around me. To label it so would be giving the world too little credit. And blatantly denying the fact there are four whole years of my life lost to God knows what, because I just CAN’T REMEMBER.

I have met, in this three quarter done year, the strongest and hardest working people I will ever know. I have met people who’ve told me that a stranger has given them a bit of happiness. I’ve re-introduced myself to everyone that once knew me. Lost something and someone I’d held very dear, but didn’t treat as if they were dear to me. Lost something I hated and, for some reason, feel it’s void more strongly than anything else.

I opined about two pink totes and a suitcase. Begged for the chance to live without ties to anyone or thing. Labored over my life’s work. Now I’m sitting at a keyboard struggling my way through a rumination that would have once taken maybe twenty minutes.

I’m still excited. I’m still crazy enough to believe I can do those wonderful and crazy things I’ve always imagined. I know I can’t do them alone. But I know that if I keep screaming into the void long enough, someone out there will hear me. And one voice will become two, until the voices become so deafening that I won’t need to scream anymore.

See, wanders like me, we’re temporary. We show up to tell you the tide can be changed, but you do the changing; in the process you change us. We’re not the leaders, those are born among you.

So, until next time, stay good and keep transmitting.
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Cosmic Perspective

Everything we know about anything has been discovered on this giant rocky space bucket. It orbits a massive ball of fire; located on one of the outer arms of a galaxy filled with them. All held together by a point of density so great even light cannot escape.

But it isn’t the only one.

We are one of many, lighting the infinite void of SpaceTime. And we know all of this because a speck of dust dared to defy gravity and look up.

Our first act was that of defiance.

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Rumination 12

WHY. Why do I have so much stuff? I used to be able to fit my life into 2 pink totes and a suitcase. Now I have a whole house worth of things without a whole house to put them in.
I have TWO cupcake makers. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND NEEDS TWO CUPCAKE MAKERS? Like 10 different candy molds, a cake pop maker, (have I ever even used it? WHAT?) FIVE CUSTOM CAKE MOLDS. The one that is shaped like a book fits into a tote and it will be mine forever. I will be buried with it.
I have 3 sets of GOBLETS? THREE? Buffet patters (I HAVE LITERALLY NEVER THROWN A PARTY. EVER.) AN EIGHT PERSON CUTLERY SET. WHAT? (Edit: I just looked at the box, it’s from Macy’s; it was $80) When am I going to use these? A SPICE RACK?!?!
The note cards and journals. I love them, I really do, but they only add to the clutter around me. Journals, I intend on slowly giving away to people I find fascinating. I’m going to miss them, but I know I would much rather they find use and not storage. There are journals that are nearly 15 years old.
The note cards will always find use. I have so many people to thank, and there will only be so many more.
I just can’t find it in me to throw anything out. Even when it’s obvious I don’t need it. I’m holding on to things better left in the past. Sure, I might get my own place again one day. But today isn’t that day. I can sit here letting the toxicity of this place ruin me, or I can venture out and find that forever I’ve always dreamt of.
I won’t let depression keep me. I won’t let my mistakes define me. There are symbols in this hoard of the person I was expected to be. Someone I never was, no matter how hard I tried.
I can’t sit still. I need the quiet comfort of lonely wandering. It’s maddening to think I can’t just be a wander. I can’t just pack up and hop a plane to nowhere. I don’t want the things everyone around me wants. I don’t want to get married, I’ve been on this Earth a while now and I’ve yet to find someone I could even fantasize a family with. I don’t want a place to which I am bound.
It’s lonely I know. But I crave the silence of a long drive. I yearn for the books read on wordless flights. I ache for places I’ve never seen.
I’m not naive enough to think two lives can run parallel eternal, but for the times some will run next to mine, I will offer the one eternity I can give; a space in my heart.
I am selfish, there is no defending that. I will wear it proudly. I am selfish. I think of my own happiness before progeny. I am selfish, because I want that which is most difficult to give. I want a space in your memories. I don’t want any more to be a passing glance on a sidewalk or a subway. Sad eye contact until the next bus stop.

I want to arrive at my death with open arms. Welcome embrace from a friend foiled twice. There will never be enough time; I just want to do enough in my time.
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Utopia

Star Trek Into Darkness is by all means a great film in a wonderfully vast and diverse universe marred by the outcry against the “Whitewashing,” of certain iconic characters (One iconic character).

Like many science fiction writers, Gene Roddenberry and his team created a character with all of the great advantages that evolution had to offer humans. The result was a man given the impressive sounding name of Khan Noonien Singh. And like a great many science fiction characters, the description fit a man of color. Ricardo Montalbán brought the character to life first in Space Seed and most popularly in The Wrath of Khan.

The casting of Benedict Cumberbatch into the fold of Khan isn’t an issue of the character’s ethnicity. Khan has no ethnicity. Nor is it an issue of his being classified as Sikh, thanks to his very telling last name.Sikhism is a religion in Northern India, practiced almost exclusively by the people in Punjab. I would know, I grew up in a Sikh family. Actively practiced the religion for many years. My grandfathers were both Singhs. Singh is a title given to you when you take vows to follow the faith. When you become a warrior for god. It preaches goodness and kindness, giving when you can, protecting those that need to be protected.

It is also one of the most inclusive religions. At least on paper. Anyone can become a Sikh, anyone can become a Singh. Or not. Sikhism is all about finding your way to the one true being. And because the aim is to return from where you came, it is held that all people have a different path. Be it Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, ect. You make your own way to the same central place, with your own guide.So a man with Cumberbatch’s face can be called Khan Noonien Singh.

It is disappointing on a different grounds.

As a child, seeing a man of color on the screen with the name Khan Noonien Singh was a godsend. He was incredible, intelligent, different. In a time when everyone that looked like me played a bumbling terrorist, Khan was evil incarnate. And that was okay. Because he was a villain you identified with. He was(is) a badass. IN SPACE.

I’m not angry that the character is now portrayed by Cumberbatch. Hell, I’m even a member of the CumberCollective, he’s phenomenal. But he doesn’t look like me. I will root for the character, because I love villains (my heroes are just good villains), but I won’t want to be him. If I was a child watching this character, I wouldn’t be inspired. That is the issue.

So no, it isn’t wrong, but it’s disappointing and I will get over it.

This isn’t about ‘whitewashing.’ It is about how we present the world, how we see the future, and what we want to inspire in people.

Khan Noonien Singh influenced the type of person I am in some ways. Not quite so powerfully as Ursula LeGuin’s red skinned, Ged from EarthSea. He and characters like him, helped make me the type of writer I am. Not afraid to make a woman of color my main character.

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