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Saturday 27 February 2010

Crystals

It's dark outside but I didn't notice. My eyes are fixed on the screen but occasionally glancing at the crystals that sit beside. They're pretty and free from dizzying thoughts, like those that are in my head. They're beautiful, sparkling colours, delicate in their very existence. They'd need only a small touch to be shattered into the white dish they stand in. They confuse me. I don't understand how they work and I cannot touch them to find out. I crave answers to their beauty. But the answers won't come from looking at it.

I sit back and sigh. They remain a mystery and my eyes remain enthralled.

Friday 26 February 2010

Distracted

I can't concentrate, my eyes flicker at every sound, every tick of the watch that lays discarded on my desk. My hands twitch to every object, foreign, familiar and settle there for only moments before moving on. I can't think straight, every line curves and splits and zig-zags across my inner vision. It's chaotic, like a dance to more than one piece of music. I press my temples and the world stops spinning.

Though every sound is heard, it is not taken in, not understood as it should be. I flinch at words that should amuse, become sensitive and ignore the speech that drifts through the air and into my ears. It's a little too much to handle. I withdraw, sit inside myself, inside my mind for a while just listening to the cogs as they turn, powering me. Their machine. With one subtle click the auto-pilot turns on and takes over - flickering at each noise and tapping fingers on each available surface and as inattentive as I would be were I in control.

My mind creases under the weight of my thoughts and I find myself lost in their labyrinthine walk-ways. Shafts of light catch me as I run and branches scrape at my skin. Too deep now for the outside to notice but a hand across my eyes, attentive and fixed on the grain of the wood in front of me, pulls me back out of the labyrinth and into the world where hands are always kept busy - tugging, picking, flicking, twitching, turning - and I hear every tick.

I don't notice when it stops, the ticking sounds and the talking, I am too far off again in my own world but the wood doesn't seem so interesting. It is only when I think of it, through my haze of muddled threads and strings, that I notice it isn't there. I glance to my left, pick up the offending object and look at its face. It's still going. Holding it to my ear doesn't make it easier - the sound is absent. I frown. It has my full attention now. But still there is nothing.

Though no longer trapped in my labyrinth I am still far away, this time held between three hands, in motion and yet not audible. It is only when I distract myself from it, with a glance towards the scattered doodlings on my right, that it returns. The ticking. But every time I register, every time I look towards it the sound fades. It taunts me. I glare down at it, pondering its motives and wondering what I could have done to make it want to trick me, to harm me.

I close my eyes, the muffled sounds of life outside of this room pervading my senses. They are alive, active, and they laugh. I exist, wandering these halls and streets not really there but not all gone either, distracted - something's missing. There's too much going on inside, it's hard to concentrate, hard to act convincingly there. Hard for me. But to them it seems normal, right, true.

My mind twists again, puzzling the pieces it left behind. Eyes still closed and sleep still far away and an emptiness tugging at my stomach. My mind wanders; too much, too much. It slips.

I sit, it knows when I'm looking at it, as soon as my eyes leave it begins again. Tick, tick, tick, calling for my attention, begging almost. It's so loud. But as soon as my gaze fixes upon it, it stops. Unconsciously, I shake my head, what am I doing?

Thursday 25 February 2010

Vision

It takes you, pulls you in and drags you under. But it's not unpleasant, not at all like drowning. It's more like swimming in a sea of clouds and shimmering raindrops frozen in place but still soft, living, movable. Each move you make is a ripple, as if in water, that moves the time around you. It's mystifying, new, it's a world you've never experienced and yet you know it. It is familiar.

Though you're high in the air, and the air is like water, you're not cold. You feel the warmth around you like an embrace, close your eyes and sink in. It pulls you further past every pigment of colour, which flash beneath your eyelids and swim through you mind.

A cool air caresses your face like silk as you open your eyes, it carries you like a leaf settled on a quick shaft of wind and there's nothing that you cannot see. Everything is in perfect detail and every colour in perfect clarity, you see each metaphor as it creates itself, each allusion, each rhythm as it starts.

You are the creator, the believer, the puppeteer and musician. You are the King, Queen, ruler and this is your kingdom

Tuesday 23 February 2010

RE: Going Without

But what if the sleep does not claim me and the nagging gets stronger? What then do I do with my time in the late hours? What then do I use to distract myself from its pull?

My mind tells me: use what you know, what you don't have, what you do. But it's hard to memorise when the words jumble in my head, tickled by the fingers of the nagging hand. My sheet is crumpled but I cling to it. It cannot uncurl my clasping fingers even though it tries. But what if the sleep never comes? My fingers loosen. It will. Tighten once more. It's just lack of sleep, the tiredness eating at my form - it's nothing. It just makes you weak, not having that bliss of rest and it likes it when you're weak, sleep tells me. I nod, agree. You're right.

It is in the late hours that I wonder about myself, about what drives me and what fails me, about the nagging in my mind and the sneaking at the corners of my eyes. And before I sleep I doubt myself and I wonder 'what are you doing here?'

Silence.

Going Without

I feel at a loss without it, without this thing that I do. This almost compulsive need when the twinge is there. Without it, I have so much time. So much flowing between my hands and through my toes that I don't know where to store it all. I don't know which box to keep it in, which shelf to reorganise so that it all fits neatly. I thought it would be easy, without it there to tempt me, without it open and wriggling across my palm until I finally give in. But it's not. I find myself wondering if it's worth going out and buying something, just to give me somewhere to put my time. Something to stop me wasting it. To stop me craving it.

It's going well. The hollow feeling can be dealt with until the late hours. Then it's hard - it wriggles into my mind, begging and pleading and wanting. Tasting me and my need. It nags at the corners, fraying my thin sheets as it picks away at the threads. The late hours are the worst. It has gone past a feeling of victory and on to a question: why? I wring my fingers as if they will give me answers. My head thumps, go to sleep, but the nagging continues, the begging grows more insistent. I close my eyes. Ignoring it gets easier as the sleep pulls at my arms and my legs. It's better this way, it whispers. And it is. It's the better way, the good way. The other way was dangerous, it tells me, this way is sensible. It works.

I feel at a loss without it, without this thing that I do. But when sleep pulls me in I don't notice, the begging fades and does not come back until the late hours return. It's a circle, a cycle of want and need and rejection. It's waiting for me, waiting for the snap in my resolve, the crack that breaks through, the rip that tears from the frays in my thin sheet.

It's waiting.

Need

It clings to you, like something out of a too-old sci-fi movie, and it doesn't want to let go. It makes everything slow and sticky and hard to get out of your system. It needs no reasoning, it just is. That's what they say. But it hates you, such writhing hate that it could hardly breathe if a breath was something it needed. Yet, it needs you, loves you, wants you to stay - wants to stay with you. So it sticks, clings, claws with all its might. Sometimes it manages it.

Until you breathe. Close your eyes and realise that it's all over. It's finished. It's done with.

It changes hands and it's gone, with nothing but a green slip to remember it by.

Sunday 14 February 2010

Fate



I wrote of you, in the beginning, and asked you how it felt to live but I didn't realise, didn't see that you were only an image, only a thought. Only a record in the space of a dream. Now, you live.

I saw you sat there on the shelf and had to look twice. You winked at me then, called my name and whispered to me your secrets. I picked you up, caressing your textured cover and I knew you were mine.

"Do you need a bag, miss?"

"No, I'm fine."

Hello, Other Blog. How are you feeling now that you really exist?

Saturday 6 February 2010

RE: Performance

We're trying. We're laughing.

And we're good.

Wherever we end up, these are the times we'll remember. And we'll laugh.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Performance

Coloured lights diffuse through smoke as a lilting acoustic drifts, the room is calm. Crowded. We sit on steps aware of each note and cadence, comparing notes in our minds.

We could do it better, if only we tried.

But instead we sit on steps, comparing notes in our minds.