Thin insecurities interwoven throughout my mind

Plagued by knowledge, I have tried to think of ways, that I could find an answer to my minds many questions. Questions that whisper incessant doubt of my own attempts at understanding anything.

For if knowledge is a quest that brings eventual illumination, how is it that ignorance can be such bliss and understanding and realization of things can bring such pounding doubt? Knowledge comes with the price, that as you learn more, you realize you know far less. It is no surprise to me that many of the greatest minds that have gone before us, seem to have subsided into stricken and maddening frustration. It seems often far more fulfilling to merely write things that make people wince or smile, than things that actually make people think.

I have often found myself driven by the desire to show people how clever I can be, when this is really just foolhardy, in that it means so little that I should not have even bothered in the first place. I need a whisky. Need? Want. Will it steel my resolve so that I may continue to try and make words appear to make sense on this page?

Plagued by the plague were the citizens of London, when in a moment of ill-luck, a bakery caught fire and cathartic flames swept away the terror of death and sickness that threatened that city. Was it good that the bakery went up in smoke, scorching the city and its inhabitants to a more ruder health? Why yes, we are told, as London went on to become briefly, the centre of a global empire.

Its knowledge swept to all corners of the earth, taking with it the rasping intellectualism of a nation and a people in awe of themselves, a vanity which has strode on through the ages. It is now easy to look upon the failed empire of the British and scold it for its misguided deeds and morbid incompetence. Though in the new age that followed, what have we in terms of empire? The insecure bully that is the United States? Its flailing attempts to be king. Though of course, its self doubt and fear are in the end the undoing of it.

The cultural hold its corporately deranged media the only thing it really has left after the terror of its fantastic weaponry. A rather tenuous cultural hold that is scorned and applauded in equal measure. The longer this empire strains to hold its position of dominance, the easier it becomes to forget any positive aspect of its heritage. Depravity and violence become art form.

Art that is consumed with hatred of its subject, and despair at its incompetence. I sometimes think we so far from understanding ourselves that instead we look upon that which we do with contempt, breeding fear of how we are viewed by others. We are taught to envy these days, as though it is a good thing to do, so that we may strive harder and longer to better our contemporaries.

I spoke earlier today to an acquaintance, telling him of a dream I once had. I stood on a small plain overhung with great sheer and jagged green cliffs. The sea to one side and the face of the cliffs to the other. I looked out toward the mouth of a great river. A large plane was hurtling toward the bank of the river, and it smashed with devastating force into the ground on the shores of the rivers mouth. Flame and smoke billowed from the wreckage and people spilled out into view, running in terror as the plane slowly transformed into what looked like a huge wrecked ocean liner. I gazed upon this for a moment before becoming aware of an angelic being flying down from the sky above me with a fiery ball in its hands. It alighted in front of me and wordlessly handed the ball to me, and it did not burn, and I held it.

I suddenly realized that I could use the fire-ball to fly, and it was magnificent, I flew around the landscape, across the cliffs and over the wreckage of the plane/ocean liner. I do not remember what it was that drew me out of that dream, as it was around ten years ago that I had it. In a rickety old house in Thorndon, in the city of Wellington, my second home in New Zealand. Probably an alarm clock radio. With its musical interruption of rest.

I have no clue what that dream represented. And have not really thought long and hard on it. I did enjoy it immensely, and the flight was lovely, as I had complete control over it, something I have not experienced in many other dreams. Save one I had only three nights ago.

This dream involved a high powered speed boat and me the driver, in total control speeding around what at times appeared to be the South Coast of Wellington and then at times seemed to be like the Mediterranean coast of Greece. It was rather disturbing how fast the boat would go and the amount of rocky dangers that appeared in the water ahead of me, though I managed to negotiate all hazards without damaging myself or the vessel and then found myself at the doorstep of an old friends house. I stepped from the boat and onto the porch of his house and went inside and spoke with him and his house mates. We sat down and enjoyed some delicious cake that his mother had baked. And then I awoke. That dream reminded me of the angel dream. All quite odd and inspirational, as well as entertaining and beguiling.

I hope this finds you in good health if you have read to here. And if you have not, may your big toe throb like never before and your left ear ring for a full five minutes.

Aquatic brain tonic

Beatifically boisterously bellowing down the road, a loud, deep sound, from the lungs all around,

The backdrop the hum and beep of traffic, belting across ground, pedestrian churlishness witnessed aplenty, it seems at times, their heads are empty,

A limerick, no, I would not propose such, just a verse along a watery line, the time today, we journeyed to the brine,

A few friends met, then the salty plunge, the water deep, though around you it quivers, refreshing coolness beneath the waves,

Far from the pastimes that have our days, perhaps not though, if you were employed, by the ocean, Neptune's servant with great devotion,

A lovely drive to the edge of the Tasman, and a splendid frolic in the vicinity of the water, sun drenched and reflective.