Wanderling❁

This week's words

 

 

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the music of Blanco White changed my life about two years ago. I've always been talented at creating emotion + meaning from nothing, but when I began "soul searching" at the edge of oceans on a regular basis, his words and voice would often echo in my head, manifesting revelations about the simplicity of our mortal human condition. beautiful lyrics, honoring mother earth's symbols and making me feel rightfully small.

we laugh and cry because we can, but what is there except emptiness pulsing between existence? our joys and our sorrows: they are all an invention of the mind. sitting alone on the beach, I would weep at my folly and shame. how my runaway heart gets carried away with every thrill and every sadness, and I struggle to find solid ground again. and then all would grow quiet. peace was somewhere closer.

at times I felt I could die on a dark beach and it would have been alright. and maybe it still would be. how blessed to have been alive.

this solemn song reminds me now, as I sit on stranger shores alone, of who I am, who I have been, and who I might become. everything, and yet, nothing at all.

 

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"Cold light of the stars the same
A flag drew a line in the wind
If I was awake there's a world that I left
Never far behind
From the time that I spent on the Arctic ice

 

One moon has a name
Only one to a dream evolved
And in the night she's ashamed
Tell her drive through a darkened sea
Below, beyond the world
How deep does the water go?

 

Cold trail of the last descent
Across held a sign in the wind
And time fell away
With the sound of each step
If the stars align then
For us they were meant in the lunar sky

 

That moon has a name
In the fires of a silver corpse
And on the ice I'm afraid
Of the drop through a darkened sea
Below, beyond the world
How deep does the water go?"

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- music and lyrics by Blanco White, Nocturne, Nocturne EP, (2018)

a divide

 

 

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the mountain, of course she doesn't know

what it means to be shared by nations

weeping, every time it needlessly opens, this

jagged scar where the road divides her

bleeding rock between two worlds

torn and speaking her stories quietly

I know how she feels

wishing to be left, in one place, whole

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photo: Annamite mountain range, south border of China, Binh Lieu, Viet Nam, october 2019

darkness is a memory

 

 

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how deep do your waters run

my silent mother and muse

all the way into my childhood

that loneliness that had no name

when I learned, without needing to see

that all the world is an ocean

and with pale faces upturned to the lunar sky

and we are alone, floating in it

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photo: Bai Chay beach, Ha Long, Viet Nam, october 2019

the humanity

 

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forever dreaming of a perfect world

of less greed, more peace

a quiet respite we might finally

be proud to call home

 

but then I saw, a child bent over his book

someone's grandmother pedaling mangoes

in great baskets, across the street

two friends, arms linked in forgiveness

 

we are all trying

this world is perfect enough

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