Fishing for Humanity

Week 52: Through the Lighthouse

2012-01-01T19:12:00.000+11:00

Like the songs of shells in the ocean,

The past feels like an inconceivable dream,

Breathing beneath this lighthouse,

as its eyes permeate the night.

Lost in the shadow of a family tree,

I was but a struggling amnesiac.

Till I felt the weight of my bones

and learnt the art of breathing,

through the length of arid days.

Till I learnt to be of service

and soothe the pain of vanity.

Now through these stone walls

and this sword of light,

Free of the borders of skin,

A stranger no more,

I am found upon those waves...

that carry the lost home.

Week 51:Meridian

2011-12-15T15:50:00.000+11:00

They breathe...

this wood, these walls

and the memories upon them.

Free from my forgetful haze,

To compose calm from ruin.

Held in this lunar caress,

We lie in silent witness,

To the dance of fireflies

in echoes of our old lives.

And in your soft eyes,

In this thirst between our lips,

We find maps to this meridian.

Week 50: Brothers

2011-11-24T10:29:00.001+11:00

Brother...

My eyes swim in a retreating light,

between the shadows of our twin plight.

Our hearts gripped by winter's collar,

Furious and blind, bleeding summer.

I ache for a return to those times,

When as brothers we'd trace

those hills and rooftops,

unknowing of this end.

For were our lives

not writ with the ignorant ink of men?

Wrapped in traps of intellect,

Wearing muted masks to cast

illusions of strength that fool none.

Hostage to our tragedies,

Only to find fleeting solace,

at the bottom of a bottle,

estranged from feeling.

Yet even as we raised

our walls and our voices,

We were loved...

By the casualties of our silence,

Beyond our deepest afflictions.

May we be candles to our children...

Week 49: Black Candles

2011-11-16T00:50:00.001+11:00

I walk to the tune

of her pan flute sympathy,

Withering woman on pavement home,

governing her silver providence

as the traffic light smiles red.

Watch teenage fans of alcohol,

Like wolves through parking lots,

Lunar howling for release,

Emptying their veins of angst

upon this gothic canvas,

always true.

She's folding her apron routine,

Drifting into caffeinated dreams

of his mirror eyes to see

the beauty of her fortitude.

Tangled lovers in the promenade,

Holding on to threads of the night,

Teasing the roots of solitude

with promise filled lips.

News from Sudan filters through
a muted TV screen,

I'm a solider of the night,

Floating through suburban streets,

Black candles in my eyes.

Week 48: Smoke

2011-11-06T09:12:00.000+11:00

Smoke

The click of the pendulum was a thread of sound in a fabric of silence. A mixture of waning daylight and the warm glow of a solitary bulb stretched across the white walls of the room. He was seated at the head of the dining table, surveying his surrounds with a curious gleam in his eyes. His dog lay at his feet, twitching as he ventured through a mysterious realm of sleep. He watched his mother's beige curtains flow upward as a delicate wind wafted in through the open windows, suspended in air for a precious moment before easing into place. His gaze shifted between objects in the room; the antique furniture, the African masks, the crystal ornaments, the paintings and old photographs. Each with an origin and history far beyond the space they now occupied. Yet they were at home in this house in Colombo, fragments in a network of memory.

A smile dominated his expression as he rested his head on his left palm. He muffled a cough with tight lips and a clenched right hand as he rose from the chair, careful not to wake his sleeping companion. He walked towards the grills on the windows and looked out onto the garden, the bright green of the palms were fading with the retreating sun. Traces of orange longing clung to the clouds in defiance of fading prominence. Witness to transition, the words and pictures in his mind awoke and fixed upon his chords.

" The yolk of past circumstance wore me thin. The marrow of my consciousness has been but a stream of melancholy, secretly welcoming adversity. It is only now that I differentiate between a chronicle and the person beneath. It is only now that I feel with a sense of certainty, the treachery of time in my mind and the length of my preoccupation. This near silence is pristine in its spaciousness. I am adrift and feel no containment in this supposed solitude."

He heads back towards the table and kneels next to the chair he had been sitting in. A quiet surge of affection drifts through his eyes as he watches his dog, still deep in sleep. He bore little trace of aging as his chest moved in rhythm to his breathing, his paws stretched across the tiles. "I may never see you again boy. Yet I feel no great sadness in this as I did before. It's no exaggeration...I've had more time with you than with my own father. In truth, next to no one has been a part of my life as you have. And it may be... that no other being will be as consistently happy to see me and show me affection with such simple immediacy. But we've had so many years...we've grown together. I could so easily slide to the sorrow of reflection...but I'd much rather revel in how peaceful you are right now. In this series of moments, a link of liberating truths have dawned on me. I can only describe it as being the death of a shadow and a lightness of being. We as humans fall prey to the very complexity that fuels our vanity. You have little need for words and intellect to just be...free of wasteful cognition and resistance. What use have we for life stories. Our minds can be the very smoke that shrouds our spirit from all things of consequence."

Lying on the floor. Moments trickle with the grace of long awaited raindrops as his eyes begin to seal. He thought of the strange but beautiful punctuation that had ended a most turbulent sentence. Hours later, he was greeted by the familiar touch of a wet nose. The clock chimed with self importance but found no ears.

Shanil Samarakoon

Week 47: Innocent Still

2011-10-08T20:19:00.000+11:00

There was a time when

our laughter scaled those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach.

For we were giants of ambition

with senses tuned to wonder,

cosmic hosts to a million personas

dancing free beneath

a confluence of sun and skin.

Ah...

I remember those afternoons,

streaming through the canopy,

When David wove the clouds

into pillows for our thoughts and

I made a bed of Pa's endless lap,

our bellies full of ma's magic

as she sang of home.

No strangers to the tragic,

our tempers swelled and thundered

and tears in torrents did come,

But we were innocent still,

smiling by morning

after every bitter pill.

But there were no signs of warning

as our skin and bones stretched

and the lottery of life unraveled.

We found our hearts heavy

with an inheritance of woe

and our eyes came to find shackles

where they were none before.

And after years in a neon haze, I've come to see,

my pulse surrendered to machinery,

The monetization of our dreams

into a cold network of revenue streams,

Depleted wells of compassion

amid deep unconscious self-obsession,

Where our eyes are trained to difference,

Where war is a righteous path

and the earth a mere limitation.

As only the lure of distant stars will satiate.

this estranging hunger.

And I yet ask myself, if we are innocent still?

For is there not beyond the shadows

of our being, a glistening spark?

Persisting in our child's eye,

Still playful and loving, longing

only for the thread

to weave a fabric of hope

that all hearts can touch,

And tonight I wonder

If there will be a time once more,

when our laughter scales those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach
and sing as ma did, of home...

Week 46: Melpomene

2011-09-25T10:53:00.003+10:00

Drawing breath from the depths of a dream,

You swim beneath the solitude of skin,

To the primal pulse of my mind's eye,

Where I yearn for your fugitive lips...

Your language, not of the tongue,

Swells with the promise of home.

And my eyes hunger upon wake,

Through the doubt of day,

For the mere sight of you...

Yet words are but the surface,

shimmering arrows to the wind,

There is no labour in tenderness

Only the ache of our separation.

For your beauty is a feeling that flows,

Like the seasons to the trees...

Week 45: Halcyon

2011-09-08T00:45:00.001+10:00

An ancient drum beat heart,

tuned to mother's rhythm,

Our sound travels through

this sea's caress in waves,

Soft against new skin.

Ripples of wonder in dark sanctuary,

Of my lot in the world outside,

Between love and indifference,

till flesh and time collide.

A return to forgetfulness,

a new seed of the universe,

Yearning to be expressed,

felt, heard and caressed.

Mother...

Father....

Oh the dreams I've searched

for your hands.

Week 44: Crayon Blue

2011-08-28T19:26:00.002+10:00

He was a struggling romancer

caught between,

Contagious frowns

on the 6:15.

Shoulder to shoulder

in muted malaise,

They were tiny pieces,

Bereft of choice.

Leaking in to stations,

in a trickle back for rest.

Yet in a pocket, within a notebook,

There were lines he drew,

Like in child times, in crayon blue,

Past the labyrinth of his plight.

Week 43: Far

2011-08-15T16:27:00.002+10:00

The waves washed us clean...

Buoyant beasts in midday sun,

Diving deep beneath cacophony,

Breath baited to shores unseen.

"For where does one go?

When cast into dwellings of doubt,

built only for the joy of smoke.

When caught between

daily races

and the lure of the stars?

When the earth is arid

for seeds you long to sow?"

A cerulean surrender,

A tender balm of silence,

Seeping through window pores,

into chambers not yet a home.

In this graceful suspension,

With fortunes set to the currents,

There is no knowing

of how far we'll go...

Week 42: True

2011-08-04T01:38:00.003+10:00

Love...

Do I even stand a chance?

Beneath your glowing veneer,

Where I meld with old fires

and those vapors of doubt.

For here I have been...

Suspended in forest green,

Watching timid hopes wake,

deep in the sweetest ache.

Tell me true...

Is there a tender thought of me,

safe from those flames?

Or is this a dreamer's lot?

For with you,

I have no bonds of breath.

Week 41: The Tower

2011-07-26T22:24:00.005+10:00

The sun seems no closer...

through these windows to the clouds,

Is this ascent as aimless as it feels?

Is this a monument of our imagination,

or merely contrived elevation?

From the bowels of a shameful habitat,

long deemed wild and primitive,

No preserved in pictures.

Self anointed sophisticates,

with systems of intellect

that deplete far more

than they inspire.

Yet we continue...

I wonder if we once dreamed of the skies,

as I do now for the ground beneath,

Past these walls and mirrors,

to leave these layers

of separation.

And what if my intentions lie,

Beyond this rushed concrete,

To walk a path of my choosing,

Where I can slow to a heartbeat,

Show no caution in tenderness

and sow seeds I've never held

And in this....

Would I be alone?

Or should it matter at all.

Week 41: Volition

2011-07-18T21:00:00.004+10:00

Chasing moonlight,

across a side street maze,

Paved with hues of another life,

wild and bright in a neon haze

and I'm overwhelmed.

Child...

Did I bury our dreams in '94?

In words, in a book, in a chest,

in your innocent core

as I wrestled an inheritance

and built walls for our guilt.

And who will ever know us

as we do each other?

Yet I refuse to be reduced,

to the shame of a shadow,

caught in the lure of woe,

For I am still unraveling to find,

The spaces to be brave and kind.

Week 40: No Window

2011-07-12T00:07:00.004+10:00

I thought I tore these pages off my spine,

to feed a cleansing fire.

Old words re-invited ,by a tender heart,

At odds with its own beating.

Excavating an arid ground,

For reason.

Eyes closed,

I'd retreat into obscurity like the winter sun,

and search the stars for the promise of home,

But I am weary of the ephemeral,

of nomadic abstractions,

an imagined future.

Tis the weight of the architect

of all these aches.

I'm feeling walls

and there's no window.

Week 39: Devout

2011-07-01T23:51:00.003+10:00

Do we suffer dreamers

as we do indifference...

Is there the voice of a heart,

within our ardent ideals,

A space for the grace of doubt

upon the towers of our convictions.

Or are we digging trenches

for an impending war,

shackled by fear,

masking our weaponry

beneath cloaks of benevolence.

For I am that martyr devout,

bound in child built chains,

drawing burdened breath,

Lifting my eyes beyond

the shelter of my deprivations.

Cerebral confusions, Sorrowful delusions,

Oh to search past all this weariness,

Where in truth, the landscape bears no chaos

and freedom needs no earning.

Week 38: Magnificent

2011-06-24T09:55:00.003+10:00

I've been grasping for the roots

of a timeless tender part of me,

Beneath the weight of masks imposed,

Juxtaposed against an arid earth,

Parched and pleading through the hurt.

Looking back through wiser eyes,

The patterns did repeat,

Self-fulfilling prophecies

built but an empty street,

With alleys of broken parts,

hidden and channeling rain,

To cleanse, to fill

a hollow habitat.

It percolates...

A barricade of fantasy,

Woven around a heart,

Is but a means to cope

with the ache of each beat,

when eyes trained to lack,

lock the mind in struggle,

a palette of demons,

reducing life

to survival.

To this place I have come,

Under the honesty of the sun,

To sense gain from every toil,

As old pages turn to soil,

Here my child does sow,

A grace I have come to know,

To shed the skin of a martyr

and feel... magnificent...

Week 37: Alive

2011-06-15T22:35:00.002+10:00

How long we ventured...

with fear encumbered,

Pleasantry masquerading,

our deepest desparations.

Somehow tonight

the fabric is torn

and we are born

into...

This moment in time, a dream alive,

As doubt dissolves , our eyes collide,

lips and whispers caress undulating skin

with tender abandon,

Uncovering the borders of our smiles

between shores of silence.

You rest upon chambers,

Forgetful of its bruises,

Only knowing

of its beating.

through...

The depths of you.

Week 36: Burst Apart

2011-06-12T21:55:00.005+10:00

I cover the windows and wonder,

In murky whispers, If all ceases to exist

Beyond these abstractions I weave

in daydreams scribbled on paper,

Beauty preserved in pristine fiction

as I trace old shadows on new walls.

For does my tenderness contort upon release,

Weigh heavy upon the ears of each muse,

Drawing suspicion with unveiled words,

Like an open door to an empty core.

There is much ache I spill to the ground,

By my own hand in its confusion,

Leaning on false walls of fortitude,

Deducing what love is not.

Where lies the art to burst apart...

With tendons too tired to move

From stitches sewn so long ago

and a yearning to be known.

Week 35: Fugue

2011-05-30T11:27:00.005+10:00

These weary old foundations

contain me no more,

I'm leaving all concrete behind,

To tunnel towards the core.

There is a paper trail of

a language obsolete,

For in this pulsing earth,

wordless truths replete...

a wondrous collision

with the arms of time,

unravels the cocoon

I did my self entwine.

For here we are not...

Pale ghosts in the distance,

Painted across as a canvas,

Preserved in muted colours.

Here we wield the brush,

Not as an existential burden,

But to express all possibility.

Joyously unknowing

of any future.

Week 34: Deeper Still

2011-05-24T20:39:00.004+10:00

Source: http://pixtream.samolinov.com/

I'm excavating the autumn sky,

Past my cloudy conclusions.

The street pulses footsteps,

Yours yet to arrive.

I am trembling hopeful,

You are achingly beautiful,

I'm twisting on beams of the sun,

You don't believe, but It's your sun.

I recognise those weary outlines,

Those sketches of old storylines,

In a morbid dance with suspicion,

Fearing with such devotion.

I'm grasping for words to explain,

The depths of my past refrain,

All those tangles in my heart,

the truths thought tore apart.

For I long to know everything,

Be given a part without a script,

To speak from the very depths,

For the end comes too soon.

Week 33: Entropy

2011-05-17T00:33:00.001+10:00

A retreat tendency, a deepening fiction,

I dream of every daylight collision,

Yet do I orchestrate this illusion,

Or I am the bright night's possession?

Drifting towards the thought of you.

What are you running from?

As you twist between

the agony and beauty

of fantasy.

The loss of a beautiful start,

The confrontation of so many

"impossibilities",

bellied in the chaos of a mind,

Afraid of the unknown actual,

safe in mediocrity,

In silence...

No more

Week 32: Guest Rooms

2011-05-09T18:08:00.003+10:00

We've been running around for miles,

Armed with passion and wild ideas,

Peeling the skin from old lies

in a bid to feel new again.

Percolating window sunlight,

Reveling in our child eyes.

Till mighty thunder rolls

through our tired embraces.

We'll trace the streets for signs

Of a spark that brought us here,

Cover ourselves with the songs

that once swept our fears aside.

Our days are dissolving love,

I lose sleep to the sound of,

Our dreams beating against,

the walls of guest rooms.

Where to from here

I'm tired of running....

Week 31: Colour

2011-04-28T16:09:00.003+10:00

As you wave while leaving,

There's a voice in me pleading,

Don't fade, don't drift away,

I've no pockets left for memory,

For this warmth feels new

and I've no patience

with my silence.

Thoughts toy with notions of illusion,

Precluding every percolation of intuition

That weave you into a harbored dream,

seamlessly blending beautiful intentions

into possibilities long banished from my heart.

For you shared a dream that resonates

with such sincere frequency,

The child in my bones leapt

from its chambers to embrace you,

Relieved with its release,

settling into your soft voice

as the rest of me listened.

These trickles of doubt that thought provokes,

If it's just my eyes enamoured by your face,

if my mind fills in lonely spaces with fiction,

Well disguised delusions.

Yet I stand here surer than I've ever been,

Sensing that thought has never had a place

in these conversations of connection,

For it defies explanation,

Why do I sense that I have held you,

In a dream, In a time yet to exist,

On land our feet are yet to touch.

I feel no need for defense

as I unravel and take a chance.

The borders are yours to draw,

For I long both to know and be known,

Where together we'll colour our days.

Week 30: Boy

2011-04-22T14:07:00.004+10:00

You erupt from a valley of silence,

"These streets suffer dreamers,

I've grown enough to sow

my own fertile ambitions

into a different earth,

free of these preclusions,

My bones hungry for the sun

and not its rippling reflections."

These walls were never built to contain,

I've fallen from your heaven my son,

To a shadow of your towering hero,

Raw and vulnerable, all scars exposed,

Of course there is a world beyond us,

A whole flow of opportunity at your feet.

Yet if you should ever find the world cold,

Unreceptive of your brave intentions,

These arms and ears are full of love,

A sanctuary for each resurgence,

as you carry responsibility unlike Atlas.

We'll always be boys my son,

Our fault is only in forgetting,

That we are as tender as we were,

beneath these heavy bones.

Powerful in our innocent lullabies,

In awe of each and everything

and its part in who we are

and who will be.

Week 29: Civilian

2011-04-12T07:02:00.003+10:00

I don't pretend I know my thoughts,

I'm turning corners bent for me,

With pockets for second hand dreams

and weary feet under neon beams,

I am cold upon miles of concrete.

What am I going to do?

Please, Please tell me!

About this routine malaise,

This twisting turbulent haze

That fills my innards with dread,

as I'm compressed into silence

and converge with indifference.

Somewhere this world overwhelmed,

A child's fantasy turned bitter with truth;

With the rearing of relentless teeth

and incisions into unsuspecting skin.

Cosy thoughts of a wife and child,

I've painted their tender portraits

with a palette of joy...

and I hold, I hold them dear,

In pockets of sleep

where I see clearly.

Upon wake, I breathe and walk on,

In service to some obscure survival,

A fear entrenched into my blood.

Am I but a ...

A kafkaesque cliche,

a caricature of a man,

An existential crisis

unfolding

in an empty

alleyway.

Curb

2011-04-02T18:51:00.002+11:00

The night is young and secluding

I'm seated on a curb under a streetlight.

Picking at thoughts like an open wound.

----------------------------------------------------------

" Well, spare me your fortunate pity,

If it so happens that love has no echo,

Then love lie down.

These once beautiful spaces

have weakened my foundations.

Cleanse your traces from my senses.

Then I am a man spared from myself.

Tonight my dreams are in your halo,

Man made sodium moon,

Illuminating, heralding,

the flicking of a switch,

The bravery of emptiness

amidst the cold wind's embrace.

Week 27: Pioneers

2011-03-26T18:03:00.003+11:00

The lofty dreams you have for us

Are walled by your own naivety,

For while you may forge new paths

and inspire the hopes of many

To survive and persist.

You detest man's innner animal

and seek to refine the inextricable,

To tame a beast into subervience,

To wipe the stains off ancient clay.

We seek to strive and revel in escape,

Feeding our indulgence without refrain,

Yet we dread those journeys inward,

Into the depths of our heart's silent cries.

Week 26: Cocoon

2011-03-07T23:21:00.002+11:00

For while words are the foundation of my soul's expression,

They lay tangled in wait for coherent articulation,

Hiding through these mechanical days,

Only to build towers of emotion

as this hampered heart

understands itself.

For what is it that we call a heart?

Is it not a space in our consciousness?

In which the creation and perception

of all cosmic beauty resides?

These walls and distinctions!

I sense that thought is a prisoning cocoon.

So often when my senses are

in a state of suspension,

I realise...

To perceive beauty, is beauty in itself.

Week 25: Broadcast

2011-02-27T11:40:00.002+11:00

Some imagined freedom, harboured inward.

Vinyl on repeat, I am the needle,

Scraping the surface, past waking hours,

Deep into saccharine sound,

A rebel voice, a jungle beat,

Loosing skin, gaining sight,

Unashamed and Unconfused,

Half awake but all alive

I'm a broadcast for two,

Where are you?

Week 24: Midnight

2011-02-20T17:43:00.005+11:00

Not privy to your elliptical affections,

Left standing in a fading opal light,

You're dissecting my intentions,

I offer no resistance.

I'm shapeless, I'm human clay,

Would you have it ...any other way?

A congress in your wounded heart

conspires to tear mine apart.

Set yourself free, flee the scene,

A cautioning moonlit whisper,

But I'll remain and you'll unfold,

For you aren't your armour,

you aren't your armour.

Thomas Solberg Andersen

Knots

2011-02-18T08:55:00.002+11:00

Sleeping hearts breed disease,

Hope rests not on weary knees,

The symptom of our inward eyes,

A thread we fail to recognise.

The pattern runs through our fragile plight,

As substance so often escapes sight.

The true sophistication of currency,

the exposition of our insolvency.

These knots we tie unknowing

of the segregation they herald.

Awaken,realise,

Action release.

Atrophy

2011-02-07T10:56:00.005+11:00

Station platform Sunday morning,

Gaze tracing shimmering tracks.

I'm deep in her silent lament,

Grasping for signs of life.

She's up in the clouds,

Consorting with splinters of self,

Voicing visions of an implosion,

As I stand here by her shadow.

Is my care but pestilence

to this dark embrace?

I am roaming outside

these borders you lay.

Of what use are my pleas and declarations,

Behind that mask and beneath your skin,

Lie your truths and deepest deprivations,

Yet therein lies a choice to let me in.

The best dreams

are built on ruin.

Her eyes search mine

As the train in furious arrival,

fills our air with smoke.

Source

Week 21: Downtown

2011-01-28T23:03:00.004+11:00

A collision of wind and rain

weaving through the air tonight.

Our star fueled ambitions

teasing through a neon haze.

Were we like this too?

Painted drunken blue.

Wasting our days in our minds,

Television religion, tethered to rent.

Painting sky castles on soiled walls,

Middle fingers reserved for politicians,

our angst kept us violent and warm.

Chasing some notion of love

in backrooms and day dreams,

This city is a spiral of illusions

twisting with our pretensions.

Those were savage days downtown,

As Sam said, "you wake or you drown"

We traced our shadows that night,

Watched old ghosts take flight.

Kim Bugaard

Week 20: Slow Strum

2011-01-24T17:47:00.003+11:00

A slow strum of invisible strings,

Tethered to the vapours, he sings.

" I think i'm ruined, I'm out of spark;

I'm painting my smiles in the dark.

Tonight all the wine is mine,

In resplendent illusion I will shine."

Arched and calm upon a comfort chair,

Revisiting himself in some forgotten lair.

" I'm a bursting cloud with a shower of hope,

Replete with the daring of raindrops

that fall perilously into the unknown.

One day I will be the heart of a river flow."

Week 19: Transit

2011-01-14T00:02:00.003+11:00

Between clouds and corridors,

Transitory tapestries,

Captures of junctures,

a constellation of emotion,

strewn across my mind's eye.

A thousand days melding

into story satellites,

Beaming reflections,

as I release possessions

into the care of strangers.

Such hospitable sterility,

As I wander between realities,

In these hives of migration,

these pauses prior destination.

Papa,

Fragile, inebriated, mystery,

We parted through glass,

Years later I woke,

To the lessons you lived.

My frail attempts to love,

Exposed in fluorescent limbo,

Crumbling self effacement,

Tethered to fear.

And for years,

As I'd watch these planes take off,

A hunger for a home would seep in,

Only I see now,

No place , no structure can fulfill,

For home is beneath my skin.

Week 18: Rain

2010-11-20T23:15:00.002+11:00

There's something about the slow cascade of rain,

the ashen clouds releasing ascended tears,

to nurture the parched intentions

of wanderers far below.

Shadows and reticence,

These shivers in shelters from the strain

of these journeys towards honesty.

Stumbling through lonesome corridors,

in seek of some golden ground.

I'll descend from the comfort of my reasons,

Before I lose my sense to feel,

Let me fall to be of use

with no mind to where I'll land.

Like these raindrops,

Bold with purpose,

Unknowing.

Week 17: These Dreams

2010-11-08T19:44:00.004+11:00

In a dream I was releasing

the doubts that have been keeping

me from you.

In a flood through mental trenches

No trace of hollow futures,

held on to.

I felt so free...

Free, to tell you how I feel.

Through my eyelids daylight streaming,

A kaleidoscopic orange beaming,

I'm next to you.

Across old streets our feet are tracing,

my words your ears embracing,

Something new.

No longer worried...

Worried and unworthy.

There's no space for disbelieving,

These bridges built while sleeping,

To be closer to you.

Week 16: Halcyon

2010-11-01T18:23:00.003+11:00

I don't know what I'm seeing,

Your glow or a ghost fleeing

from an earful of reasons,

a mind buried in old treasons.

In dreams I render to perfection,

You against a setting African sun,

Where bliss is a swan dive into

your smiling eyes, the depths of you.

There's sweetness in this distance,

Safety in this halcyonic existence,

Tracing your delicate ascension,

Past this towering apprehension.

Till I can suppress no more,

Lean my ladder against your window,

Will you come down?

How have you ever let love in?

I've so often let doubt win.

For now it would seem,

You're my favourite daydream.

Source: peytonoriginal.com

Week 15: Forget

2010-10-21T00:41:00.013+11:00

Late night collisions with apparitions,

like feverous winters precipitate,

the sweat and the heartache,

Everything I've wanted to forget.

My father's struggle in dreams I render,

A faceless man broken asunder,

in the depths of his bleak ocean,

Our arms stretched at the periphery,

devotion unheard our eyes dimmed.

The bonds we form seem destined to

bring us hope then tear it down,

For I let them in and let them win

those weary games we played,

Everyone I've wanted to forget.

First love a twin shadow silhouette,

A moon blessed escape from solitude,

After daybreak reveals the precipice,

I don't want to believe or be in love.

After yearsI've come to see,

My timid surrender to memory,

Painting with that palette so bleak,

a vision of life so full of strife.

For to forget,

is to feign indifference

to the lessons of experience,

To submit oblivious of irony,

to a life of mere remembrance.

To let go

is to see what was

as the whispering winds that

brought me to this shore.

Source

Week 14: Sustain

2010-10-11T20:02:00.002+11:00

Emerge from the confines of my longing,

Passionately kiss these abandoned lips.

Encircle me, bridge these melancholy spaces,

Melt into me, my companion in silky shadows.

Take a step back and dive into my thoughts,

Love and fear them, please embrace them.

Your eyes may never long for me in the light.

--------

Wretched longing borne from naivety,

Wisdom ought to thwart your existence,

But I am a man with much love in my heart,

It swells and dies, homeless in these chambers.

Yet it is perpetually reborn in a failing organ.

---------

Her eyes, hide her perforated heart,

Her smile, a polite disguise.

She has dreams for humanity,

But her soul is a lonely space.

-----------

Let me peek into the truth of who you are,

I intend no fix but a chance at understanding.

Why we float our hearts into distant skies,

We meet only in cosmic confusion.

Is the love around us so weak?

The earth is parched but our wells are full

We pour and wearily refill.

Perhaps our existence is hinged,

On this unending journey,

And even if our paths do not cross,

Our dreams will sustain us.

Week 13: The Weight of the World

2010-10-04T22:01:00.005+11:00

The sun beat heavy down on us,

Sweating our sap from our pores,

Soles pressing the earth for a home,

For our weary ears are still drowned in

The sound of thunder

in the arms of men.

Our child is dying and we can barely sleep,

His loving mother, My grieving wife,

His aching body on my guilty back,

I have brought him into suffering,

The fields are not for him to play.

Women weep in march and men breed anger,

Amidst the palms and blue ocean shore,

The sound of thunder in the arms of men.

Oh Atlas,

We're brothers in burden,

This migration empties me,

We walk these ruinous paths to peace,

Knowing we'll never reach.

Honore Daumier - The Burden, aka Washerwoman with Load

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Week 12: Fire Inside

2010-09-27T22:41:00.005+10:00

Within lies a flickering flame,

In defiance of dousing rain,

A beautifully delicate glow,

Shadowing a murky undertow.

The preservation of illumination

in lanterns of bold construction,

Of essence to the art of perseverance,

As hope is lost with your disappearance.

My weary hands are cupped upon my chest,

To protect the chambers in which you rest,

For one day you will be a fire and set alight

The wicks of withered souls who fear the night.

Week 11: Morning Mirror

2010-09-20T00:08:00.010+10:00

An abstract man before me,

Sifting through the cacophony,

His eyes are the very borders

that reduce his existence

into an image in a mirror.

" To see that I am not a flawed reflection,

that an image of self is a conflicting notion.

For is life not in perpetual motion?

If so, how could I ever conclude?

That I know another, that I know myself?

Why ought there be fear in this?

Not knowing.

Seeing life as a movement,

Everything new in actuality.

Only old in catacomb thought.

Or is there comfort in this image I've held,

Of a man that clings to his loneliness,

Perceiving himself as being a victim somehow,

Passionate but only loved from a distance,

Honest but often lacking receiving ears,

Finding solace in imagining some pristine love.

Intellectually ridiculous, romantically delicious.

Is this the poverty of this limitation

A misguided inclination.

For what of love Shanil

if all you see is a fragmented image.

No assurances to the contrary

will ever amount.

For only you can see what is,

Is it not you speaking through me?

Week 10: A Warrior Life

2010-09-13T07:44:00.006+10:00

"If this voice is but a whisper through wounds,

Let it not speak of sorrow's weakening grip,

Lest our vulnerable hearts be reduced,

To mere tomes of remembrance.

Let it speak of the opportunity that arises,

The quiet intensity and brave vulnerability,

Searing through skin with a liberty flare,

Illuminating every crevice with insight.

For If today makes but a single appearance,

and every caprice bears consequence,

How can we afford these distractions?

Our minds tethered to illusions of eternity.

I speak to you of a warrior life

that entails no bloodshed

but an armoury of awareness.

A life where there is splendor in the unknown

and fear is but an indolent abstraction.

A life so serenely in tune

with each cascading moment.

A life in which love is a trivial word.

For our devotion to each other is innate,

etched into the very marrow of our being.

A life in which I am not a mere dreamer,

painting words across a canvas of hope,

But a speaker of the simplest truths

as they echo through my eager ears."

"Splendeur Du Matin" by James Feng

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Week 9: An Insular Life

2010-09-05T11:15:00.005+10:00

Their faces like shells in the ocean,

Lost in the withering light of day.

In service to our study of war,

in this age of illumination.

There is no utility in despair,

The hubris of man is only a constant

in the marrow of an insular life.

Chained to boundless acquisition

to satiate a void in purpose.

There has always been choice,

between submission and action.

Will our children inherit loss as we have?

Or will we give them compassionate eyes

To see beauty in this world we live in?

What will teach their curious minds

If we merely perpetuate what has been?

For as we gently fade out of sight,
We reflect on our time in the light.

Week 8: Maudlin Years

2010-08-30T00:16:00.004+10:00

Source

There's no one holding my hand,

On my own feet I stand,

Lighting shadows

out of prominence.

The words of the past,

Were wrapped in maudlin cast,

Most necessary articulation

of a heart's precipitation.

Father is yesterday's tragedy,

Mother is a legacy of survival,

Sister is shielded young

and I,

Stand weary at a crossroad,

with a pocket of old dreams.

I feel a strange longing,

For someone to feel upon touch,

The history of these hands,

It's journeys through,

The hardest of rocks,

The softest of sands.

The hands of a sculpture,

through maudlin years defined.

Not a scratch out of place

and each crack beckons grace.

Week 7: Wheel (No Longer)

2010-08-22T08:48:00.007+10:00

The glow of daylight spins out of my heart,

Spilling memories on to a canvas of the past.

Brush strokes wild and mild unleashed,

Telling a colourful story of little significance.

In passive rotation, submitting to the end of my time,

I am an ethereal wanderer, no longer a wheel,

As I was forever ago, dreading tomorrow.

But what is time to me now?

It is but a futile filing mechanism.

The colour of emptiness is beautifully indescribable,

I am an ethereal wanderer, no longer a wheel

shackled to a spectrum of sharp contrasts.

Mephistopheles may swoop from any direction,

With intoxicating memories and an inheritance

of loss and vanity that plant me to the ground,

But I cannot be caught, no longer will I submit.

I am an ethereal wanderer, no longer a wheel,

Those borders were never real.

Source

Week 6: Half Light

2010-08-14T20:39:00.007+10:00

Through those tunnel years,

I thought I'd never survive,

Dreaming of some opposite shore,

For some beauty to believe in.

In the half light of an autumn day,

I woke from years of melancholy,

To see the walls I built

with my victim hands

crumble in my mind,

A beautiful collapse

as light flooded in.

For to live as a mere individual

is a sorrowful abstraction,

To live in the shadow of thought,

is a limitation of all possibility.

Source

Help me empower Zatuba Village in Malawi

Week 5: Optimistic

2010-08-05T22:57:00.004+10:00

Crashing through the barricades,

Virtue circling our heads,

young beacons of rebellion.

We are asked how we remain,

Optimistic in the face of emptiness.

They say the writing's on the wall,

Hope is but a fool's indulgence,

candle light in fluorescent night.

And inside our cubicaled monotony,

Drawn into television illusions,

Dreaming of some splendor

beautiful and far away.

And here we are,

Building peace on foundations of war,

Governed by persistent contradictions,

Deepening an existential abyss

that we might as well call home.

Yet we are still optimistic,

This is no sane delusion,

No fanciful hope,

Born in desperation.

It is vigilance,

In seeing our capacity

for both brutality and compassion.

It is fragility,

In being vulnerable to all that we are,

In sharing ourselves, free of deception.

It is humility,

In accepting that our time is not ours,

It is a window of opportunity

to be part of the universe.

Let us not call this hope,

We need not an armory of dreams,

Only the eyes to see our choices,

An inward revolution to see the world anew.

Source:

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Week 4: Children

2010-07-29T00:35:00.006+10:00

Source

Our little feet,

Pressed to the pulse of the savannah,

We wander through with animated glow,

Parting through lengths of golden grass,

The sun mirrors our heart's intensity.

The rivers of our imagination flow,

Without the restraint of thought,

Brimming with vitality,

Abandoning all notions of time,

We are our sincere selves.

Contented, we sit across the mulberry tree,

Deep purple and red stains across our faces,

We laugh as Sounder barks with disapproval,

Unable to join us on the branches above.

My mother's voice fills the air with urgency,

We hurry home, through the grass, scale the fence,

She is not impressed with our state,

We can only smile as we hurry through lunch.

We return,

A rock protrudes over the edge of the hill,

We lie down, our bellies full and our eyes sleepy,

The hills beyond, the clouds above, have unusual shapes,

We name them between moments of sleep

As a gentle breeze caresses.

The sky is streaked with deep red

as we light our evening fire,

Our voices full of song,

Faces empty of fear,

Our hearts in tuneful yearning,

For the fruits of the morrow.

Support Zatuba Village in Malawi

Week 3: Intangible Sun

2010-07-20T07:54:00.006+10:00

Blood drop heavy on my weary brow,

the wells of wounds old allow,

a tired gathering of fear,

in vessels wishing to persevere.

Life with a sentimental sheen,

A reluctant run, no pillar to lean.

Each tragic figure bears my face,

A shadow cut from light's embrace.

To the cold disconnect I'd surrender,

Our collective hearts buried under,

The rubble of self delusion,

in constant seek of completion,

Our poverty is the soul's seclusion.

Through the cracks of affliction,

The warm glow of an intangible sun,

Filters through my weary plight,

Like sunrise after years of night.

My clutch to name no longer,

Nameless I am free of bind,

To weave with sincerity,

A life of love and purpose,

Once obscured by memory.

May we all transcend our mortal fixation,

And fill to the brim, the long neglected.

I am both the drop and the mysterious sea,

Within lies a sun that illuminates me.

Week 2: Particle Dream

2010-07-13T20:27:00.005+10:00

The dreams of children lying on the floor,

Hang from the cracks of their hardened hearts,

In seek of compassionate hold,

To enliven their imagination,

Into sparkling truth.

I oft dream of a field glorious

and an indiscriminate warmth of light,

We are all particles in its dreamy beam,

Our unions and collisions

Are the symphony of the universe,

Where spaces have meaning

and time is an antiquated delusion.

Split between dream and wake,

I am conscious of my bodily shell,

My grip to identity and its acceptance,

A mess of labels and insecurity,

A face with the scars of history.

In truth I have no name,

Your eyes will never see me,

Mine unable to trace your beauty,

For we are more than peripheral.

I hope this one truth can be felt,

Then in light we'd float beside,

With little fear of future plight.

Until the sound dictates our parting,

I am your adoring particle.

Week1: Colony

2010-07-07T00:59:00.007+10:00

The fury in his head spoke

Across this ocean and many more,

They came forth, pale and ruthless,

Bearing the force of thunder and piety,

Putting end to our supposed savagery

through the privilege of slavery,

in sanguine service to their plunder,

rebellious bones torn asunder.

The sorrow in his heart sang

They hurried for gold

Our ancestry sold,

Left us mere residue.

We carried our chains,

Still mourn the remains,

Of what used to be.

They with regret say forget,

memories with horror beset,

For today we are equals.

Yet I know not of the future,

For I know not of a home,

only a colony remains.

His brother speaks....

Dear Brother,

Let us not speak of fury

but of our collective futility,

In abstractions dividing humanity,

In victim states and perpetual hate

and our part in its crippling grip.

Let us look neither forward nor back

but intensely at ourselves in the present

as we watch these waves at night.

For don't you see?

We all belong to the earth,

Not it...to us.

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Indivisible

2010-02-04T19:30:00.006+11:00

As the morning light permeates this skin,

A voice bursts through the silence of these years,

Free from burdening remembrance and crippling fear,

Soaring with passionate purpose through the atmosphere.

Life is the universe in motion

and our division is but a mental affliction,

For the cosmos fuels our daily embrace,

We are its sculpted energy, its very face.

Our freedom remote from disparaging eyes,

We must transcend meticulous individual disguise.

For conflict is a perilous pattern repeating,

Through lines of separation so self-defeating.

For though love colours our daily diction,

In expression it is mired with contradiction.

Tightrope sleepwalker,

Witness, victim and offender,

Questions simmer inside,

Can these walls we build subside?

Can our lives transcend mere survival

and our consciousness know no interval?

May surface cover core no more,

This voice is but a corridor,

To the depths of all possibility,

where all fragments are illusory.

Indivisible
Larry Poncho Brown

Reason

2010-01-25T20:28:00.014+11:00

Oh citizens of reason...

For too long have we been witness

to the inequities that grip this land,

Thriving like weeds upon the fertility

of our collective unconsciousness.

I speak not of prolonged naivety

but of elevation from individuality,

an end to the lines of separation

that dictate our daily division.

No longer can we cast a finger

and in games of blame linger.

For our actions so oft contradict

and espoused virtues lie derelict.

For our leaders are of our ilk,

Fashioned by our collective hands

and animated by tame surrender,

Turned ruthless by our apathy.

For progress is not hinged on

the hollow charisma of politicians

But on the passion of men and women,

yearning to breathe life to their potential.

Dear citizen,

Opportunity never leaves

your capable hands.

Of War and Victory

2009-06-02T10:25:00.003+10:00

On the streets people herald a new era,

In a carnival of patriotic euphoria,

The fangs of the tiger we bred,

Removed by popular bloodshed.

Strangers in a troubled isle,

Thrust in to decades of exile,

The victims have no voice,

No belonging, no choice.

The poverty of migration,

in a long fractured nation.

How can we speak of unity?

When war is but a flame expunged,

And the fuel lies in the hearts of us all,

Protected by ignorance and nurtured by pride.

How can we speak of progress?

When we are blind to the roots of prejudice,

When our minds fail to detect,

The guile of opportunistic heroes

and their verbal charades.

And what are we?

If the love we preach is not for all,

If we indulge in victory after war,

If the separation of our kith and kin,

Is an all but necessary sin.

Sri Lanka,

You are yet to be free.

I will never be the son of a nation,

I see no purpose in such a fabrication.

My life is and will be an expression

Of my soul's desire to explore

Every possibility to better this world,

Regardless of inching progress

or the finite nature of my existence.

Africa: Chinese Imperialism?

2008-06-24T08:11:00.005+10:00

In the wake of China's increasing stature as an economic and political force, concerns over its role in Africa are increasing. Africa has arguably been the greatest victim of colonial rule. The continent as a whole is viewed by many in the political establishment as being the world's "problem child". Of course there are many that feel that Africa's problems are largely its own, it's inability to translate its vast resources into meaningful development. It is the land of dictators and regimes, of famine and genocide. "This is the real Africa" ...apart from the Safaris of course.

Having grown up on the continent, my opinion is not so neutral, though I can't honestly say that my childhood experiences are sufficient to entitle me to a real strong, factual view. Thus I rely primarily on what I have read and heard.

On the evidence, it seems clear that China is rapidly expanding its influence in Africa to secure access to natural resources, to expand Beijing's political influence, and even to increase its international commercial markets through generous but self-serving diplomatic, financial, and military assistance. Chinese policies are also troubling, especially when they support authoritarian African regimes, hinder local economic development, and exacerbate conflicts and human rights abuses in countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe. - Heritage

Of course the counter-argument would be that this is all an inflammatory response to the fact that the Western world feels threatened as China is fast usurping its role as Africa's financier. Those who are "Pro-China in Africa" argue that there are mutually beneficial interests at stake. China proposes its economic model to many African nations as an alternative to the free market. Furthermore, Chinese investment often comes with fewer strings attached, they don't come with moral sermons, the enforcement of "democratic ideals" and so forth. In fact it's business that counts and China believes it is stimulating growth and development in Africa.

"We might see the Chinese political system appealing to a lot of states whose elites and regimes are more in line with that sort of thinking," said Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. "It's really a conflict of two systems, one based on regime security and the other, almost Western, which talks of human security - good governance and human rights."
- International Herald Tribune

Like most things in reality, there is truth and falsehood to all this. The truth is that China has in fact invested unprecedented levels of capital into Africa. Sino-African trade has never been so high. Oil Investments (Sudan, Congo, Angola), Iron Ore (South Africa), Platinum (Zimbabwe) and Copper (Zambia) are a few notable examples.

Chinese investments have an advantage over the West in that most are through state-owned companies whose individual investments do not have to make a profit so long as they serve overall Chinese objectives - World Socialist Website

So what you say? They are trading, Africa needs investors, they need development. I am in complete agreement, but at what cost and is there real development? Is it development when a nation's resources are exclusively drilled, excavated by foreign interests? When Chinese labour and exports flood their markets and threaten local labour and product/service markets? But above all....is it development when these handouts and these deals are conducted with internationally deplored regimes e.g. Bashir in Sudan and Mugabe in Zimbabwe?

I would say no to all. An added dimension to this purported multi-faceted opportunism by China is the fact that Africa, with over 50 nation states, constitutes a very significant significant bloc of the UN. Some argue that this could do much to serve China's interest in UN matters, particularly with regard to the recognition of Taiwan.

In light of all of this, I find it hard to envision China's role in Africa as being honest let alone altruistic. Although China is often cynical of Western practice and claims to adopt a softer, less invasive approach to development and trade...is it really?

Robert Mugabe: “We look again to the East, where the sun rises, and no longer to the West, where it sets.” - World Socialist Website

Could China be proud of supporting Mugabe's regime, one that is reviled not just by the West but by the rest of the world. It's not just dirty politics, it's a case of people being oppressed and killed. Is expanding resources, being "Anti-West" really all that matters in the light of people starving and dying.

Which brings me to China's military involvement.

China has become more forthright in its arms sales in line with its growing economic influence. It sold an estimated $1 billion worth of arms to Ethiopia and Eritrea during their border conflict between 1998 and 2000, comparable to the US selling arms to both sides during the Iran-Iraq war. It has also sold arms to both Zimbabwe and Sudan whilst they have been under Western arms embargoes, and has sold helicopters to Mali and Angola, arms to Namibia and Sierra Leone, and army uniforms to Mozambique. World Socialist Website

China is supposed to have provided the Mugabe regime with jet fighters and surveillance equipment to keep track of the opposition movement.

More specifically, South African President Thabo Mbeki recently cautioned that China risks replicating in Africa a "colonial relationship" of the kind that existed under white rule. - Heritage

I concur. What I see is a series of amoral, often self-serving transactions. The money that comes in often lands in the hands of oppressive regimes or corrupt politicians. Sure, Africa is of strategic interest...but must it be raped of the little dignity it has left? I agree that African leaders enable this process. But China, as a global political and economic power...shoulders much of the blame. Their objective of being an alternative to Western dominance and malpractice is merely rooted in supplanting their dominance with its own. I make no reference to either side, East or West being right....they are essentially the same demon from a different direction...and Africa is the perpetual loser. Moving from one imperial power, to the next...

Over and Out,
Shanil

Terror

2008-06-08T11:14:00.002+10:00

Oh terror is a cycle

Upon which the opportunistic prey.

Our liberties subject to open exchange.

Enslavement to fear for our security,

A fear that suckles terror's teat.

Praise be to the puppeteers

Who dangle visible strings

To put on a show of good and evil,

For masses who applaud and jeer,

A most generous theatrical distraction.

Forgive me but let me detract from this play,

Ask a valid question if I may,

We are told of malicious forces that persist,

But pray, how do these bombs ever come to exist?

Stateless

2008-05-26T00:46:00.001+10:00

"Stateless" is a short film I made in June 2007 based on my time working with war refugees in Eastern Sri Lanka. This is a shortened version of the film and is meant to serve as a visual showcase of the plight of these people in their own homeland, at the mercy of their Government and the armed terrorist group that claim to be struggling for their freedom.

Shanil

Helping Burma

2008-05-08T08:18:00.013+10:00

It's been on global headlines for days now. The Cyclone Nargis has devastated Burma. The scene is tragic and is unfolding much like the 2004 Tsunami did in Sri Lanka. I recall the mass emails, the frantic phone calls and the desperate aid efforts. The numbers are recited like cattle and adjusted on an hourly basis, from hundreds to thousands. There are estimates that the loss of life in Burma could be on a scale over a 100,000....

If the Tsunami is something to go by: Clean Water, Basic Shelter, Dry Rations and Clothing are amongst the most critical aid requirements.

There are also fears that the crisis will result in further inflated food prices (rice) that could affect survivors of the crisis even further. One can only hope that the Junta opens its doors before its too late...

Source: NY Times

The flooding is extensive and the already basic infrastructure. has been severely damaged. Worse yet the Military Junta is intent on maintaining rigid immigration control in the midst of this humanitarian crisis. Of course the grounds being that allowing mass entry into Burma (even if with altruistic intent), would result in a loss of control.

For those now in the know here are a few links to news articles:

The Australian

BBC

I received an email from Florian regarding the crisis and his organisation Simple Wisdom has directed some funding to a Swiss friend of his who resided in Burma for 10 years but is now in Switzerland co-ordinating an aid effort. I have made a formal request with regard to the possibility of me organizing some funding from over here. Please contact me at shanil.samarakoon@gmail.com if you'd like to make a contribution

Dear Shanil,

Thank you so much for your caring thoughts and support. At the
bottom of my letter are all the bank details, I will happily send it
again. You can send any currency ...

Yes, i still have many contacts and a good network in place. Depending on how much money we are talking, I will decide, to who to give. There are many ways to bring the money into the country ... through friends,or companies who live there and I can send it to their bank account abroad ....

I am now in contact with people, I want to entrust with the work of distribution etc.At the moment I don't know yet, where to start. They just need everything.

There is alot of international help in the pipeline, but they can not distribute yet. I got through by phone today, for the first time. My direct family are all alive, many friends' destinies unknown. Life circumstances very critical.

There is no water, none. No electricity, and they estimate no electricity for the next 3 months, there are no more trees!, the prices are sky rocketing, there is no rice to buy and it is pouring. There will soon be diseases and robbery ... for life! There are mountains of dead bodies in the Irrawaddy Delta ..... the list does not stop. Most roofs are damaged or non-existent.

A logistical nightmare!
Dear Shanil, I will keep you informed.Thank you for your kind efforts! Burma needs light and hope ....

Take care and best regards,

Sandrina

Update: 25th May

Shanil

Know Thy Rights!

2008-04-08T11:59:00.004+10:00

Last Saturday was an eye opener for me. I had to attend a Human Rights seminar at UNSW as a part of my course requirement for Project Design and Evaluation, a social work elective I'm enrolled in for this semester.

My lack of focus on human rights was astounding. I mean sure I've been an aid worker on and off over the last few years and I've put considerable effort into helping others. But I can honestly say that this was seldom from a rights perspective. It was based more on "need" and "deprivation" of course these strongly correlate with the "concept" (if you will) of rights.

First and foremost I am on a mission. How many of you know your rights? I refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948? I didn't think so...
While the declaration and its classification of rights is debated to this day, I firmly believe that its well grounded and I can now clearly see how it's a clear basis for some sort of human progress, if not survival.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The main criticism leveled has been that it's all culturally relative, human rights that is. While there is some credibility to this argument, the seemingly Western thinking that is supposedly pervasive throughout the document and the various articles it has spawned since...can be viewed from different perspectives. Many feel that there is a mismatch with non-western culture as they tend to be more communal and collectivist in nature, in turn downplaying individual rights. Then there is the whole can of worms that religion opens...

For me, at the risk of sounding like a young pup enticed with a fresh piece of meat. I believe it's all about the quality of life and this is relative ...but these basic human rights, declared and applicable to all UN signatories (though some are part signatories to certain articles). While accountability is still a huge problem in an international context, I look at it more from an education standpoint.

One can't make many generalizations about people and their attitudes towards being beneficiaries to aid and development. However I can definitely see how empowering knowing your rights can be. Entitlements are something that most of the really destitute are totally unaware of and there is a vast majority who feel small and socially unimportant. Educating such people can give them a sense of worth and provide them with an understanding of how we can all work with/against social systems to achieve these rights.

Many who know me well know that I've been a critic of the UN. Of course one cannot deny that its principles and existence in theory is vital...but sadly the reality is that it is run by nations, and most if not all nations are plagued with power-lust and corruption that will always stand in the way of true progress. The only solution, or counter-force....despite being painfully slow...is to educate people at the grassroots and lessen their susceptibility to manipulation.

We speak of our rights candidly...but I urge you to really reflect on the vast consequences and responsibility that it places on us...the minority who enjoy them. Human rights are largely aspirational, there's no doubt about it, it's easy to be cynical...but what good would that achieve?

Shanil

Delusion: The Art of Existence

2008-04-03T10:28:00.007+11:00

I must confess, most people, especially those in the confines of my personal life, think I'm rather negative. Of course this has been largely due to the nature of my upbringing and certain events in my life (at the risk of sounding like your run-of-the-mill angst ridden youth). Moreover, I feel this internalized pessimism towards the world is a result of a realization...that of reality.

I've been quite involved in social development initiatives and I continue to do so. To some it may sound bitterly ironic, that someone who is passionate about bettering humanity is also overtly disappointed with the current state of the world. To others it makes perfect sense because it is that disparity between what we imagine in our hearts ...and what is...that drives us to do something, even if that end destination is never reached...it's still some sort of progress as we see it.

I digress. I came across this rather interesting article online by A.A.Jacobs that was published in Esquire. Jacobs talks of "delusion" being a necessity to cope with reality. He makes reference to a psychological theory called "depressive realism". The theory holds that the clinically depressed tend to have to have a clearer, more accurate perception of reality and the level of control they exert over their existence, none. He goes on to share his own pessimistic viewpoint and how delusion is the only natural way for us to cope as human beings. A stubborn belief , positive perception in order to cope and carve out happiness.

Source: http://staff.washington.edu/xtoph/anth469metro/

Naturally I found this discussion quite fascinating. Having witnessed suffering, both in my soul and the lives of so many others, I can relate to how the depressed have a more focused view of the world. I can see how they are disillusioned because they see disparity, they see how things can be stripped away in the blink of an eye, that nothing is constant. However, one can't deny that people who are depressed are often so for rather insular reasons. Not necessarily the plight of humanity...though it often forms a gloomy backdrop.

So I guess the question is..How does one delude oneself into a positive state of existence when wars rage, people starve and compassion seems to wane? Of course I have no answers. Though I imagine that this would be an internal crisis for many. We as humans try to control every aspect of our lives yet the world has so many ways of countering our arrogance.

So is my inference that happiness is a result of a delusion and sadness a product of reality? As dramatic as that sounds, it's very possible, though I can't claim it is so with total conviction. There's no denying that there are many things in this world, in people, that are inherently beautiful (as relative as it all can be) ...the problem is that it can often feel like a drop in a dark ocean. When one cares, truly cares about the world and all in it...one brings upon a great weight on to his/her shoulders...a weight that causes the bearer to question everything.

And some of us wonder why apathy is such a stagnant obstacle in this world. It's a paradox that we could talk about ceaselessly....but I feel I have voiced my point....I agree with Jacobs...but delusion vs reality is a steep choice for me and I envision choosing the former as disconnecting myself from my heart...as it is inextricably tied with the happiness of others and the welfare of this world as a whole. Am I doomed or am I merely alive t0 reality?

Either way I walk on

Shanil

Pray for Zimbabwe

2008-03-29T13:52:00.003+11:00

As the day that determines Zimbabwe's fate come closer, I can't help but feel a great deal of anxiety. "Why?" one may ask. I am not a Zimbabwean, I live thousands of miles away in Australia, a markedly different country. My memories of Harare and Victoria Falls are non-existent...I was an infant when I went to Zimbabwe.

No. My anxiety does not stem from a personal attachment but rather the disgust I feel towards the suffering that Zimbabwe's people have had to go through. I can't help but parallel it with the plight of my own country, Sri Lanka. Though Sri Lanka is yet to plummet into the economic crisis that has befallen Zimbabwe...politically and socially, I fear the same devils are at play.

Source:www.sokwanele.com

"Mugabe must go". A strong feeling that penetrates the mind of one who sees , understands and empathizes with the nation's people. "The cronyism, the corruption, it has to end", "Make Zimbabwe the bread basket of Africa once more". The sad truth is that it will take decades to restore Zimbabwe to what it was. Removing Mugabe from his stubborn throne will not solve everything but at the very least...it leaves the option of change..of hope open to people who have been struggling for so long. The hope that their alternatives, Tsvangirai and Makoni might save them from further anguish.

My friend Micheal from Zimbabwe is pessimistic, I am too when it comes to Sri Lanka's electoral process. Rigging and intimidation are inevitable and it's seldom a single man who brings this misery to the masses, it's a whole system. But despite everything I can't help but hope that a miracle occurs and allows this bleeding nation to heal itself. For to me it would be a symbol that there is hope for restoration ...not just there but everywhere. ..and that the foul corruptible nature of man can be defeated ..if only in a few instances.

I pray for Zimbabwe.

Photography

2008-02-25T12:37:00.010+11:00

I'm excited, just like anyone else who gets something shiny and new. All my film and photography projects to date have been with borrowed equipment and I've finally got
my own now!I got the beautiful Sony HDR-SR7.

It takes High Definition Video and lovely still shots at a not too shabby 6.1 Mega Pixels. Here are some shots I took over the weekend. Now to spend time on short-film ideas..

The Road Home

Cauldron Sky

Outstretched Warmth

Pink Lilly

Escape

Over and Out,
Shanil

Home

2008-01-28T10:14:00.000+11:00

It's been a few months now since I've written anything here. Not particularly due to a dearth of activity, in fact it's more the opposite. I've been looking for a house/unit to rent for a while now. We seem to have struck gold after a long arduous hunt ...the Empower project goes on...starting to move into full swing...

But all this talk of home has always had me in conflict. What is it exactly? Have I known one? Will I ever? Is it about a collection people? A physical space? Both? If so can one be inhospitable and the other accommodating and still be home?

I for one am at a loss when it comes to what home is. For many it's a simple word that rolls of the tongue on a daily basis, without much thought, without a need to even question it's validity. I guess the main reason for me is the fact that I've had to shift "homes" very often (this would probably be the 12th shift in my 23 years of existence). I'm sure there are many who would consider that nothing...but I think it all leads to the same sort of situation...one in which the concept of home becomes increasingly abstract.

Source: insurancebuddy.com.au

I personally attached a great deal of weariness to the process of moving, re-acclimatizing (be it a new country or a new neighborhood). I guess one tends to romanticize the concept of home when in my shoes...creating a near fantastical expectation; an amalgam of blissful solitude and warm sincerity in the form of loved ones and friends. A place to rest your anchor, a permanent end to migration. I sometimes feel like a boy lost in time, nowadays everyone is on the move.....

My thoughts then drift to the plight of refugees...those of the "home"-less. Do I consider myself one of the latter? Well that would be a rather vain description but I guess that's one way of looking at it. But I feel a latent form of envy when I go through villages, clusters of houses ...that would likely stand there ...forgotten by time...for decades to come....housing the generations to come. Then there are the refugees ..in tents and shelters with only the hauntings of their loss and the seemingly pointless expectation of restoration . The homeless, some embittered by all they lack while others revel in their "freedom".

This all leads me to believe that the concept of a home is something we take for granted in so many ways. I don't speak of the usual guilt trip pertaining to the physical definition of a home...but more the psychological realm. A place to belong, to relax...to let oneself unravel...

Either way..it seems i'm on the cusp of a new era...even if it's on a 6/12 month lease.

"Heroines"

2007-11-18T16:50:00.000+11:00

Source: The New York Times

Servitude

Having a "Servant" is not a really familiar practice in the Western World anymore. Whether this is primarily due to the economic cost (higher labour costs) or the heightened moral awareness that more developed nations espouse and claim to possess...is up for debate.

In Asia and the Middle East (also in Africa from my experience), the idea of having a "servant" is very common. Most Upper-middle class and Upper class families have at least one "servant" to help with the cooking and cleaning. However, my article today is more about the deplorable treatment meted out to immigrant workers ...particularly in the Middle East. My focus is on the plight of Sri Lankan Maids but this often extends to workers from many countries such as the Philippines, Sudan and Ethiopia.

The Driving Force(s)

A little foregrounding is necessary. Sri Lanka is known as "the country of housemaids" in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon (immigrant hot spots). Most Middle Eastern people have no concept of what Sri Lanka is...apart from a source of cheap labour. Sri Lanka on the other hand, due to years of civil war and political mismanagement...has been perpetually sliding on the socio-economic front from its colonial-era success with 1 in every 20 citizens seeking foreign employment (over 1 million). Of this over 660,000 are estimated to be "domestics" - Yahoo, 2007

The sad reality is that successive Sri Lankan Governments have often buttressed this practice and as of late, audaciously labeled these poor women as "heroines". Why? Mainly because they are biggest source of foreign remittances (over a $100 billion in 2003) that the country has, outstripping all agricultural produce in the country (tea, rubber and coconut) . The Domestic Workers, primarily young women, leave due to economic pressures faced in rural Sri Lanka. They make the choice of leaving the country purely for economic reasons, leaving behind their children, husbands and all they've known to be subservient to an Arab master/mistress in an alien land. Most don't know if they will ever come back...or have any family to come back to. A large portion of those who leave (I have personally witnessed so many of them at the Airport in Colombo, nervous and oblivious of their future fate)...come back prematurely...they are considered the lucky ones.

Source: The New York Times

A Foul Business

The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment is the main body in charge of this "asset", with training centers for prospective maids on how to "cook" and "clean" to please their masters/mistresses. These intensive workshops are the government's way of saying "look...we care...go outside and earn money that you can't earn here in our own country". The bitter irony of this is lost on many in Sri Lanka it seems. The Sri Lankan government has typically been mum about the abuse, rape and shameful neglect that these women are forced to endure. I have seldom come across any media coverage of these atrocities by the Government...the only measures they appear to have in place is a "Shelter" for victims. A shameful prescriptive approach...

Immigrant workers, for the most part are treated with utter disrespect in these Middle Eastern nations. My colleague from Simple Wisdom, who worked in Lebanon years back confirmed this...having seen first hand, how miserable most Sri Lankan women were. A hard-hitting documentary called "Maid in Lebanon" on Al-Jazeera was a shocking revelation.

What happens to these women? Most are treated like slaves, with inhumane work hours (over 18 hours a day in a lot of instances), some are locked up inside the homes they work in, most are paid very irregularly and some are brutally beaten and raped. This mind you, is what happens to them at that end. In Sri Lanka ....their families can often fall apart ...divorces are not uncommon due to the fact that the wife isn't there to look after her husband and children (a primary duty of a wife in Sri Lankan society). There are even cases of sexual abuse of children at home by male relatives.

Such is the real fate of the nations "heroines"who sell their lives to survive. There are many suicides that go unnoticed and unreported, an understandable result of the deep depression and disillusionment that these women go through ...stuck in a foreign land (some employers even confiscate passports). Sri Lankan women are typically timid and too tolerant of abuse. The employment agencies that thrive of the trade preach "tolerance" as being the key success factor.

The story of Rizana Nafeek highlights the inhuman treatment that these women are subjected to. At 19 this young girl, whose family lives in abject poverty in Sri Lanka, was given a death sentence for allegedly killing her employer's toddler. A huge outcry over this particular case has failed to provide the poor girl with any relief. The case has been put on hold till the end of November (that was the last I heard).

Source: Telegraph

It's sad that the Sri Lankan Government is so shamefully timid with regard to abuse of its own citizens. It's failings are monstrous....its inability to provide its people with the most basic necessities to survive...and to protect its citizens from abuse . Economics keeps the Government quiet...a ruckus over human rights would simply result in these nations finding a new source of labour...leaving the Govt. with a huge deficit in remittances to make up for. The Middle Eastern Governments are similarly apathetic...seemingly viewing immigrants as social discards that are sub-human...

What a crazy world we live in...it makes me sick how people can be treated so badly...these are mothers, sisters...daughters....

Shanil

Free Rice

2007-11-14T09:16:00.000+11:00

Source. CTV.ca News

Would you believe it, the internet helping relieve hunger in a more constructive way? Well i'm not totally sold yet but I came across FreeRice.com which donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme when a user of their website matches a word with its definition. I gave this a go and I racked up 750 grains in next to no time. The site has recorded millions of grains per day....staggering results when you think about it.

Firms like Apple, Time, Macy's and Toshiba are amongst the big firms that contribute money towards each correct match.

I'm not sold with regard to whether this actually translates into tangible benefits for the hungry. But I must admit it's a fantastic concept ...

Give it a go ...there's nothing to lose after all...

FreeRice has two goals:

Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

http://www.freerice.com/

Over and Out,
Shanil

Rain from Nowhere

2007-11-01T19:26:00.000+11:00

This morning, I was sipping my coffee as usual...switched the T.V. on while I was having my toast...and I came across a really touching poem by the "Bush poet" Murray Hartin. It was on a Channel 9 (Australia) Morning Show called Kerri-Ann and it was certainly worth the watch. Hartin reading his poem and it was brimming with genuine emotion...it captures the plight of a farmer during a bad drought. Drought is a serious problem..not just in Australia but in many parts of the world as weather patterns change drastically...

This piece is wonderful because its simple, genuine and captures the plight of a man reliant on nature for survival...

Rain from Nowhere
by Murray Hartin

His cattle didn’t get a bid; they were fairly bloody poor,
What was he going to do? He couldn’t feed them anymore,
The dams were all but dry; hay was thirteen bucks a bale,
Last month’s talk of rain was just a fairytale.

His credit had run out, no chance to pay what’s owed,
Bad thoughts ran through his head as he drove down Gully Road.
“Geez, great grandad bought the place back in 1898,
“Now I’m such a useless bastard, I’ll have to shut the gate.

“Can’t support my wife and kids, not like dad and those before,
“Crikey, Grandma kept it going while Pop fought in the war.”
With depression now his master, he abandoned what was right,
There’s no place in life for failures, he’d end it all tonight.

There were still some things to do, he’d have to shoot the cattle first,
Of all the jobs he’d ever done, that would be the worst.
He’d have a shower, watch the news, then they’d all sit down for tea
Read his kids a bedtime story, watch some more TV,
Kiss his wife goodnight, say he was off to shoot some roos
Then in a paddock far away he’d blow away the blues.

But he drove in the gate and stopped – as he always had
To check the roadside mailbox – and found a letter from his Dad.
Now his dad was not a writer, Mum did all the cards and mail
But he knew the writing from the notebooks that he used at cattle sales.

He sensed the nature of its contents, felt moisture in his eyes,
Just the fact his dad had written was enough to make him cry.
“Son, I know it’s bloody tough; it’s a cruel and twisted game,
“This life upon the land when you’re screaming out for rain,
“There’s no candle in the darkness, not a single speck of light.

“But don’t let the demon get you, you have to do what’s right;
“I don’t know what’s in your head but push the bad thoughts well away.
“See, you’ll always have your family at the back end of the day;
“You have to talk to someone, and yes I know I rarely did.

“But you have to think about Fiona and think about the kids.
“I’m worried about you, son, you haven’t rung for quite a while,
“I know the road you’re on ’cause I’ve walked every bloody mile.
“The date? December 7 back in 1983,
“Behind the shed I had the shotgun rested in the brigalow tree.

“See, I’d borrowed way too much to buy the Johnson place;
“Then it didn’t rain for years and we got bombed by interest rates.
“The bank was at the door; I didn’t think I had a choice,
“I began to squeeze the trigger – that’s when I heard your voice.

“You said ‘Where are you Daddy? It’s time to play our game’
“I’ve got Squatter all set up, we might get General Rain.’
“It really was that close, you’re the one that stopped me son,
“And you’re the one that taught me there’s no answer in a gun.

“Just remember people love you, good friends won’t let you down.
“Look, you might have to swallow pride and take that job in town,
“Just ’til things come good, son, you’ve always got a choice.
“And when you get this letter ring me, ’cause I’d love to hear your voice.”

Well he cried and laughed and shook his head, then put the truck in gear,
Shut his eyes and hugged his dad in a vision that was clear.
Dropped the cattle at the yards, put the truck away,
Filled the troughs the best he could and fed his last ten bales of hay.
Then he strode towards the homestead, shoulders back and head held high,
He still knew the road was tough but there was purpose in his eye.

He called his wife and children, who’d lived through all his pain,
Hugs said more than words – he’d come back to them again.
They talked of silver linings, how good times always follow bad,
Then he walked towards the phone, picked it up and rang his Dad.
And while the kids set up the Squatter, he hugged his wife again,
Then they heard the roll of thunder and they smelt the smell of rain.

Source: http://www.tyroga.com/