More portage

content/post/2018/01/forging-a-path-into-the-web-of-unknown/index.markdown

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+title =	"Forging a path into the web of unknown"
+date =	2018-01-12
+[[resources]]
+    src = "**O61o9mJWmPm4pxRint1HTw*"
+    name = "header thumbnail"
+    [resources.params.meta]
+        creator = "Benjamin Blättler"
+        sameAs = "https://unsplash.com/photos/J40eheaQ_OE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" # also updates caption
+        license = "https://unsplash.com/license" # attribution not required
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+I stand, hesitant
+
+Before me, the path splits
+
+Splits and splits again, dividing a myriad times
+
+The tangled web of choice pulsates gently
+
+A dull glow, alive and breathing
+
+I glance back, a moment
+
+See the path behind me
+
+Threaded in shining silver
+
+A halo of darkened paths around it
+
+Shriveled tendrils of choices not taken
+
+I tear myself away, return to looking forward
+
+Out over the future in all its perfect, fearful uncertainty
+
+Then, a choice is made, my mind and heart unite — and ignite.
+
+I step
+
+I step through
+
+I choose no beaten path before me
+
+**I choose no choice**
+
+**But my own**
+
+**I choose no path**
+
+**But my own**
+
+Thread winds out beneath me as I step again and again
+
+Glittering gold, not beaten silver
+
+I choose my own way
+
+Through
+
+There is no other
+
+  

content/post/2018/01/i-dont-know-how-to-write/index.markdown

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+title =	"I don’t know how to write"
+date =	2018-01-13
+[[resources]]
+    src = "**oZDxPDh3u6b9i2r6dIRUhg*"
+    name = "header thumbnail"
+    [resources.params.meta]
+        creator = "Alex Iby"
+        sameAs = "https://unsplash.com/photos/aU1cBKa3mJU?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" # also updates caption
+        license = "https://unsplash.com/license" # attribution not required
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+That I honestly don’t know is something I always kept close to my chest. But no more.
+
+Because…I write. I write and write. I just *do* it. Only occasionally do I pause to search for the right word. Only some of my pieces are edited for more than a basic spelling and grammar check.
+
+Not all is calm sailing on a river of flow, mind. Poetry, for example, takes me far longer to write. Because I must wait for the right words to arrive, and for the right order to arrive too.
+
+Even still, little conscious thought is involved…my muse doesn’t even have the decency to whisper to my inner ear. She just grabs control of my fingers and writes away. Writing seems to come second only to breathing, for me.
+
+If that sounds a lot like magic…that’s because it *feels* a lot like magic too.
+
+I’d urge you not to envy me, though. Yes, the writing flows. Flows easily, most days. And in that I am massively blessed and freely admit that.
+
+*But,* I don’t know what makes me tick. I don’t know *how I flow.* Not the first clue. I know I have a wide vocabulary from reading voraciously. That makes sense. I don’t know, though, how that translates to sentences that string themselves together seemingly without my help.
+
+That’s more than a little terrifying.
+
+Because what if…oh what *if*…the words disappear? What if I suddenly lose my flow? Without it, I’d be helpless. And I wouldn’t know how to get it back.
+
+I’d no longer be *a* writer. I’d no longer be *the* Frenetic Scribbler.
+
+Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I hope they don’t. I need my words. Losing them would be like having my throat torn out. That makes me fearful.
+
+But for now, I write. And write. Fingers flying, brain dragged along for the ride. Through me, the Muse sings.
+
+Perhaps one day I’ll even understand how it happens.
+
+  

content/post/2018/01/magic-of-the-4am-silence/index.markdown

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+title =	"Frenetic Scribblings #34: Magic of the 4am silence"
+date =	2018-01-04
+categories = ["thoughts"]
+[[resources]]
+    src = "**nightstreet*"
+    name = "header thumbnail"
+    [resources.params.meta]
+        creator = "Khachik Simonian"
+        sameAs = "https://unsplash.com/photos/G22cAfM7-tE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" # also updates caption
+        license = "https://unsplash.com/license" # attribution not required
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+4am is a magical time. Where the late-nighters have mostly drifted off to bed, and the early-risers haven’t well…risen.
+
+It’s simultaneously eerie and relaxing in a most odd sort of way. Hearing birdcalls echo across a graveyard silence in a usually hectic city center is an…experience. The occasional twitters should feel out of place in the concrete jungle, normally masked by human noise as they are.
+
+They do not.
+
+Sitting there, watching the sky gradually lighten and listening to the calls is magical because you feel isolated. Despite being surrounded by thousands of people, you feel isolated because you are the near enough the only one awake and around.
+
+A city at 4am feels like a graveyard. Except that — unlike a graveyard — its inhabitants are only *temporarily* at rest.
+
+Passing through the airport close to my home earlier that night…well, morning, had a totally different feel. Even at the oddest hours, the place is together alive and dead. Alive because it is filled with people. And yet dead because those people are mostly waiting.
+
+An airport at 4am feels like an indrawn breath.
+
+There’s a sense of anticipation as people wait to jet off across the globe, or wing there way home. That too is magical, in a totally different manner.
+
+What was I doing around town at 4am having worked a double shift that day? I went to the gym after work, at gone midnight. I parked my motorcycle in a multistory carpark, assuming that because it was not locked by midnight it wasn’t going to be. Wrong! Leaving the gym (past 2am) I found steel shutters between me and my bike.
+
+I took a bus to the airport intending to walk home from there…and on arrival realised I’d left my keys in the gym. By the time I’d bussed back, I decided to wait for the shutters to be opened. And so, I found myself in one of the oddest experiences of my life — a city normally so filled with life emptied.
+
+They were long hours, but I almost don’t regret them just because of the 4am insight.
+
+
+> Thought for the day: The heavier the eyelids, the sincerer the words