I see you standing there at my window, with snowflakes dancing behind you. Your warm hands fogging up the cold glass as the heat of your breath melts the air. Condensed vapor rising skyward like we once did.

When I was too young and naive to understand the hydrologic cycle and the great forces of gravity.

We're just two birds that flew past one another a long time ago, while searching for a warmer place and just being lucky enough to find warmth in one another. If only temporarily.

But now as I look at you through the obscurity of a hazy window and the emotional buffer of time. You don't seem to glow as much as I once remembered. It was then when I realized that time changes all things.

Just as time brought the chill of winter, so did it numb to sting of lost perfection.

Further subduing the yearning was the promise that tomorrow brings a new season. With its own take on perfection.

Often times our past can cast its shadow upon our present.

It's fragrance can be strong and lulling, it may draw you in, reviving old memories and long sense faded emotions.

You will remember some things with a biased recollection, some times fondly... some times with an aching sickness.

But don't allow nostalgia to deceive you.
The past as beautiful or hideous as it may have been, is dead and gone.

All that exists is the now and the now holds nothing but a boundless potential.

If I showed you my weakness, I wonder...
Would you hold it against me?
Would you use it to break me?
Is your heart as black as mine?
If mine weren't so black as I portray it to be.
Would you show the same infatuation?...
Or is this simply a matter of you gathering strength from the illusion of mine?
We as humans prefer the idea of having someone to lean on. Than to be leaned on.
We prefer to take over giving.
Would I still give what you want?
Would my honesty not be enough for you?
Do you prefer the facade?
Can you answer that honestly?
Do you even know what you want?
Oh that's right... you want me to tell you what you want.
Life is always easier, when you can just play follow the leader.
Do what you're told.
I don't blame you for sleeping, in fact I envy you for your ability to do so.
I can't be like you though.
Perhaps I'm just the proverbial ugly duck.
But none of this is what you wanted to hear is it?
Everyone lives it... but no one wants to face it
Instead we'd prefer to hide behind the temporary illusions.
Forget that I asked.

Fear.

I as man, fear no other man.
For men are simply animals.
Animals can bark and hiss.
Animals can bite and grip and claw and throw crushing blows.

But as a man I fear not death.
Because I know that like all living things,
I am made to live and die.

What do I fear?
As a man, a being made to think and create.

I fear only my own creations.
I fear only my own thoughts.

Ideas are stronger than men.
Ideas can empower or weaken.
Ideas are the poison and the antidote.

The ideas which I accept,
be they my own or the creation of another;
Are the fabric of who I am.

It is our beliefs which bind us.
It is the power we give to others.

What I fear when I look at one in authority is not the man himself, it is what he stands for.
It is the idea that he has power over me, power to take something away from me, power which is given to him by me.

In truth he can take nothing unless I give it.
In the case of a police officer, I am conditioned to submit to his authority.
To do otherwise would have great social ramifications.

I could fight back, but to fight back would mean being pursued by others.
Others who conform to a belief, a belief that it is wrong to oppose those in authority.

Society as a whole imposes upon itself, the beliefs of a minority.

Power is the evolved force of an idea.
Society is the controlled evolutionary chaos of an idea.

Every idea, causes a ripple, a chain reaction.
It evolves outwardly, growing intertwining with other ideas.

I regret the change. The change that comes from knowing. Because once you know there is no magic, no mystical secrets. You're left with the realisation that what you see is what you get.

To know that the seach for what is, is no more or less key to life than any other venture.

To know that the only difference between you and everyone else that matters... is you live your life. Your existence therefore is no more or less valuable than anyone elses.

To know the knowledge you possess be it infinite or none in the end all amounts to the same thing.

and yet... to go on with that knowledge, to still choose a path and to follow it in all of its futility.

This is why we needs lies. This is why we must believe in the illogical. This is why we have created religions since the dawn of man and most likely will continue to do so. This is why we create our ever evolving philosophies. Because we don't and we cannot know.

Knowing we can't know... just makes the need to find and follow belief laughable but still just as imperative to our existence.

This is where I'm struggling in life right now...