for sean:



as promised

this is more recent with my nifty nikon coolpix

what i'm about to do, i haven't done in a long time. i've stopped telling the story for a spell. a long word.

i don't know why i became infinitely more and more secretive about the goings about of my personal life but it always seems to have been a function of my paranoia that may be grafted onto the hardware due to years of heavy exposure to the unamed horrors of our self-masochistic designs

but perhaps i've just grown so driven inwards that i've progressively pushed away the entire world... even the unobtrusive, impersonal one on the internet. i disconnected the cord from the planet and hid away. i tried to clean up the chernobyl-like lake of shit that had oozed out of my then-unhinged mouth and didn't end up surfacing again until i was done doing so. it was as though part of what i had cleaned up was the vent; this wordy, expose in human chaos.

then again, i accomplished a lot of what i said i'd set out to accomplish so i'd be surprised to find anyone who would disagree with how it all went down. as much as i may have severed bridges with people i genuinely loved, i also became a better person because of it and am better equipped to love people the way i ought to. it is a funny tradeoff that comes with casualties but it also brings great rewards so i have no qualms there.

ah yes. i happened to journey back here two years after the fact (and almost to the day... how odd) and what do i find? my friends, still living their beautiful lives taking their beautiful photographs to freeze moments of said lives and sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings. reminds me, in case an idiot such as myself dares forget, that the world always turns.

yes, the world has turned here too.

i am going to be frank.

i regret many of my life decisions. granted, this is what life is most about and what gives it such precious variable subtlety but being here has opened my eyes to several things.

i love my family, i should never have turned my back on them. when they reacted to christina's first pregnancy so many years ago, they were freaking out because they had, in the base of their hearts, always known that i was going to be hard to control, unpredictable and volatile... a ticking timebomb... but were hurt deeply at the fact that they could do nothing to stop it. being the young, explosive immature fuck that i was, i interpreted it instantly as a loss of love, a labor of cruelty and shunned them even after the smoke settled and they desperately tried to reach back out to me.

i should never have chased christina to the extent that i did. she was very bad for me and i was blind to how hated i was. instead of listening to those cared for me who urged me to walk away while i had the chance, i based nearly every major decision of the past 8 years on my pursuit and it left me in a place darker than i could have ever imagined i'd end up in. and the good people i sacrificed along the way. ugh.

i may not be able to repair most of whats been damaged but let me assure you of this; i am a better man than i was. my understanding of how feeble my sense of independence was is my resurrection. my resolve is pure and steadfast. my mind is set. i do not waiver as i once did as i have finally, over the course of the past several months, learned the true meaning of self-reliance, self-honesty and stability.

i know what i want in life and it is ambitious. i have grand plans and i'll be damned if i don't achieve every single fucking last one of them. i owe my daughter, myself and the people i love no less. i think i'm starting to finally understand that the world really is yours for the taking and that all you really have to do is reach out and take it.

the most trifling paradox is how hard it seems to do such an effortless thing... but this said in a modern age where we all feel so entitled to everything under the sky, it is no surprise than even i, with all my self-proclaimed faculties, still suffer from the delusion. it is so deeply engrained in my way of thought that even when AWARE OF THE PROBLEM, there is little done to quelch it.

makes no sense then again, we're talking about me so you can leave sense at the door and give me the key cuz you won't see it again.

=============

you hit rock bottom and you look up and see a cavern ahead of you. however, a floor is a floor and below it, there is no more. up, up, up is the only way to go. it is all cliche but it is such an intense sensation, vision and drive.

i am not scared of the path ahead of me. indeed, i challenge it.

=============

metamorph is almost done. i played the album for my dad last night and he was riveted. note: my dad has never really warmed to any of my work over the course of the last decade and his artistic opinion is on a level supreme to anyone any of us know. i am shaking with pride.

i forgot how hot it got here in northern california. blistering so.

but amidst the savage heat and tricky conversation, i've found solace in the fact that i'm doing the right thing in gearing my life's direction back towards my family. i found my life helplessly empty once ties were severed permanently with christina and likewise christina's family. i no longer had the comfor of "belonging somewhere" and it left me unable to cope with having rolled far far from the tree or any tree.

more importantly was that i truly did miss my own family very much. i lost track of my truest feelings for them because i was so caught up in trying to make my life work and failing miserably at it.
so i'm back home for a little while to mend those ties.

there is another purpose to this trip of course. i'm taking over something that ought to have been under my control a very long time ago. it feels good to have the drive to know what needs to be done and to do it.
i'm going to end this pattern of underachievement that precedes me.

you know, the saying "eating right off the grill" really does refer to eating directly off the grill; it is, without a doubt, the best in eating steak.

i've had a very rough few days. rougher than usual. a lot of change and i must attest, the most trying to date. for some reason, the only lapse in the darkness is a moment of huddling over a tiny round grill, eating a steak on my porch with claire de lune playing gently inside during a long beach sunset. it is hardly a glorifying moment in ordinary life.

but it is worth noting in the extraordinary

Remember when you were young
You shone like the sun
Shine on, you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky
Shine on, you crazy diamond
You were caught in the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom
Blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter
Come on you stranger
You legend, you martyr, and shine
You reached for the secret too soon
You cried for the moon
Threatened by shadows at night
And exposed in the light
Well you wore out your welcome
With random precision
Rode on the steel breeze
Come on you raver, you seer of visions
Come on you painter
You piper, you prisoner, and shine
Nobody knows where you are
How near or how far
Pile on many more layers
And I'll be joining you there
And we'll bask in the shadow
Of yesterday's triumph
Sail on the steel breeze
Come on you boy child, you winner and loser
Come on you miner
For truth and delusion and shine

http://super.herograw.org/Zyko_-_Survival.zip

i am proud to say that i have good friends. i am terrible at showing you how much i love you but i do and i'm blessed and fortunate to know you. my sincerest thanks to everyone who hosted my album and enjoyed my work.

this is the last music from my old guitar. it was taken away from me shortly after its completion. it is painfully disturbing that the material is dually relevant both before and after the last time i'll ever try to work things out with christina.

sorry for being such a downer in recent years. it was a necessary stop on the way to where i'm really headed. to those who know me and are affected... just trust me. it's really all i ask.

in the meantime, enjoy my guitar's last song

i've decided.
i want to go to egypt for at least a month.

i'm confused, though. in one hand, i think i need it more than anything. in the other, it will be immensely difficult (near impossible) to make this happen.

bend to the point you expect to break and then don't
the sensation of being left on the edge of nothing waiting for it to happen is so much like the floor underneath you bottoming out so that you find yourself leaning forward, in motion, without momentum, terrified.

vintage waleed.

but it's at that moment that i realize, each time, that i'm not going to break because there is no breakage here... ultimately there is too much strength, too much pride, too much intent, too much to live for. all i get out of the experience is pain. the torture is a byproduct of a beautiful mechanism and you understand that this is life, destiny and the art of resilience.

so how does one carry on?

i've found that one relies on heart. nothing moves a body of mass the way a heart does; simply look at your own body if you have any doubt about it. your vital organs all come in a secondary role to the real battery behind the whole thing. "have heart" carries further than "have mind" as the mind simply facilitates the raw energy that heart provides you with in that nondirectional, erratic way. so in the end, your intelligence, your capacities and your facilities are only there to harness your potential and realize it... not create it. i learned this as a salesman because a salesman does not achieve the sale by being apathetic or passive. you do not wait for something to happen, you make it happen. the whole concept of carpe diem is best realized when you find yourself idly trifling and blaming the "game" for being unfair. kinda like mark cuban and the dallas mavericks; the miami heat simply wanted it more and ultimately got it. on paper, the mavericks were far more dominant... but what little effect does heart have? enough to win four straight games and transform that hunger into material gain.

the greater lesson here is that the world truly is yours and all that is in it is very much attainable if you actually want it. the problem is nobody really does. folks can easily announce what they desire because in that fleeting moment, they feel obligated to it... especially in this modern generation of self-indulgent, ambitious but awfully misguided youth. nothing is obligated to us and nothing is intrinsically valuable, not even autonomy and self-reliance. these things are developed and earned. they are fought for and scrapped. if you don't get it, i don't blame you... it really isn't your fault. just look around you and you'll see a world that feeds you this erroneous bullshit about an entitlement to individuality and significant achievement by way of quick fix sensations of accomplishments and "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE PASSED LEVEL 1" without having accomplished a single. fucking. thing.

who's to blame? ourselves, ultimately. this is the lesson of accountability. reason tells us that we cannot always place an entire burden on one pair of shoulders but reason also tells us that nobody is above responsibility. if anything is obligated, it is that.

my daughter gives me heart. she is an amazing source of energy and with each passing day, i see her becoming a strong woman. she is headstrong, stubborn and highly adaptive. she is cautious in new scenarios but that is a default characteristic of her age since she has very little to go by in comparison. however, she has an uncanny ability to adapt very quickly and it rubs off on any in her company. i took her over to my buddy's place for a father's day bbq to play with his twin daughters of the same age. while eileen had been walking for several monthes, they had yet to take it up. she was timid for all but a minute and a half, quickly earned their confidence and by the next day, had inspired both twins into walking. their parents were shocked. i wasn't.

her two most sincerest passions thus far (aside from food) are music and soccer. i am flattered that she is taking up her father's most prized abilities with such wicked speed. i was introduced to my passions at a very young age but not nearly as young; not even close, in fact. she's also become apt at recognizing different aspects of music such as rhythm vs. melody. she matches pitch when i sing to her and goes for my guitars as soon as she enters my apartment.

what it does for me is it gives me confidence, gives me strength and pride. it reinforces that i am important to her, not that i need the reassurance but because it gives me purpose and makes my intent clear to me. feeds my drive. i am hitting bumps the size of mountains right now and they probably would knock me clear off my course without her influence. her laugh, smile and dependence is revitalizing. i've become a better man because of it.

that said, things are difficult. i am poor, i am struggling with very many fundamental aspects of my life and i have no semblance of consistency or control. that's fine. i wholeheartedly believe that i still have plenty of time to figure out what's going wrong as i am only 25 and with a growingly more complex understanding of myself.

i'm back not to be a part of something or anything.
just opening up a really fun can of worms...

needless to say
alive.