A Vast Barren Wasteland

A single bird flies over the vast barren wasteland,

The frozen plain, empty of life, an eerie vacuum.

It inspects the ground below, desperately searching,

Searching for a scrap of food, for relief, relief from

It’s seemingly perpetual, consuming hunger.

Yet all it finds are the ruins of a past glory.

The bird flies away, as it does a single feather

Floats down on what man once built in their glorious pride.

Yet as they gave it life, they slowly, ignorantly,

Killed both it, and the surrounding land as well, until

all that is left in the wake of its fall, is the cold,

Vast barren wasteland, not a single essence of life

The bird flies, weak, desperately searching for any food.

Yet all life is gone, and very slowly it grows weaker,

Until it falls, the last essence of life in the plain,

Falls and plummets, digging itself into the dead dirt,

And what was once a gloriously beautiful plain,

Is now the ruins of mans’ glory, A vast barren

wasteland, a frozen plain, empty of life, cold as death.

Blog time:

                Blog time:

                At the beginning of the year I was asked to start a blog and every week or so place a post. At first, the idea was welcomed; it seemed like an entertaining way to get some writing done. And so I wrote, by the end of the first few months having 4 posts. A few months later 3 more were written. And then I was asked to write 5 more. But it was then that I noticed I had run out of topics to write about. After a mere 12 posts, I had to spend more time thinking of a topic than I did writing it.  

                At this point I truly wish to stop writing posts and instead write in some other form. I hate having to spend up to half an hour attempting to come up with some topic to write about. I wrote about books, movies, breaks, even some short stories and a poem. I will probably continue to write short stories and poems to get the required amount of posts in, but eventually I will have to stop and write a real post, for which I will have no idea on what to write.

                My short stories and poem were, as it turned out, my best posts anyhow. I am in no way a writer who enjoys writing about non-fictional topics. I had more success writing my poem, a tribute to those with no valentine, and my short stories, a fiction about medieval knights and a few hundred words of a dying Jew who defied Nazis.

                If I had to write I would love to simply start a short story or poem, and just write several continuations of that for each post. I was actually offered to do that some months prior, however it had not occurred to me at the time I might run out of topics for posts and thus declined. If given the option again I will very quickly accept and discontinue the blog posts, and instead write stories and poems.

Inception

                Inception: My view of it

                Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is the story of “extractors”, people who go into the dreams of others to extract locked away information, trying to accomplish inception, in other words planting an idea rather than extracting an idea. Two extractors fail at accomplishing an extraction, and are now hunted down as extracting is not very legal. The man who they attempted to extract, however, offers a job that, should it succeed, will grant asylum. Unfortunately it involves inception, which complicates things greatly, leading to them entering a dream within a dream within dream.

                The story behind inception is a complicated one, one that requires one to stop and ponder upon what has been watched. This is what separates this movie from the average thriller that doesn’t require half a mind to watch. Inception is entertaining both as an action thriller movie, and as an intellectual movie, with a complex story.

                While many did enjoy inception quite as much as I did, I remain by my opinion that the movie was one of the best I have seen. The story, music, and special effects hooked me from beginning to end, which was quite some time as the movie is nearly 3 hours long. 

Libya Civil War

                Libya, a North African country neighboring Egypt, is currently in a state of Civil War. After the uprising in Egypt, where protests were made in the central plaza to overthrow the long reigning president, Mubarak, Libya has chosen to follow Egypt’s rebellious example and attempt to overthrow their president, Gaddafi, whom has been in power for over 40 years. What differentiates Libya from Egypt, however, is that while Egypt remained mainly a pacifist protest, the Libyan protests have become civil war.

                Gaddafi said himself not long after the protests began; all that oppose him will be killed. Since then his soldiers and those of the rebels have been in civil war. He has sent his soldiers to diminish the protests, like a scourge. The rebels are going across the country, capturing several cities, and are currently capturing the hometown of Gaddafi. This civil war has taken the lives of many Libyans, pro-Gaddafi, rebels, and innocent civilians alike.

                The civil war has gotten to such scales that the UN has begun to interfere. A no-fly zone was placed in Libya, preventing the use of planes for rebels and Gaddafi, although Gaddafi’s planes have all been destroyed anyways.  As well as the UN, NATO, an alliance of 28 countries, has intervened as well, assisting the rebels in defeating Gaddafi. France has been bombing Libya repeatedly, eliminating air base after air base, nearly eliminating the Libyan air force in its entirety. 

                What started as a mere protest against a long reigning tyrant has quickly evolved into a bloody civil war, which has reaped the lives of many. The stakes have escalated, and more and more nations are intervening. 

Tribute to those with no valentine

I dreamed a dreamer's dream,
of a love the following to the ides of February, 

Yet twas in vain, for Aphrodite, cruel god, hath struck me down.
I left no better than the half blind creations of the gods,
than the beast wise Athena left in her lover's lover's place. 

The deep vacuum of the universe frails in comparison
to the vacancy of my essence. Olympus’ guffaws
have reached even the deepest extremities of my being.
Love’s baby hath flown by me, not a glare or sight on my soul.
I remain alone, on this silent night, with a vacant mind.
Dreaming a dreamer's dream.

My chin is held high, nigh immune to the odds. 

A soul is not completed by a lover.          

It is completed by the siphoning 

Of the undying love and gratitude of

Family, primordial essence of one’s self,

The primordial essence of self-contentment. 

The ability to usurp the grief from

One’s soul, become a harbinger of one’s fate.

A harbinger of the realization, 

One is completed with the love of one’s self.

Mockinjay - My View Of It

            In the prior year, I have found the Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games was a truly amazing and entertaining book. It was not spectacular, to be looked at as a literary classic, though held higher than most books out at the time. Then came the sequel, Catching Fire, was, yet again, entertaining.  As was commented on the back of the book, Suzanne accomplished something that nowadays is not commonly seen, she improved herself since her first book. And then I read Mockingjay. I advise that everyone who reads this finishes the post, goes to the nearest library, buys the three books, and cancels their day’s plan. Read The Hunger Games and read Catching Fire, but do not read them solely for an entertaining read. No, read them to later read Mockingjay. Collin made a perfect book, with a mix of strong symbolism, characterization, tragedy, love, mystery, and thrill. Every page moved you closer and closer to the edge of your seat. While I will admit that the beginning of the book, like all others, is rather slow. But make sure you pass that checkpoint in the day. I did not, and suffered lack of sleep which came back to bite me in the butt the following morning. The story, the action, the characters: they all keep you itching to find out what occurs next. The story had strong literary devices, it had wonderful characters with beautifully depicted personalities, it had symbols that strong and persistent, the mockingjay and flames to name two. It was exciting, it had a tragedy, relations, and all the essentials in keeping a reader from shutting the book. I will not speak of the actual content, seeing as to how it is the end of a trilogy, and I would ruin the prior books. I will say, however, the world in which the book presents itself is strong, reinforced, and the reader will be emerged into the story. Suzanne Collin’s Mockingjay was a truly spectacular book.

Short Story

                On a cold winter evening, in a street of no particular interest, laid a man on the street. His beard, which had grown to nearly resemble foliage in the dark light, was smothered in blood and snow. His breath, slow and heavy, was nearly run out, his life escaping with every breath. His clothes were ravaged and left to rags.

                The man had lost all hope in living, he accepted the inevitable. He began to contemplate on recent events, question what he had done to end up where he was. He didn’t want to remember, but the brain naturally remembers horrible memories best. He shed a tear as he relived the events through his head.

                “Run, Schmael, run!” yelled the man’s wife, fear and terror on her face, all happiness left behind. The man got up and looked around, saw the room, ravaged through as if by a beast. Then he saw the body, and he realized what had happened. There it sat, bloody in the chest, shards of glass sticking out from behind, an expression of hate on the face, as if the carcass was looking at them, as if it was still alive.

                “Come on Schmael, we have to go!” she yelled again, urging at him to run. But the fact was, he couldn’t. He could only stare at the corpse, and realize what had happened. The Nazi had come to their house, and started interrogating his wife and children. Half realizing what he was doing, he sneaked up behind the man, and stabbed him with a broken bottle. And he couldn’t move. He had killed a living being.

                His wife realized the man would not leave, and ran for her life with the children. The man sat there, in shock. Soon more Nazi’s came to check what the origin of the screaming was. Within a few minutes of walking into the room, Schmael was on the street, being bludgeoned by the hilts of their guns, to the brink of death. Then they left him there, in the cold, to die.

                The man shed a tear. He longed for one more moment to be with his family. He longed to live out his life to its full extent. The man was infuriated with himself, for lying there, by the corpse, shocked, naïve. He wished he had just run, and he would be with his family, at this very moment.

                “But I’d be cowering for the rest of my life in fear…”

                The thought going through his head was more painful than all the bludgeoning he had so recently received. He would be in fear, hiding in an attic or basement his entire life. Slowly, he came to the realization that dying was the best way out. By dying, there was no hiding, no fear, just rest. He still longed for his family, but he decided to wait, to allow them the life he would never have, and when it was their time, they would be reunited.

                With a tearful face and bloodied body, the last essence of living was sapped from the man’s body. The man breathed his last breath, and with no regrets, accepted Death with open arms, and let it carry him over to the next world.