Of Swords & Sugar

Capacity & Progress

Saturday, June 7, 2025

A Barrier of Salt - Great White Sea - Out of the Mire

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A Barrier of Salt —

March 2025

I believe I've been granted what I've always prayed for: Indifference.

I've noticed the things that often make me feel alive, as though my heart were cloaked in flames, all eventually wane. In the end, whether it be an affinity for another person or an activity I enjoy in my free time, it all droops and withers like a plant dying of thirst.

Even despite praying for it, I used to be terrified of apathy, and now it's nothing more than a habitual passerby, staying for longer periods of time with each visit. I used to dream of impassivity, but it's strange actually having it.

I simply do not care. I'm too tired.

This rarely makes me laugh, and rarer even still it wells tears in my eyes because I feel too young to say something so detached. People are getting married and having children all around me, but I don't care. People laugh together and embrace each other, but I don't really mind. People tell me they feel sorry for me that I have not felt what they have felt, but I am unbothered.

Where I used to care what others thought of me, I find only nothing. Where even beauty does not enrapture me anymore. Where the hope for reciprocation is merely a distant dream. Where the idea of love, or of ardor, or of sentiment is just a fleeting memory.

People require so much time and effort, and whatever payoff they find in each other, I cannot see it. I cannot feel it. At the end of the day, we're all human, enamored by genitals, beauty, drama, and power. Although I often wish otherwise, I'm human too. I feel, I am—I felt, I was; but the difference is minimal, inconsequential even.

It makes no difference the way I feel or the way I felt, and I doubt a single one of you can convince me otherwise. If I never felt anything again, what would it matter? So am I human for once being infatuated by the things that sent chills across my skin, or am I inhuman for no longer desiring anything at all?

I picture you and me in the dark, sitting on opposite sides of a barrier made of salt. Only, you have a fire on your side. I pray one day that the salt between us might degrade over time, and that the fire you hold might find me waiting patiently on the other side, but until that day comes, I'll make do in the cold. I've yet to feel the warmth, or to even be given a premonition I ever will. But I will be patient.

It's funny; it's always in the deep hours of the night when things seem so hopeless. In the light of day, these things seem trifling.

So, despite all this dreary gloom, we know, whether we choose to ignore it or not, that life will be hard—Yet we still laugh. We still embrace. We still sing and dance. We still give thanks.

There is not a day that goes by I do not thank God for every ounce of life He offers me. I could, on occasion, remember what it's like to appreciate beauty, and passion, and hopeful reciprocation. I may, from time to time, enjoy seeing others dance and listening to them laugh or sing. I might, every now and then, feel invited to celebrate life's great successes with them like becoming married or starting a family. And perhaps that is enough for one lifetime. Warmth or not, perhaps that is enough.

great white sea — April 2025

This world is full of paradoxes. As a man, it tells me, "Always don your armor, but abide in your vulnerability. Keep your shield pristine, but prove your worth in scratches and scars. Forever hold your sword in its sheath, but draw it on those who might threaten the ones you hold close."

People seem to think that the world of armor and swords has long since passed, but it's merely taken on a new shape. For me, I doubt I'll ever be able to remove all of my armor to reveal every part of who I am, but I can relax its bindings just enough so that my peers may know I'm still a man. I can raise my visor so they may see my eyes, a window into my character. I can take off my gauntlets so they might touch my hands, a reflection of my past. I can loosen my breastplate so they can hear my heart, a whisper into my future. Those things, in and of themselves, carry a great deal of weight.

However, I know neither showing my emotion, nor showing any at all, makes a difference on the actions of my peers, so it's likely that it does not matter what parts of me I choose to reveal. Each of us will do what gives us the most immediate gain, regardless of past or current attractions, affections, affinities, or feelings. And we'll take all the more greedily if that gain requires no effort, physical or mental alike.

Though, as I grow more accustomed without my protection, I find that security in myself was always there; it just needed to be cultivated. Whether I don armor or not, what lies beneath it is what makes me a man. It's not the metal that protects me from my fears, nor the wounds left along the way—it's something of the heart; something not so easily nurtured or dismissed. Something that whispers of both peace and turmoil, hope and despair.

That being said, I need you to know that whatever comes to pass with my life and the relationships in them, I'm comfortable with. Whether we're always in each other's life, or you and I never speak to each other again, or we only connect when we're feeling nostalgic, or we simply keep each other as fond memories, know that I don't toil about you as you never did for me. And in this, I find a great sense of calmness.

Despite the calmness, it's difficult for me to know that there often isn't much I wouldn't give to someone with whom I find great comfort and affinity. Unfortunately for me, I can never tell them that, especially since I know that nothing would change if I gave them my sentiments, let alone my action. So, I must come to terms with the price of inaction because everyone, including myself, is a coward in the face of true emotion.

Because of emotion, I've since prayed to never speak another word since they're so pointless, and to always keep my eyes fixed on the ground since I'm invisible anyway. It makes me wonder what comes next. Someone praying away each of his senses hardly seems like a man to me, much less a living one.

Though, no matter if I'm deemed by others to be lifeless or living, I spent years longing to be seen, but here and now I think it might be best if I stay invisible. I used to believe my courage never matched anyone else's around me, but I think reality is dawning on me like a bead of ice coiling down my spine.

To be seen is to be courageous, but courage is of a breathless nature, and we are not drawn to that which is demanding of us. So, I wonder if any of us truly feel known through the eyes of those beside us.

You might be honest, but it may not matter. You can look someone in their eyes and tell them how much their company means to you, but they may not hear it—perhaps even until years later when their ego is suddenly cracked, or when they're feeling lonely, or when rejection stares them in the face, and then they may remember your past words with fondness.

All too late - All too craven.

Affinities or attractions might wane, whether we like or not, and I've never seen a person so eclipsed by something more dominant than emotion. We're controlled by them, though we don't like to admit it, or maybe we all just prefer lying about it.

In the same stretch, I'm having trouble deciding if honesty means anything if no one is willing to listen. However, I'll never apply its counterpart without good reason; dishonesty has little sustainable benefit, despite many of those around me wielding it as if they were born with it draping about their tongue.

If I were to portray my own honesty, all I know is that I will no longer make myself so freely available to those who only find my company when they require it. Neither will I continue to allow my company to be seen as nothing more than a convenience for those who care nothing for it.

I am not a tool to be used for your validation, and I hope you take heart in my failures so that you may remember your own. Maybe then, you will remember that we are more alike than we are different, both drifting like a rudderless ship across an ocean of emotional disorder and misunderstanding. Don't forget that you and I both seek shelter from the rain, and we both flinch when the thunder rolls overhead.

I'm not sure about you, but I live in a world devoid of certainty and understanding. I live in a world of armor and swords, where the armor encapsulates the heart and the swords are little more than words.

It's times like these when I often wonder why things can't just be easy.

Easy to make decisions.

Easy to speak your feelings.

Easy to appease the past and forget the future.

Alas, I come to the same conclusion: We're all cowards.

I can make decisions, I can speak my feelings, and I can even surrender the past and live in the moment, but many of those whose company I wish I could find warmth in seem different.

In the end, it doesn't really matter whether any of us can do those things; we all still seem held back by something. Something that lies at our doorstep after we've locked the doors, or something that pulls at our throat when try to look forward instead of back.

Life really does only make sense when we're looking backward, doesn't it? Oh, well. If I never have the opportunity to feel what real reciprocation is like, then so be it. I've worried about it enough for one lifetime. It's time for me to look ahead. So, regardless of reciprocation, or honesty, or courage and cowardice, I suppose I can only hope that when you look back, you might remember my fondness instead of my armor.

Their cups seem to have sugar,

I envy them since mine has salt instead.

I see them though they do not see me,

Even when I'm black among a great white sea.

Out of the Mire — May 2025

The older I grow, the less I understand. As a kid, everything was so simple and clean cut. Black and white. The world may have felt like it would end when I made a mistake, but it never did collapse beneath my feet.

With every sunrise and with every sunset that I experience, it seems as though an ardent lesson further petrifies itself into my life: Time is the ultimate luxury.

It's of no consequence to a child, of course; but to an adult, it can take on different meanings though we can't even experience it with any of our senses. Yes, we can watch the hands of a clock tick endlessly in a cycle, but can we see the threads of what it measures? We might also feel the wrinkles and crow's feet develop on our skin as we age, but can we touch the ribbons of what causes them? Alas, you can explain time to a child, and he might raise his brow at you, but an adult's eyes will widen, and his lips will tighten at the mere thought of it.

For me, time has brought me to an unfamiliar place—one that's healthy and kind, calm and restful. It's like I've finally come home after a long time away, or like I've just sat down by the fire after coming inside from the snow, or especially like I've met someone I had known a lifetime ago.

Things have changed to the point that I had once aspired to be recognized by a world filled with people who care for nothing but themselves. Now, I wish to live quietly and out of sight; out of the mud and the mire left behind by those who are too frightened to look me in the eye.

So, like them, I pray I keep my eyes fixed on myself and myself alone. But, unlike them, I pray that if I must look up, I only look upward at those who already hold great value to me, or to those who might wish to stir something of great value. All the rest I have little care for, and if there are some in my life whose maintenance outweighs their worth, then I pray I move on from them with little effort and without hesitation because my company and my attention is finite. Yes, I will be indifferent to those who are fruitless, but by God I will remain open to that which could be good and kind.

Despite my newfound inattention toward my peers, there's still this matter of childhood and adulthood. The older I grow, the more I see how similar we all are, the young and the old alike. The line between naivety and maturity is much thinner than I had imagined. Though, with every passing year, I find myself hoping I can hold on to what it means to be young because I know that time will not favor me in the future—and that future is coming for me quicker than I'd like.

Yes, I know time is of great consequence to me now, and it can't be ignored any longer like that of an old tool that just needs some good polishing. Yet still, I once wrote that if I could be stuck inside a glass globe forever, I would be relieved, and it pains me to know I still share in this sentiment.

I know I've prayed to be able to feel everything this world has to offer me from joy to pain and from acceptance to rejection, but in this time of prominent rest and affirmation, I hope I can hold onto this moment here. Always here.

Can I not stop time, then? Can I not stop it here? Here ... please?

No. No, I know I can't. Despite how much I'm enjoying this moment, the sun will set in the west tonight and rise tomorrow in the east as it always has. In this world, I've noticed that those around me wish to be immune to pain. For me, I wish to be immune to time because there's nothing like it that can truly place life into perspective.

With just a little time I've lost my dream, you see. My dream of reciprocation, and understanding, and recognition. Years worth of longing washed away like a receding tide! Instead, I've given that dream up to the heavens, and in return I've found calmness and appreciation.

It's strange to think that in just a few weeks one can feel so much. It seems to me that with each passing day life gets just a little sweeter. And all I can say is this: Whether by providence or luck,

It's about damn time.