Bill Janssen

“The sounds of my breaths slowly begin to fade away, and I can hear again the waves in the darkness. The waves again! Reverberating through a hollow tube. Focus inward, and ignore the sound! Ignore the cause. Think not upon the cause of that cause or upon that cause’s cause’s cause. There is more than we will ever be able to explain. More than I will ever know and observe, and thus our systems are riddled with gaps.”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“The rocks are craggy/unmanageable
without sufficiently lacerating my Self ~ scarcely
solid ground, but more accurately a foothold. Yet in smoothness, the rocks are even less effective against the sweep of the tides than the sands of the shore. I sit here, not terribly concerned about the bruises and scrapes the jagged rocks lend in the moment, but concerned nevertheless by the waves that sweep back so effortlessly over the catchstones and eternally beyond reach—evading capture, leaving only a dissipating froth upon the black ridges to signal, at the very least, that 'it' happened: for whatever 'it' is worth.

There is a distinctive tenor to this declaration of presence, this collapsing flow—Something that reminds me of...?—the reverberations of which remain beyond the span of cognition. Reverberations: there exists a memory of a memory of a dream I had once, but
never an authentic rendering of the essential
Moment. Still I can hear it in dreams of memories of memories of dreams.

In dreams: a faint voice.

A persona, a belief system distinctly its
own, yet for now, the roar of the tides are a
whisper ears strain to grasp. Seemingly a clue to a memory locked within. Or it’s all imagination:
perhaps the sound of the ocean causes me to
assume I’m remembering something. Gives the
memory a sentience of its own and a vessel
allowing it to surge in and ebb out. Yes, I’ve heard such things mentioned before: the stimulus that reverse engineers the very memory it is presumed to trigger.

Still, it bothers me: this evasive, timeless
notion.”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“All probabilities have
stacked up to this imminent form, and
all causes have aligned according to
this pathway and not another. I could
otherwise have been another complex
of particles, another material altogether,
and perhaps also another form, for how
much does the material influence the
fingers that shape it? Does the material
similarly shape the whims of its
sculptor?”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“Ask me any question–preferably one with no simple answer. Or one with no answer at all–even better. Just ask, and await no answer. Let the question take on a life of its own.”
― Ashim Shanker