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Wed, Jun. 18th, 2008, 03:35 pm
Wed, Jun. 15th, 2005, 09:36 am
getaway
She settles herself into a faded cotton cushion on a sturdy wooden frame and unfocuses her vision onto a pastel wash of refracted twilight. The sea serenade is sand between her toes, on her skin, against her tongue. Each wavelet jostles and splinters into quiet drops that, as a whole, rumbles into a full-bodied mural.
This is art at its finest. And she knows this: art is not created; it is discovered.
Her eye marvels at the watercolor sunset and her skin tingles as frothy-white bubbles dance between her feet. Neither of these is a discrete event, significant in its single moment of glory. Rather, they are the organic manifestations of a larger masterpiece that speaks in dimensions deeper than color or feel. Often, we try so hard to focus these impressions into our own translations, from cassette tape ribbon, to oil-masked canvas, to these very own fanciful words upon the screen.
But it was never our own to claim, and attempted duplications will never attain the richness or significance of the original.
It is that singular realization that brings meaning to the simple statement; "live life". It seems so glaringly obvious and intuitive that we nod with assumed wisdom and move quickly past those words to continue operating with industrious ignorance. We're so convinced that we've integrated the philosophy of the original within ourselves that we accept the second-hand rendition as sufficient substitute. Complacency inures us to sensory blindness.
She knows better, though. Do you?
Fri, May. 27th, 2005, 09:04 am
balance
gadabout
Gadabout: Webster's word of the day, and an apt description of younger-me. One week into college orientation, I walked to a school auditorium and greeted ten new non-freshman friends, all from different fraternities, clubs, dorms, and majors. That instantly earned me the title social butterfly and I loved it, even worked hard to keep it. College was as much a source of networking as it was to be an institution of learning.
But I couldn't be the life of the party all of the time; I vacillated between extreme sociability and dormant self-isolation. It still continues to this day. I burn on a giddy high; an effervescent glow from receiving and projecting gaiety, animation, and celebration. And then I crash, abruptly short-circuiting my social batteries, and limping into the darkness in sulky silence, unfounded sadness, and frequently, self-pity. I recharge, gradually reaching my senses out once more into the world around me. Relaxed and shyly at first, and then with increasing frequency and urgency. The yearning for resolution is my self-drive. I feel myself craving the energy and euphoria of that drug-like high drifting at the outskirts of my memory, and I know that it will all come around again.
This can't be healthy. So what chemical imbalance in my mind creates this desperate need? It feels good, all of it. Even when I'm running away to escape deeply within myself. I wouldn't do it otherwise. But as with all scenarios, I am not the sole inhabitant of a self-proclaimed universe. Every one of my escapades results in casualties, sadly.
My apologies.
I can't stop repeating one of my lines, like an over-used pop song lyric. So I'm going to grab it and run, a single-minded quarterback with the tie-breaking goal clutched under his her arm.
I'm an irony of life
A glitch in the holistic harmony
Of life, the universe, and 42.
That's everything, right?
So where do I belong?
I'm the whisper of the forgotten song,
The kiss that was never stolen, and
Instead grew old in timeless purgatory.
Beside me lie forgotten figments of imagination
And neverending story wishes.
I'm the one that got away,
But really never existed.
I'm the reason why we give and take,
Fight and love, live and die...
Without understanding how or why.
It's lonely, being the only one.
I'm special, or so they say.
But words float into the air, and
After the rainbow connection melts away,
I'm nowhere... and nothing at all.
Thu, May. 26th, 2005, 11:36 am
irony
Fucking Thursdays. So close to the weekend, teasing me with the flirting promise of unshackled freedom. I smile, charmed, and rise with anticipation, when I feel the weighty obligations of Monday that stupidly went ignored until now. They clamp onto my heel with ball-and-chain iron solidity. I fall back to the floor, defeated and listless.
...
Okay. Really, I'm just hating on the day because I needed something to lash out at. It's actually a serene day, well-behaved with clasped hands and childishly innocent. I'm just being irritable because of [insert bitchy female reason: time of month, upcoming finals, self-issues].
I'm just an irony in life, an oxymoron that should have gone the way of the merlion and gryphon long ago. And when I happen to get myself tangled in the threads of reality, ugly things happen and I feel myself self-destruct a little bit more.
That's what it is. The Easter bunny, Santa Claus, tooth fairy, and monster-under-the-bed didn't go without a fight, I bet. Certainly not the monster-under-the-bed. And it wasn't a matter of children losing their naivety and renouncing their pagan idols, either. It was a lack of self-adaptability to reality: jets faster than sound, flashing strobe lights in mosh pits, and 24-7 convenience stores. Mr. Claus didn't know how to work the air traffic system and retired his outdated sleigh and annual trip. The tooth fairy was horrified at the state of teenage angst, and packed her bags for Never Never Land. And the poor monster got fed up with waiting for the 24-7 convenience store to close to stock up on cherry coke slurpees in the soothing dark, and hitched a ride to the undeveloped wilderness of another dimension.
Me, I'm still breathing the same air as all of you, pretending to be one of you. I'm trying to adapt. If you can't tell, that means I'm successful because there's nothing out of the ordinary.
But every once in a while, I feel myself unravel into pulsating, melted wax. Today's just one of those days.
Thu, Apr. 21st, 2005, 12:51 pm
pithy vignettes
Fill the space between the lines with noise. She moved her pen back and forth quickly, lightly, with little thought and less purpose. 'We do it so much, we can't even see what it is that we're clouding', she thought. ' At least this has a purpose. I'm bring depth to the body, a heatbeat to the smile. When I listen to him... he loses me a little more each time.'
Thu, Apr. 21st, 2005, 12:43 pm
How is it that silence echoes more emphatically than sound? How is it that you can dissolve metered silence into your sentences and create a honeyed potion that is in such high demand? I drank in your words as they flew out from your mouth and washed over still, hushed heads. They oozed through my skin and swelled in my stomach until I was pregnant with your brainchild. Mon, Apr. 18th, 2005, 03:52 pm
Consumption
We're chasing the wind with my wheels on a black leather night. "Feel it, baby?", I scream, my eyes sealed against the ember charcoal sky. The motor massages my feet and echoes the race of my heart, sending thrills across my chest and out-stretched legs. Hard and fast, swirled with a shot of 100% proof recklessness. The words burn in my throat and I gasp breathlessly. I whip my hair around, sucking in your gaze with a spicy sinnamon pout. Our speed blurs the air into over-exposed needle streaks of light held taut by the dark. All I register of you is a slow, sensuous, predatory smile. You're going to devour me, I know, and I'll slide into your power easily if we don't both meteorite crash-and-burn first.
The road is smooth, so smooth, that I can't even feel it. We could be motionless, languidly registering the reflectors that slide by in a wet stream. In front, they taunt me to skid my tires in their silhouette curves. In back, they peel away from my tires in smoke trails. I rise to the challenge, pushing relentlessly.
I don't see you lunge towards me. Surprise registers, before your gorgeous smile saturates my field of vision. You pull us together, harder and faster. Ferocious and feline, we undulate and squeeze coiled limbs around one another. You possess me and I imprison you. I open myself to wet leather, the music of our cries, and a liquid road that leads us on. It's a long drive, but on this endless night, we'll ride it all the way to the end.
Let's start a conversation, you and I. Then it will not be a story that belongs to just you or I. It will be our chocolate milkshake at the neighborhood diner, with feel-good swing bouncing in the background. You'll flash the sultry red of a maraschino cherry at me, and I'll lick whipped cream from the upturned corner of your smile. We'll lean in over the frosted glass and duel with our eyes as our mouths latch onto straws. It's better that way. It's not one-sided, nor possessive. We bond through sips of the shake. It's twice as good. The knowing, the sharing, the satisfaction.
You start. I'll jump in. You'll smile and leapfrog over me. I'll weave maypole streamers around you. You'll buttress my arguments, and I'll lace your descriptions. Somewhere, we'll both end up at the finish line in one jumbled heap, laughing and tumbling with the flow of our energy.
It'll be fun, I promise. And the conversation? It'll be smooth, cool satisfaction settled in our stomachs. I'll meet you at the diner's corner next Friday, okay? Let's try the vanilla shake then. Fri, Apr. 15th, 2005, 10:24 am
The soul
"One day", I began, "I would like to lose my soul. Shake it off and run the other way. And not give a damn."
It was one of those days where it felt great to just throw words to the wind. I could cut men into slivers with the bat of an eyelash, and a lick of my tongue would dissolve worries like rice paper.
It was a selfish proposition, of course. But being selfish was easy to do, when one knew oneself. My desires. My dreams. My shortcomings and regrets. Today, I was shaking those out with a toss of my hair. It was to be about me; me as much as I knew myself to be.
I wasn't tired of my self-definition. I wasn't unhappy with life. It was just that I had found in my conscious, popping up from unconscious hibernation, a responsibility to myself. Do you remember the days of trying to run from your shadow? Or imagining what it would be like to slip sideways out of your ear like smoke, so that you could assess yourself 360 degrees, in second-person? Instead, I found myself chained to my grey doppelganger, and that I couldn't wrap myself intimately with a mirror to create an inverse mold of myself.
So. It stemmed from the inability to shed parts of myself at will. My limitation to critique myself with detached objectivity. I was shouldered with myself, bound to accept all of my self, my skin. And I was tired of it. I wanted to be free without consequence. I was going to experience air without the barrier of lungs, and learn how to radiate light instead of reflect it. I could do these things without a soul or body.
And besides, wouldn't it be cool? To experience death without dying? Knowing that it wasn't a one-way street oriented towards the setting sun?
It would be, I decided. Amazing, inspiring, and new. And then, my friend, I would record that experience as strokes tattoed upon my discarded skin - loved, but no longer needed - and gift it to you to read, and perhaps to even slip onto yourself, for a moment or two.
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