And how brutal we all are to (all) our past selves.
And
some nights we just want to walk on and on and on and on - but we
can't. We've got all these responsibilities and commitments and
obligations. And don't we wish we never grew up? And some days, like
these, maybe we believe.
"And you'll fall in love again," she threatened.
And partaking of a stranger's happiness on a train, as she reads a birthday card, perhaps from a lover. Perhaps not.
"And were you ever lost,
and were you ever found?"
And she casts no shadow on nobody,
and nobody cares, nobody does not get hurt.
"And are you ready for this life?
The world is calling out your name,
there's another future out there for you.
And this, and that too, shall eventually pass.
The universe is riding off with you."
And oh, bluebird, I would not ever
try to capture you.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
2 1⁄4
______________________________
The dust motes swirling in the sunlight
as it streams through the open window.
A woman tending the fire to the sound
of crackling firewood.
The smell of tea fills the air.
Home can be found -
Two and a quarter time zones away.
______________________________
The dust motes swirling in the sunlight
as it streams through the open window.
A woman tending the fire to the sound
of crackling firewood.
The smell of tea fills the air.
Home can be found -
Two and a quarter time zones away.
______________________________
Monday, June 22, 2015
Desastres Naturales.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, to-
He looks up at the clock whose second hand is still now, time freezes for a second there as his brain scrambles to figure out what it is that has suddenly gone missing. Something so seemingly insignificant, so perfectly natural, as the sound of a second hand ticking, his mind does not know quite how to react to its abrupt absence.
He stares at the once-clock. What is it, now? A clock which cannot mark time. Something whose entire existence is now entirely invalidated. A being with no raison d'être, no reason for being. He does not know how long he stares. Ha ha.
And the once-clock stares back at him. Tick, tock. No one's making those hands start moving again, and yet life goes on.
Life does. He starts walking. Away. And he walks, and he walks, and he walks. What, or who, was waiting for him back there anyway? Nothing. Just an existential question of a clock. Ha ha. He walks on.
He remembers this recurring dream he has:
A girl, a traveller in a city on a hill. As she wanders, absolutely and utterly alone, she wonders. She stops at a break between two buildings, and gazes out at the city spread out before her. She's never felt so alive, alone in a strange new city. The possibilities seem endless. It is beautiful, stark, the utter desolation of freedom. She smiles softly to herself. She walks on.
He realizes he cannot hold on to a girl like that. He must not. That no matter how tightly she holds his hand as they walk in the park, a part of her will always long to be free. A part of her which wants to lose everything, to leave everything behind. Her family and her friends and her habits. Her work and the things she enjoys. All the things that make her, her. She cannot help it - the desolation of freedom accepts no compromise.
Ah, compromise. He remembers the man on the streets, old, decrepit. Broken.
Love fully, or not at all. If love doesn't ruin you, then why love at all? Why settle for some safe, pale imitation of love?
His eyes comes alive as he speaks the words. Maybe broken isn't so bad after all.
What a strange place. This modern world, right? Surrounded by all these people, five million of us in this tiny city-state, and you're alone. Even though each of us know how lonely we all are. We pass each other by, strangers on a train, embarrassed by the furtive eye-contact, when we're caught peeking at each other's messages, showing interest in the shows we're watching, the games we're playing. Embarrassed!
The broken man does not stop talking.
The girl on the train reading the same print of Catch-22 you never quite got around to reading yourself, listening to your favourite song just that little bit too loud so it bleeds into the otherwise quiet cabin, with a faint smile flickering about her lips as she comes to the realization that you're looking at her. Perhaps wondering, too, what might be if you would just say something. A million possiblities, and then nothing. Another day, right?
Another day, it is. It has to be! The once-clock protests in futility - time marches relentlessly on. He takes comfort in that. He walks on.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
He looks up at the clock whose second hand is still now, time freezes for a second there as his brain scrambles to figure out what it is that has suddenly gone missing. Something so seemingly insignificant, so perfectly natural, as the sound of a second hand ticking, his mind does not know quite how to react to its abrupt absence.
He stares at the once-clock. What is it, now? A clock which cannot mark time. Something whose entire existence is now entirely invalidated. A being with no raison d'être, no reason for being. He does not know how long he stares. Ha ha.
And the once-clock stares back at him. Tick, tock. No one's making those hands start moving again, and yet life goes on.
Life does. He starts walking. Away. And he walks, and he walks, and he walks. What, or who, was waiting for him back there anyway? Nothing. Just an existential question of a clock. Ha ha. He walks on.
He remembers this recurring dream he has:
A girl, a traveller in a city on a hill. As she wanders, absolutely and utterly alone, she wonders. She stops at a break between two buildings, and gazes out at the city spread out before her. She's never felt so alive, alone in a strange new city. The possibilities seem endless. It is beautiful, stark, the utter desolation of freedom. She smiles softly to herself. She walks on.
He realizes he cannot hold on to a girl like that. He must not. That no matter how tightly she holds his hand as they walk in the park, a part of her will always long to be free. A part of her which wants to lose everything, to leave everything behind. Her family and her friends and her habits. Her work and the things she enjoys. All the things that make her, her. She cannot help it - the desolation of freedom accepts no compromise.
Ah, compromise. He remembers the man on the streets, old, decrepit. Broken.
Love fully, or not at all. If love doesn't ruin you, then why love at all? Why settle for some safe, pale imitation of love?
His eyes comes alive as he speaks the words. Maybe broken isn't so bad after all.
What a strange place. This modern world, right? Surrounded by all these people, five million of us in this tiny city-state, and you're alone. Even though each of us know how lonely we all are. We pass each other by, strangers on a train, embarrassed by the furtive eye-contact, when we're caught peeking at each other's messages, showing interest in the shows we're watching, the games we're playing. Embarrassed!
The broken man does not stop talking.
The girl on the train reading the same print of Catch-22 you never quite got around to reading yourself, listening to your favourite song just that little bit too loud so it bleeds into the otherwise quiet cabin, with a faint smile flickering about her lips as she comes to the realization that you're looking at her. Perhaps wondering, too, what might be if you would just say something. A million possiblities, and then nothing. Another day, right?
Another day, it is. It has to be! The once-clock protests in futility - time marches relentlessly on. He takes comfort in that. He walks on.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Wings.
And on your tongue
was the whisper of the wings
of the dreams
of the life
of the life we could
have had
had we loved more
had we more courage
had we let ourselves
we let ourselves
down.
At Least Icarus Flew.
______________________________
Icarus!
Flew toward
the indifferent sun
Ecstasy!
Even as he fell
toward the uncaring ground.
______________________________
Icarus!
Flew toward
the indifferent sun
Ecstasy!
Even as he fell
toward the uncaring ground.
______________________________
Sunday, March 1, 2015
The Jade Rabbit Feasts on Green Cheese.
The moon they say will
be seen in twelve
different colours tonight
Once in a hundred
and eighty-four years
O!
Wonder!
let the moon reflect that
life is a many-splendoured thing
as Chang-e flits across her face
as the Jade Rabbit nibbles on green cheese
let the lonely moon reflect that
lonely as she is
love goes beyond distance
love goes beyond colour
love goes beyond desire
love goes beyond hope and tears and laughter and
fear and sorrow and understanding
let the lonely distant many-coloured moon tonight
reflect our light
let us teach her what it means to live
let us teach her what it means to love.
be seen in twelve
different colours tonight
Once in a hundred
and eighty-four years
O!
Wonder!
let the moon reflect that
life is a many-splendoured thing
as Chang-e flits across her face
as the Jade Rabbit nibbles on green cheese
let the lonely moon reflect that
lonely as she is
love goes beyond distance
love goes beyond colour
love goes beyond desire
love goes beyond hope and tears and laughter and
fear and sorrow and understanding
let the lonely distant many-coloured moon tonight
reflect our light
let us teach her what it means to live
let us teach her what it means to love.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
And She Looks Like The Moon.
Q: And do you think this, all this, lasts forever?
A: No, and if it does it should not. Nothing that is this beautiful should be made to last. Life without death is a tragedy; eternal art not art at all.
A: Yes, and if it doesn't it should. If even this degrades, decays, then of what use is hope? I could not bear to live in a world where all beauty eventually dies, where beauty, indeed, is contingent on transience.
I get on the train, and you are there, waiting for me. You smile as I sit down opposite you, and I remember the day we met all those years ago. The day I met the 99% perfect girl; the day I fell in love; the day everything started; the day it all started to end.
I knew as soon as I saw you: here is a girl as close to 100% as I'm ever likely to get. Should I have waited for that 100%, I will never know.
Of course we ended up disappointing each other. No surprise. How could we not, when we were so afraid of revealing what we want? (What we want what we really really want.) Somehow we made that 1% out to be so much more than it really was - it grew and it grew until there was a rift between us neither of us knew how to bridge. Was it because everything else was so perfect that we couldn't help but focus on what wasn't?
I look across at you. All I see now is the 99% I overlooked because of the 1%.
How did it happen, when did we grow up all of a sudden? Where was the line, how did we cross it? Without warning, without fanfare. What a shame! Do you remember the smell of rain, the whisper of the wind?
Your smile fades. You look out the window. Silence.
But you were always like the moon to me. As you went so did my desire ebb and flow, as I tried my hardest to keep up with you. But no matter how hard I tried I never got any closer to you; no matter how hard I try a part of you will always remain hidden from me.
We speed past the seaside. Oh! That is where we were once, on that beach, happy. You lay against my chest as you scoop up handfuls of sand and allow them to run through your fingers. Do you remember? The picnic mat beneath us, the future before us. We used to talk, once. We used to love, once.
And beneath our love, our happiness, flowed that steady undercurrent of sadness. Do you remember how sad we were? Like something that could only be seen out of the corner of your eyes. Lurking, always, at the edges of our happiness. It was not loss, no - it was the memory of loss. That every second I spent with you was another second gone, lost forever like so much sand in the wind.
Your side profile still turned towards me, I remember the day I went through your diary. Why, I will never know. And I will never forgive myself. "And love was a language he never learnt to speak. He had to pick it up and piece it together wherever he could. And slowly, but surely, he began to understand. Just the tiniest bits at first, but slowly, and surely, he began to be fluent in love. But who can say, even as he was learning to listen, learning to speak, how much had been lost between the cracks, how much love had flowed past him, incomprehensible? They say you never step in the same river twice. So too love. He could not receive the love I gave him, and it will never be the same again."
Didn't you feel like you were drowning, desperately trying to grab on to anything that felt real to you? That's what falling in love felt like to me. Or maybe it was like wandering in a desert. I'm parched, desperate for a sip of water, and I stumble upon an oasis I'm never sure is not a mirage. I gulp it all down, hungrily, filling myself to the point of bursting. Maybe cause I thought it was real; maybe cause I was afraid it wasn't. When you're at breaking point what do you care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway?
I turn to look out the window, too. There it was, the scene from the day we met. I glance back at you but of course you were gone too. What do I care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway? The train speeds on; we arrive at our next memory. I think of all the things I've said, all the things I never said. How could love have turned out to be the greatest barrier of all?
All the messages we sent each other were the perfectly preserved records of our imperfect love. Another chance for us to get things wrong again. Love: the perfect desire for the imperfect. But we confuse the imperfect object with the perfect and like two trains speeding away in the night we miss each other by inches, perfectly engineered imperfection. And we are breathless from the speed, the proximity. We want to reach out; we dare not.
In the distance, we hear the sound of two trains - a collision.
A: No, and if it does it should not. Nothing that is this beautiful should be made to last. Life without death is a tragedy; eternal art not art at all.
A: Yes, and if it doesn't it should. If even this degrades, decays, then of what use is hope? I could not bear to live in a world where all beauty eventually dies, where beauty, indeed, is contingent on transience.
I get on the train, and you are there, waiting for me. You smile as I sit down opposite you, and I remember the day we met all those years ago. The day I met the 99% perfect girl; the day I fell in love; the day everything started; the day it all started to end.
I knew as soon as I saw you: here is a girl as close to 100% as I'm ever likely to get. Should I have waited for that 100%, I will never know.
Of course we ended up disappointing each other. No surprise. How could we not, when we were so afraid of revealing what we want? (What we want what we really really want.) Somehow we made that 1% out to be so much more than it really was - it grew and it grew until there was a rift between us neither of us knew how to bridge. Was it because everything else was so perfect that we couldn't help but focus on what wasn't?
I look across at you. All I see now is the 99% I overlooked because of the 1%.
How did it happen, when did we grow up all of a sudden? Where was the line, how did we cross it? Without warning, without fanfare. What a shame! Do you remember the smell of rain, the whisper of the wind?
Your smile fades. You look out the window. Silence.
But you were always like the moon to me. As you went so did my desire ebb and flow, as I tried my hardest to keep up with you. But no matter how hard I tried I never got any closer to you; no matter how hard I try a part of you will always remain hidden from me.
We speed past the seaside. Oh! That is where we were once, on that beach, happy. You lay against my chest as you scoop up handfuls of sand and allow them to run through your fingers. Do you remember? The picnic mat beneath us, the future before us. We used to talk, once. We used to love, once.
And beneath our love, our happiness, flowed that steady undercurrent of sadness. Do you remember how sad we were? Like something that could only be seen out of the corner of your eyes. Lurking, always, at the edges of our happiness. It was not loss, no - it was the memory of loss. That every second I spent with you was another second gone, lost forever like so much sand in the wind.
Your side profile still turned towards me, I remember the day I went through your diary. Why, I will never know. And I will never forgive myself. "And love was a language he never learnt to speak. He had to pick it up and piece it together wherever he could. And slowly, but surely, he began to understand. Just the tiniest bits at first, but slowly, and surely, he began to be fluent in love. But who can say, even as he was learning to listen, learning to speak, how much had been lost between the cracks, how much love had flowed past him, incomprehensible? They say you never step in the same river twice. So too love. He could not receive the love I gave him, and it will never be the same again."
Didn't you feel like you were drowning, desperately trying to grab on to anything that felt real to you? That's what falling in love felt like to me. Or maybe it was like wandering in a desert. I'm parched, desperate for a sip of water, and I stumble upon an oasis I'm never sure is not a mirage. I gulp it all down, hungrily, filling myself to the point of bursting. Maybe cause I thought it was real; maybe cause I was afraid it wasn't. When you're at breaking point what do you care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway?
I turn to look out the window, too. There it was, the scene from the day we met. I glance back at you but of course you were gone too. What do I care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway? The train speeds on; we arrive at our next memory. I think of all the things I've said, all the things I never said. How could love have turned out to be the greatest barrier of all?
All the messages we sent each other were the perfectly preserved records of our imperfect love. Another chance for us to get things wrong again. Love: the perfect desire for the imperfect. But we confuse the imperfect object with the perfect and like two trains speeding away in the night we miss each other by inches, perfectly engineered imperfection. And we are breathless from the speed, the proximity. We want to reach out; we dare not.
In the distance, we hear the sound of two trains - a collision.
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