a rainy night in town

A few photos that I took tonight.

la lengua

Currently Listening: Yael Naim - Levater

There’s something captivating about listening to music in a foreign language. It’s a beautiful paradox - you can’t understand a single word, but magically, you still understand everything. Lost in translation? There’s no such thing. You know exactly how the artist felt when the song was written - you know what it means. You can feel every last feather’s weight of emotion buried beneath the notes, it’s not hard to dig up. You can sense the direction of the melody: the climb of an uphill scale, the freedom of arpeggios, the circular waves of rotating chords. It’s just like feeling the wind - you don’t have to open your eyes to know which way the air is blowing; where it’s colliding with your face, nipping your ears, fluttering your hair is already evidence, enough. The subtle touches of every moment of the music do the translation, by themselves. It’s like slowly (but freely) connecting dots between the stars at night, forming your own masterpiece of imagination.

So, no - I have no clue as to what “Levater” translates to in English. But frankly, I don’t want to know. Leaving it a mystery, out of my grasp in a sense, makes it that much more fulfilling to the ear. I’m free to run away with it’s mood, to drown myself in its remarkably powerful chorus, to adjust my interpretation of the music to good mornings, good nights, and good byes.

for better or for worse

.. I’d still have you first.

There’s some things you can never forgive yourself for, never stop regretting, never stop remembering.

The world feels pretty empty. My mind feels empty, my soul feels empty. My hope feels empty. You could see it as a good thing - light as a feather, no maybes, no worries, no expectation. Or you could see it as a bad thing - empty to the point of blankness, of forgetting what makes you smile and losing what you once thought you couldn’t live without. Empty to the point of disposable, useless .. and yet, you could care less.

I don’t know where I’m headed anymore, and these few weeks have taken a bulldozer to my original plans and hopes for the future. Why wake up in the morning when all you do is confront another day full of passing - passing faces, passing classes, passing time, passing yourself on by without even realizing it, yet going through the motions regardless. I look in the mirror and wonder who that girl is. Bags beneath her eyes from lack of sleep and worry wrinkles that can’t be erased by a million Alpha-Hydroxy treatments. She doesn’t even try to look pretty anymore - there’s nobody to impress, not even herself. In the end, she still comes home every day to her bed and takes a nap to forget about the stillness of life, how trapped she feels amongst these cyclic, crashing tidal waves of boredom.

I have yet to find what fuels me, what makes life more than an apathetic masquerade. I have yet to find what makes me more than just another child, clutching onto cotton candy for dear life, on a hollow merry-go-round.

fool's gold

There aren’t many things I look forward to nowadays. And there are fewer things I look forward to that actually prove to be worth the wait - they’re usually not nearly as great as I anticipated. Like fool’s gold, they sparkle from far away, drawing you near in metallic whispers. And once you get down to the core, they’re just as worthless and unsatisfying as the last fake rhinestone.

But there’s one thing I know for sure that, when it happens, will be so much better than I can hope or imagine. It’s going to be better than even all the fancies and daydreams of the wait, all the time spent envisioning its happening. It’s going to be so worthwhile, so surreal, and so unforgettable. There’s no way it could go wrong - I just hope it happens sooner or later.

That’s my driving force.

fine lines

Tread the line as it treads itself
an unraveling fit for kings and queens
ceremonies laden with love and coated in gold
beneath the realm of backwards progress
He says between sips of a tin beer can
Did you know God is everywhere?
Did you know He’s in my drink? In the stink of my breath?
Between the dirty seats of this train
and the ugliest smog of night?
In the lost fog of insanity
and the clean air of clarity?
I saw Him once then never again
A glaring light, the kind to blind you
the kind to strip and cleanse you
of the stink of your breath
and the dirty seats of this train
and the ugliest smog of night

I said to him I never saw
such glaring light, the kind to blind
Where could I find it? I asked him gently
Between the edge of night and day?
Tell me the splendor inside of the secret
On the corner of left
and the crosswalks of right?
Scribbling the lines of heaven and hell
the ones that tell you where to go?
He said to me, you cannot find it
but for the sole reason
that you do not try

wakeful

The new OneRepublic album is phenomenal. They keep 100% of their talent without losing the signature style that makes them so unique, to begin with. If anything, they’ve refined and perfected their style - sanded off a few bumpy edges. Primed, polished, and toned the balance of instrumental vs. electronic elements. They’ve synthesized features of classical, hip-hop, ambient, and rock genres into one stunningly colorful masterpiece. And this album, even more so than the first album, is not only metaphorical social commentary on the brokenness of the world, but also on the hope buried deep in humanity’s drive to change and revolutionize itself. Listening to it makes me feel the potential leadership charisma inside of music.

"OneRepublic adds many production flourishes to their second album Waking Up: sawing strings, children's choirs, minor-key piano, cavernous U2 reverb, long ponderous instrumental sections of piano and orchestra duets, a title track that bears echoes of the Killers. Despite all these new additions, OneRepublic's calling card remains Ryan Tedder's blend of atmospheric modern rock and rhythmic modern R&B affectations, creating a coolly slick collection of power ballads of love lost and won."

Bravo for music that is pivotal in both message and sound.

liberty

Free from expectation … oh, how i long to be.

I’m not quite sure who has the highest expectations of me. But my gut feeling says that it’s myself. And that, kind sirs and madams, I hope to change.

Because lately, I’ve found that expectation (although it doesn’t necessarily create false hope) creates false identity. I refuse to be defined according to expectations. I am not a byproduct of empty standards glued to my forehead. I hate being labeled according to ambition or potential, to “her future’s possibilities.” I am not a perfect porcelain doll or a dictionary or a coat-rack or a blank slate. I am not your disposable brilliance, not an exhibit at a museum to gape and gawk at. Googly-eyed, drooling fools don’t understand that I am not my brain. Just like they say: “a heart ain’t a brain,” well, a brain ain’t a person either.

I’m waiting to crack the ivory because I can’t stand rosy cheeks and the ‘thank you’ of forced modesty much longer.

lately . . .

A few more moons, a few more winters
A few, or perhaps many –
they come and go.
Numberless as time, rise and fall with tides.

A few more moons, a few more winters
will bring us together, my dear!
But until then, they keep us apart,
two hearts, one dying echo.

The distance is far, the wait always long
but the wait and the walk of the distance is ours.
For the stars you see are the same ones as me,
and our eyes share a sky that holds the same sun.

Good morning on my side is goodnight on yours
and while worlds apart, the wind,
ever faithful, blows my kisses to where you are.

Not so far, after all
Not as far as we thought
Same day and age, just not the same place.

The patience of a few more moons,
the worries of a few more winters,
I pray will bring you back to me.

---------------

. . . I can't tell you how much I miss you.

gravity

Blank Verse

I stand in the icicle cold tonight
wrapped in frozen moments and memories,
crystal beaded tears and smiles made of glass,
a porcelain doll abandoned on the shelf
whose empty grey eyes stare into grey dust.
Such are the companions of my silence,
the hollow friends of a lost, broken night.

Take me somewhere the air is full of life
and hellos and goodbyes and - my oh my -
the adrenaline of a chase, the rush
of change, the thrust of time, the lift of love.
Set free the colors to roam in my world
and bear the dead weight of an uphill climb
towards the sky, forward, further, higher

‘til horizons are crossed and oceans sailed,
‘til my heart trusts enough, to fall back down
gravity to ground and into your arms.

between a hundred years of solitude and heaven once

"It's for the deaf kid in the aisle of the symphony who hears it through the rumble of the tuba and the timpani." - George Watsky

Every once in a while I stumble across true lyricists. People who by their words reaffirm the thumping heartbeat of life that can be found in music. And meanwhile reaffirm the empty hollow burned-out sunken melting corpses of what are the pathetic remnants of today's "mainstream" hip hop.

Somehow, these lyricists resurrect the death of truth. They rewind past the timely ignorance of a generation who is blind to the crusty gold spray paint plastered to its face. They tackle real issues. Well, no. First, they define what is "real," set it as undeniable, and then tackle it with this crazy mix of bravery elegance urgency and wit all at once.

They point lasers in the eyes of corruption, blaze fire in the face of oppression, shine spotlights on the mute minority; they are the long-forgotten conscience of society.

----------

but perhaps there will always be you who prefer standing on the corner
hustling till your bone marrow and veins drain empty
and the valves and chambers of the hearts
of those who love you shatter into a million parts
with your shiny silver rims that cost you money (that you stole)
digging deeper into the mess and mud of your own (grave) hole
writing pride on your arms, signing two initials on your chest
naive enough to believe one worth is precious, more expensive than the rest
but nobody comes out on top when everybody's thinking "dey da best"
so give up on the vanity, 'cause vanity comes in vain
and then comes the pain of your unresolved yesterday
the gain of burden on the shoulders of tomorrow
self pity before the vultures embark, then land to feast on all your sorrow

sonnet

The ships embark; they’ve got somewhere to go,

The planes lift off, away today they fly.
What’s the rush? seems like the last hello
to a story barely begun – goodbye.
Early endings bred this bitter farewell,
what-ifs and who-knows of what could have been.
Always the time to go, so chime the bells,
the rude dictators of our every when.
You count the hours, time’s edges frayed,
the minutes add up, but never enough
for the tempo of your reign, so we fade.
This is not what it is to be in love.

The clock can wait, its debts we can borrow.
Just once, let’s leave it all for tomorrow.

-----------------------------------

Just a few thoughts lately about finding composure and happiness within the rush of life.

lost & found

Villanelle - Creative Writing Period 1

The sun shines brighter since you’ve been around,
for every tear, ten smiles, fears a million miles away.
The lost beat to my heart, I’ve finally found.

It skips a beat, flutters a bit and finds the sound
of your voice at the end of these long days
when the sun shines brighter ‘cause you’ve been around.

You unearthed it, buried deep in the ground;
underground, out of sight, hazy and gray,
that lost beat to my heart, you’ve finally found.

Vision blurred, head hurt, on the verge yet down
you pulled me out of harm’s way, a safe place to stay
in, I swear the sun’s brighter since you’ve been around.

We’re out at sea now. Everyone thinks we’ll drown
in the waves and waters of love, oh - but they
don’t know the lost beat to my heart that you’ve finally found.

I can barely remember the times where I wound
Right and left, inside out, upside down in a maze –
but these days, the sun shines since you’ve been around.
You’re the beat to my heart, lost but now found.

sooner or later

Bits of cloth lay scattered on the ground. Strips of white lace, blue velvet, shiny black silk – you name it. Classy fabric, trashy fabric, fabric fit for playing in the sun and playing in the mud. Little needles and pins stood buried in the carpet, like bombs littering a warzone, waiting to rupture on your heel. If cloth were corpses and needles were missiles, then World War III had already taken place in that tiny sewing room. Anyone who laid eyes on it for the first time called it a nightmare. You couldn’t walk, or even tiptoe, for fear of being stabbed in the foot.

But, she called it paradise – maybe even heaven. In her sewing room and that room only, she was unstoppable – fifty years younger, a hundred times happier, and one secret lighter. Every fabric was a masterpiece waiting to be made into something beautiful, especially this one.

Grace, the only one in the household daring enough to enter, crept in. She glued her back to the sides of the room, trying her best to miss all the needles on the ground. “What are you workin’ on over there?”

“Oh, just finishing up something.”
“Well, what is it?”
“A dress.”
“What kinda dress?”
“Wedding.”
“What? Nobody’s getting married, Grandma.”
“I am.”
“What do you mean, you are? I think it’s a little too late for that.”
“It’s never too late, Grace. Never too late for anything. So long as you really want it.”

Then there was silence – not the kind that made you feel at a loss, though. Her two hands, over the years, had grown old. Threading string through the eye of a needle never seemed quite so hard, ‘till recent years at best. Hands trembling, eyes squinting, she brought string and needle close up to her face, painted in wrinkles whose crooked paths outlined every joy and every sorrow of her secret.

“So you’re finally marrying him, aren’t you?”
“Yes, dear. In my heart, at least.”
“Why’d you wait so long?”
“Cause now he’s gone. He’ll never have to know I loved him the whole time. He’ll never have to know he was the one I really wanted.”
“Well then what’s the point? Isn’t it too late if he’s gone?”
“It’s never too late. Never too late for anything. He’s gone, but I’m still here.”

until

She is counting down the days. Counting them down, marking them off one by one with a big red x on the calendar. Each x hoists her upon its shoulders, bringing her one step closer to where he is. What a flimsy handful of papers tacked to the wall. Flimsy but powerful nonetheless; papers that dictate space and time, and most painfully, the spaces between times.

She does not have the heart to take down the calendar - surrender is unheard of to a longing heart. But nor does she have the heart to wait much longer. Absence brings agony matchless, unbearable for even the most steadfast of hearts.

The date reads a whirlpool of numbers and letters, distorted by magnifying glasses, coffee stains, and heartache. Tomorrow, yesterday, today, forever – what difference could it possibly make? A year might as well be a light-year. She reaches for the red marker lying motionless on her desk and marks off another day. It's all too familiar - the x, the wait, the distance between.

Lay yourself to sleep, dear. As her eyes shut and she enters a realm where time shackles none, another x embraces the fleeting day as it did the night before. A rush of blood to the head and to the heart, perhaps enough to pass the time.

hide & seek

Hide –
Under the table, beneath the stairs, catch me if you can. Glue guns, melted molasses, masquerades. Silence, waiting to be broken - like the droning of a smile waiting to form, life waiting to breathe, love waiting to be found. Head-on collision of anticipation and the unexpected. Motion sickness of the heart, let’s rest here for a while. Let you in? Keep you out. If it was in my power, if it was in my control, your cup would be overflowing. I would give you all and more, I would be yours to keep. Your name embossed on my heart, inside out and upside down. But we are weighed down by stones, wrapped in sheet metal, floating in ice water. Perhaps one day, the gap may be bridged – that these chains will be one by one unlatched, unraveled, unclamped. We would at last be undeniable. Forgive me for this halfhearted heart of mine.

Seek –
In the closet, behind the door, adrenaline of the chase. Blinding lights, mirrors, tired eyes. Fists pounding on the door, demanding entrance, demanding existence. Still the deafening sound of silence – a road leading to who knows where, but crossroads for sure. Make space, scoot over; there’s plenty room and more for two. Breathe in, breathe out. Take me, will you? On purpose, please. Not by chance, not a hint of reluctance in your resolve. Yet your voice falters, cracks, stutters and stumbles over syllables. Hesitation demoralizes; it robs me of my courage and cheats me of my sacrifice. But if worst comes to worst, come back when you can, because I’ll be waiting on the other side of this brick red door, hand clutched on the golden knob. What cannot be changed can either be accepted or waited upon. The wait is mine, the fight is ours, and all the while, my heart is yours; wholehearted.

exhilaration

Things That Make Me Feel Alive:
Blinding white
Pain
Bear hugs
Dreams
Orange suns
Honesty
Receiving voicemail
Peanut butter
Humidity
Boredom
Wind in my hair when driving
Writing
Belly buttons
The smell of new books
All-nighters
Power outages
Secrets
Sunburn
Missing the bus
Blood
Heartbreak
Cold showers
Second chances
Listening to pouring rain
First times
Elevators with mirrors
Ugly days
Making eye contact
Bravery


Things That Drain Me Of Life:
Cycles
Dry skin
Stale pretzels
Clothes shrinking in the wash
Misunderstanding
Cluttered rooms
Getting white shoes dirty
Uncomfortable sleeping positions
Ignorance
Too many pennies in my wallet
Unflushed toilets
Secondhand smoke
Rude children
Getting the bottom of my pants wet
Stuffy nose
White noise/static
Holding the door for someone who doesn't say thank you
Slow left lane drivers
Accidentally touching chewed gum

Realizing I messed up

bye

The plane took off precisely as the departure schedule had read: 2:10 PM, June 9. Just another numb lift-off, up into an endless expanse of blue shrouded in white. She sat on the right window seat, passenger class B. In her right hand, she clutched a red iPod nano, scratched on both faces, scratches marking the times she had used it for comfort when nothing but music could fetch and shoulder her heart home. Now was another one of those times where therapy was valid only in the form of rhythm and melody. In her left hand, rested a locket mirror, large enough only for the clutch of a small hand. She unfolded the mirror and remembered what he had told her. From the reflection, his words seemed to emit back a gaze as strong and fixated as the gaze she gave it.

You are powerless if you believe yourself powerless. You are powerful if you believe yourself powerful.

She shifted her gaze from the reflection - that was all the while poking holes at her conscience and spitting an image of his face, rubbing salt in the wounds of decaying memory - to out the window. The surreality of the clouds against such blue backdrop made her heart leap bounds. The colors seemed to splash beyond their normal thresholds, an intensity she was unable to characterize or since, relive. Way up here, 10,000 feet above ground zero, everything was 10,000 times more beautiful. Could life down there ever be lived as it were up here, basking in glory and beauty, timeless? She wondered if his words would truly validate her potential or wholly confirm her doubt. Regardless of outcome, she was glad enough to have known him and everything he had managed to show her about herself, intentionally or unintentionally.

3 and a half hours and what seemed like infinite contemplations later, flight 647 landed in sweet compliance to the forces of gravity, at her destination. She dragged her luggage off the plane, each step growing heavier, but barely perceptible. She stepped in the airport, alongside hundreds of other faces. Each face had likewise left someone behind, had left the known for unknown. Each face loved someone or was loved by someone. For her, airports seemed to always affirm the common thread of humanity in mankind, let alone strangers from scattered corners of the world.

Then, she saw him. He was leaning on the wall, already looking at her. Why was he here?

And what if saying goodbye is, in some underground, impossible way, really saying hello?

patience is

She is teetering, wobbling on untreaded territory. Spinning a quick 360, yet still no familiar faces in sight, no warm smiles, no humble abode to call home. Her strength is fueled by the slow deadening of desire. Her quiet patience has been bred by several a defeat and many a disappointment. She has come to terms with the absence and tries her best to embrace independence.

He is wandering, blindly clawing at colorless, shapeless silhouettes. His perspective of time is drowned amidst disproportional yesterdays and tomorrows. Every day interchangeable for the next or the last, it all fuses into one ugly blur. He is master of his conscience, controller of his greed. He suffocates memories of her smile, extinguishing any leftover, burning embers.

But behind her ever-fading shadow, he wants her to know that she's done nothing at all to make him love her less. It's a pity she's already realized that she does not deserve to love anyone else if she cannot first love herself.

Tonight, they lift their tired gazes up towards the street lights. Those orange, glowing pendulums of what they would like to believe is hope, shine throughout the night. At the first hints of the sunrise, they dim low and greet darkness, with conviction.

too good to be true?

Too much sugar, too little salt. A little too bitter, not quite sour enough.
Too much charisma, too little charm. A little too nice, not quite naughty enough.

I thought I knew what I wanted - that I had it all perfectly mapped out in my mind. A visionary, almost a prophecy, one that I told myself could ultimately be fulfilled by someone. Well, I'm beginning to question the blueprints. It seems like they are crumbling at the creaking base, fraying at the loose ends, peeling at the crusty edges. Paying for his mistakes, others are having to apologize for him, make up for what he stole and never returned. Worst part is, they get nothing out of the deal either. False bargains and frauds, I feel more of a wanted criminal with each repeat and every echo.

Sometimes it's easier just to not answer the door. Let the chimes ring, let 'em finish their little clockwork melody. Don't forget to close the blinds, just don't close the case.

... And all the while waiting, ever so patiently. All the while, clinging to dwindling promises.

gaze

Your eyes, they teem with burdens. Burdens unspeakable, heaped beneath layer upon layer of densely-packed, coarse hues and gradients. These stacked and shaded gradients, you keep sealed tightly at the seams, just so there's no room for poking holes and crushing air bubbles. Perhaps I'll never know how it is that you bear the sweat and ache of burden, how you muster the courage to liberate others before self. Jaded to the feeling, your affliction becomes familiar. Self-neutralizing, maybe even numbing.

I've hoped you're alright and not horribly disappointed, carrying all that by yourself, with but a scanty pool of souls in the world to stand alongside you. Upon the raw flesh of one back, lays the weight of the whole world.

restless

I can't fall sleep. Maybe it's because trying to sleep means having to remember how fleeting yesterday was, how empty today is, and how unsung tomorrow may be. Anything leading up to sleep is as much a blow of reality, as sleep itself is an escape from reality.

My thoughts tonight are scattered, fluttering pieces of garbage in the wind. I'm at a loss as to where to go from here before it's far too late. Too late to turn back without putting someone else's emotions on the line.

Playing with fire?

deep city lights

I'm glad these days the sun shines a bit longer, so the days feel a bit more liveable. It's harder to get lost when the lights are guiding you, igniting your bones.

click for larger image

for reasons unknown

click for larger image

pulling heartstrings

There are strings dangling from my the chambers and valves of my heart, attached to little puppets. Quite animated, quite they are. But I have not the slightest idea by whom or to whom these puppets come to life, prancing around, flailing their lifeless limbs.

At times, the little puppets slumber like children for days on end. I come close to forgetting them, altogether. Other days, it seems they are pounding with indignant fists on the inner walls of my chest, demanding release into the open. May they burst and reap explosion, or suffocate a death mocking as it is slow, I cannot say.

Charlotte O'Connor - Just Like You Love Me Again

until

"dying is easy
it's living that's so hard"

scholarship entry frenzies

“If you could rename yourself, what would your new name be and why?”

I proudly dub myself the name Anonymous.

In the history of nomenclature there have been names of both typical and atypical nature, of both glorious and disgraceful meaning. History has yet to encounter wholehearted absence of name. I believe that name does not confer upon the named the virtues of Greek gods and goddesses, nor does it bestow particular fortune or calamity. A name fosters not concrete identity, but virtual, futile identity. In essence, it is emptied of meaning when employed in the context of the moving, breathing commotion of life. Within life’s bona fide realm, little does it matter what my name is, so long as I can show you much better than I can say.

Sooner rather than later, akin to trivial specks of dust particles diffusing into nullity, engrossed by sunlight’s captivation and darkness' absorption, a name denotes naught.

one hundred forty four thousand

cause when the trumpets blowin'

I have spent so much useless time in the past trying to please others.
I have found that I will end up either stranded at sea or shipwrecked on shore.

24 elders surround the throne

What things would we say if we had not a care of how others regarded or judged us upon? How fervidly would we love? Would we at last cease to ferment amongst moldy bits of bread crumbs, made sheepish by our vile instincts - our want of acceptance and recognition?

only 144,000 gon' get home

1 + 1

I made a time capsule in 4th grade and found it in my closet today, buried beneath a heap of the past, among other flimsy old valentine's day cards, photographs, printed conversations, or whatever else have you.

And I have always wondered what my PostSecret card might one day say.

"I finally got what I always said I wanted. And now I realize I don't want it at all. But the worst part is that I'm powerless already."

Too bad I didn't think to glue big, red 'Rewind' and 'Fast Forward' buttons on my time capsule back then.

= 2

withering flowers

The coming and parting of spring infests me
It's the happiest and saddest time of the year

mercy on men

"forgive them, forgive they know not what they do"

If we didn't know that forgiveness was endless, we wouldn't bounce back comfortably onto second and third and thirtieth chances as acceptable avenues of redemption. That God would still consider excuses "repentance"? But even though He sees us manipulating His forgiveness, given the choice, He would still save us a thousand times over.

Paid the full cost plus tax, so long as we still got it all for free.

masterpieces on blank canvases of silence

Music speaks in the world's only universally understood language. There need be no fear of precious meaning, lost in translation, forever irretrievable. Zimbabwe, Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aires, Cairo - you name it. No matter where you're from, you can feel the bounce and rhythm of a song. You can tap your feet to the beat, that is, unless you are melodically handicapped. (Such poor, unfortunate souls.) You can get goosebumps listening to silky smooth vocal runs, like I do.

Gets me every single time.

We are a people with whom the majority have been equipped the ability to empathize with music on a crazily sublime level. To be moved by notes and voices from all ends of a revolving 3-D spectrum of hues and colors. Some identify better with the raspy throats of hoarse soul artists, others with the striated timbres of violin and viola, and yet others with electronic synthesizers and voice box technology.

Sometimes I wonder how beautiful the world would be if words were sung, rather than spoken.

So that expressing how you care for someone wouldn't amount to meaningless mumbles, but to rhythm, chords, and ultimately, divine melodies. Imagine if there were soundtracks for every emotion. Soundtracks for joy, fear, anger, hope, despair. After all, don't we always say that how we feel "can't possibly be put into words"? Words apparently don't serve proper justice to the intensity of human emotion. In no way can it capture the fine lines, and the unfathomable depths between those fine lines, the way music can. Words can't overlap and layer and interweave and contort like the notes of a root chord and all its variant chords - the seventh, fifth, ninth, diminished, major, minor chords.

I believe that ears can shed tears, can bleed convulsing in pain, can smile wider than the heart can grin. I'm so thankful that I'm not deaf. If and only if God willing, I were ever to go deaf, I suppose I would paint quarter and eighth notes in the air, in hopes that they would magically come to life and reverberate the airwaves surrounding my eyes. Perhaps I could use those digital, visual metronomes so I could sing and play, if not audibly, then at least visibly.

Until then, music will always speak for me when hurt penetrates so deep that I am numb at the mouth and frozen at the feet, drowning in my own miserable pool of writer's block.

grip

She is not a nameless
face, encapsulated identity, gasping for
sky and all else lack thereof

And for reasons still largely
unknown to her, is beginning
to see that it is okay, on behalf of

A face with a name,
her identity, locked not in dusty
containers of hollow glass jars

She is mopping up all
else and the sky, rhythmic inhales with exhales
buried deep chested, at peace

no more sinking ships

There are two kinds of smart:

1. Smart that you squeeze.
Like a tart lemon, this smart bears its face only when pushed to the edge. It won't magically appear at its own inclination or in an organic manner. You have to fight with it - sear, rip, lacerate, strangle. Essentially, you get your ass kicked. This involves studying into wee hours of the night, re-editing as a necessity and not at discretion, memorization as a wrestle with death, himself. People call you smart, but little do they know it's a product of countless years of toil against an only average intellectual capacity. It's pushing through the ceiling and roof when you know fully well that you maxed out long ago. It's trying to stretch brain matter as far as it will inflate without ripping. It's a constant struggle between weighing cost versus gain. Only blood, sweat, and tears brings the sugarcane. Your smarts aren't cultivated naturally out in the fields soaking up rays of sunshine. Your smarts are cultured in a laboratory specialized in synthetic experiments, with trial and error, failure and success.

2. Smart that oozes.
Shake up a full Coke can with intensity, and an explosive fireworks effect results. Even after the fireworks are over, Coke bubbles still eagerly rise, dancing and oozing around like a little, industrious ant colony. This type of smart simply comes with the package, like one of those plastic toys or beanie babies that come with the cereal box. You needn't study - study is, after all, a rather foreign word to you. All your pre-test preparation resides snugly in your head. You retain and soak up material from class like an extravagantly porous sponge. And likewise, all post-test harvests reap only the most pleasing of results. Your smarts are 100% organic, whole wheat. No need for artificial steroid syringes.

My brother got into the Blair Magnet Program. Something inside me always knew he would. He's one of those genuinely rare smart kids (type 2, refer to above), who carries his head nice and balanced on his shoulders, despite the brutal beatings it's had to endure (pun intended, just in case you were wondering). In the realm of everyone in my sphere of influence, both the old and crinkly as well as the spirited young, my brother is the strongest. Not necessarily strong in the physical sense, although, for the record, he can effortlessly run a 6 minute mile and spar a 6 + foot brown belt.

I am proud of him. There is nobody in my eyes that deserves more to have a chance at happiness. Don't we all? Why is it that some people can seize it and selfishly store away in locked chambers complete with a whole ring of iron locks and keys, while others come back with their head buried in their hands, fingers burned and blistered, when they so much as reach out to try and touch it? I want life to be fair to him, for once.

So Dustin, when you read this, I'm sorry that I didn't say congratulations. My pride seems to get the best of me, half the time when I least want it to. Where I failed and wasn't accepted into Richard Montgomery IB, you have triumphed. A part of me feels redeemed, in knowing that you proved Mama wrong. Another part of me feels infinitely jealous - is this a reaffirmation of my shortcomings or simply a mark of final surrender? I know well enough, although I have difficulty admitting, that you can outdistance and surpass me academically and in every other way for your future, hands down. Heck, you're nearly taller than me now. (I never thought the day would come when you would be in my direct line of vision.) You're type 2 and I'm type 1. God blessed you with something He chose to withold from me, for His good yet unfathomable reasons. If you value my advice at all, even after every bloodcurling scream that has chilled the living daylights out of you, I say: simply do what you think will make you happiest. Forget about the unnerving idea of keeping up your GPA while maintaining Cross Country, Karate, Chinese School, college options, and all that jazz. Everything will fall into place, so long as your face and heart stay smiling.

:) I love you BRO.

coming full circle

feel, feel inside
so burns the pain
so floats the joy

run, run away
so shrinks behind
so swells forward

steer, steer angles
so curves the road
so bends the bridge

feel, run, steer
moment's paused none
if only to where

we may learn to breathe
breathe one day the ugliness we see
so much as love will be like breathing

we will rise and fall with tides
wane and wax with moons
cycle alongside seasons

come and go, all the while flanked,
coming full circle

mother goose & co

Today, my sister asked me to read to her the story of Humpty Dumpty.

As I was reading I realized - be it by coincidence or by a quite striking dose of reality - that Humpty Dumpty and I would likely be the bestest of friends, were he only real enough for me to identify with.

He sat on a wall and by a most unfortunate turn of events, as fate would predictably have it, came crashing to the ground. His remnants lay scattered like broken glass about the ground, irreparable by even the combined efforts of all the King's horses and all the King's men.

Humpty Dumpty probably built that wall and sat on it because he was terrified of letting anyone in. Perhaps if he let someone in, it would disrupt his equilibrium. He would inevitably lose his balance, and in oblivion at the falling moment, blame himself for not sitting upright enough. Or maybe it would just make him feel as if his efforts in constructing the wall went to vain, in and beyond their entirety. The intruder would not even begin to imagine how many painstaking hours Humpty Dumpty had spent building his wall with the all too dependable mixture of mortar and tears. His hopes had already climbed the highest crags and leaped over gaping crevices. Was it so wrong for him to wish that his final product be resistant to wear and tear, bullets and bombs, thunder and lightning?

I understand Humpty's thought process - his path of logic and attempts at self-preservation. I find myself doing the exact same thing. I build up walls, swearing never to let anyone in, in fear of the past bearing its atrocious face, the ever so mocking flag of my own vulnerability. My walls are built so high that they tower with an almost ominous glare, as opposed to the protective purpose I had initially intended for them.

And with karma flanking me left and right, one day, the walls just crumble. With a few words, a look, a smile – anything even mildly suggestive of anything beyond nothing – they collapse. The burning embers recoil around what once were strapping walls, until only the putrid smell of grey ashes remains.

Time to rebuild again, I guess. Hopefully I can find the right proportions of mortar and tears so my walls serve more faithfully to their purpose this time around.

wishful thinking

I can't seem to put into words how I've been feeling lately. Nothing seems to serve proper justice in capturing how I feel. I know this because I've been here before, seen the same insanely enticing sight, and walked away the same way. Walked away the whole road home battling heart and head, wondering if it would have been a rising or setting sun - a luck of the draw or one just to find you've picked out the shortest clover in the bundle. Walked home the whole time trying to convince my two feet to make a 180, carrying me backwards to that familiar crossroads.

I can't say if you make me happy. But I can't say if I'm sad because you can't make me happy. I can't say if I want you enough, that I might face and embrace my flaws in hopes that you would, too. I can't say if I could ever see you wanting me enough, flaws and all encompassed.

I can't say because I've never seen and would hate to falsely imagine what it looks like on the other side of our wall.
But I can say that I want you to know and desire everything that there ever existed to know and desire about me.

Perhaps this is all beyond my means. Inside my dreams.

the root

It's cold everywhere. Frost dangling off the limbs of trees, awake among the yellowness of dead, brittle grass before dawn creeps in.

The cold is infectious and in being infectious, also thorough. Infects everything thoroughly. You can't be cold and warm at the same time. You can't stand in circles of stabbing winds and say that it feels like you're basking in a pool of summer breeze. You can't stand, drowning in pouring rain and say that you can't feel the drench. You can't ignore it when the water soaks up hair, penetrates into the depths of skin, weighs down clothing to a dripping overflow.

There's a name for that. Crestfallen denial.

igniting airwaves

There's something piercing about watching a candle flicker in a dark room on a wintry day.
Piercing because in awe of the irony of it all.

You see, the candle maintains complete composure even though it burns away at its own existence. Burns away, quite possibly in pain .. but nonetheless with that same upright posture. Burns away until only a pool of miserable, dried wax at what once was it's feet remains. A bit as if on it's knees worshiping what is no longer physically tangible, but in another unseen dimension, worshiping what is still .. there.

The leftovers from the candle are all still there - the heat, the smell, the ambiance, the suggestion, the quivering shadows that, just a few moments ago, were bouncing off and across the walls. It's amazing how something invisible to the eye can still have such emphatic presence to the remaining senses. It hasn't disappeared, just willingly changed in silhouette from gorgeous to grotesque. But all the while, there's no doubt that it was once there. Such are the marks of true divinity.

Funny how when we ask for reminders, He answers in the most unusual yet unforgettable ways. One or two breaths of fresh air in cities choking under pillows of smoke.

bittersweet

Have you ever been so happy with something that you're deathly afraid .. of losing it?

I can sense that fear creeping up on me. It's like molasses. Sticky, so easily attachable, but horribly difficult to get out of. An accidental mess .. a painstaking clean-up. I don't want to drown in another pool of my own molasses. It's rising tide engulfs like quicksand and before I know it, I'm ten feet under and upside down. Bittersweet is a beautiful thing, but only when the balance of it isn't disrupted -- too much bitter and too little sweet.

As opposed to unbalanced, let's keep it beautiful. Please don't let the scale tip.

on blossoming

I must admit, without shame but rather with relief at this final liberation, that I have always been jealous. No, not particularly of the Barbie doll girls, glamorized drug dealing, partying, or sexing it up, but of people who know what they want and, by all means, get it.

No, not in the sense that they know what they want to eat for lunch or what they want to purchase on their next shopping crusade.

I am actually green with envy of people that know what they want to be when they "grow up" - their profession, their life's culminating apex stretched out over forty, fifty years. People that have laid eyes on, pinpointed, cherished, and are determined to grasp a tight hold upon their life's purpose. I am so jealous of their absolute and emphatic KNOWING - they made a decision already, pick and chose, came out satisfied with self.

I, on the other hand, have never been able to picture myself in a serious profession ten years from now. I have passively fluctuated between a countlessly long enumeration of future job possibilities. I wish I was more assertive. I realized recently that I have always been in rather pathetic denial about the fact that I am utterly afraid of commitment. Be it commitment in taking on a job, investing in a relationship, spending more than 10 dollars on anything, engaging in daily after school activities for more than 45 minutes - I shrivel into a wad of cowardice at the sight of commitment. At times I know this is because I do not have enough grounded faith in my own potential; I usually, with a compass of particularly short length, inscribe myself within a circle of likewise short radius, dictating my dead ends. I tell myself that if I try to venture beyond the edge of the circle, into such unfamiliar territory, I will surely lose myself along the way.

But really, I think it's time to muster courage to battle what is not fear, but apathy and lazyness. Simply put, the acclivity leading off a cliff is not a dead end, but the avenue less traveled.

I have finally realized what I want to do with my life!

I would like to be a writer. I'm not quite sure what type - journalist, columnist, broadcast reporter, novelist, translator, etymologist, the list goes on, only to name a few. I just want to mold and glue and shape and twist and paint and create with words - a blank canvas to be filled with multitudes and waves of language. Aside from basic emotions as love and pain, language bridges a universal gap of expression (given the assumption that nothing is carelessly or masterfully lost in translation). It interweaves and overlaps entity with entity. I can't imagine investing my life's purpose in anything aside from using language to make what sparse impact I may upon my bubble of a universe.

Let me not turn back upon my resolution in fear of failure or judgment or slight (but in my head, intensely magnified) obstacles. Let everything I work so hard for now, be of ultimate contribution to what I one day see myself as. For once, no backing out or hesitations allowable, you shaken little girl.

square one

They say that love will take you higher, farther than you ever could have dreamed; towards unfathomable heights and away from unfathomable depths. They say that love blurs your vision in a glorious way, turns black and white into scintillating metallics. They say that love assembles an army of belief that convenes at its own will without prompting or incentive, and the army can conquer all, not just by a slim victory, but by triumph in immense disparity between the spoils of vanquisher and vanquished.

Perhaps most importantly, they say that love is genuine. Authentic as a first-edition, tore-worn series of playing cards, natural as rain comes in drops and not jagged pieces. Inborn and spontaneous, the way a laugh or smile or frown can unfold over one’s face when caught off guard. So I can’t help but ask then, if they say love is genuine, should it not lead to action? How is it that they say someone loves you, but their actions only place them on the opposite end of the spectrum, at the burning red banner of hate? Love and action hold hands, tightly; they are one in the same and have not the slimmest chance at survival, if in want of the other.

Never believe someone if they say they love you, but do bounds less than nothing in demonstrative testimony to their “love”. I wish we could attest love, the way they say love really is.