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.