How Do I

Recently I've been sucked in the world of words. I don't think I've really experienced a full-blown epiphany in my whole life but I think the realization of wanting to entrench myself in a thousand, colorful worlds has been the closest I can get to something like that.

You see, I don't really know why but I've been having the hardest time expressing myself verbally. I swear it's like I have these things I want to say but when they escape my mouth it's like they ooze out languorously, and it's deeply saddening sometimes that I have to think about how immersed I used to be in the meaning of my sentences, and not how I deliver them. Because these days I'm definitely too careful about how I can further improve my grammar at the moment and not about how my emotions can bridge to others by just letting them transform into vocabulary. I guess this is what they say about how life changes and how it changes you and how you change over time. I've been noticing things but most of them are external and not a lot of them are very introspective, frankly, and it worries me that I won't ever get back what I could almost always do before -- write passionately, write figuratively, write on my own terms, write because I desire to express. There's a lot of things inside me that I wish I could express but I find it troubling to find any other way than this to release the tumult in me, or, when I'm happy, the sun bursting in my heart, eating me alive with its rays of elation.

Cold

I'm not going to say I'm skilled enough to deal with my emotions, a tangle of debasing complexities. I myself do not think I'm as complex as I wish I were, and I know that I can marginalize my entire self into a black and white anatomy, a melange of narrow and wide, fat and thin muscles. What is so depressing about me? Is it my unwillingness to accept reality as it is? Is it the way I perceive what I observe? Most of the time I haul myself into razor sharp danger zones, toxicities in the air, in the earth. God, I'm so lost for words. And to lose myself is to lose my future, is that it? Will I ever transform into art itself? Isn't the way my lungs suck air in and shepherds it out an example of art? Tell me why the heart aches so badly. Tell me why the mouth bends downwards. Tell me why the day seems so short, and when night finally meets with the sky I am so wastefully useless, curling into what is the travesty of a fetus into a bed that feels like it was made out of the bones of the monsters that haunt me while I am awake. Or is it the net, the online forums and web pages, that cause such disturbance in myself? What do I block? Is there an accurate portal I need to seal? Like the spaces in my keyboard, or the holes on the horizontal sides of my heads. How will I ever complete what is missing if I am blind to what is lost.

Lo

HI HELLO.

I'm supposed to be doing my Filipino project right now but I got distracted by the Internet once again and now I'm back here. I mean, I can't really apologize for blacking out and ignoring this for almost, what, FIVE/SIX/SEVEN MONTHS, but after realizing that I'm not so far into losing myself I have "risen from the dead." It's quite funny that there are only three days left before Christmas and so MUCH has happened lately and you can assume that I am actually doing okay.

So yes I plan to write more and more. I've missed a lot.

Update

Hi. I haven't been logging in as often as I used to, and I would almost like to apologize. But I won't, really, because although I have missed writing -  have missed Blogspot-blogging - I've been able to take a look at things. Grasp them, even. I like writing when the nights are cold and blustery and when I'm halfway through a book I can or can't finish. Then I abandon the almost accusatory glare of PERNICIOUS THINKING, white text that swallows me up when I can't swallow. I like the purpose, the potential, the essence of writing - of words - but I do not miss it when I leave it behind for a while.

But I thought it would be lovely to keep track of happenings. Currently, I am doing a most honorable job avoiding the camera that sits on my bedside table. It keeps 600+ photos of Singapore, which I gladly, happily, fell in love with. Singapore is small but lively, a fast-paced city and country. The escalators, especially ones in LRTs, flow up and down in stress. The hurry is contagious, the movement infectious. Sooner or later you begin to cope with the hushed up frenzy, and, travelling through the streets and mimicking the pace, you know you're pathetically sweating. But it's all good. Amidst the exhaustion is a flurry of excitement, and that's probably what you feel when out and about in somebody else's home. Or maybe that's how I entangled myself in Singaporian ice cream wedged in between two tenuous biscuits. I'll say it again - a flurry of excitement.

But I have to be honest that as of the moment I don't feel as smiley as I did back in Singapore and its boat rides. Recently I've been feeling quite down. In moments where my happiness shines through in shorts of laughter, I often find that my happiness has depended on other people's almost entirely. I madly search for reactions, gauge those, and I expect a level of gratification. And I'm thinking that maybe that's all I'm really depending on. Somebody else's opinions, frequently somebody's acceptance or rejection. Be hostile around me, I feel ostracized. Maybe I've lost the ground, and if I had then I should get it back. Find home, retain it, set it free only when nobody is looking. I don't feel liberation, the cause of this may or may not be by the remaining days of vacation left. But I am doubtful. Nonetheless, I feel terribly empty. How many times have I said this? Black and white. Decaying, almost to the point of unrecognizable monstrosity, reckless negligence. Am I a victim of unrelenting narcissism to the point that I can't care about the damage under my skin? I am not sure about narcissism, but I am sure about being shy, about anxiety, about the absence of composure and stable structure. About introspection. I feel militant, but I feel powerless. I might not greedy for weaponry, but I am greedy for might.

I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.

Thinking

This is me, this is you, this is all of us, and I can never do justice this way.

Often wondering if I end up in one way or another, I try to measure all that I almost am - from the words I omit to the thoughts I damn from evolving into action, into consequence. And I hope I'm recording things right, and being right, but I can never be so sure. I know that if I force myself into knowing my limits and boxes and talkative expectations that I will soon lose my restraint and self-control, my sanity - opposing what, I do not know - but this is somewhat untrue, because I am not a girl in a book, a boy in a movie, a stereotype alone, and I only sometimes want to "break free." (Note: You don't have to relate.) I am my own being, no matter what tests and certificates declare, and I am like you. No matter who you are. I am fiction, I am real, I am a person. I can contradict, I can submit. And I hope I am more than a list of characteristics offered on paper.

I am not different, but I believe even the most shallow-sounding people are complex and deep in ways we can't see.

If my perception is wrong, I would want to know why. Is my perception invalid? Erroneous in opinion... or fact? But what is perception?

I can touch worlds in me, and others too, but I know where I am within.

I am not a hedonist and I trust my thinking more than my feeling. I know the world suffers and that it screams although I may not hear it in my sleep. I know you suffer and that curves of teeth and gums don't always translate into happiness. I know how to keep quiet, and how to twist silence (borrow into them, squeeze them out of their bones), but I will never know why someone looks at me unless I pry into their space and ask. "Why are you looking at me?" bears a strong difference from "Why do we suffer?" and "Why do we want to please?", but I can't gracefully bend my questions into the vastness of a blank document, into the aligned structure of a paragraph. I can't eloquently caress my feelings, the knitting together of my brows, into a breath of self-expression. I am stuck, yet off-kilter, and I may as well be living with life like this.

But I don't want to live with life. I want to live life. I want to live in it, make it mine, trust these compounds, break them maybe, and defy death thinking I can. Knowing I can. Trusting myself to jump when I feel like I am ready.

I fear jumping, but I do not fear heights.

My 3 AMs

It's 3 in the morning. I usually know it's time for me to sleep when I start to get annoyed by myself, with all the little things I see and think of. I thought that it would be nice to write about how I feel at 3 in the morning, or how I think around this time.

Or I can try.

I'm supposed to be asleep - to be swept away by the wings of rest. I think I really need sleep, and I know I do need to shut down, but I can't when all the quiet I have always wanted to consume and bathe myself in is flickering across the walls, beating against my heart, running back and forth. The quiet has always been what I wanted. Peace and rumination, an introspective look at things. But as much as I want to entirely hide myself in 2 AMs and lava lamps and sleeping faces, I am in need of noise. Noise so pure and hoarse and disturbing. Noise a rage, a fire, a trumpet. And I wouldn't want to torture myself, but I already am. You may call me a perfectionist because I want to perfect my commas and my periods, but I lack in all the points where I should excel. And there comes the feeling that I am old and dusty, useless and never valued, where I am nothing but a nondescript building in a street of color and promise, future and innovation. But no, I am not meant to be used, but I think I should let feelings use me. How can I free myself and learn the heart's ways while I am chained to logical thinking? And am I even a logical thinker? And am I pushing myself too much? I want to be the emotions I wish to describe, but all I can be is a weak emulation, a copy, of other people's fears and ambitions. No, no, I have my own fears and ambitions, but they burn down into nothing but wanting to be someone else, someone different, someone who trusts their heart more than their mind.

At 3 AM I feel sad because I can't embrace diversity well enough, and because I don't know what to think of anymore. I perplex myself to the point of numbness and self-pity. And by the time I wake up a few hours later I will regret using my time imprudently, regret feeling wrong when I could have felt so right, regret feeling insipid when I could have worked on being creative, regret letting the dark yank me off the track of my head. I do not want people to know I burn at 3.30 in the morning, but I do, and I wish for change although I hate it. I need fluency, but I want it too much more.

Don't think so much. Don't edit too much, don't rephrase too often, or else you'll end up rewriting all your sentences to their thoughts, and words won't feel natural. You won't feel natural. You will feel stained and besmirched. Blemished and complicated, not complex. You will feel worse, and you will worsen. You will feel unoriginal, and you will feel like nothing. And nobody would want that, even your favorite enemies. The night can breed demons, and it will, but nothing is as flammable as 3 AM.

Summer and Warmth

Summer has feverishly swum into April with a kind of fiery madness that likes to knock you into sleep and lure you into the bathroom for a very cool and much needed shower. Splashing water on your face is a nirvana and greedily gulping down a glass of water is a blessing. It has rained a couple of times this past week. I welcomed the rain with open arms, although I just sat in the foyer bobbing my head to music. I am always enamored with the smell of rain. It embraced me through open windows and billowing curtains, droplets shy and lingering. My diminutive friends.

But right now it isn't raining and the house is a furnace. I am roasting. Two stand fans are standing in two corners. I'm about to watch Hannibal NBC episode 4 although the link I have may be phony (it turns out it isn't - yay!). The heat is hypnotizing me into a dreamy state, the silent brr of the fans a cat's purr and the sun a blinding gold and immaculate white. I've been hanging onto winter through Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, a wintry mixture of joy and longing, and I can almost taste the dazzling intricacy of snowflakes, the snow angels mirrors of the guardians we can be. 2.30 in the afternoon and I am gasping for a bed of ice, a welcoming reprieve from the onslaught of summer.

But! I love the night, the nights. Although they could be hot and humid too, the darkness feels somewhat full and deep, a mirage of shadows and esoteric magic. I like the night because the village is humming but quiet, a heap of sleepy sighs and breaths or, if not that, a chatter in some certain lots, a feast for the ghouls of night. It's funny how things have an opposite, an anti or a pro, and I like that. It keeps the world interesting. It keeps people busy and sane.

Before I end this shamefully brusque post I want to share with you what was meant to be the whole point of this entry. At first I didn't know what to write about so I liked to enumerate three videos I've been watching/have watched the past few nights while I had my headphones on and felt at least a little bit happy. Mirth. And warmth. Always with the warmth.


1. Call Me Maybe (Hannibal NBC)

Hannibal NBC is very serious and stars enough blood and darkness that make me squirm and frown. So this is a glacial and merry reprieve from all that horror and tight suspense, although there are some scenes that do suggest humor (but that may also be based on who's viewing the show). I am wary of Dr Lecter and my compassion for Will Graham is lengthy in words I can't express. 

Countless of fanmade work make me giggle. This is one of those things.

2. Bastille - Of The Night (Live at Scala)

Courtesy of YouTube user Colonel8Custard who recorded such a good performance. For some unknown reason I can't insert the video here so I'll establish a link in its place. 

I discovered the Bastille band just recently and I am glad I did! They had covered Corona's Rhythm of the Night and here they play it live with zest. The drumming washes a grin upon my face, and as we near the end of the video I cheer along with the crowd because I can.

3. On thin ice 4 

I watch with amazement. I cry because this man is who I want to be when I am 48.

Blow Your House In

I'm going to try to string my thoughts together.

Your cheek grazes the pillow, your eyelashes blink in the blistering sun, your head runs a current of waves, and yet you feel like nothing, like you're moving but you're not animated - your heart is self-destructive and your lungs are ripping open, and you can't choose to breathe or not to breathe, because you feel empty. hollow. and the empty and hollow are spaces for spit and bricks, for dog-chewed sandals and construction sites, for rubble and layers. Layers layers layers to cover up a whole which is you.

Do you ever feel empty
even when your playlist runs jubilantly - and your heart leaps and tumbles across the floor in smatterings - while the seconds pass, and music is your lullaby and it's proud to be. You ponder why. You'd kill to know why the sun likes to grow from dust and soil and scorch itself into your eyes, yet you still feel like ash and stones, and your cuts and bruises can't catch up with the glow that burns you inside out.
Do you ever wonder about what would happen
if your sewing kit would come to life one day, and pools of red thread would run in between your fingers, and your toes ear lobes tongues, without preamble without consent?, and stitch into you, painstakingly one by one, by needles made rusty by Father Time. You'd be resurrecting from a robe of magma, smoke a cough from your chimney throat, delicate in sinew but rigid in stance. Hot angry cobblestones in summer daylight. And you'd be a wall of blood - magnificent, dazzling, stunning, horrendous. Envisage Red Riding Hood, envision her in between Wolf's razor sharp teeth - flesh a palette of striped peach and red good for a stew. You are grisly art.
Do you ever feel like a teardrop
ruminating about falling upon an eyelash, sliding off a cheekbone, the length of an elegant neck, and pausing by the chin to dwell as if in the Father's house. To swell, as a balloon does. To fall in a push, that is after you pop after you run out the door. This is consistency at its best - a million other teardrops line up to rest, by the loops of cursive writing so smooth and so possessive and by the pulse of living poetry so dear yet so dreadful, sinking into a moleskin pad. Suicide by gravity, the final bang of depression. The stains you leave point to constellations unnamed. You are pain at its summit, you are salt, you are exhausted.

You are collected,
but you are fallen.

Another Version

Just
dance.

Break free and spread your wings. I'll dab the ash off your lips and envelope you in ivory, let you rummage through my closet, my drawers, let your fingers slide off the hangers. Pick your poison. I think I'll photograph you -- you in your (my) favorite dress, you in a dream, you fiddling with flower petals, you painting. You are not insipid -- you are the opposite of bland -- like when you dance you are svelte and mellifluous, movements like notes and heels zapping off ice, water falling from a distance, when your nose scrunches up, when your chest heaves up, when my vision is suddenly brimming with electricity. And when you raise your hands I feel a falsetto popping in my ears, notes roasting in my fingertips, keys a ladder to climb.

(fall on your knees

oh hear the angel voices)

I think it's mad to try to tell you how I like it when light threads victoriously through your hair, and some days I want to swallow the sun, and kiss your mouth, and write about how your eyes glow back at you when you touch the mirror. (I'd memorize your laugh.) I like you, and whether you'd be munching off biscuits or talking about politics I think I'd trust my gut and plant a kiss on you just like that, because I revel in those moments when you're caught unawares and you don't know how dangerously ethereal you look, or how my arms miss you and how our jokes don't seem to make sense until you're there to make them more nonsensical. Your arms flower in pen ink while the soles of your feet are earth. The paths of your fingers are tattoos of proverbs. The milk of the skin over your ribs match the color of your cheeks. (I want to inflame us.) (I'd bake you chocolate cookies. I'd cross-stitch for you.)

I want to know where your memories reach their apex, and where they hurt, where they fade, where they turn black and white, and where they burn into paper. I want to know where you (is this allowed?) hate me and when and why. Tell me all your reasons and inflict emotion, but pleeease demonstrate your answer to how, rush an essay in the midst of day. (I'd shop for acoustic albums for you, inquire about dozen musicians to that clerk we promised not to make fun of. I'd study for you, then maybe later I could show you where my heart is and why constellations are the most vulnerable things to ever exist and why they're more awesome than the Venus flytrap your mom owns. I'd learn recipes for you and abandon music class for you and forget the alphabet for you, then learn it again. For you. I'd novelize my reasons if you want.)

I think it's silly that you don't like your freckles because I think they're one of a kind and they're rad and they're lovers and comrades and twins of the paint you unintentionally splatter on yourself. They're also constellations and this is reason #2845 why constellations are more awesome than carnivorous plants.

Fact.

(I think you're awfully pretty, unconventionally beautiful, and it's totally okay if you're not from here. Does your hometown trespass the boundaries maps can't cover? That's okay too... just guide me to where because I don't know where that is.

I think your toes are cute. Shy. But cute. Adorably shy. Hey could you scrunch your nose up again?)

Noted

I'm always afraid I can't stitch my words into a perfect piece. All the cobwebs in my head are pressing themselves into my mouth and my vomit is coming up like a choo-choo train and it tastes like salvaged lint from the dry cleaners. I'm trying to unhook myself from the world and focus on paperbacks and dandelions and noses, feel the waves with a couple of dolphins, and just shut my eyes as I embrace the flood, welcome the copper in between my electric fingers. Open my mouth to a gasp of lightning, nurture the pain in my ankles and in my calves with a bend of friction, treating a craving with a gluttonous retaliation, murmurs like ice in utterance but like coffee on a Sunday morning in the lungs. I tell myself I am meant to help myself through a protocol of wires and nutcases, but I can't hear anything over the radio, the inside of my mouth burning from blowing the wisps of taunting fire. I shall not make sense and I shall not touch the algorithm (because I don't want your stupid cure, or, well, your um stupid "theory") and a sliver of tongue and a shot of winter (in my bones, in my sentiments, on the warpath of my palms, living in my very core) is enough for me

and

I'm going to break and regress and scratch at my nubby toes (because they're freaking me out when I don't wear socks) and kiss somebody - you - before the ground opens up under me and takes me away (from you). I don't know if I'm doing love right but I hope my hugs don't suffocate you and my heart doesn't hurt yours. Maybe we can count our blessings and visit the CD store and pick some flowers where there aren't any signs, or people, yes, because that would be nice and  liberating and ticklish for me and I like the guitar in your laugh and the slope of your nose and the stories, the universe, in your eyes

(especially how they twinkle when they collide with mine,
and sometimes it hurts and I can't figure out why).

But I think it would be even more spectacular if we got to hold hands
like, maybe in the streets of Bologna or in your Dad's car
because my heart hums and my mouth hums and I think
your eyes shed more stars than ever when that happens

So it makes me happy because it's about to rain in the thunder and lightning kind of way (it's also like tambourines and drums and a whole orchestra... but with bazookas). We don't have anything but that coffee shop across the street where hands burn and silhouettes are misleading. And it's you and the nonsense you speak that like to make sense of my hollow hands because they don't shake like earthquakes anymore and I've occupied them with tattoos of what you say.

You say you like autumn but love summer and I can't wait to kiss winter for you. Your knees are beautiful and your legs are skinny, your shoulders fragile, cracking, but stable, sinew after sinew a heartbreaker, and the smell of your hair on the back of your neck drives me into the mattress and I'm bewildered but articulate in incoherence which you think is lovely so I don't protest. I can drink liquor from your expletives and skip from constellation to constellation with the astral roses on the canvas of your back and I can smoke colors of black and white without fetching a few cigarettes from under your bed. You taste like blueberry and bread crumbs and hot red toothpaste, Scrabble around your wrists and white glue in your hair, History your favorite subject. You sound like the harps you often listen to and whistling sailboats marking the sea and my whole entity is pooling around my heels, ferociously, unkindly,

and my heart is somewhere here;
it looks like a clump of feathers
but i carried it once
and it weighed like Atlas
carrying you and me--
us, the world; i can say
that we're nothing, but we
treat ourselves with
utmost importance
so maybe we weigh
more than we should, and
so I'm blaming you because

the hotel is crashing down into roasting ashes and it's because I've unlocked the cage of my heart and the prideful organ flew from my hands before it could remember it couldn't fly on its own

thus the malfunction
and destruction
of everything that used to be
just fine, and i
didn't mean this to happen
(i'm so sorry, m'dear)--
salty tears and lamentations too soft,
spread like butter on my fingers,
and this is sick, spoiled, in my throat,

savage and too hot for (your) coats and I'm sad and I wish my feet didn't hurt so bad from running from the nest of ashes to the hospital

where you lay
and I miss you and I will (and you'll hate me for
being cliche) miss you
(goddammit)
forevermore.

my love.

Millard, Madeon, and Malocclusions

Yesterday was my first day of summer and I present to you a follow-up of what has happened this March. Woo! By the way, the nouns making up my long and all-telling title do not relate to each other. I was just trying to bring in all the M's and I think I have failed. But it kind of does sum up my March 2013.

I was meant to publish this yesterday but it struck midnight and I was still typing like a madman, headphones on my head and reminiscing for the sake of blogging.

Warning: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children spoilers (avoidable if you skip the first part).

I. Millard

Last March 2 National Bookstore brought Tahereh Mafi to Manila for a book signing. And, guess what, I adored her! I met her! All the cute excitement and confectionery congeniality she displays on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. just blow up in an overwhelming flurry when you see/meet her in person. She was more than nice to listen to and I felt like she was both high-fiving and teasing each of us fans every time she would mention Chapter 62 from her Shatter Me trilogy's second book, Unravel Me. She was indubitably so beautiful and she has the warmest voice ever (but I already knew that). It was mind-blowing, and it still is, to stand right in front of her as she signed my copies. I didn't know if I was saying things right.

And Ransom Riggs went with.

Wow. And I mean wow... so I was so shocked and surprised as much as other people in the crowd were because he was there Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine author is here woahwhattawhat (to support Tahereh no doubt). I was freaking out by the time he had settled in the room, facing the stage at first then beckoned to sit beside Tahereh under our scrutiny. 

To be frank, I was slightly angry at the host for inviting Ransom onstage. Although it was delightful and expected, I had a few moments when I was acting suspicious because I wanted to stay on the point and refer to the name of the event itself, pointing out that the book signing was Tahereh's and hers only. (Ransom was going to have his own event the following day, anyway.) But after a few minutes of introductions and questions about Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, I liked that he came onstage. There was a lukewarm touch to his wit and, well, presence. He also kept pushing the limelight back to Tahereh, and it made me happy to see how good friends they really were, forgetting the evidence of it online and seeing it with my own eyes. They both made jokes and the crowd got tangled up in them. Tahereh mentioned Harry Potter and manuscripts and eyelashes and coffee and different perceptions of beauty and Ransom went along with it with jeepneys and photography and have I said that it made me happy. Because it really did.

Both of them gave excellent advice to writers, too. Lots of Keep reading!s and I wanted to hug Ransom for "When I'm not reading a book, I can feel myself getting dumber." BECAUSE ISN'T THAT WHAT WE ALL FEEL SOMETIMES/ALWAYS. We feel you, sir Ransom, sir. Now shall I glomp you? (I'm gradually re-reading Perks because I love it and I don't want to feel dumb.) Tahereh signed my copy of Shatter Me and Unravel Me with Sharpie Read Ons and I can kiss her autograph if I want to. I told her I loved her prose and she told me I was so sweet and I wanted to be like, "Aw shucks, naw, you are!" but my lips were frozen on my face unless I forced them to move if she would like to add anything else. 

She and Ransom vocalized their admiration for my Audrey Hepburn T-shirt and I died and ascended to Geek Heaven. (Admittedly and sadly, I have never seen any of Audrey Hepburn's films, but I feel an affinity for her charm through photos and I am privileged to blame the influence of Sky Sailing's Sailboats/Adam Young and Glee's Kurt Hummel.)

To get to the point, here you go, this is Millard Nullings

FROM THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT JACKSON

and he is a peculiar, forever invisible and has always been. He uses logic quite a handful of times (I've been sensing a pattern, yeah), he keeps a record of everything on the island, and if you can't see him at all, well, he's nude.

Me: Let me love you, Nullings. Pls.

Ransom signed my Miss Peregrine copy and my thoughts went out on auto-pilot. I was shaking and I could feel warmth constricting my throat, and I have proof (that I will not provide!!!) that I looked just heavenly with the shiniest forehead on Earth. But, explain to me, how could I not quiver on the spot and flush when Ransom Riggs aka skillful photographer/great great great author (who has already sold more than a million copies of Miss Peregrine) was sitting in front of me, looking up at me babbling like I was giving me a diatribe (I hope I didn't give him a violent vibe.), and listening to each and every one of my words? I had just quickly chatted with the radiant Tahereh Mafi when I was swept to Ransom's side of the table and fumbled for things like sense and recollection of the mind and the mind itself. 

It went good. 

I told him how I reacted when Millard was shot, how I loved Run Rabbit Run (he informed me that it's actually a real song, much to my chagrin and amazement), and that was it. He said he forgot he even wrote the part when Emma started asking Millard questions to keep him conscious, and I think I nodded (or died).

After letting papa take a photo of us shortly after he signed, I hopped off the stage and didn't really care that I didn't get a photo with Tahereh or that I didn't do the Nerdfighter sign with Ransom. I was on the verge of weeping until finally I was crying on the way out of Glorietta 1's NBS because I sneaked a peek at what Ransom wrote as a dedication and here is a photo of it:

To either assure or scare you, I am still wailing on the inside. I knew he was listening to me the whole time, but the proof, the sight of it, makes me feel unbearably conscious that I feel less worthless. I know I'm just a reader, just a fan, but I hope he knows even just an inkling of how things like this mean to me. Because? It means the world to me.

II. Madeon

I googled Hugo Leclercq among the last days of February and given up to liking his music enough to reblog photos of him last February 28. I know it sounds like I want to know when I happen to like an artist - the date and even how and why - and I'm here to affirm that that's how I really am usually. A blog I follow had reblogged a photoset of him, his head looking down at these electronic beautiful things in one panel and, frankly, I was struck with how the shot reminded me of Adam Young in his early years of producing Owl City and being Owl City. Curiosity made me putty and threw open a new tab; I checked Wikipedia and was like, Okay. I get it. but I didn't get it. So young, a French musician, electronic dance music. So I'm demanding, "Give me your musiiiiic."

I listen to this

and I melt right through the goddamn floor.

Why is it so good; it's like honey on pancakes but sizzling and white, scintillating scintillating the sea is chanting, with the waves catching me and latching onto my wings, acerbic depth of lachrymose days of labor and admonition reflecting feathers of cream and porcelain, skin gold and sweatsweatsweat dripping onto hands of grime and a tongue of forewarning. It's so good it's too good; I'm kissing the salt in the water and threads of jagged rocks are scraping my sides, yawning around my body, blood blood blood the taste of a jump from the highest cliff.

But, if you want the truth from me, music is ineffable.

not the photo, but very similar ©

I'm trying really hard to interpret my emotions and what I had to deal with after listening to a piece of heaven and hell combined and duplicated. The fact that the track is called Icarus doesn't alleviate me from this kind of stress. You know, this stress - you find something, someone notable, remarkable, laudable, wondrous in possibly more than one aspect, and it's sucking on you, drilling into your pores, and hijacking your whole being. Your whole perspective of now. And maybe not everything changes, but many other things do.

He is so animated live and everything is blowing out in smatterings of candle wax and peacock feathers - across the walls, against your heart, and maybe my life is a show of sentiment and a cycle of ongoing amusement and paralysis.

I want to laugh at myself because I could have known about Madeon sooner. I can't judge the past so much because I couldn't have gotten to the future, the present, without it. Do you get that? Right now I just want to support him (he's been dreaming since he was 11, if I'm remembering right!) and listen to what he has to say about his launchpads and about anything really. It's almost pathetic but I'm here to translate my feelings into miles of words, am I not?

It's scary how much you get into something that you get interested in someone, too. I'm in love with art and passion, and I will never get too much of it and touch/hear/see all of it, so when they're there, I'm... here.

(And it isn't a sad thing. Never.) 

Hugo is yet another musician I'll be looking out for. Clubs permitting 18+ people only will not stop me!!!!!! I have the Internet!!!!!! (But yeah.)

I enthusiastically suggest you see this before leaving.

III. Malocclusions

First of all, I neither have an overbite nor an underbite. We'll get to the reason why later.

Secondly, this is what happened yesterday, March 16, the first day of summer 2013. 

Papa, my brother Adam, and I were all pretty stoked to start summer with a splash in the pool, having it all to ourselves. I was already seeing it as I danced around the foyer an hour before we departed home on our bikes. I don't usually swim but this time I was going to, definitely planning to, especially since there won't be much people; I get really shy when there's a number of them. So we pedaled off toward the village's club house (aka le pool) and everything was dandy.

Until I unfortunately landed on my face in the middle of the sunny Saturday ride.

No.

Literally.

I've taken photographic evidence but I don't have that at the moment, and we're already getting to the "climax" of this post so I'm recording this in words, okay.

So I was following papa's lead through the winding path of one of the many parks of the village. My brother didn't follow and so ended up on the actual sidewalk. Nothing wrong with that, but I was taking glances back at him to see if he was doing good and if he can make it through in between those bushes and that parked truck. I glanced some more until at one particular look I abruptly swung my head to the path in front of me before I was violently hurled to the ground by what you call distraction, gravity, and stupidity.

My bike's (its/his name is Quentin, by the way) front tire hit a root for a nearby electricity post and the impact sent me crushing onto the ground I didn't know I was so in love with just yet. For a vivid moment I thought, Omg what can I do to avoid this before the very last second???? but I saw what I was dealing with - which was inevitably falling and badly getting hurt - and, I don't know, lost all hope.

I am not Taylor Swift, or any of her past boyfriends, and I'm only making this reference because I thought it would be funny and I know that part of the lyrics enough because of my classmates; I think Quentin was so done with me and all my "Omg I'm going swimming!!!!!" and felt bad because I was only using him to get to this new guy Swimming Pool, thus the flinging me off his seat like an ant and leaving me on the ground to smooch on the dirty cement instead. 

I didn't ask for a hard first kiss. [chokes at own failure of a joke]

I received a bruised upper lip, but it's doing fine if you ask me. It didn't slice open or anything that gory. My nose is still one big rock and my nostrils still flare when I ask them to. My forehead is still bedazzled with-- everything is okey-dokey. Except for one thing.

One of my front teeth.

When my body slammed into the ground and my mouth collided with it, it might have been too eager because my upper right central incisor got cut into half. Fortunately, the remaining half stuck to my gums (wow thanks). We never got to know if I swallowed the other half or it fell into the depths of Tartarus right after it escaped, but I'll presume it stalked off to find other now homeless and beheaded teeth to commiserate with. I still couldn't believe it happened when I started lamenting because about everything inside my mouth felt like they had been shattered into shards in an instant when I met the ground. Either my gum or my tooth bled for quite a while and I cried for maybe fifteen minutes. I got a few scrapes on my right knee but they're nothing compared to a broken tooth. In that moment, I felt very... finite. Hah. I was cursing the world through my tears and shaking my fist (in my head), groaning (again, in my head), I was ugly enough. Whyyyyyy!!!?

oH MY GOd this is my life. (Thanks.)

Then we went home and I cried some more and changed into more comfortable clothes. We headed to the mall around lunchtime to get my tooth X-rayed for a dentist appointment at five in the afternoon. In the middle of getting teeth X-rayed, having lunch, and seeing the dentist, I took advantage of my lisp to feel like Daffy Duck, listened to papa share memories of his summers, and burned CDs. All was good.

And the dentist appointment wasn't as bad as "dentist appointment" sounds. There were tsk's and thinking out loud and (on my part) staring at the walls with heightened interest. The decision was that I get a dental filling to replace the missing half of my front tooth. Getting to the light in my face and the drill in my mouth, my first thought when the drill was turned on was, Ooh Daft Punk. I would have danced if it were not for me being the patient. I stared pensively at one frame on the wall that wasn't entirely blocked by the dentist and his equipment. It read "Malocclusions" and started off with Normal. I liked that I didn't have to talk much since I had my mouth open and immobile the majority of the time I was in the clinic. After that, I thought of baby dog Asami and rejoiced knowing that the title for this post would be perfect and personal and I would frown at it later on. 

It Sinks

I should really start doing things.

Whatever those are.

I could really do things, like read half a book or browse for Gorillaz music, or try to think about what would happen to my favorite character if he lived where I am. And I can be other things, like someone dangerously paranoid or a neighbor. I could schedule my life - make fancy and tacky predictions, pretend I could recite a speech about the events of tomorrow; dice my life into phases, episodes, seasons, books, stanzas, quotations, epiphanies; salvage all the happy thoughts into a bookmark and dare to see where I've stopped last time.

Empire Ants

What if I do find purpose? What if I actually find the concept of life's labyrinthine circus (maybe in a mahogany cabinet or in the passion of someone else's manifest dedication)? But what if all we are are broken bones in quiet parentheses - conducive, scarfing down all the noise and trouble - or worn-out baby shoes resting in the dump? I know nothing but the imagery of constellations like pop cola on my tongue (easy and sizzling and all but fantasy in my head, idyllic as if watching a picturesque field from a rocking chair) and how inconveniently hot and stuffy long-sleeved uniforms are capable of being.

The cubby-holes are powdered with chalk dust. Some retain textbooks haphazardly squeezed onto crusty layers of envelopes. The walls are race tracks on the sun meeting up with full blue traces, blue and yellow wound trim and nice to resemble the academy's facade - gates that steel against intruders and hallways frosted with mustard ribbon (a paunchy American's cheeks, the skin extending from one end to another). In the classroom, light ricochets off the exam folders. The fan orbits and my paper waves at it against my hands. My classmates are playful, and together they emit a raucous chatter. A din rises in fluctuating intensity; laughter unravels in spaces of corners, almost a cacophony as everybody else either giggles or mock-reprimands.

Everything has an affable concordance within themselves, but we are all an oxymoron, we are all phenomena, monsters watching through screen doors, magic but real. We are resilient warriors, marching forward in war of change, and as long as life grows I am there to see the Polaroid gray out and the leaves spin through the air. I am there to hear the echoes of shrill friendship and hostility, slipping through chairs the color of royal blue.

I could be here, like you, to crack the codes and fireworks in the marrows secluded in parentheses, or I could be here to make up silhouettes of worlds this earth will never know (because they are indecipherable scribbles shattering into the faintest Big Bang - like truth and fact and theory and diagnosis and smudges parading across the blackboard before eroding into particles cutting through the crystalline air).

And I think
you are
cutest
when you let
yourself 
smile.

Wringing It Out

Poetry.

Although I have been told that my writing has a poetic ring to it, I have never indulged in the process of writing poetry itself before last Sunday. I always got how free verse poetry was appealing. I saw it as lax and compliant, a twist in fluent speech. I understood it, but I'll still say this: There's a madness about the lack of rhyme and consistency of concrete syllable count, that I had felt structure was absolutely loose and quiescent, obliging only to the mind of the poet. I'm still getting the hang of things, and if ever there were truly a correlation between poetry and bicycling, I think I would understand it, because to write poetry and to bike you need that smooth glide and control till all you feel is the euphoria of the wind in your ears and hair.

I love metaphors. Maybe this is why I love metaphors:

There is emotion (a shadow of it, a sliver of it filtering through a gap of curtain, or maybe a reeling dream of it) you can't express in limited, literal words that it becomes marginally inscrutable. Indecipherable, and utmost enigmatic. But there are other words, ways, and the crooked yet pure excuse of poetry, to elude descriptions seemingly too vapid and hackneyed and instead to make up out of this world explanations by calling on stars and space and blood and butterflies without (entirely) losing your hold on the ground and the thorough coherence of literacy.

Poetry is a stifled cry, an episode of improvised, muffled chokes as the blood pooling down around your feet throttles you free.

I would also like to direct you to the most recent (as of now) blog post of Ms. Laini Taylor, which she posted three days ago and which I was ecstatic to be notified of just minutes ago. Laini Taylor is a phenomenal writer and blogs about a metaphor involving writing a novel.

Love and Freedom

Catharsis pulsing like a dream, when our entwined breaths radiate in the contact of our hands, drips in the shadows of your touch, like a blushing cheek against a neck, like a palm of solace and comfort, and like a hiss of wreckage in the serenity. A hiss, a groan, hostility. Pain.

Pain?

The enormity of the vast galaxy, the unwieldy gravity of earth, and the claustrophobic, intoxicating loose hold of space are convoluted nothings in me, and are thus set free in and by the frissons of love; puzzle pieces clicking into place to suggest an unbrokenness, a gasp of "I promise". It's the mesmerizing pull which unfurls me into you - a tug-of-war on hair and ears, a hitch in your inhalation and a wail in my exhalation. Pale, splayed fingers.

You may as well know, entirely, that you impede my routine with a subtle interrogation, acting completely serious with sly dialogue and infuriating subterfuge. This is infallibly your deceptive facade. Then in the gleam of your eyes I am ticking - too soon, I am enraptured and enslaved. You inadvertently slip out a twinge of emotion, and, like an influx of sun and stars and heaven, I am engulfed and in need of repair. I stutter and skid into a territory of new, everything so awfully new. Of you. Unknown and uncharted. Exotic and fey. You rein me in and I you. We elapse back to urgency, encrypted emergency, reincarnated angst. An amber blaring angrily in anxiety, rather. Need charred and singed on the edges. A litany of perpetual exasperation and a downpour of liberating veracity.

Indignation, acidic and biting and bitter bitter bitter, teasing, "——". Contemptuously delicious - air carrying rigidity, guttural and raspy.

Speechless. Dumbfounded.
A clogged up heart.

♥

Solving the Mystery

Spoiler!sh: about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

and others

I frankly happened to want to read this book like I did Life of Pi: on the spur of the moment, as if the description of the novel was too interesting just in itself that I wanted to ravage the story. It was easy to spot due to its color, and the upside down poodle easily stirred up some curiosity of my own, because if something can be "wonderfully intelligent," "wrenching," and noted that the feel of The Catcher in the Rye can be felt while submerged in it, I can say that I am up for a read.

So here we go. Here I go.

(This isn't particularly a book review - mind you there is personal input bound to spring from this post too - but a collection or scope of my favorite lines and why I like this and why this made me smile and just why, why, why.)

Okay.

I am not going to encapsulate my response with Christopher's (the protagonist) autism as the outline because that isn't what this novel is about. I would venture to classify it as something like coming-of-age, but when I think of it it just doesn't exactly click with what the book contains. And this begins to puzzle me. The Curious Incident insinuates something of the piquing of the interest, a mystery of some sort, and perhaps this is what pulled me in, especially since our Christopher is fifteen years old. But the book is written in first-person narrative, and like most books with the same narrative the world we read of is totally subjective, and I somehow didn't entirely expect this because first chapter in and I am intimidated because there's a dog and next chapter there is the talk of emotions and perceiving them, coming from someone known to be logical. And this book is incredibly subjective and thoughtful and stupefying; it suggests a vortex of different vision. 

And I feel like books ought to suck people in like this did.

One of many factors frightening about my adventure through this read is the proximity of Christopher's thoughts, and how when there's "a balloon in his chest" I can feel it in mine and his fear permeates into me. His distress and his incidents are tangible through the rasp of paper and all his actions - I can see them. I can't not see them, especially when he covers his ears with his hands multiple times.

And I can't help but see Stephen Chbosky's Charlie (in the film adaptation).

ow

Then Christopher has a vast interest in space, and mentions wanting to be an astronaut then a scientist, and I admire this a whole lot. I revel in the confessions of ambition and aspirations and dreams and daydreams, and the bleeding of the head on the thought of time and the future. He talks about Sherlock Holmes, the author of the Sherlock Holmes series, reasons why people are being unreasonable, what he's watching or what he has watched (like Star Trek and Doctor Who), and he drives a whole different place - whether be it the neighborhood or the train station - into my head without flashing it through so much words but by showing diagrams of not just buildings but tiny illustrations and equations and personal comprehensions of his. Sometimes it's overwhelming when he goes off on a tangent, and some chapters are dedicated to just describing something or someplace, but I find these as an enormous part of the book although they may be small. He complains about how illogical metaphors are and points out the usage of the simile and why it isn't the same as the metaphor itself. ☺

Christopher detects and explains what he's doing, and why he's doing it, and I can almost hear his mind work with all the decisions he makes. And the room isn't so empty (even if literally isn't) because Mark Haddon provides a reserved but talkative character who blows my mind repetitively. He does heaps of maths and although I do not interact with him through constants and variables and radicals, I see how maths and his calculations reach out to him.

I feel like I should mention that he reminds me of Spock in the way that he shoehorns himself into so much profound logic and, I quote, "always tells the truth," because his lies are only "white lies" and he finds good enough reason in his excuse. And there's a quote (that originates from Star Trek) Spock and Sherlock say about the truth. Then Christopher says, "And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer." He expounds on Sherlock facts at one end of a chapter and I almost laugh because he focuses on facts. This makes me somewhat smile. Because.

©

This may seem contradictory but Christopher and Spock differ in entire being and story, and so much more. (I just adore the prominent relevance I may have made up in my head and that's about it - and I also adore Spock. I magnify the idea of their intellectual relation because of the aforementioned.)

Christopher describes himself as observant and brave, and with this I wholeheartedly concur. His supply of quotations from The Hound of the Baskervilles (his favorite book, which figures) makes me think even more, and this is what I've been looking for.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. 

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will.

He finds understanding and nestles in refuge in these lines.

He also quotes Doctor Watson (about Sherlock): His mind... was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted.

He elaborates that "this is what I am trying to do by writing this book." 

And although I don't do it, I want to scream and groan like he does, and the nexus of all these detached and singular riddles and rhymes chills me and kills me to the bone. And hah! I almost guffaw at the thought of Christopher arduously attempting to comprehend what I had just said, and the life in this book is invigorating and the streets glow in novelty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is where I end the poring out of my empathy and compassion, and I hope they were evident! Yay!

An update on my own "book" writing: I've started a project that will hopefully strive and prosper (it began around late-but-not-so-late January. I am about to complete one section wherein I've hustled in info about Vulcans. (But not all content shall be Star Trek.) I'm declaring that copying off from wiki pages makes me feel oddly happy and keeps me busy when I feel like I really should be, and I like learning about fictional aliens and I'm calling this fictional xenobiology and you might not be able to stop me.

T'was also a good day because the world was presented with a new ("extended") Iron Man 3 trailer and an equally provocative (at least to yours truly) Star Trek Into Darkness teaser at the Superbowl. I will be checking them out myself tomorrow night.

I should hop into bed very soon.

Good night and DFTBA!

I May Be Repeating Myself

Just for a minute...

Pain sprouts tenfold, in the form of blue fire weaving into a red-orange, and slides up the contours of my body. I begin to see an ocean of sunlight - it claws at the dust and sets me ablaze, a tsunami of stars grazing upon my lips, the metallic taste of blood, the sinking of teeth. It rushes forth. I gulp it down. I almost falter. The waves hum into a reluctant stop, foam bidding farewell under my toes, after quite a while. And the choking of tears / the worship of love / caresses my cheek / before I wake up.

I caught you, and I thought you were the most beautiful, of reminiscence and of prophecies, and I dreamed, exalted, to think I could eschew the present - and myself. I thought you neither the lion nor the lamb, but the wind shushing me up against my indifference and my arrogance, washing anew in circulations, and making me care when maybe you don't.

And sometimes I wish all of us couldn't utter a word, shan't speak, shan't sing, and just watch behind a web of shard glass the way we all exaggerate and act as a messy hyperbole. And isn't it embarrassing! to replace the ellipses with more of them; the chalk dust is waiting under my feet, shuffling, carrying on, under their feet, under everybody else's soles; I am speechless
and mute
and my lips are
stitched close
.

It was a Monday - or a Tuesday... or just a day - and your hands were all like ice, frosted metacarpal bones, deadly ridges, shivers and lightning, but enough like a revolutionary wave of heat to my delight. Your heart and your lungs subjugated mine, a wistfulness chattering somewhere in between, but it was of my own volition that I succumbed to your pulse and got lost in it. And it was chaste - the timing and the movement - and I am curling into your cadence and the incandescent stars in your voice, breathing upon planes of revelations, mercy at hand with ravage in mind. Clumps of magma are smoking around me, falling apart into rain, and the smell of burnt trees wafts in the air, and I realize all these are me.

Gray Umbrellas

Weariness, clouded but thundering like the gloomy day across town, hung on lints on her shoulders, a sniffing set in place with the rhythmic tap of heels in the driveway, calculating the distances, and breaking off into a slow walk, umbrella open in hand. The letter, smooth and rough under her hands, crumpled against the wind, and her lips liked the kiss of weather, but it wanted more the kiss of rest.

It was morning, and she had dreamed all night. But this was a different kind of dreaming, lest she forget how to gather her wool; she had felt the world around her in glances of the moon, and a slumbering monsoon, and dreamed with her eye open. Consolidating the day after that with augurs, she had pushed the worries of the back of her mind further into the corner, and instead sang her sorrow with a couple of handwritten missives and calligraphy. Then she walked a little quicker, rapid breaths unwanted but aware by her chest, and cursed for she forgot her phone in the haste reverie. Though she didn't stop, and continued petting her letters like they were altogether the furriest dog.

One consolation for today, Monday, was not that she had skipped class, for it was never truly a consolation to her, but was that the ground was wet and the sky was fraught with the omen of more rainfall. She liked the town wet and less crowded, and umbrellas and raincoats in splashes of drearily whispering colors, the smell of silent rain infiltrating her and enrapturing her in a call, as if she belonged in the arms of clouds adhering to climate and weather, as if her love were but a drop of singular water in the gutter. She felt like her walk by the garden was harmless and just... just perfectly innocuous, like the rainy days were her sunny days, flowers blooming by every second in her peripheral vision. The papers in her hands trembled, antsy, in her hands, and maybe this was the reason why she had dreamed in hopes of escaping - to eschew the rules of life's game and distance.

She had written to someone who would understand, hopefully, once again what she was going through. It was a long story, beginning somewhere sunnier and dryer, and fell into sagas she hid back in her heart. Maybe someday it shall be blunt against everyone's faces, but it wasn't in that moment, so she shrunk in the Doomsdaylike palette of the outside world and furled her hands onto the hem of her coat, trying to think of something else.

Another skip of the heartbeat when she almost slipped on the pavement. Raindrops endeavored to mollify the lines of anguish in her face, to no avail, and just a serious swipe of the back of her hand, white and cold.

A juddering palpitation hitched up her throat; leaves scattered on the road, the wind swirled around her bun, and the hairs on her nape stood. Her brow had dampened with sweat, almost inconspicuously, and paranoia made her eyes glance left and right. The air suddenly tasted stiff, and she swore she had just seen a glimmer of sunshine in the midst of the austere death by the following corner.

....

It is an Art

He stalks steadily in the city, as flakes swirl in abundant showers. There is a slight fault in the silence that he quickly brushes off, trudging quietly on wet ground, shielding interest and effectively breathing in the collective subterfuge. One of many. Blending in with a composed expression, he meanders around bodies of warm and cold, keeping his hands to himself and holding on to that slip of light - that slip of heaven and promise folded in blissfully hushed tones. Phone booths are occupied, conversation is concise, and he seems to be doing good, but not good enough. He tries.

He sifts through gangs of people, leafing through them and pursing his lips, stoic blue eyes shining ever so lightly. The city blinks in pale colors. Skyscrapers tower intimidatingly, cars languidly maneuver and pass by, and a laugh or a snicker or a sigh may be heard from time to time. A gale of giggles bursts like jack-in-the-box at one point, and his eyes flicker to a blur of bright red faces to the nearest lamppost, seeing the light emanate in slow blinks. He starts to fasten his pace in bigger steps and avoid as much eyes he would like to evade, and he can still feel the sliver of light in the palm of his hand, curling around his frigid fingers, dancing on the tips. A pall stretches and hunches over the chit-chat of the streets, blowing in shorts of breath, shuddering across glass cases, and reaching in the corners of a funnily ordinary morning.

He, in fact, likes the mundane routine of it - the lack of excitement, the slackness of everyone around him, the tour of people as a river flowing through the city - because the reality of it just beckons for the hidden truth, so there's exponentially more potential things to do, no doubt. More excitement for him, all right. And the snow keeps falling perfectly on his hoodie and his shoes, concealing him in the absence of colors even more. He has stopped moving around and is standing by the door of a motel when the wind spares a kiss on his cheeks, and it's time to postpone on everyone's parade.

Darkness immerses everyone in an embrace. It isn't as comforting. Instead, it hovers and clothes in tides of murmurs, like the whole presentation of dark is esoteric. Because it might as well be and it might tend to be. A foliage of twinkling stars replace the clouds of snow, and he can feel the struggle and panic of everyone, so he sends a melody out into the dark city. With one hand, he colors a page with reveries of circus visits and weekend picnics, blending the pleasures with inks of dancing in the rain and slumber parties. The dark wavers a little so he leans back against the motel's dry facade. Then, with the other hand, he drums a little beat on his heart, and in a moment dark is life - not death - when his laugh trickles over his lips and falls into splashes of consequences. The hollow feeling of the darkness is now gone, replaced by a sense of something there that circles everyone in happy introductions. A friend in the gloom of the process of secrets.

The storm is almost shaking off. He looks up at the stars. In a quick flourish of a hand, a star jumps off from its cubicle, shooting off in insane directions like how an elephant reacts to the mere presence of a mingling mouse. He offers his hand up to the black ceiling, and catches the tiny little thing before it shoots off into an eternal distance he himself couldn't risk speeding up to. The interstice between the stars - as he has been taught - is an internal thing when it comes to doing the job of keeping reality closer to fantasy, but he enjoys the zap of a star against the boundaries of dark rooms, and of dark imagination, so he finds a star in lieu of developing one. It twinkles readily on the palm of his hand before funneling down into a gleam in the eye, and he allows himself a smile of content among all this.

He passes a beatific dream across the walls, tightening his fingers around the clasps of veins. With the star transmitted into both his hands, he heaves the power of numbness into the impervious brick walls of the dark, and soon he hears everyone's strained sounds of panic dwindle into momentary confusion, then dizziness. The darkness is blanching. With a twist, a manageable rectangle of the wall turns into a door, and he rummages in a typhoon of supplies to get what he needs. Brandishing a drenched clump of ruined letters from the halcyon days... or years, he uses up a bit more effort to close the door and seal it again.

He does, and before the remaining waves of the dark empty into a speck in space, he clashes with a couple of do-it-yourself stars and draws a thin veil over the brimming majority of them. The sky of stars transforms into still flakes in a beat. And all the letters - they fly out of his hands in paper airplanes and plaster over the dark. They all manage to cover everything up, some excessively toppling over others, but that's okay.

With a hand's run across space, reality is completely risen once again, and the numbness and the panic are nowhere to be found. But the boy is not in our presence anymore; he has gone off to follow up on imperative deadlines.

Only people in the city are recorded this day, but with more music, kissing snow, and love and family letters read over steaming cups. The phone booths are no longer occupied because people now have what they were once missing.

The flakes fall more sluggishly through the air in artful spirals.

Elusive and Irrational

A colossal amount of foam down my throat, and the sandpaper scratch of sand in the chimneys of my lungs. A crash of luminescence, and a seasick smile with anchor tips. The screech of midnight ripples through salty sea water, and the keys to an adept pianist's piano, the almost soothing tumble of blood in my ears, the right moment. A blur of tight colors, like azure and the color of the dark, brash and churlish but prudish and pursed in amount, a sigh and a shout and a duck into the hallway of humanity.

A peephole to peer into, and bevies of clouds awash with buoyant stars. A clap of thunder and the smite of lightning, hearing me throughout my lonely tirades. The dominant influence of tides and time. Acquiescing my instinct, sleeping like a madman, boring holes of thought in actions. A hacking, and a burning, and a kinship - a clandestine exploration and a destructive miracle in the swings and sways of loving and missing and realization and profound misery as deep as physical punctures. Maligning the stars, the moon, the sun, you, me, and I squint so I could almost hold on to strands of fluid flame. A pint of madness, an accusing finger, and a march to a conclusion. A prologue to the world, the mind, an accolade to the gods.

This is the promise of the sea. And this is the promise of Life.

Catatonic Bites

(In The Dark)

Roaming around the stewing seconds of midnight's feverishly loquacious hum, I venture out into the dark abyss of what is called the pantry, then shut it a tad too loudly with my knees and search for that bowl of barbecue-flavored french fries I adopted over from Midge's sister's birthday party. The microwave won't start this time but I still proceed to carry the fries over to my mess of a room, and almost slide (and gasp in surprise) in front of a Persian kitten due to its adorable size and untimely apperance before my bedroom door. My room is a box of tossed colors. I dress my cocoon of a bed with one of the two blankets I just got from the laundry this morning and burrow my shoulders in a recess of plush pillows and wool blankets, my nose fairly runny and the night strolling with the autumn chill pressing against my windowpane.

Then the midnight really sinks in, gregarious and hospitable in my heart, and I am not even halfway done with Toy Story 2 when the walls begin to close in, in a slow manner as I sniff my way to sleep. I faintly remember the scratch of my blanket's coarse patches against my right cheek, and my breath dipping into drones of anticipating snoring.

I dream of an ardor, cracking and creaking like a fireplace in a heart, ramshackle and barely visible but there. A nerve of agitation hangs unsteadily in swift swings atop this heart. An unconscious and tenuous sigh makes its way out of me, out into the dark, falling in the sweetness of pancake syrup, chafing and biting on my feet like five o'clock shadow. And in my dream I am innocuously sitting directly before the fireplace, my cheeks feeling aglow in my hands. A foliage of lackadaisical stars and dancing curtains obscures a kind of pain in a dreamy half-sleep, and the autumn outside morphs into an inclement weather - a tumult of white winter documentaries - like a promise sealed in favorable transformation. I struggle to find solace yet consciousness in a snug, partite chronicle.

A keenly exquisite pang of pain reverberates in the leaping fire. It is marginally extinguished as it playfully hops and flies around my head, dulling into twinges of childhood memories in my ears, and successfully tuning the dream to a vision of myself dozing off. The heart looks quite pensive, when I think of it, but in a way catatonic (not seen through the eyes, but the dream, and the slowly beating heart). There comes a myriad of bites of shedding dark in the light of my dream, rowing oars forgetting how to row, and a pair of svelte dancers falling to their knees and throats. My hands shift to shoo the silhouettes of nightmarish semblances away, deep back into the origami dream structure, but when I shudder awake the bites aren't immediately found throughout my arms and legs. They are deeply set in my heart that I did not know was also especially intoxicated with the dousing of warmth and the heralding of cold.

I myself feel (and am) disgruntled. My eyes adjust to golden rays of sunlight in the morning, and my movie, snack, and cat are not in my room. I stretch and stir in blankets of freezing temperature, my stomach, my memory, my lungs, and my comfort empty then vanishing altogether. I stare blearily at the ceiling for a good twenty minutes, then another ten at the floor with trepidation, because the cracks and creaks of the broken fireplace are now in the creacks and gaping maws of the floor.

Or what may be underneath it.

Light and Blood

har·le·quin

 [hahr-luh-kwin, -kin]

noun

1.

( often initial capital letter  ) a comic character in commedia dell'arte and the harlequinade, usually masked, dressed in multicolored, diamond-patterned tights, and carrying a wooden sword or magic wand.

There is a stark juxtaposition. It mingles coquettishly. It drums as soft as a heartbeat in filtering sunlight, the morning a steady stir on shadowed sheets and pillows. First and foremost, there is light - almost like the color of doves alongside a church at noon, almost like the nauseous whirr of hospital gowns. But it is dawn, a moody, ghoulish dawn, and light is scarce and muddled with edges of suffocating dark in a harlequin's smile.

It is like a daze, a daydream, and a high-pitched laugh running through fields of rice, conjured up with the defying help of a handful of affairs of escapism - the humming and droning of a radio. The harlequin's hair is spunky and fiery in a sleepy amber light that topples over ridges of encyclopedias and cosmetics rolling over each other in drizzles of paper cutouts. Powder is tinted on cheeks and ears of wavering red in time. The harlequin likes the spasmic route of cream and roses and cows over the moon in the little attention she strikes her cheekbones with. Her countenance is then briefly masqueraded, albeit only awhile as there is still a couple of hours before she stations herself.

Our harlequin's breath is tinged with nearly indistinguishable lines of coy and demure desires. It hangs patiently on an impish smile, before given permission to cascade over her lengthy reflection in a sigh that ventures with bits of soul. She nips at her cherry lip and shades her eyelids with smoke, rising up from her chair in juddering beats. She is made of light, her fingertips lined with butter from popcorn and laminated photographs in photo albums.

Her shoulders are overly taut under the sunrise's soft gaze. She awkwardly shuffles her feet across the floor to check on her smile again, but it's a hundred blinks and breaths too late. Light and blood and sandpaper and lunch boxes and inner monologues are never the best components of a clown's potpourri, or at least of her performance's potpourri. And strawberries are self-served on ceramic dishes, but our harlequin is parched for light and blood only. She is left to ruminate about these in the timeless stillness of her room, quite an interim between breathing and doing, before she is given the choice to choose between (1) performing and (2) being.