Mediocre

I am really tired, and today has been a splash of colorful weather combinations; the weather being all sorts of emotions, at least according to me. I've been thinking about video blogging while riding home from school as I observed how fresh and bright the colors were this afternoon. Perhaps the vlogbrothers have inspired me. To be frank I've been trying to make light of classes but I am often stuck in the middle of chaos -- if we're straightforwardly referring to Art class, I came across my own mediocre imitation of professionally drawn lips. Turns out I can't even shade them.

There has been so much urgency going around and tonight I have the heels of my palms on my grandmother's computer because mine is silent in misery in one corner of where my relatives are staying for at least, maybe, a month. I've missed blogging. I've missed the comfort of my blog, because in a way it comforts me like no one can. I've been worrying that something inside me would just leave this afloat and abandoned, especially since I haven't been blogging for a long time. Well, maybe not for so long, but I am strict and unmerciful to myself. I've been chastising myself day by day by loosening the grip on my hold on this haven. Maybe it doesn't make sense at all, but I hope it does. I apparently like making sense and having it.

Thanks, and DFTBA! (what does DFTBA mean? see numbers 1 and 2 for accuracy)

Tuneage

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1. After Afterall -- William Fitzsimmons 
2. Tenzin's Decision -- Legend of Korra (The Track Team)
3. Breakeven -- The Script
4. She Will Be Loved -- Maroon 5
5. Reflection -- Lea Salonga (Mulan)
6. A Whole New World -- Brad Kane and Lea Salonga (Aladdin)
7. Breath of Life -- Florence + The Machine
8. Cave Jivin -- Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Track Team)
9. Where The Fence is Low -- LIGHTS
10. I Don't Dance -- Corbin Bleu and Lucas Grabeel (High School Musical 2)

Take Me There

I grew up dreaming amidst raindrops and fireworks, like the depressing pall of the weather and the beginning of a sparkly New Year. I read the dark in the syrupy breath of flickerflickerflickers in the attic and on the dining room table, and I drew childish hearts, borrowing fingertips of the dark and knowing I was alone that night while the peaceful roar of adults talking quaked below. I had forgotten and abandoned my favorite books and how could I? The dogs swam around and below, circling around the house like shark fins. We were on top of the world nonetheless, and I peeked down and crawled and tried to whisper some prayers here and there. I did not know what the sun was. La luna? I think I knew its language. But anyway the branches danced from side to side, then the roots swallowed too much water, and I held on with it because it needed me and somehow I was the lost girl that needed it too. The Lost Girl of the Nowhere, listening and watching and waiting for the sailors of La Luna to take me there. La Luna.

Dogs, Tweets, and Satos

Hi.

August is on its way and as the weather keeps holding everything in place and fighting against gates of rust, I’ve been lazing around, listening to the dot dots of key-pushing, completing a few assignments, babying somebody, and reading, writing, examining words, and watching photosets/gifs of characters I adore.

Last Saturday I woke up to my mother looking at the TV as The Olympic Games ran live. John Green has been tweeting eagerly about the competitors/teams, and I am absolutely enjoying seeing his tweets pour down my timeline.

So far he hasn’t sworn. Yet.

And I got this book 

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know 

and the reviews are enticing – it does look promising, especially with that dog staring into your soul on the cover (and the title even uses the oxford comma, although I try to establish not to judge any work of literature that lacks it) – so I hope I garner more and more knowledge about dogs, considering the aforementioned reasons and the fact that the author is – surprise surprise! – a dog lover herself. 

There are two girls I love so much – one the namesake of the other.

My Asami Baby

(and all the other dogs

try to chase me

but here's my number

so call me maybe)

(I'm embarrassing myself online.)

and my Queen, who appears on Legend of Korra

©

I'll be back this August! Hopefully, yes!

Two Hips and a Hooray

Some days when the world is pretty much the same in the peculiar sense that it is not, I like to think that I do think of the worlds I’ve rumbled and jumbled under my eyelids. There’s a Captain America shield to my right – a story, among other stories. Books – at least the books you know – stand out to you because they’re known and they are loved. I’ve loved worlds and I can’t tell if it’s healthy or not – the longing and the desire – but it dresses me with joy. Unquantifiable joy I grasp till I can’t – euphoria I can hold before the truth and the days of this world blind me back to disparate (and sometimes unwanted) knowledge.

Yesterday I wrote one drabble and hiP HIP HOORAY to that! But now I can feel how competitive and so damn little I am as I have skimmed past a page of laudable writing by a dear blogger. There is pride, now that I think about it, when the screen had flashed through my eyes and thoughts. I identify as writer (and I just had to italicize that word so much because I marvel in it) and I live in a world where there are many others of that too. But then I speed through blog to blog and I know – I’ve always known – that there are lovelier, simpler bridges of words that have been constructed SO WELL that they are so gorgeously complicated in a way it makes me dizzy to comprehend. I envy so much.

One thing: I am a cruel vine sprawled out over lives of my loves, and I am a witch hissing for languages and the breath of vacation. Another thing: A twisted world doesn’t need a Cinderella, but she stays because she’s Cinderella.

If it hasn’t dawned on you yet, I want to speak out that my words do not make sense unless you understand – from beginning to end. I try not to make reading hard for you. But the world doesn’t make writing easy for me. I’m struggling, and I love you. Perhaps you could allot time for reading? :)

Life Number One

For July and for Owl City. 

Let’s say that humans have nine lives and this is my second life. My first was a life of discovery and amazement funneling down into a cryptic close, and I wasn’t worrying because I still had eight more lives to spend. And hopefully I do spend wisely as not to waste.

My first life was a book of fresh faces – the pillars and waves of teeming journal entries and biographies. This life had begun in between wet eyelashes and flipping notebook pages. A collection of fiction and not, I originated and lived without panic.

My Mondays were sewn with the tapping of feet and the blowing of wind, my place of relaxation and study as a twenty year old was a house near the beach where I could breathe way easier. I created dance steps and procrastinated. I was crammed with word document appointments. I was too engulfed in the work of fixing my TV set and staring at dresses and bowties on the Internet. I was a silly lady made out of sharp pencil markings and long hair. I was a borrowed ballerina shoes; I was a freckled face – too sunshine; I was a ponytail snaking down to my tailbone – the colors of black and red were prominent.

Nine years old of first life was when I would always jump out and shout in the rain. My name was Z – like, maybe, zealous! – and when my first life’s fourteenth year came I sat among a couple of friends and their stuffed toys to hit our faces with cake of strawberry icing. I bounced from cloud to cloud when it was a Christmas blue, and I can only recall the jukebox pumping out notes by Momma’s Diner as my good friend Rende (like the rende of rendezvous) leaped from dead rock to sleeping frog with my collection of films. That thief.

My twenty-first came one day and I made the bell ring once again in the nearby library of Mrs. Monica. I showed her my doodles of Rende and that diner one time it snowed abundantly, making sure my toothy smile was safely inches away from her frowning one. But I can tell you that she smiled at the end of our almost one-sided conversation; Mrs. Monica may have already been eighty-seven and a widow, but she breathed in stories the way I breathed in paint. She loved, loved, loved it.

So I told her another story and whispered it, saying, “You know, ma’am, I used to bounce from cloud to cloud.” She pushed her pair of glasses back and inquired, “You stopped?” And I laughed. I don’t know why I laughed, but I did. It was more like a small snicker to myself – a sarcastic and bitter one. Oh, I did stop.

“Mrs. M, of course I did!” I smiled. She grew a smile. And she told me to continue hopping until something stopped me.

That was when my pencils unraveled themselves from my fingers and drew that Christmas blue back. “How can I, Mrs. M?” I always called her Mrs. M. I already had called her that half a dozen of times that day. But I was afraid. I had not cloud-hopped in a long time. My jukebox wasn’t there; my diner wasn’t there; and my good friend Rende Zvous wasn’t there.

She told me, so softly, “Believe.” That word took me aback, but I stood in place; I feared my pencils and I feared myself. “You’ll die and you’ll live. Be yourself, miss Z. You have won the Christmas blue before, and you will again. Behold, the sun is shining! You are sunny, too. But you know you belong in the world of the moon and the stars, child. I will miss you. Your books will miss you. But Christmas blue misses you much, much more.”

Mrs. Monica blew my jukebox at me, and it landed on four stars next to Momma’s Diner. She hauled – and I almost shrieked for she mustn’t carry such a massive thing! – the world at me and before I could catch it with my hands, my heart did. I breathed out a few wishes, a few hopes, and a few miseries. I kept more to myself. But still–

I hopped.

A Few Colors

Today was like a million drops of dark chocolate syrup and splotches of blood under a summer day’s sun. It was like finger-shaking cross-stitching and yogurt, landing in between frames and cups of mango bits plus rainbow sprinkles.

by Adam

The library was closed during lunch time and so I engulfed the raindrops of sunshine under the roof and peered through the glass, scanning the shelves and pillars of books – pages were left open, then later they blinked at me like a pair of butterfly wings. Clouds dunked in Microsoft blue and paper white littered the sky as raucous chatter pushed on and on to exceed one of many limits. My heart – a cavern – hungered for answers, scrambled toward the door and almost left my mind behind with nothing to give. Daydreams hung around notoriously, and I rowed onward.

I drank the light of last night’s lamp like my last gulp of iced tea. My languid kicks brought me to a room stirring with finality, a place where I could breathe in and out with pruney fingers. Buh-reathe.

Thank you.

The Orb of Dreamers

The Orb of Dreamers by The Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra

Adam introduced this track to me via LittleBigPlanet – a game where one can design, interact, and so much more. The narrator has an accent and the introduction is mind-blowing and seriously the game is amazing. Through Sackboy (the main character) and with him, you journey from one place to another. Beautiful.

Adam plays levels in the car and we listen to the tracks of each. The Orb of Dreamers has been my favorite yet, and I've downloaded it. I suggest you listen to it.

It reminds me of the joy you receive when you meet a goal or when you feel the euphoria bubbling in you.  I don't want to complicate it – or trivialize it with my words – but I admit that I sense longing and melancholy somewhere in it. When the Titanic sank, fresh ghosts danced from room to room, and the world experienced loss but they breathed in new life. As phantoms, they sojourned without shackles.

Yes. Longing.

Reign Julia

Prettiest baby ever.

Lovely reader, if you don't revel in a baby's laugh I don't understand why not.

Coffee Sunday

On a cool afternoon, I died curled in a midnight blue cardigan – the patches of cartoonish stars splayed across my chest and belly, pulling the piece of clothing tight around me that I could almost feel myself suffocate against the missing buttons. I was ensconced in a rocking chair as I swung my feet playfully under me, making sure I didn’t kick my cat (because I did love that stupid slyboots). The floorboards creaked as I peeked through the slivers of the curtains and out at the neighborhood. It was an old sight, colored with swaying trees and games. Then later I let myself rest back and gulp down – with little difficulty – a mug of newly prepared coffee.

But then the sliver disappeared and the stars pushed forward, leaving me scrambling for light and air.

Light. And air.

With a quick swipe of a blade against my ribcage, I tumbled down onto the dusty floor. I let loose a horrible cough as I willed my eyes to open, but they were already open – I just couldn’t see. Beneath the sound of my heavy, troubled breathing, I could hear a song I was forced to remember. It was a minute of alluring voices as I slowed down, trying to grasp anything like my ugly cat or the feet of the rocking chair. I froze when I heard the door scrape open. I froze, I froze, I froze.

And I fell down.

I fell down with the blackness clinging onto me – its hold on me like a blanket of metal, twisting around me like a slithering snake. Ouroboros was what it looked like from the corner of my eye. By then I had to listen to the sound of my heartbeat – quick, nimble footsteps pounding on soaked ground like thumpthumpthump. They collided as one until my eyes were blown wide and I felt like a mighty lion. I fell down until I sank down. The shoot led to a cyan world of nothing but me foolishly attempting to gain purchase on anything that could help me swim to shore. I had told myself that I’d swim to shore like a brave sailor, a cap’n alone but warm with a beating heart. But here’s the twist and I suffocated more with the revelation.

There was no shore in sight.

I was stranded and I was dying as the cold blew above me and the stars flew to the sky. They danced and pulled the night into the view, and the night did embrace the little stars with its own blinding light as they twinkled so carelessly across the sheet of bedtime. Bedtimebedtimebedtime – my tears were as cold as the wind, cruel as the blanket around my shoulders.

I did not understand how fickle and evil the world was until then.

But I kicked,

roared,

fluttered,

breathed

until I felt wings behind me growing gradually with light. I carried myself over the waves and in the air, suspended for a while so I could watch the stars sway and so I could learn from them. I made them tug me to land, and so I was like a moth to a flame but with more control. There was nothing dangerous about the heat of the stars. There was only me.

I had sand in between my toes and the ocean in my hair as the blanket bid me goodbye and trailed under the gentle waves. My ribs were gone and maybe my heart fled away too, but I swore I could feel my heart like a flame inside me. It was the fire that was life and not destruction that made my eyes rife with ember. I could see the red and orange through the reflection of the water – they reminded me of the books I used to read. They were fragile pages of fantasy and mystery coalesced into a beautiful genre.

But then I was the fantasy and the mystery – a book yet to be opened.