A New Year

My eyes sweep the clutter around me, looking for material, wondering which one goes first, which one goes with what, which one stays where it is--I, who have no gift for organization, whose bed is lined with stray books that have no relation to each other, some odds, some ends, a pencil; who mixes up the days in the calendar; who has no calendar.

But the hand and mind grow more listless as the days pass; the year is about to end, that much I know. I find myself cleaning up, instead.

It is the broken heart that has gathered the most dust, so it is the first to go. Tear-stained records follow suit, and how can that empty beer bottle still be where it is? That corner looks like a good spot for a coffee table and a vase. I'll buy the flowers myself, I'll make sure to say. There were never any flowers. The room echoes with forgotten sobbing. Was there really that much crying? I laugh a little. They need to go, too, these echoes have no business being here. Ah, but this is turning into a more difficult task than I thought, and it wasn't even what I had set myself to do. The things we deliberately lose eventually catch up with us, don't they always? But there are ways to make things easier, there always is.

With haste, I throw things away. The trash bag quickly fills up. A handful of empty pens, strings of sadness, socks that don't match, bits of despair, an armless cup, leftover bitterness, a rusty, blunt-edged knife, a cracked plate, loneliness. I'm almost done.

No. I am done. I crumple one remaining piece of regret and shoot it into the expectant bag. How light it feels, how new.

I look for B. B. King and draw the curtains to let the light in. Here is music, here is sunlight. So much sunlight, beautiful sunlight.

I fix myself a cup of warm, fragrant tea. I am ready for the New Year.

You, there.

I am throwing a smooth, grey stone your way. It will land near your left foot.

You will look up from the book you've been trying to read, take your glasses off, and bend down from your seat to pick the stone up. You will turn it in your hands, wondering where it's from, but only for a little while. You will soon realize it's from me, and you will not find it strange, no, not at all. You will not look for a crack in your roof, you will not wonder about distances. You will not think about strangeness, because you and I have already been to most worlds, together.

You will only think about sunlit gardens, wide straw hats, coffee in the rain, shared seats in flights to nowhere, warm hugs, buttered potatoes, pecks on the nose, foot massages. You will think about The Sundays, you will hear me reciting poetry. You will remember that story I wrote, many years ago. You will think of that story you filled with songs, moonbeams, and stars, wrapped in pretty paper, tied with a bow, and gave me on my birthday. You will mumble to yourself, "I once rescued her from a flood of tears, yes, I did." Because you did.

You will smile, dear one, you will be happy. And if I have to keep throwing stones your way for the rest of this life just to remind you I am here, then that is exactly what I will do, even now, as the bones on my hip start to ache from the weight of years, even if it means I have to plod through decades and dimensions, and walk back miles to where we started.

You will smile, dear one, right this very instant.

The Story I Found: Foo Fighters and Sonic Highways

"There is a river I found---"

- from "Something From Nothing"

In Sonic Highways, there is a man, and the man--broken and a little lost, but looking for answers to his questions, looking for deliverance-- (unwittingly) takes a journey. Something inside him has died, but something in him, too, knows that there is life in the death that has taken place, that there is something hidden in the undergrounds of the world that just might bring him back to life. Along the way, he encounters darkness, more questions, people who are lost in similar and different ways, epiphanies in the most ill-lighted of corners, love both found and lost. He encounters himself along the way, meets himself at the end of every path. Finally, he comes to terms with himself and rekindles the fire that has kept him going, despite the odds, the same fire, stronger now, that will keep him going, henceforth, and his journey comes full circle, in the very fact that he knows and looks forward to the fact that the journey will keep on being.

It is a typical enough story, the story of everyman, after all, but the beauty and grandeur of Sonic Highways is in keeping true with the themes it has set for itself, in delineating a story with a beginning, a rising action, a climax, a denoument, and an ending. Each song is connected both to and with the next one, and each listen brings with it a discovery, so that one can spend entire hours on it, and not get tired of doing so. The words are in keeping with the music, which is brilliantly-written--thanks to the genius of Dave Grohl--and flawlessly-executed, thanks to the talent, skill, and passion of the entire Foo Fighters. The arrangements are dynamic, the riffs play up the narrative, the drumbeats provide both backdrop and heightened action. Sonic Highways is a phenomenal work of music, unabashedly different, and with enough richness as to leave the listener more than satisfied, even with only eight songs in the stash, because the music fleshes out the themes and this sort of thing necessitates a repeat listen, and another, and another.

The one flaw (and another good thing going for it, if you will) in Sonic Highways is that the songs would not be able to stand to their full height without the others. The album is unapologetically contextual, and something gets lost when one song is taken from the other, leaving the listener turning the song over for something more and very possibly not finding, and thereby making the songs un-radio-friendly. Or maybe it's just me talking. I take off from the mistake I made of listening to "Something From Nothing" the moment it came out, and subsequently giving it my full judgement, without giving it the very benefit of the whole. It was only when I got to listen to Sonic Highways in entirety that I saw its richness. From that point, I started raving (mostly to myself) about it, and about the fact that everything now made sense (and what beautiful sense it was!), the way that almost nothing of it did with my "Something From Nothing" one-bite experience.

There were undercurrents of a narrative in Wasting Light, but the Foo Fighters' use of the story-telling device comes full-blast in Sonic. The album excellently spells out the kind of evolution that Foo Fighters has proven itself capable of, time and again, the band's collective effort and incredible energy visible in the entire production. I would say that they have outdone themselves, this time, and have managed to put enough pressure on themselves as to spend the next few years bleeding their brains out in order to top this particular, border-defying work. But knowing Dave Grohl, I now counter my last statement by saying that it will never happen. There's no going dry with that madman. He is most definitely something else.

See if you find the story I did, and if you find something else, do share it with me.

"There is a secret

I found a secret--"

- from "I am a River"

Static

Let me tell you about my recent preoccupation with stasis, about the question of what one is supposed to do with it, about whether one is supposed to do something about it. But then again, will that not negate the stasis, will that not make it something else? I fear I will contradict myself; I often do. I will pause somewhere, I am certain, and I wonder if you will wonder about that pause, you who seem to find blanks in pauses. But know that there is stasis in certain pauses; in others, thoughts, in some, confusion. And then there are those that hide stretches of waiting, variable in length. 

The afternoon could drag on like a tune pretending to be a melody, and I shudder at the thought, for that could mean a chance forever lost. But what am I doing taking chances? There is comfort in stasis.

I will take a sip from my cup of tea, I am sure, I might finger the label at the end of the string and fold it into smaller and smaller shapes, but let me talk to you about you, too, will you? Will you let me, if I could find it in myself to do it, if I could allow myself to leave the safety of my pause? As it is, I have a feeling I will end up (once more) analyzing the stasis in teacups: the subterfuge of stillness resulting from the opposition between teabag and water.

Let me tell you a story I found along the highway, instead. This, I just might be able to pull off.

Older and Better: My Kind of Mr. Big

euphoria. noun - a feeling of great (usually exaggerated) elation

Thank you, mobile phone dictionary, for being so succinct. Euphoria is the very word I would use to describe my Mr. Big experience last October 31st. The build-up of excitement--from the time I found out they were coming over to the very moment they appeared onstage--took a little over two months before culmination, so that meant I had had to suppress that little lump of giddiness for quite a while. Our tickets were purchased two weeks before the date and by that time, I had already consumed enough of their music to fill a medium-sized pool. I am a discography type of person, though I no longer have the luxury of time to "study" each and every album, so I end up singling out and retaining only my favorites from each. A handful was added to my cache of Mr. Bigs, but I still spent so much time listening to them because once a song becomes a favorite, I put it on loop and listen to it enough times for somebody else's ears and patience to burst.

Sadly, though, Mr. Big started out for me as Eric Martin and only Eric Martin, when I was in High School and still very much prone to crushing on celebrity vocalists, Eric Martin not the least of them, if only because he was so deliciously good-looking and had one of the best voices in town. Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan--I used to not see drummers back then, so Pat Torpey was virtually non-existent--were no more than fixtures for me, ignorant little girl that I was, whose idea of music consumption was confined to song and singer, and knowing next to nothing of the other (equally) important details that went with the finished product. All those changed when I got older, but that's another story.

So, anyway, there we were, two hours before the concert, loading up on a few beers, trying to contain the excitement that found (paltry) relief only in sudden exclamations of "I'm so excited I could barely contain it!" And alcohol, so it would seem, because we managed to make it to the arena in one piece. Thankfully, we had prepared ourselves for a delay, being used to waiting as we were, so it didn't appall us as much as the sight of the half-empty (or half-full, for the positive thinkers out there) venue did. I found myself getting more and more dismayed as the minutes ticked by and there didn't seem to be much hope of the arena getting filled. I grew anxious for the band because yes, I'm a little crazy that way. What will they think and how will they feel, poor creatures? What is wrong with people? I questioned the universe for a little while, biting the ends of my fingernails and sighing. The minutes stretched into longer ones and I turned into a huge blob slumped into my seat, watching a big, white guy in denim shorts and a black shirt making last minute check-ups on the set. His long hair was tied in a ponytail and I wondered what his life was like.

When the lights went out and loud, orchestral music filled the room, people started to clap and shout and whistle and I felt the hairs on my nape and arms rise. The band went onstage and took their places and everything else disappeared into a vacuum--I felt myself rising to an all-time high, and the rest is history. Or maybe not. They opened with "Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy", played "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind" and "Just Take My Heart" to an audience that could hardly stop itself from singing along, "Alive and Kickin'", "I Forget To Breathe", "Addicted to That Rush", "Take Cover", and some tracks from their new album The Stories We Could Tell, "As Far as I Can See" being my favorite from that album, which I have yet to "study".

Eric Martin wasn't as cute as I remembered him to be (I'm stupid, I already know that), but he was still able to hit the notes, though sustaining them was an altogether different affair; still, he had ways of playing around with the vocals so that he still winged the more difficult songs with flair. Paul Gilbert was his usual brilliant self and the crowd went crazy when he did his solos, but Billy Sheehan ended up the one to take my breath away--so much stage presence, that giant of a man, and those guitar rifts, holy molly! Apparently, he is who Mr. Big took its name from, and this new tidbit delighted me to no end. Pat Torpey, who has been diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, still appeared on stage and drummed to "Just Take My Heart" and "Addicted to that Rush". For the rest of the night, his place was filled in by a drummer who was known to me only as "that bald guy". I just recently found out his name was Mark Starr. "To Be With You" and "Wild World" were my two least favorite numbers.

Everything else was a roaring blast, as I had expected--and hoped--it would be. It was a relief that the band did not allow the sight of the empty seats to stop them from being in their element. They soared up to the high ceilings with their energy, more fired up and bigger than I have ever known them to be. There they were, a bunch of wonderfully talented musicians who've been playing for fans for 25 years; there they were, in their mid-fifties and having gone through as much of life's ups-and-downs as any other person could; there they were, older and better. I had a feeling that night was going to imprint itself on me for a while, and was I right. I'm writing this more than a week from that time, and I can still remember how they were, and how I was, watching them.

They didn't play "CDFF Lucky This Time", which is my favorite Mr. Big song, but I ended up not minding, at all. My pool was overflowing and it was one of the best feelings in the world. That night, I went home nostalgic, reminiscing how it was in the 90's, remembering my long, wavy, untreated hair and my afternoon trips to the diner with my friends, the little joys and heartbreaks, the weekends spent reading and waiting for my favorite songs to be played by faceless DJs, the light, airy evenings, wonderful little stuff that only fourteen-and-something-year-olds can know--and I felt young and stupid and happy, all over again. And so it goes that the things we loved and lost but keep loving, anyway, eventually find their way back to us, at some point or another, and music has just the power to bring it all back. And that unforgettable night, Mr. Big made it all happen for me.

Companions

Morning. My thoughts are taking a walk, with I in tow. They are traversing a path strewn with certain hours of certain days. Objects, sights, platforms, smells. Remembered musings appear from corners. Sudden turns yield more images. I find myself having to catch my breath, sometimes, they are going too fast; other times, I stop and turn blank, unmindful of them. Then I would have to break into a run, just so I could keep up. There are times they pause and turn their heads to look at me, willing me to confront their faces and I comply, breathing a sigh of relief, taking a rest from the whirl of strangers and voices and gamuts of feelings. They resume and I follow. We keep walking and I start losing my breath.

By the time we return, I am exhausted, my cup of tea grown cold.

Disagreements

I survey the distance from I to you and stifle a gasp.

The plan is to calculate and come up with sums, but I end up counting differences, instead. For example: your hurried steps plus my tentative ones equal a gap. Or: a definite blank is formed when my flights of fancy meet your appallingly firm hold on all things solid. At least I know I got those right.

Everyday, I wonder, though I almost always resolve to stop poking figures into the air. Because I have never been good with equations; because equations aren't figures one pokes into the air. Or are they?

The law of this states that and the law of that states this--I am mad to think I could make sense of things, though I'm pretty sure that you could. I count the number of squares between us and realize what exhausting shapes they are. So I turn my back and draw circles, instead, wishing I could disappear into them.

I would like to

draw a line on one of your furrowed brows, and make a cut, a cut along your frown. I would like to trace that line.

It cannot be clean, this mess that's to be. You are not a task and if you were, I will never be able to complete you. Are you all straight lines, are we parallel lines? It cannot be so, or so my mind insists, insisting on softness even as I struggle--while feigning non-struggle--with the (imagined) resistance of your surfaces.

I steady my trembling hand; this fear is of my own making. This fear of you is of my own making. My fear is that of recognition: what if I end up seeing you, and yet end up only seeing you? I suspect I will; I am sure I will.

And so I wrap you up in haze, consign you to the shadows; I darken you with words like "cruel" and "lost". I look for safety in my own ignorance, or whatever bliss that's left of it.

I shut you out. I would like to.

Dear--,

There is a distance made of walls and on the other side, you. Where are you, dear friend? How are you? Sometimes, it is a thick slab of glass, opaque, this gap. I feel, hear you stirring, and I wonder if your thoughts mirror mine, like they often do. We are listening to the sound of the rain, falling listlessly, aimlessly. Are we? Is it raining where you are? In the distance, a grand chorale, horse hooves thundering. Listen. Listen, you would say, listen and hear. And I would hear them, I who never think of horses, realize that they are beautiful and grand. Send me a line, share this breakfast with me, for it tastes like sadness where I am. Where are you? Help me break this wall of glass--surely, it can be done? We've done it before. We've been saved once, and again, and again. Talk to me about angels, talk to me about grace. You are moving my fingers to write. You are here.

These days, I spend a lot of time watching you. I'm not entirely certain if it has something to do with the years I didn't get to spend with you, like they are something I have to make up for. Maybe it does. Maybe they are.

Now, I watch you pace the length between here and there and wonder how far you've gone from where you are.

Is it true, what you say, that the number of times you stir your coffee makes a difference? Does it take more of the bitterness away, the more circles you make? I wonder.

You are looking at the road and I am looking at you. To your left, a darkly tinted window; to its left, an unrecognizable twilight. I realize that I don't mind if it is so, at all. I trace your profile with my eyes.

I couldn't bring myself to stop at four segments; and so I write you down again.

Because your birthday is coming up, I will write about our garden

We agree that someday, we will have a garden, and that garden will have: lots of green grass; a perennially mild sun, whose light plays on glass tabletops; five old, friendly trees with trunks as thick as years; nice, wooden chairs with brown cushions for seats; unread books kept in a woven basket; pink and red flowers that are perpetually in full bloom; a wisteria-wrapped bower.

And a huge, yellow-and-white striped umbrella, of course.

We agree that it will never rain in that garden unless we wish for it to rain, and only after we've put the books and the cushions away.

We agree that we will wear big, straw hats when we sit in that garden to talk, or read, and those hats will be identical. I have picked out an ensemble of long, white skirts and frilly white tops, and it's up to you whether you would choose to stick to the floral shirts you'd said you would wear for those daily breathers. It's not too late to change your mind.

We agree that I can laugh to my heart's delight at anything you say that I might find funny. My laughter will ring and rise and be loud, unlike how it is now--muffled, silent, almost-- while you're there, and I'm here.

We agree that the only thing we will argue about are the books we've already read; we will never argue about politics, or about how good, or bad, people can be, and you will never disagree with me when I say that life isn't always all that bad, because once upon a time, you had told me so yourself, and just because you are very sad right now doesn't mean you will always stay that way.

We agree that crying is allowed, but only if we are both there. We will each keep a hankie in our pockets.

We agree that there will always be warm tea and cold water. I will fix you fresh garden salads, and we will already have sworn off junk food, by then. You will absolutely not be allowed to eat anything that's bad for you--delivery of any sort doesn't reach that part of the world.

We agree that in that garden, we will have all the time in the world to talk about our favorite writers, the movies we've seen and want to see, poetry and loveliness, how complicated relationships can get, Woody Allen, Fiction. We will take our time making plans, like dropping by Paris for cups of coffee; watching the rain soak my sandal-strapped feet at an outdoor restaurant in Prague; hugging in a crowded mall for half an hour; attending a conference in, say, New York, and sharing a plane seat, just for laughs.

We agree that we will not wear watches; the sun, setting, will be the only clue that it is time to go indoors. We can always choose to stay until evening, however--there will be lamps, and candles, and watercress sandwiches.

We agree that in that garden, I will always be 18, and you, 24. There will be no such thing as aching limbs, or wrinkles, or brittle bones, or failing eyesight. Never.

We agree that we can keep coming back to that garden forever, or until one of us decides we don't want to, anymore. Even then, one of us just might still keep dropping by for a peek, to take the chance that the other might be sitting there, reading.


For L--

Because I do not know which scary place my thoughts will take me to.

This is how I know I'm not all right; this is how--and when--I know you're not with me: no matter how late the hour and no matter how drowsy I am, I feel almost afraid to go to bed without popping a pill.

You wonder.

You wonder about the storm, wonder about the things it may have taken with it when it went away. The dust, the prayers, the hours, the night, the morning. You wonder about roofs, floors, houses. You wonder about children. You wonder about sadness.

You wonder about rain, trickling down glass windows, wonder about rain, whipping at shut doors.

You wonder about overflowing rivers, wonder about books and plastic cups washed away by flood, wonder about wet, shivering skin, about fear, helplessness, loss. You wonder about hope beneath a torrential rain, hope against the wind's merciless lashing, hope despite them.

You wonder about words--do you describe the wind as "howling", "roaring", or "wailing"? You wonder about meaning; you wonder about meaninglessness.

You wonder about the trees: some, uprooted and fallen, streaking the grey streets green; the others, leaning low against the sides of roads, nodding even as the air momentarily keeps still. You wonder about puddles.

You wonder about the blank look on people's faces as they walk under a drizzle, you wonder about their thoughts.

You wonder about darkness and light, wonder about the correct way to strike a match to light a candle, and how there is loveliness in the sound. You wonder how you can think of loveliness at a time like this.

You wonder why the sun shines the way it does right now. You wonder why you wonder.

You wonder what will come next.

Passage, or something like that

There's an element of strangeness in it: being half in love with something for as long as one can remember and then, one day realizing one doesn't like it anymore. This was the case with my (erstwhile) addiction to coffee and sadness. One morning, I woke up, fixed myself my usual cups of caffeine and gloom and, after a few sips, decided I wanted no more of both. 

I poured them into the drain, turned the water on, pelted the sink with disinfectant, and scrubbed with more force than usual. 

I went out to buy some tea and bask in the sunlight.

Variation on a theme: Daphne and Apollo

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

- Louise Gluck, "The Reproach"

Waning, trembling, loss of breath: the first signs of the permanence that will become the end of this story.

Picture woodland, Dear Reader, imagine trees with whorled roots, and leaning branches; picture sunlight and comforting shade; picture the occasional brook, silver rivulets crossing brown earth and clusters of green grass; the sky must be a blinding blue, for it cannot be otherwise, the mind will always insist on blueness; let the breeze be a delicious balm--in the beginning, at least. Isn't this how most stories start, after all?

Or imagine the city, if you will, the city with its absent stillness. I prefer the woods, but do what you must.

STICK TO THE STORY. A reprimand. There should always be a reprimand.

The mind is where the chase leads; the mind is where the chase is, and I begin:

The shadows lengthen as the day loses ground. Two shadows, they were, and one of them was faceless.

MIND YOUR TENSES.

At the body's swiftest, the limbs persevere, and the mind endures.  Soon, twilight, herald of night. Soon, the wind; soon, the truth. YOU ARE GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. But it is a race, is it not?

IT IS A CHASE.

I erase a word and replace it with the same word and think that I am discovering newness. It is a form of madness. I look out the window and see a small, round moon. I think it is more yellow than white, but then I change my mind.

One shadow fleeing from the faceless one, from the impermanent one, he whose being is always a makeshift one. I come up with a list of adjectives: transient, shifting, short-lived, they. They is not an adjective. Impermanent, then.

And that was why I ran. An epiphany.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? A reprimand.

The other shadow, breaking, then, turning into someone else, breaks again.

Daphne, dazzled by a slice of brilliance, finds herself turning--

That was not in the outline. That sentence pushed its way from below, from somewhere unseen. That sentence was an insistence I did not foresee. It begs to be italicized, but I would rather look the other way. It was I, after all, who was dazzled, it was I who turned; it was I who mistook that slice of brilliance for light. There is no outline.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? There should always be a reprimand.

It never ends. I cannot have you follow me this way.

WHO IS THE You HERE? But must there always be a reprimand?

I have (finally, finally) taken the great myth and torn it apart.

You are the tree that I want to become.

The Walk Home

what surprises you most in what you feel,

earth's radiance or your own delight?

- Louis Gluck

The lamps were lit, the street was pale yellow, and my steps were unhurried as I walked.

I was thinking, it is no longer the night that's catching up with me; it is I who's catching up with the night. I was remembering a particular moment--daybreak, it was--when you made me realize twilight no longer made me sad, the way it used to, for a very long time.

A small, unforeseen smile, a quickening in my chest, the deep, languorous texture of evening--an aqueous joy was rushing through my veins, and I felt light, like a murmur, or a ripple. A faint memory of, of--something brushed my left cheek, and was gone before I could give it a name. The word/s seemed far away, too blurry for me to make out. Or was it a breeze?

I laughed, out loud, and the sound echoed upward, toward the sky (like I knew what sky meant), like my laughter always does when I am laughing, and happy. I felt my heart swell with anticipation. Just a few more steps and I would turn the corner that led to you.

Thoughts of hot tea, of music and books, of hope and love, wafted in my mind like promises about to be fulfilled. I brushed back some wisps of hair that fell over my eyes and quickened my pace. Awake and pensive, by the light of the furtive moon, I knew you were waiting.

Story

Sacred and unutterable Mind

flashing thorough the universe one thought,

- John Berryman

Let me tell you how it happened:


My foregoing thoughts of you: did we have to be all those? I cannot let go of this loveliness, all blurry and countless, unlike

the wondering I had done: oh, let me, let me ask, where? Where

are/ you/ are you

(in) the things I had seen you in: streets and highways, titles in bookshops, random twilights, a handful of rainy days, this solitary tree,

the accidental skein of prayers: let me ask you one final question, or be, or here, my love, here--

converged into one dazzling, lushly flickering light.


And you, beloved, were, one enunciated night, licked by the sudden warmth of a far-reaching flame. From the immeasurable--because, with time, turned into something unseen--distance, you crossed the rift between before and after. And by crossing, you sealed the hollow, drawn as you were by the brilliance: a known strangeness, yes? Beckoned, you came.

Summoned, you arrived.

And here is the afterglow: you and I, 

here.

Summer

Daybreak. Pale rays of light cleave (your) consciousness into humid halves. Edges start to blur. A book of poetry, sprawled on your left thigh, disappears as your lids finally drop.

Slumber and desire are both fluid--

The ceiling, dock to your longing: this will be your first thought when you open your eyes again, hours later. Oh, merciless heat. When and where, deliverance? A dull ache lingers as a montage of tarnished dreams dissipates from your mind, but

--so let me flow--

not yet. Meanwhile, your mind roams in unbearable brightness, through tepid skin and agitated hands, above rising, and rising heights, underneath the glow of distant moonlight and alongside a frugal, sultry breeze, through restlessness and crawling mist. A dark, nameless hunger, an absent stasis. The eyes seek dim corners, entanglements. Blue lights flit about.

A specter of you, faceless, all brilliance--

On surfaces, sweat breaks, and breaks, and breaks into tiny, oppressive beads and

you dream of skies unfastening,

of you, opening

of rain falling on parched ground, of you catching the drops finally, finally, with your

tongue.

Interlude

Mo chuisle, you have come back.

Rest now, dear heart. Rain has laced the evening with crystal drops; look at how they shimmer in the moonlight. The night has shed away its mournfulness, and is once more fragrant with promise.

Do not keep this brightening at bay; let yourself be consumed by its radiance.

Tomorrow's sunlight waits. Love hovers at your fingertips.

Debris

Slanted stems of sunlight bathe the room in the aftermaths of a stowaway morning, and my eyes catch movement, elsewhere. Elsewheres are faraway places. A quick brush, an agitation of sorts, the noiseless rustle of absence. One more hand slices into the stillness and I realize it is the mirror, stirring: the mirror is the explanation, and my hand is in it. There doesn't always have to be a reason. I look, and my elbow materializes.

That is my wrist, and that is my hand. The sunlight lingers, waiting. My fingers are flipping through the pages of a slim volume; my fingers are looking for a memory. There is no face, and I move away, grateful. You will only find that which you really look for. The air hangs heavy with what comes next. And I'm sorry, but there are no more gaps I can put you in. 

Hand and book disappear, reappear, and I scoop them out of the mirror.

Somewhere, mute, small and distant, a misplaced hollowness. Here, the poem I was looking for.

Your Franz Ferdinand Shirt

And indeed, there will be time...

There will be time, there will be time.

- from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

A girl and a boy once roamed the city under sun and starlight. Their portion of the years, once swallowed by the city, are now resurfacing into a single moment. Once upon a time, the girl and the boy drifted into parallels and disappeared into the years. But some sleight of hand, hosts of cogent thoughts, some vagrant wish, a strange, mute sadness--they will never know which, or that even all of these--have driven the years away and pulled, tilted them into a single point.

The girl and the boy are now talking about a shirt. The girl is telling the boy about her dream, because the shirt--and the boy--were in it. They are laughing, and in their laughter, their thoughts are careening backward into another time. The boy is remembering a Thursday, the girl, a Saturday. They were both in those days. As they talk, they are thinking of each other, and they are bending back into each other. Now, they are starting to grope around for the lost years, inching their way into them, picking up the luminous fragments and handling them in a circumspect way, avoiding the cracks on the floor, kicking the shards away. 

In this moment, they are not aware that the wounds have healed, or that they were ever there. They are not thinking about healed wounds; they are not thinking about wounds, at all. They are asking each other about the last movie they saw, about the books they have read. The boy is telling the girl about the book he finished two days ago; about how, upon shutting it, he had found himself wishing he were also shutting her memory forever, because the years have failed to do that. "But here I am," the girl says, and the boy replies, "no you're not here. You're there, I'm here. And I want to be there." The girl hesitates, then laughs, and the boy does, too. They are walking around the gaps.

They start talking about something else.

Grace

She caught her by the wrist and said, "Your wings are bleeding."

Startled, Czarina slowed her steps down and looked beyond her right shoulder. All she saw were sunlight, some trees, the sidewalk, a lamp post, and a man, sitting on a bench, reading a book. She stopped and stood where she was, staring at her right wrist where the woman had touched her, remembering the distinct whiff of cold air that seemed to have brushed past her when she was touched. The woman. It was a woman's voice she had heard, and the words had been spoken in an unmistakably feminine way.

She felt her heartbeat start to slow down; it had accelerated to an alarming pace two, three minutes ago. She walked to a nearby bench and sat down, finding relief in the familiarity of wood. Your wings are bleeding.

She gingerly touched her right shoulder blade with her left hand and winced a little. It still felt sore, and she could picture flowers blooming on it. Some were purple, others, bright red. Rudy. He had planted the blooms on her skin; he had imprinted himself on her consciousness for always. She had cowered and cried, remembering other pains and hearing other insults, feeling them again, hearing them again.

She thought it would never end, and she was right. Bathed in daylight and so many hours removed from that evening, she knew that it was still happening. Her heart, she felt, was still breaking; her soul, bleeding. She wiped the tears on her cheeks with the back of her right hand and made a decision. She was going to look for a new place.

She stood up and started walking down the path, thinking of angels and dreaming of flight.

Here is your line.

He sank into the couch like an old friend and lit a cigarette. His pockets were full of unused scripts, obscure facts, and cryptic notes; most of them, hoarded from walls and pavements, a few, borrowed from random years, none of them useful, except when it really mattered, none of them hollow, except where the edges began. He watched the smoke float aimlessly in the space between him and the cream-painted wall, like a nameless shadow looking for a place to go, looking for a parallel to press itself against, and he wondered at these thoughts; he knew they didn't make sense.

Outside, the darkness lingered like wine in a glass.

She threw her head back, laughing at something he had said, and she felt the space between them turn into undulating rings, becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller. And in her mind, she was thinking, will there ever be a question I can throw at you that you cannot answer?

"Probably not," he said.

"What?" She blinked, twice, wondering if she had asked the question out loud. She was sure she had not.

"Forget it," he grinned. "Are you somewhere else, again?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm right here."

They started talking about The Beatles and as she listened to him speak, she remembered other conversations in other places, other days, another year. It occurred to her that they had both become different people, but then, afterwards, wondered if they had stayed the same, all along. She was a lost child who had insisted on clutching at the same straws, and in one way or another, she would turn to him for answers to questions, for when nights got too dark and things that were lost became irretrievable, blackened out.

She had a tendency to slip away; he was a drifter who knew his way about, and always found his way back. She was liquid; he was the breeze. She felt like he could see through her, somehow, could read between her confused billows. She constantly found herself struggling against waves and waves of untold stories, in storms both real and imagined, in self-made whirlpools, in conjured images of drowning, in nightmares of frighteningly high tides. And she would always come back up, gasping for air.

Conversations with him were balms to her many wounds, and listening to him talk, she realized that it was really she who had dreamed up the unused scripts, the obscure facts, the cryptic notes. It was really she who looked at the smoke for more than what it was. It was she whose thoughts were looking for a place to go, it was she who was looking for parallels, and she knew that these thoughts didn't make sense, at all.

Not yet.

Meanwhile, they talked about Beethoven.

Segment

A door in the mind closes, its sound barely perceptible. It may never leave an imprint in the memory, may never be heard, may never be felt. But in some random series of seconds, when the mind is at the crest of wakefulness, it comes back, that previously unnoticed wafting of a slight breeze, that faint click of the knob.

Celine: A Sketch

The onlooker is drawn by her face and he is never left with much choice: either he stares, outright; or averts his eyes, only to take a second look. The delicately chiseled nose, the oriental eyes, the flawless complexion--they coalesce into something that teeters dangerously close to perfection, and the effect takes one's breath away. Never cloying, her beauty is the kind that stays, the longer one looks. This opinion is shared by male and female alike, by the way--you can ask around. But let's not get sidetracked. There's more to her than surfaces go.

But let me add, while we're on the subject of countenance, that there is a certain imperviousness to her persona that, now and then, shuts doors on strangers. Maybe it's the tilt of her chin, or the veneer that is completely devoid of self-consciousness; maybe it's the unflinching look she gives you right back; it could be all of the above. 

Overall, it is the distance between her and those who remain outside her borders, that sustains the speculation.

To her friends, she is perfectly human. She constantly finds herself tormented by her own very high expectations of herself and the painfully keen eye for detail that she seems unable to dismiss when it comes to whatever it is that she's working on. The degree with which she finds fault in herself can come up to saddening heights. But the anxieties remain masked; she is the last person you should go talk to if you're in the mood for either wallowing in self-pity, or dullness, at that. She has this uncanny talent for digging deep, and keeping her own conflicts buried. A banter-cloaked monologue is the most you'll get; if you're lucky, she'll bare parts of her heart out. But always, the funny asides will be there; the laughter, too. Now, if only one could teach her a thing or two about allowing the deeply-buried ghosts to surface, maybe they'd stop haunting her in her dreams.

Her fierce steadfastness is something I'm sure her friends will attest to. No hour is too late and no madness too trivial--she will be there. She will listen and help in all the ways that she knows how. Her capacity for empathy is limitless. She might crack a joke, or two, besides, so you'll almost always end up minus some of the heaviness. 

Do not be fooled. For all her lighthearted repartees, she is perfectly at home in cerebral conversations. You'd be surprised at her fascination with the metaphysical, her excursions into the artistic side of life, her theories on the subconscious, her musings on loneliness and hope and love. You might want to bring a pen, too. You just might find a metaphor sandwiched between her laughter and her stories. 

The observer knows nothing of these, of course. She was named after the moon, after all, and she is just as mystifying--and radiant--after nightfall.

Saved

Hollywood Giant Walt Disney's 20-year chase to obtain the film rights to P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins books finally sees its end; meanwhile, the author finds herself having to confront her own childhood. If you're a girl and you adore your father, make sure you have a box of tissues with you when you watch this movie. I didn't have one handy, so I had to use the hem of my shirt.

There isn't much to be said about Tom Hanks's and Emma Thompson's acting; only that they were perfect. And damn that Colin Farrell guy for making me cry.

"You think Mary Poppins has come to save the children? Oh, dear."

Director: John Lee Hancock ("The Blind Side")
Year of release: 2013
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson

Forgive me for I shall document

Aside from movies, books are my favorite things to snack on. In between my Oscars craze (3 titles left to watch: "Nebraska", "Philomena", and "Gravity"); a Woody Allen binge (close to half a dozen movies in the past couple of weeks--my favorite of the lot being the hilarious "Love and Death"); and hunting for Joaquin Phoenix movies (I had "Walk The Mile" for lunch yesterday), I also read.

These are the books I've read these past few weeks:

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut
The King of Nothing to Do by Luis Katigbak (all in all, I've read this collection three times)

I tried to restrain myself from listing down the books I read during the final months of 2013, but I lost. So, off the top of my head, here:

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
Poems (1962 - 2012) by Louise Gluck
The Double by Jose Saramago
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Here by Wislawa Szymborska

Right now, I'm reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods and 158 pages into the novel, I still can't decide if I like it, or not. Excepting Smoke and Mirrors, my feelings for Neil Gaiman's writing tend to be ambivalent. It took me a while to get the hang of Neverwhere, and it's taking me forever to finish this one.

As it is, I'm itching to move on to either Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, or Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Decisions have to be made.

Meanwhile, I shall nap.

Happy Birthday, Momsy

I've heard it said that if you want to know how a girl, or a woman, will look when she's older, the thing to do is to look at her mother. I do hope they're telling the truth. My mom's turned 61 today, and she doesn't look a day past 45. She has aged so gracefully, that I couldn't resist asking her, just a month ago, how it is that she manages to look so young. With a smile, she told me, "there's my secret", and pointed to my dad (who, I think, was scrolling down the news, that time).

Aside from my father (I am quite certain she'd given the best answer to my question), I think it's my mom's possession of that joie de vivre that has enabled her to ward off the "old woman" look. Laughter is one of the things she's not stingy with; it's quite contagious, too, her laugh. She has an innate ability to shrug stress and sadness away; she's an advocate of clean living (which she doesn't forget to remind us, her kids, about, by the way); and she seems to have that perennial twinkle in the eye for new things, undiscovered places. She's always loved to travel, go places; lakwatsera, as we call her. 

All in all, she's managed to maintain a certain sense of wonder for people and places and things, which is not something that I can say for myself, tsk.

Today, I raise a toast to my mom, and all the things that she is, most of which I continue to hope I could still become. 

But first, that youthful glow. I should ask her for more tips.

Like chopping garlic; or, Love in the Modern Age

It's been almost a week since I saw "Her" and I still think about it. I was putting up new curtains this morning, and I thought about Theodore and Samantha; I started to wonder what Spike Jonze's favorite color was, or if he preferred grapes to pears, like I did.

I guess it's one of those things that stay with you, or that would suddenly cross your mind while you're in the middle of doing something totally dissimilar, like chopping garlic, or putting your shoes on.

Like other great films, "Her" prods you toward introspection, pushes you to confront your own central beliefs (no matter that you have to chisel your way down to your own untraveled depths), dares you to ask questions you have difficulty constructing. In this case, you may start with "what is love?", a question that has seemed to acquire various elements of the commonplace--largely because it has so often been thrown out with so much familiarity, at times, even in jest--but is really, on closer inspection, one of this life's deals that have yet to be clinched, despite numerous attempts to do so.

So, "Her". And this documentary, "chronicling reactions to Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated film, Her. The documentary, directed by Lance Bangs, features stories and reflections from writers, musicians, actors and contemporary culture experts, including Olivia Wilde, James Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis, on the film Her, and their thoughts on love in the modern age."



Thanks to Mr. K. for the alert.

Watch Conan visit a doll store

I was watching Conan O'Brien clips on YouTube last night, saw this, and cracked up.

photo from laughingsquid.com

I couldn't resist;  I just had to share it with you.

=)

Go talk to someone.

You're at the grocery store. A Lady Gaga song is playing, and you're trying to decide which brand of canned peaches to buy.

You remember a particular writing assignment one of your teachers had asked the class to do. This was from ten years ago, and the exercise had nothing to do with a grocery store, Lady Gaga, or peaches.

You find yourself wishing you could have a chat with that teacher. You wonder where he is now, and if he does his own groceries, like you do.

And the nominees are...

"Sometimes, I feel I'm fighting for a life that I just ain't got the time to live. I want it all to mean something."

- Ron Woodroof, Dallas Buyers Club

The wee hours after the Golden Globes have ushered the Oscars season in. Here are my one-and-a-half-cents' worth:

"Captain Phillips" bored me. I think I dozed off somewhere in the movie. Maybe it's just me.

Michael Fassbender shines in "12 Years a Slave". Vicious like the villain that his role is, his presence is both loathsome and commanding, as expected. Or maybe I'm simply biased. After all, how can someone as good-looking as he is not be brilliant everywhere else? Ugh, yes, maybe I am biased. But, think Daniel Day Lewis. 

photo from collider.com

"Her" is a beautifully rendered rumination on consciousness and being; on loss and the emotional debilitation it often entails; on ennui and confinement; and on how, in this age of volatile, fragile relationships and, even with so many ways to connect to and with people, loneliness really--and still-- stems from the inability to communicate, if by the term "communicate" we want to highlight being understood. Spike Jonze is one of this generation's best screenwriters; he's a genius in my book. And why doesn't Joaquin Phoenix have more movies? Or maybe I just haven't seen enough.

"The past is just a story we tell ourselves."

- Theodore Twombly, "Her"

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is one prolonged, graphic paean to sex, drugs and alcohol. Or maybe I'm missing the point, perhaps somewhere along the lines of how a life of excess will, eventually, come snowballing down on he who lives it, yadda, yadda, yadda. I must be, for the phrase that comes to my mind, where this movie is concerned, is sensory overload. Though Leonardo DiCaprio's acting is superb, Scorsese's seat may have been a little too hot, as his instructions came out just a tad overblown. If we were on more intimate terms, I just might be tempted to tell him to google "restraint". Ah, well. Maybe I'm just getting old.

My money's on "Dallas Buyers Club". Matthew McConaughey disappeared into the character, the movie evaporated into the story, and I was entirely drawn in. And don't even get me started on how luminous Jared Leto is. There are no movie actors in this film, just people. Well, maybe except for Jennifer Garner. But what am I doing, making bets this early?Maybe I should watch the others first. 

"American Hustle", "Nebraska", and "Philomena" are still, and next, in my bucket, so maybe I ought to shut up and stop being stupid. "Blue Jasmine" wasn't nominated for Best Picture, but I'm watching it, anyway, just because it's a Woody Allen film, and Cate Blanchett bagged the Best Actress (Drama) award at the Golden Globes. For some reason, I don't at all feel inclined to watch "Gravity".

But maybe I should.

Highway

Dusk, the highway. The drone of cars speeding past drowns all possibility of conversation. Not that there will be much, given their track record at exchanging ideas. She glances at him and takes in the all-too familiar, semi-permanent frown, the set of grim lines that make up his mouth. His eyes are on the road, his left hand resting on the wheel.

She keeps her mouth shut, wondering how long the ride home will take.

"Try to be quiet out there. I'm tired, and it's gonna be a long drive." He, after turning the ignition on, several minutes earlier.

So there she sits, an obedient puppy. Glued to her spot, counting billboards.

Almost everything you want to read about

is in The Best of Brain Pickings 2013

Here's a sample:

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble."

- Bill Waterson

and another one:

"Though “about” a cat, this heartwarming and heartbreaking tale is really about what it means to be human — about the osmosis of hollowing loneliness and profound attachment, the oscillation between boundless affection and paralyzing fear of abandonment, the unfair promise of loss implicit to every possibility of love."

- Maria Popova

Lost

Red liquor, a warm breeze, orange-tinted chairs. The evening has turned into a slow dance. People are asking for ice.

She is tipsy and drowning in a pool of music and low, inaudible chatter, still mildly conscious that what she is doing is trying to keep afloat in the crowd of twenty-somethings she had so unceremoniously found herself, some hours earlier.

Loud cheering erupts at the first strains of a popular rock song, and she turns to look at the band. Her eyes meet his and they both smile. She remembers watching his fingers fly, light and sure, over the guitar strings, and realizes she'd lost track of him when the alcohol started quickly working its way through her nerves.

He nods, and she wants to believe she knows what that nod means. They are both anachronisms here, after all; both lost, in some shared, unutterable way. The bench he's sitting on seems too short for him, somehow, and she giggles and raises her glass to him.

For a moment, her head feels clear, and her smile creeps from her lips to her soul, and she is asking, could I, perhaps now, risk my silence for your keys and strings? A promise of other moonlit conversations gleams from afar; in the muted distance, soft music waits.

Ah, but the moment, like most other moments, darts into a blur of bygones. A waiter asks if she wants a refill, and she hands her glass to him. While he's pouring the drink, she looks down at her hands. Still slightly intoxicated, she finds herself back in the subdued safety of obtuseness, where questions so often get lost in tangents, and answers, though found, are seldom ever the ones to the questions we ask.

By the time she raises her head again, he is no longer looking.