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.

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.

What kind of lazy

The kind of lazy that won't get out of bed.
The kind of lazy that won't lift a finger.
The kind of lazy that lets the dust settle on the floor (or lays out plans of sweeping them under the rug, later).
The kind of lazy that stares at a wall.
The kind of lazy that draws blanks.
The kind of lazy that won't budge from its seat to walk toward the bed (because the bed is in the other room), no matter how sleepy.
The kind of lazy that's too lazy to open its mouth when a yawn comes along.
The kind of lazy that watches (without budging) a cockroach cross the room.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away with its favorite shirt.
The kind of lazy that leaves things (all sorts) unfinished.
The kind of lazy that falls asleep with its coat on.
The kind of lazy that will watch you walk away.

That kind of lazy.

No in-betweens

There can be method to the madness, but a choice has to be made.

Neither mid-way nor half-way is a good place to be. Something either is, or is not. I will not stand for half-baked, or halfhearted. A half-life will not sit well with me. Neither will half-tones, because there is no pleasant shade between black and white.

Half is not a good word. I have yet to come to terms with halves.

Daylight.

I used to tell you my dreams.
- Louise Gluck, "Siren"

These short, sudden silences, in syncopation with each other, like the miscalculation of tears, and, in between, the small pauses. The words, spread across spaces, as mute, as immobile, as the reach of this depleted while. The sky dissolves the moon, and the stars slip away, like nights often do. And because everything melts into everything else, we lose the moon. Soon, that gush of sunlight, bathing the sylph-like vagueness in clarity and certainty, revealing the gaps, the hideousness, in things.

Fluorescence, fizzling, flimsy, faint, fade, futile, forsake, forget.

One line, another.

Twilight is almost here.
Someone just sighed.
Repression is maddening.
Last night's laughter and songs have been left on last night's doorstep.
One realizes that one has to move with the hours.
The minutes go by and soon we find ourselves in the same second, on the same spot.
Nothing stays where you put it.
The heart sinks more often than one wishes it to.
Help me give a name to this absence between us.
We connect one certainty to another and come up with uncertainty.
Stop wondering what will happen next.
If I knock, will you let me in?
Good night.

Gloria Jean's Cafe, Robinson's Galleria

So this is what it's like on a Monday morning here.

There are too many people, too much noise from the adjacent road, too many conversations going on, that my powers of alienation refuse to shut out. The jazz music from the store's speakers are drowned into paltry strains.

OMG, there is an Anthony Hopkins look-alike sitting on the couch two meters across mine, eating a grilled sandwich, could be BLT or something. Blue eyes, and all. Yup, he's white. The guy, I mean. M-- says he looks more like James Gandolfini.


Noise, noise, noise. Zone out, Shan.

Nope, can't do it.

Grrr.

And how to handle fear is to shut it out

shut it out
shut it out
over and over exhale put it in a paper bag and throw it away but is that the way to go or is it to remind oneself that the fear might not be real it is not there it is just a figment a chimera a trick conjured and therefore it is the mind that one has to drill because if one is able to bully the mind then the fear should it be there at all should be there enough near enough to be gripped and gripped hard hard enough that it might soon die from the tightness of the grip but what of the nothingness in the fear what of its not being there but here what of its non-manifestation except in one's dreams in one's thoughts in one's blank spaces where nothing is nothing and only fear is real enough to be because the fear is real or is it but yes it is there is it not or is it here here here

I am beginning to hate empty spaces--

--blanknesses that stretch into miles, empty silences that roll upward to crests and fall down to plateaus, ending in emptiness, always emptiness, never-ending.

...
Empty spaces are blank canvasses for what's no longer there.
And silence is an empty space.

I remember punching holes into the air

Sleeplessness.
Desire(s) translated into restlessness. Or, that which is untranslated into the fulfillment of said desire(s).

For time to run faster so that the next task can be worked at and accomplished; for the object of one's affection (a dress? a goal? a woman? a man?) to be within one's sight; for time to unravel, unravel because time spent in sleep is--or seems to be--stationary, and lack of movement is desire fulfilled.

Whereas our nature requires movement. How contradictory, this raison d'etre.

Sleeplessness. Desire unfulfilled. Movement.

Toss, turn.

Imogen Heap turns 32 today.

But that is not the subject of this post; though this doesn't mean that the statement above isn't true.

Okay, okay, start over.

Imogen Heap turns 32 today.

When I think of all that has been taken from me--
countless white spaces between time's black hands--

In the room, everyone was beautiful.
Silks rustled with tulle
and toad's skins
kept very quiet
under lavender and lily.

She knows Eddie Vedder
(spell check, please)

I wish we could talk
about Pearl Jam
but I only know
Maria Callas.

You laugh and ask me

if I'd seen
Fargo
I answer, "no, but
The Sound of Music, I'd seen
a hundred times."

Snicker

and then

separate ways,
as always.

But
have you ever thought of
wanting
to talk to me about
Camelot?

I guess
not.

Pessimism is Ugly.

Looking at the sky still shakes my faith, at times. Its vastness warps its beauty.

The rain fell, heavy and noisy, like rice grains from the gaping mouths of hundreds and thousands of canvas sacks.

Anxiety is clingy and stubborn and breathes down your neck like some persistent
reminder of an ugly past and a future filled with monsters pretending to be people.

Those aren't people but monsters, that crowd across the room from you
laughing
they are laughing at you.

The worst is always the best thing to think about
(blue is really black the fate of life is death and yes, that image in the mirror
is yours, yours) because it prepares you for when it comes.
Or so you are convinced

because you have been living for too long with that monster
breathing down your neck.