Strange Love Letter#2

I want to murder hope.
There, it's now in the open.

Hope, vengeful and triumphant

a silk thread

I cut til I bleed and still,

it claws deep, alive

because of a dream,

a voice in my head,

the prophet, 

who says, This is right.

Were I brave enough,

were it falter once,

I will take poison

the bitterest, my love

to kill every speck of you

to scrub me raw and repeat.

Were there is a pill,

anti-hope, anti-you, dear

I will take without water.

Choking optional.

How I plot!
Going against the divine

is a sordid, blue affair.

I tip-toe between wrath

and spiritual abyss.

Yes, I promised, I swore true

to nurture, nourish, foster.

Yet, if love turns cold,

may I not seek to escape,

before hate takes reign?

Leashed with hope, 

I follow one path forward.

This road is getting darker,

and only you have the light.

Why do you keep it from me?

Strange Love Letter

Here's a song I dreamed last night:

"I don't want to be Adam.

I don't want to be Eve.
They had no choice.
But baby, you and I,
We can choose to leave."

Since most of my dreams are silent movies (with subtitles), how do I know it's a song? Because it's so sappy and I've had probably listened to too much Country lately.

Then today I stumbled upon “Our Love is Easy” by Melody Gardot. In this song, there is a line: “Like Adam was to Eve, you were made for me.”

 I don't dispute that – but as Billy Joel once said:

 “So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break.”

 And so it goes. 

Shards

There's something to be said about heartbroken girls who cry in public. We still care about how we look to others despite shards in the vicinity of the heart. Not because we're vain; but because we don't want to disturb others. We hate it when people look at us with pity or, worse yet, awkwardness. We reflexively want to apologize and at the same time raise a figurative middle finger - both of them preferably, if we weren't so busy holding and sobbing onto a tissue.

Speaking of tissues, they get soggy really fast although we don't cry that much. I wonder if there's some weird chemistry that accelerates its disintegration when tears make contact.

And about people looking at you - they usually fall into two categories: those who gape and those who avert their eyes. The former is merely a slower version of the latter. Eventually everyone stops looking at you. But their gaze lingers.

Right before we burst, we would probably say, "I'm not going to cry" or a version of it. That translates to "I'm trying hard not to look weak right now but I know I'm lying."

Big, fat lie.

Some of us break in a spectacular outburst; some sob and catch their breath; others manage (or not) to cover their face and let out in silence. No matter how, the hurt is real for each and everyone.

The hardest part of this whole thing is holding out the tears before and the smile after. Because heartbroken girls who cry in public are expected to cheer up sooner or later. Grief, pain, fatigue, anger, disappointment and despair are matters of the closed doors.

We abide. Oh, how we abide. Because we hate to intrude.

But sometimes we fail.

It's not about drama. Never about making a scene. We are level-headed people who dislike calling attention to ourselves. When the valve turns on, it is never a choice. It's almost physical but I hesitate to call it such - a burp is physical, a fart as well - but tears? Tears imbued with so much feelings?

Perhaps it is self-preservation.


Singapore, 13 August 2015

Bad Puppy

Once I knew about a man who flirts.
No harm, all fun and plenty of charm.
Opens doors, pays for dates, not once late.
How nice, you'd thought, to have him around.

He listens, he smiles, he drinks cognac.
He laughs, he jokes, and he texts you back.
Cash, cars, cards, condos, clubs, what a guy.
Oh my god, you'd thought, let's have a try.

But, there's always a big freaking but,

He, the smug vainpot preening for blood
the douchebag with a joint in his hand,
plays the VIP Casanova,
in a liar game every Friday night

I want a family, he whispers,
Two kids, one boy, one girl, and a dog
A repeat litany every week,
An ever changing congregation.

But, there's always a big freaking but,

Happily ever after, you see
doesn't include a picture of silence,
he so artfully paints come morning,
slipping out before the alarm rings.


Well now, you'd thought, the fucking bastard.


---

Decided that I didn't like the way it rhymed, especially when I shifted the meter and made it all messy. So, here's another try, with Nicki Minaj in my head, loud and so-oh-very-her, telling me to shut the fuck up and write. No Billy, no Thorin and no Thranduil this time. Just me and Nicki, and steady nine.

Boy, that changed the voice of this piece so much. I had aimed for a lighter tone, but it wasn't working. So anger it is. But it's not rap - it doesn't fly. I may want this for a song lyrics one day.

One thing remains, however; puppies don't go to hell, bad or not. All dogs go to heaven.

I still love puppies.

Life Is...

-having a bad day in the office

-getting on the train after three tries

-internet failing you when you need it the most

-you shuddering when taking a look at price tags

-the stench inside the mall making you wonder if it's coming from you

-the super short skirt you see someone wearing, followed by a question

-the third voice inside your head who's a professional critique

-the queue at the supermarket

-giving up on grocery because of said queue at the supermarket

-being crushed at the thought of another microwave dinner

-buying food from a stall you don't really like

-getting shortchanged on the amount of squid

-getting onions for squid instead

-being angry at the old uncle who wasn't paying attention on the street

-being angry at yourself for being angry at the uncle

-saying 'thank you' and 'please' even when you don't feel like it

-thinking of how lucky the world is you're not a superhero

-thankfully not imitating fiction since you're most likely a supervillain-in-the-making if it is

-shouting 'Hulk Smash!' over and over again inside your head, trying to get the feel

-the taste of oil lingering inside your mouth

-the thought of cold beer and fried chicken

-the anticipation of a good drama show

-the realization that all of that need to wait until work is done

-knowing that being patient is key

-knowing that you're not blessed with patience

-the urge to write these all down before you turn into a green monster

-hating your phone for buzzing incessantly

-saying grace

-eating your kangkung, peppers and onions while leaving the squids for last

-being grateful the rice is hot

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

This is Milos Karadaglic, playing my favorite Doris Day's "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." Do me a favor - if you're planning to read the text below, click "play" on the video first. 

* * *

From my office you can see a boat in the sky and every time it catches my sight, I think of Noah. Of his dream and legend, and why the idea of placing an object so out of its depth in midst of vacant air is so enthralling. It is the unexpected that captures our attention, the abnormal. We see beauty in the strange, the alien. We hail the people who create these strange, wondrous things. But not always.

When Noah was tasked to build the Ark, I imagine he wasn't very popular. People would've called him insane. Got few loose screws in his head, probably could benefit from some knocks. Oh Noah, he's a loony man.

Had he ever felt despair when the ridicules got too much? When the barbs stung a little too close to heart, had he ever wanted to join others in the mocking? Had he ever hated himself?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

According to the story, however, the Ark got built anyway.

I wonder if Noah had ever seen this coming—his story surviving the thick coils of time—and what he might've said if he could see us now, trying to do what he'd done so many ages ago.

Nowadays the sky looks ready to release another biblical flood and even though I do not put much stock in the doomsday predictions (plural, of course, because we, as a species, have a universal fascination with death whether we want to admit it or not), I keep waiting for the crack in the clouds that will bring rain of lightning and hails. It crosses my mind now and then that the world may really end on a Friday, which is just two days away, but then the thought simply excuses itself and slinks back to the corner.

Some people say that humans are born alone and will die alone, so even when all perish two days from now, each life still leaves this world as alone as they were when they entered it. But alone doesn't mean lonely. Alone doesn't mean hopeless. Even at the end of everything, there can still be hope and companionship.

Allow me to recall the thought that has been festering at the corner. I'd like to call this nearest doomsday prediction the Unexpected Expected. It's expected because people were told beforehand that it's coming (although no one's vouching for the source's credibility), but at the same time it's also unexpected because people think it's an almost certainty that it won't happen since experts all around the world have managed to drag the hype down to the level of superstitious murmurs. 

If the Unexpected Expected does occur this Friday, we are faced with a huge abnormality and like most I suspect, we won't be ready for it. We had our chances to become Noah, but we didn't take it.

Reading this, you may think to yourself, "Pfft, it ain't gonna happen. The world's not going to end on Friday."

Well.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Formulaic Dharma

When I thought I knew how things were going to end, I always ended up with defied expectations and a bittersour aftertaste. Bittersour because it's the kind of taste you wish you can forget forever and not to be fondly reminisced once in a while like bittersweet. I believe this is why I rarely set any expectations at all, the least for myself.

Whenever I get involved in a social setting, which deals with one or more people who don't live inside my head (yeah, you read it right - there are voices inside, trying to say many, many things all at the same time, which gets really noisy at times), things had a way of spiraling out of control very fast. One moment you were laughing, the next moment things went whooosh downhill.

Every time I would be replaying the scene in my mind, trying to figure out where the hell it went wrong. The answer would always come shrouded in doubt because I can never be sure of anything. In the end, all I have of the whole process is a lot of bruise I inflict upon my intangible self. Oh, I must've said this, I must've done that. Oh, how could I be so stupid? So careless? How could I cause such trouble?

I wonder where this tendency for self-blame springs from. I wonder why I like it so much. For once, I want to try living without the fear of offending or hurting others. Trying to read people and please them all the time is so tiring, is it not? Perhaps then, without such fear, the self-blame game would stop. The world would cease being such a scary place. I would be able to wave the figurative middle finger without a shred of guilt.

But then, what an unfeeling person I would've become. I don't know if I would be truly happy like that. One suffers and suffers - perhaps it is the best state of humanhood (I know I'm inventing a lot of words right now, but shush) and from it, one's true self emerges.

So what does that say about me? I suffer from a perpetual guilt of failing, which leads to an endless fear about everything. I go through my day with countless scenarios inside my head, minute by minute, a perpetual sort of What Ifs factory, an infinite number of parallel worlds swirling within the universe of one. Imagine how many regrets, big or small, I have. Imagine trying to sleep like that. Imagine having to wake up to that. I truly am amazed that I haven't dashed towards insanity after all this while. 

Perhaps this is normal; meaning, others experience this too. Perhaps this is not unique, this is commonplace and many, many before and after me would've gone through the same tiresome thought process. If it is so, what is our true self? What emerges after the long torture of what-could-have beens?

Logically, I would answer (like the good student I am), "Self-reflection breeds wisdom, applied wisdom breeds enlightenment. Applied enlightenment breeds peace." It sounds good in theory. In fact it sounds perfect, like the answer to everything. If Deep Thought the Supercomputer had to describe 42, it would've said it like that (anyway, digressing a bit here, 42 is a pretty, flat number in my head, like a wooden bench painted white against a white background). But it is easier said than done. Much more so. Hence, the discrepancy between what we know to be ideal and the reality we face is the suffering itself.

Putting it in a formula:                                  Suffering = Ideal - Reality

where the ideal state is the enlightened state, and reality is what we're facing when we are currently unenlightened, hence:
                                                   
                                                      Suffering = Enlightened state - Current state

Epiphany! I've always been confused about how suffering can bring about enlightenment, but I think I might've started to understand it a little now.

So if this is true, at the end of my conscious self, I would've had the chance of finding enlightenment and finally peace. But only if I move on from endless self-reflections to wisdom (and even if I manage to do that, there's still the whole thing about applying wisdom to achieve enlightenment. Life is really not easy, hey?).

Anyway, the whole point of this rambling is to get my thoughts straight. And this is why I love writing. Amidst all of those voices in my head, only mine is heard when I write.

I can finally hear myself speak.

[Pics] Tree of Life, fly away baby

Tree of Life - 10/04/2012

fly away, baby - 10/04/2012

Dwarf's Dream - 10/04/2012

Just some things that I doodled in GIMP. Photoshop is beyond my means so I opt for the next best (free!) thing. ;)

On Sleep

 There's a sickening lurch in my stomach that always coincides with the tides of pressure behind my right eyeball whenever I stay awake past one in the morning. I suppose this is a way my body signals sleep deprivation, a sort of second alert of the impending crash that will happen sooner or later.

The pressure on the eyeball, I can take. But the nausea? I'm a slave to its whims and I know the only way to stop it is to lie down and try to get a shut eye. It doesn't matter that after the eyelids close I still see images in my head, running around, screwing each other, colliding and getting tangled in a mess that cross stories and genres. It matters not. Sleep will come, dreams may or may not, and the nausea will be gone.

Whenever I sleep, I always strive to wake up as naturally and as early as possible. But that's actually a lofty goal because my inner clock is skewed towards the unnatural after years of practiced insomnia.

So I wake up groggy, most of the time, tight-lipped and cursing inwardly (because it just ruins the whole day when your first utterance first thing in the morning/just before noon is a loud, "Fuck!").

Despite all that, I like sleep. Sleep's my friend. Sleep is where I meet interesting things, where my brain shakes itself loose and goes woo-hoo on me. Sleep is nice.

Having said all that, I'm going to bed now.

[Pic] Grassland

Grassland
Medium: Paint + Bamboo Fun
Date of completion: 06/12/2012