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Author Archive for love-ridden
Pursuit
August 25, 2008
As I sat waiting for the appropriate boarding time, I flicked through one of the books I bought during my short excursion in Malaysia. Although the trip destined for Brunei was insufferable hours delayed (insufferable since ‘I’, an inept traveler was at the airport 1:30 p.m. for my 5:45 p.m. flight which was later on rescheduled three times. Talk about a long wait. I’ve never seen my fingernails grow!) I was at my desideratum, however, far from throwing a hissy fit amidst the commotion of travelers anxious to get in the plane and my deferred flight, as I was taking a ride of my own.
With Stephen Chbosky’s novel “Perks of being a wallflower” at hand, I don’t mind the interminable wait. Slowly and subtly, I was drifted into the life of Charlie as he writes heartrending and engaging letters to an unidentified person whom he addressed as a ‘friend’. At some point it felt almost like an invasion of privacy. These epistolary entries cover a whole year in Charlie’s life when he’s fourteen, that sort of pivotal moment in one’s life when everything happens, it’s when you go through numerous “awakenings” and you have the perfect peer, the perfect book and the perfect song for that perfect ride towards infinity.
You know you’ve read a good book when you find the experience linger long after you put it down.
"After the dance, we left in Sam’s pickup. Patrick was driving this time. As we were approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel, Sam asked Patrick to pull to the side of the road. I didn’t know what was going on. Sam climbed in the back of the pickup, wearing nothing but her dance dress. She told Patrick to drive, and he got this smile on his face. I guess they had done this before.
“Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called “Landslide”. When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
Rilke Poem
Spanish Dancer
(Rilke)
As a wooden match held in the hand, white,
on all its sides shoots flickering tongues
before it flashes into flame—: within the inner
circle of onlookers, hurried, hot, bright,
her dance in rounds begins to flicker and spread.
And suddenly, everything is completely fire.
One glance and she ignites her hair,
turning all at once with daring art
her entire dress into a passion of flame,
from which, like startled snakes,
the naked arms awake and reach out, clapping.
And then: as if the fire were growing scarce,
she takes it together and throws it off,
masterfully, with proud, imperious gestures,
and watches: it lies there raging on the ground,
still flaring up, refusing to give in—.
Till triumphantly, self-assured and with a sweet
welcoming smile, she raises her face,
then stamps it out with 
small, powerful feet.
"Maya" by Miracle Romano
Solemn Hour
Whoever cries now somewhere in the world,
without reason cries in the world,
cries about me.
Whoever laughs now somewhere in the night,
without reason laughs in the night,
laughs at me.
Whoever goes now somewhere in the world,
without reason goes in the world,
comes to me.
Whoever dies now somewhere in the world,
without reason dies in the world:
looks at me.
Always
(Pablo Neruda)
I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!
Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!
Sunday, home by 5:43 that time of day when dusk slowly shelters the earth with its dimming rays like dark hands reaching into great lengths over mountains, making fearsome shadows out of trees and monoliths and of other things that breathe, live and skulk in broad daylight, transforming everything into diabolical creatures that stood like humungous guardians of darkness. In this lurid interval, the night beckons like a sinister guest, clutched tightly in her arms are dreams that shaped your book and peopled your thoughts, but not a word! not a word lest they unravel the riddle! Let the wind blow like a soothing lullaby to those weary ilks that creeps by day and soothes everything to a rest and shelter them into a dark quietude of a nocturnal suite until the earth in utter exhaustion lets out a yawn and resumes its subtle spin, but pray tell not a living soul. At night shadows sink all shapes into an infinite color big, fat and black, the ominous rain is a rough matter gnashing into surface and you are metamorphosed into something, something with a name, a name you know you do not deserve. So like those things around you that are shaped by darkness, you with a hungry heart behaved of those anthropomorphic beasts that grew wings and haunt like greedy vultures and succumb to a nocturnal wretchedness, licking words on paper and wrote and wrote and wrote as if the world is forever cold and sad and dark. This is how you wander the night. And then by day, you shall be well again. Should one fear the night for the shapes it took or should one delight in darkness and the things it conceal?
A Mere Cyber-Interlude
Scarecrow: “Don’t you just hate laundry?”
I know he meant ‘doing’ the laundry but still I replied with absolute tolerance to his erring phrases much more to his exerted effort of feigned ‘mystery and immovable calm’ for the past incalculable seconds only for fear that at a certain flash of correcting him I would get the cold treatment for knowing too much. One moment his eagerness passes clearly as a promise of a ‘budding’ Greek love between people with mutual affection and the next he shuts you off like someone with a communicable disease. His knack for making people fall in love with him and shut them off the next possible moment is up to now a mystery, he is a self-imposed science as he is hard and obscure. Although I have a saint’s leniency to his unusual character of the ‘odd sort’ he struggles himself to be, I admit there is a threshold for putting up with this façade of misanthrope. But nonetheless I cherished his peculiarities as I would to his indifference and the ache it incurs. Don’t we all ache for being neglected? Although I was a bit annoyed of him playing it like someone in control of the entire conversation, like he is in control of my entire thought and being, I delight in the idea that he has to pretend all the time or the fact that he at least ‘tries to be’ every time he talks to me. I must’ve made hip flip 360 degrees from his usual self.
Fungus: “I left mine in the machine long enough for life-forms to establish its niche on them”
. . . was all my spontaneity could afford. I hate to wisecrack. When one is wisecracking I believe he isn’t really communicating, he is only playing it clever and playing it clever isn’t really as close to an honest-to-goodness talk. But who does that sort of talk through Internet Relay Chat? Talk was all I wanted especially from him whom I haven’t had the slightest forecast of weather for what felt like a thousand years, even if I knew he had to pretend. But I wisecracked anyway, it seemed a likely bait for someone with varying interest to talk. I hung on to this whole pretense with sanctity, almost a distracting eagerness of someone willing to resurrect the dead.
Fungus: Franz?
Fungus: Nice talking to myslf.
But what followed the witticism, the well-feigned sound bite was silence, a silence palpable and real. It was cold as dead. He delights in doing his laundry while I on the other side facing a screen was left hanging, timing every blind blink of the cursor, worrying whether it was the Y2K bug’s delayed leash that took effect right at this fractured second or just me having too much chutzpah like a bad spell enough to scare a whole flock of Godknowswhat. He left me facing a machine long enough until life-forms establish its niche on me feeding on me. . . I will only have to scan, scroll up the electronic page and read in verbatim our previous chat and figure out what went wrong perhaps a misplaced punctuation or a grammatical error.
I will have to rewrite everything fit for consumption. He could have just said he wasn’t fit for conversation.
The Confounded Notion of a Happily Ever After
(And this is just my opinion)
I like myths with indefinite endings. I am a bit skeptical about those with trite endings, the ones that went off with HAPPILY EVER AFTERs and TILL THE END OF HIS DAYS. Not that I reject the perpetual bliss being suggested entirely and dampen the spirits of those with lofty imaginings of an 8-year old who marvels life like a Disney film but because it is a part of the myth, these fabricated endings, that I can never bring myself to believe in. I believe in a kiss that awakens a hundred years of slumber, I am enthralled with daring sword fights and magic spells. I believe that dragons exist and so does Superman. And I like the obvious fact that dragons exist and that one need not suffer its tyranny all because these dragons can be defeated. I deem these fairytales with its implied truths and inherent lore but there is a part which I can’t bring myself to agree on. And that is the imminence of the HAPPILY EVER AFTER after the kiss. I believe that myths never have endings or happy endings for that matter. I believe that one must read fairytales but not revere them as an end-all-survival-guide to life but as primers for the BIG STORIES waiting to happen or be written in one’s life. I believe that one must keep hold of its implied wisdom but must never have the false impression of a HAPPILY EVER AFTER once the dragon is slain or the glass shoe is slipped on or once the kiss has taken effect. It’s not something I’ve come up since childhood and if you’re wondering, I didn’t grow up in a defective household to inherit this cynicism either. I believe in myths as an effective antidote to the grim realities of life but they are all digressions from the real-life and that is why I cannot reconcile to the spoken EVER AFTER.
Well not yet maybe.
In view of my present situation I have come to question the unspoken denouement of a much-told tale. And I hope you dear readers can share light to its ambiguous conclusion. What became of the little boy who spoke of the emperor’s nakedness? What was the consequence of his bold attempt to speak the truth? I bet you can’t wait to hear my side of the story.
The truth! The truth! In all its rugged harshness!
I’m a planet
“This is the most magnificent discarded living room set I have ever seen.”
I am not fancying over a couch or a derelict bin or any living room inanimate. By gosh I am not fancying over a piece of furniture! I am merely quoting a smart-mouthed Juno Mcguff, aged 16 who doesn’t realize she is 12weeks pregnant with fellow bandmate/friend/lover Bleeker’s child. “Juno” is a onehourfortysomething minutes film by director Jason Reitman with script by Diablo Cody and was exceptionally starred by (to name a few) Ellen Page (Juno), Michel Cera (Bleeker), Jason Garner (Vanessa Loring), Jason Bateman (Mark Loring). The film launches off in a one-liner confessional, a crestfallen Juno caught in an unwanted situation: “It all started with a chair” and then develops into a bumpy and sticky journey of a teenager (typical goth-cynic-freak) coping up with pregnancy; whether or not to undergo abortion “nip it in the bud” or go through the whole process and yet give it up in the end, hand it off like a piece of furniture perhaps to whoever is most willing. “Juno” is a smart and humorous film whose soundtrack is worth “lending an ear” for (Totally golden!:-B). No spoilers included. Just a few crumbs to keep you curious enough so you’ll have to check the movie out yourself.
********
Juno: “I just like being a piece of furniture in your weird life.”
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Juno: "I’m wearing a fat sui t I can’t take off. I’m a planet."
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Bleeker: "I still have your underwear".
Juno: "And I have your virginity".
My Name is Red
A Master S
tory-teller of recent discovery.
"Painting and Happiness. I would like my dear readers who have given close attention to my story and my fate to bear these two things in mind, as they are the genesis of my world." — I AM CALLED BLACK
If i attempt to give a review on this literary masterpiece i fear i will fall into a pit of understating or overstating what concerns this book as it is in itself ‘Sublime‘ as Sublime can be. What i can say is it will take you in a close-encounter with every character, may it be an Animate or an Inanimate entity. Expect each of them to divulge every vile and horrifying account, expect to shudder upon reading them, expect to love Pamuk for his florid passages of his erudite grasp on things that concerns Art, Love and Death. You will chance upon a corpse addressing the reader and on later chapters a coin will eventually pop out of no-where, a tree will take its own language and languish in melancholy " I am a tree and i am quite lonely. I weep in the rain. . . Drink down your coffee so your sleep abandons you and your eyes open wide. Stare at me as you would at jinns and let me explain why i’m so alone’.
"Discover who I am from the color of my words."
"I don’t want to be a tree, i want to be it’s meaning."
"Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight."
"I am not me but eternally thee."
January 14, 2008
