Wednesday, May 25, 2011

travel

image source: freepeople.com 




































can hardly wait: a foreign land's native sun on my shoulders, its breeze in my hair

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

Staring through the window panes of a vase, searching. A week ago roses grew from its sparkling depths, but now it is empty. Triangles in the crystal lattice ignite one at a time, lightning bugs looking for love.

Rambo's breathing comes in waves. It is cool against my fingers, but his nose is warm. Twisted into a ball and tucked under his left ear is my dad's karate kid t-shirt.

He tilts his body a little and, pulling him sideways, gravity completes the motion. With his legs kicked out in front of him, one paw curled under like a hoof, he resembles a pony. 

Footsteps sound and he is stirred. Abandoning the couch, he crumbles to the floor on a stretch of cardboard. Adorning the entrance to his crate, the board serves as the designated place for chewing his bone. Open it up, and you will see the vestiges of an old science fair project. 

All winter our shoulders and arms waited patiently to breathe again, and the time has come. So why do I seek a metal band to snake around my arm and contain its newfound freedom?

My mom placed a doggy scarf on Rambo the other day, and, to our immense surprise, he didn't shake it off. The tables were turned, and we became the shadow that trailed his movement through the house, delighting in his attainment of a whole new level of dapper. 

Borsch awaits. 

Friday, May 20, 2011

Just Hanging

Standing in front of two sitting girls on the New York subway, I caught a few words of what they were saying, their contemplation a response to the crass jeering of nearby men. Something about a self defense mechanism in the form of finding humor in the tauntshow in such situations that is all you can do, but "it just sucks sometimes". It made me want to be their friend. They seemed sweet, and genuine. They didn't bully the smiles off their own faces the way others did, the way I was pressured into doing as I attached to the subway pole of their city, foreign though it was to me. My stop came. I tumbled out of the metro, realizing I'd never see them again.

On the streets I looked at people, half expecting them to have airbrushed skin. Masha muttered something about feeling like everyone was a character from a movie. I acknowledged the strange sense of disconnect mingled with empowerment that pervaded the walk down city streets, though I soon realized the latter was an allusion. The humidity lingered on my hair, inciting my hands to push through the thick air and clutch helplessly at the frenzied locks.

Black choker with black onyx stones dripping onto the swell of my collarbone; nestled in the web, a black cross, stripped in my possession of any meaning it would have to another, and lain powerless to rest on my neck; velvet vest, black; black tube under; black skirt tangled around the length of my legs; black hat; boots, blackness broken only by a spattering of studs. I roamed a shadow.

The strobe lights worked in layers, new intensities slipping over old ones like color transparencies. I found Masha's left hand, then her right, weaving both through the fog. On my own hands, black exes flickered gently in the sifting light, resembling a cult symbol but really a stamp to brandish my still-youth. Dancing, words mouthed, and smiles. Energy, electricity. All of my worries melted into the music, while the beat of my feet against the floor shook free the remaining thoughts, except one: I love concerts.

Monday, May 16, 2011

it's cold today

image source: prism cell


what i'd really like is to crawl into a picture. venture to the other side of what is in front of me and be what i see.

image source: 8luemoon
classes are over. i've been dreaming of this state of disconnect for a while now, ironically counting down the days until the emancipation of time, the moment when this perceived antagonist is released back into the universe, loose now, unassigned to anything but free to transpire naturally. now that i am actually here, the pool of time that i imagined would swallow the world around me feels more like a bathtub, complete with all of the confinement but none of the playfulness. i suspect it is the weather that has me tied up in this strangest of moods. contrary to what my mother thinks from looking at me, i am happy. it's just my consciousness is permeated with flecks of sadness, and my struggle to trace its source has found no justification. i have no reason to be sad. i am so lucky. i was thinking this the other day and only wish i could carry the thought with me always, never losing the comfort and the wisdom that it radiates. this must be the trick to making us impermeable to the cloudburst. or maybe the solution is to find no fault with the inevitable odd day and follow the advice i came upon recently, which is to embrace the whole of the human experience, good, and bad. although i guess within this line of thinking, there is no bad. even that which we strive to avoidflaws, mistakes, pain, sorrowis only natural.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

La Prochaine Fois (The Next Time)

Somewhere sounds the jingle of an ice cream truck

Don't you love that phase of summer when it is not yet too old for its nickname, spring? Carelessly, the cherry blossom trees disassemble in the wind, their petals settling like tea leaves underfoot. Though I must confess, sometimes I get jealous when, billowing in front of me like outstretched fingertips, my hair plays clapping games with the wind. I remember being that free.

so long


won't be seeing me for a while.
image source: nature love

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Creativity and Perseverance

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
-Ira Glass

anthropomorphisms

to be a ripple in the water, transcending physical boundaries by having none. a calm entity without a body, or knowledge of beginning or end. almost like not existing, until all of a sudden you emerge from your hiding place of nothingness with a vengeance, come alive in energetic bursts over what moments prior was a smooth surface; reminded of your being in one instant that, despite its brevity, epitomizes the energy and the ecstasy of being alive. all this life contained within transparent, transcendent ticks in the tranquil water.

to be a ripple, disconnected rings experienced as distinct entities, and yet they are all your own. no body, no overwhelming sense of obligation to feel all at once. i read a story in which a man was held up at gunpoint while working in a magazine stand. he felt no fear, realizing that his life was not exclusive, there are others transpiring that will continue even in the event that his should cease. he imagined dying and then walking off in the body of the assailant, extra money in his pocket. being a ripple would be kind of like that. you are one ring, and yet also the next. you are separate entities coexisting all at once, no one ring taking precedence before another.

and what if i am wrong, and a ripple is merely water's twitch? how would it feel to be omnipresent? does water discern everything that is happening on its sweeping body? every ripple; every wave; every time a ship passes through its dreams, stirring it from slumber; every displaced water molecule, squeezed from the liquid and propelled into the air? wouldn't it be overwhelming? i think it might be the opposite, calming and freeing. with so much constantly happening, you are instead able to tread into grounds of oblivion, justified in selected ignorance.

and what about air? to be a breeze? or twirling fabric that, with no skeleton to enforce order, knows no bounds?

and how would it be to wind and flutter like silk charmeuse underwater, fluid, continuous, and wild?


McQueen, I loved you

Friday, May 6, 2011

The Chronicles of Narnia




































mine

Celestial Voices

The Rites of Spring

It's hard studying at home when your house is set before a patch of forest.

The odor of freedom pours in through the window, beckoning me to join in the festival of spring transpiring outdoors. And there are the trees, performing tribal dances in the wind. The rustle of leaves moving against each other escalates, carried through the air on the trees' communal rhythm. It creates a continuous chorus that is almost like a song, or maybe it is a whisper.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Way I See It

Writing a story is an act of filtering—filtering events in life the way we filter the words spoken to us. Through filtering, we attain focus, which enables the beauty and the pain of moments to shine clear. Writing a story simulates the natural filtering system we develop with age, which maintains the prized moments from life in crystal condition.

And knowing what to say and what to leave between the lines makes all the difference.

The Momentum of Words

In the margins, she leaves wordslittle mysteriesfor someone someday to find.

The Momentum of Rhythm

A surge of music moves from the pores in your headphones into those of your ears. After traveling swiftly through a channel of veins, the surge ends in your fingertips. To complete the cycle, it grows into the tap of your finger pads against the music player.

Here, the cycle begins anew, so seamlessly, you don't notice a pause.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

"...be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can."
-Thomas Hardy


"I love that there are very few things that books cannot do. They can pluck you from under the covers and drop you into the outskirts of your imagination. They can rearrange the chemicals in your brain until you feel happy and uplifted, or wistful and nostalgic. They can, with the careful placement of words side by side, remind you of places you have seen in the dreams of your childhood that you thought you had long forgotten."
-Me, on bldg25 here


Almost a year has passed since I became smitten with the idea of a delicate journal, one whose "beautiful exterior would inspire me in my quest to make the inside equally as magical". Since then, I haven't acquired such a journal, but my passion for words and stories, along with the conviction that writing is what I want to do, has grown so much I almost can't believe it.