an idiot.

 for my birthday i had sent my semi-estranged cousin a list of books i was hoping to be able to read this year. she had specified that it must meet her guidelines (those being restricted to 'no gore' , 'no depression', 'no death'), and there should only be one. with the prohibitions she put forward my hands were tied and i couldn't think of a very good book from my reading list. 

i do not give a fig whether or not that reflects on me constraining myself to a certain genre.

either way, it was a good five months before i finally got to see what she picked out from the refined list i had very reluctantly made. i looked down at the book and examined the cover. it was unappealing to my eye- the vividity of it all. 

it was when i read it, that i found my assumptions to be incorrect.
the book was more myself than i was.
and still yet, more than myself.

i was surprised.

-

“Whenever I’m worried about anything,” said this guy Ben, “I like to think about China. China has a population of like two billion people, and not one of them even remotely cares about whatever you think is so important.” I acknowledged that this was a great comfort.”

i liked that idea. of a population of two billion people. and not a single one caring about what i thought was the end of the world and beyond. that insignificance made me feel safe.

however when i shared the same with my father, he did not seem to acknowledge it as much as i did. i assumed he had a lot on his mind to grasp the irony of china's population.

he did not.

he was just scared. when i asked him what of, he said he did not know.

that fear must be frightening. the fear of the undetermined. 
his solution to curb the fear was to leave work. 

i did not agree with it. i thought idleness to be much scarier than the fear of the unknown.

however, i did not drone on. we disagreed on a lot of things. this could be another one on the list.

the entire ride back home, i thought of a chinese bazaar. and how none of them knew me. or my father. or about the job he was going to leave. or how this was the beginning of his unraveling.

-

“I wanted to know how it was going to turn out, like flipping ahead in a book. I didn't even know what kind of story it was, or what kind of role I was supposed to be playing. Which of us was taking it more seriously? Didn't that have to be me, because I was younger, and also because I was the girl? One the other hand, I thought that there was a way in which I was lighter than he was - that there was a serious heaviness about him that was foreign to me, and that I rejected.”

i paused when i read it. a kind of pause that isn't a 'eureka' pause, or the pause before an earth-shattering- fourth-wall-breaking monologue looking into the far distance with a wistful look.

this was a pause that made me think of me in bookstores as a child, looking for the story in the last page of the book, because i couldn't really buy that book. in an attempt to swallow the story and its aftertaste, i went to the last page, looking for whatever i could extract.

i mean, if you know the ending, isn't it safer to read the book ? to save the devastation before it reaches you ? 

the devastation wouldn't really come across as such if you hadn't made the journey with the people in it. it would just be another death. another flimsy ending from the internet. 

i never thought of it like that. i wonder if my devastation looks like paper from the outside too.

and then,

there's no other way to finish a book than to go through it. the despair of it all.

i believe that a good writer does not leave the book with a worthy last page.

a good writer leaves gold in every nook and cranny, 

if you look for it, it is yours to keep. but you do have to look.

-

“I felt every level, graphemic, morphological, and semantic, and they all hurt.”

the dam wall shakes and the water is stronger than the cement. that is a strong sentence. water being stronger than cement. the dam can feel the pressure. it is a weak dam. the water hits again. there's too much water. you have to let it out. the dam wasn't built well. you can see the cracks run through, and the water sprays out. 

you can't do anything now. this is it. you will have to let it flow. 

the water gushes out with an anger it cannot express. the city floods. and everything stops.

the water has flooded and now everything is worse.

a slow liquid rocks in my head and i can hear the gurgling. the ink runs and with it, my lifeboat.

there is no pain. it is all water. and you have to wait for the water to go down the drains.

all you can think of in that silence is the peace before the storm. a storm you had politely asked to come back later. like a landlord asking for his monthly rent. 

in that moment you ask the water how long it'll stay. 

it does not speak.

it is water. and you are just human. 

and you stay in that room, in the hottest season of the year.

(a storm brews outside and it feels like intruders banging on the windows trying to claw their way in.)

-

'Don't answer the telephone ever

Or week over anything that breaks.'

i think she meant weep. but then again, i do week over things too.

Pages after pages I write for me and no one else

Standing tall, no brick in the wall

I take care of myself

Fickle is as fickle does

As solitary links

My, oh my, it's hard because she says just what she thinks

Mmm

I am only as good as you want me to be

I don't pick up the phone if I don't want to speak

I am only as good as you want me to be

I don't know what I'm doing

It's easy to see

i am indeed extraterrestrial. homesick. and i do not belong here. 

i wear a different tongue when i speak to these people.

and all my words just look like words. 

i want to deserve more.

These humans speak my language

Still don't understand it

I wish you took me with you, when you left that day

But everything looks perfect when you're far away

this has started to look like an art horror film dragged on too long. 

-

“At the same time, it seemed certain to me that someday I would really want to hear his voice and wouldn't be able to, and I would think back to the time that he had invited me to call him, and it would seem as incomprehensible as an invitation to speak to the dead.”

i don't like it when people don't listen to me.

i don't understand it. you need to hear me out, because i can explain. and even if i cannot, you must know i am trying to. and you must know how important it is that i am trying to. i don't try anything.

i can't process the concept of someone else taking away my ability to contact them. it reminds me of one black mirror episode. where the man's fiancée blocked him. and it's not the internet block right, it's worse than that. in that episode, when she blocked him, he could be right in front of her, but he would just look like a grey silhouette. and whatever he said was white noise. he wouldn't be able to see her either. 

not just her in person but her in every photo they took. she would just look like a grey silhouette to him. until she died.

i hope they never find out how to make and manufacture that.

when people block me or stop speaking to me, it feels like that. 

in elementary school, when my friends got upset with something i did or said, they just stopped speaking to me. pretended i was invisible. and i used to beg. i believe that, somewhere they liked it. that begging. having that power over me.

people are unreliable.

that assurance of permanence is unreliable. it always is. i mean, how could you say it with such certainty ? there's so many things that could happen. we could die tomorrow.

plus, my faith in things is comparable to building monuments. 

and when i cement bricks together i remind myself,

that someday i would really want to hear your voice but i wouldn't be able to, and i would think back to the time you had invited me to call you, and it would be as incomprehensible as an invitation to speak to the dead.

-

“Light from even a nearby star was four years old by the time it reached your eyes. Where would I be in four years? Simple: where you are. In four years I'll have reached you.”

in four years i'll have reached you.

in spirit that is.

my mind and body have been cremated long ago. 

i walk briskly forward today, with a determination to learn.

it hurts beneath my ribs when i walk the distances i don't want to.

-

“I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo.”

the light from the projected film falls on our faces, and i sit next to people who make me background noise. they're playing the first home alone movie, and this to us is a delight. we get to watch a movie every three years or so. it is kind of a reward for surviving the half-term examinations.

this is not a reward.

we get to sit on the metal chairs this time instead of the scratchy rug on the floor, and the auditorium is filled. everybody laughs and i don't get it. it isn't that funny. i find it boring. i look across to the people i sat next to and they are in their own little circle. he references her in the movie scenes. something about an angel, i don't remember.

they tell him he is like that little boy. the boy who fought off the pedophile kidnappers.

the little boy grew up to be a drug addict, pounding 6 grands of heroin a month.

i really want to go home. i'm not in the movie, everybody here is.

-

the playlist is called 'to be exceptional or nothing'.

it plays in the background as i zoom into a photo of my friend's boyfriend's ex's sister.

-

“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”

i am time's least favourite child. like the one experimental kid you have at home. everyday she taunts me and asks me if i will last the day. some people would say that is a worthy characteristic for a parent, preparing the child for the world.

time did not prepare me as such. she threw me in the fire, and asked me to walk out of it with a half burnt body. i did so. and then she did it again. and again. and again.

eventually as i grew up with time, she made me see the world in its worst sense. because, if you can survive the worst, you can survive anything. 

now when i look at people, i speculate whether i will have to walk out of fire again. it is getting more inconvenient as i age. still, i am not surprised when it happens. i don't die at least.

i have done it before and i do it again.

time is everywhere now, and she dances on my shoulder still.

she tells me i am beautiful and burns me at the stake.

at one point, it becomes repetitive and i get bored of time with time.

even my own mother has not been this harsh.

-

“Your atom, I think it will never go back to peace, to cereal or rocks or anything like that. Once it has been seduced there is no way back, the way is always ahead, and it is so much harder after the passage from innocence. But it does not work to pretend to be innocent anymore. That seduced atom has energies that seduce people, and those rarely get lost.”

i always wanted to be buried if i died. with a nice looking tombstone. with a nice line i have written carved on it, so i look like a profound corpse. with nice flowers. maybe tulips or sunflowers. i like those. or lilies.

now, it matters less.

if i die, i hope that the soul disbands all the atoms that make me, and i hope they disperse across the world to places good and bad, and make it a little kinder. i hope all the bad parts of me seep into the earth to nourish the trees. 

and lastly, i hope my writing finds its people, like kafka's found me. 

then i will not have died. and that will be my last act of love.

-

                                   Safo (The Death Of Sappho) - Miguel Carbonel Selva (1881)