haiku

(truth is, I’m jealous.

I said it. Now leave me to feel

—insignificant.)

**

self-deception

I am so stingy with my happiness. For other people. For myself. 99% of my batteries run on loss aversion. I just want to be genuinely happy for people I care about without worrying how things will change, and if they will change for the worse, and what to do just case they do take a turn for the worse. It’s like I’m constantly prepping myself against becoming collateral damage of other people’s happiness. What a terrible and irrational thought. Shouldn’t my mindset run something like: happiness begets happiness? Maybe it’s just the old fear of putting too many eggs in one basket. And if that basket happens to beget little chicks, then the insurance premium would of course, have to go up.

Yep, that’s everything. Everything and not a percent more.

Even losing you, the joking voice, a gesture

I love, I shan’t have lied, it’s evident

The art of losing’s not too hard to master,

Though it may look like (write it) like disaster.

**

feverish

I used to think drinks simply induced a sort of reckless abandon. Fun and full of surprises at best, awkward yet harmless at worst. But now I worry it’s also tinged with a kind of evil. Maybe that’s too strong a word, but it eggs on a kind of selfishness, capable of unraveling things that took so much time and care to be weaved. It also betrays the most worthless of desires…but this is, of course, old news.

Pure evil. Destruction. We often take so much pleasure in it, despite all of our sober consciousness’ efforts of denial. Though it has an easier time in the freedom from such efforts. The author of A Clockwork Orange meant for the title to symbolize a kind of mechanistic morality imposed on something full of juice and life. I will here, in a wild guess of optimism, claim that it is ultimately effective, but never quite the perfect fit. Spurts of incomprehensible bad sprout up from time to time, its refusal to be understood so very terrifying. The fear of not only what we are capable of but also what we can take pleasure in…it is…in a realm where words (among other tools at my disposal) fail me.

The breeze is streaming in through my window now, as is the sunlight. As the day creeps still further along, some of the fear leaves with the first blush of dawn. The cold sweat dries slightly. This time, though, something lingers from the night before, something tells me this lesson is not a repeat. I think what’s fundamentally different is that this time, the crime almost committed would not have simply led to self-destruction, but will have spread to others…would have spread to others…as it hasn’t happened yet (nor will it).

The writer of mechanisms and juice goes on to tout the importance of change. Characters must be capable of change, without it, no matter how sensational, the story simply remains a fable, never a novel. As I scramble to root my belief in his preachings, I barely register the irony that this nightmare I am trying to flee from turns out to be a fairy tale. The copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales someone gave me so long ago sits mostly unread, because there runs a deep kind of morbidity absent from Disney films…but maybe the lesson is that they are, in essence, all that fairy tales boil down to. In any case, it’s time for me to stretch into novels.

**

abandon in the winds

Whenever I watch a glossy reality show I feel an odd inspiration to mimic their lives. The way they live is, according to us, silly, without substance, and melodramatic. But I need to look no further than the sterile academics I'm swimming with to know what attracts me to the golden tresses on the other side of the TV screen. It's the ability to own up to everything they feel. They drink their mocha lattes and complain to their girlfriends and confess to their crushes and express their dislikes without any discernible barrier between the throat and the mind, whereas we are rendered mute.

If any of those actions dared spill over this side of the screen, it'd be quarantined into whatever that shuts up the desperate and passé and irrational. The one get-out-of-jail-free card is, conveniently, the inducement of alcohol, an always reliable scapegoat. Why so proper? Why not rein in abandon? Why not let what you do say something other than that you know where social boundaries lie?

I'm so sick of people telling me: "don't do X because they'll know you feel Y". Maybe that's exactly why I want to do X. Maybe I want an other to know I feel Y. Maybe actions should signify desires. Maybe the external world should reflect internal affairs.

Maybe I want my X to mean something.

**

foster pet

The green eyed creature is back with me today, but its stay won't be long this time. I've well prepared for it. It and I have a relationship kinder than most. Others indulge and despise it. And I've certainly done a great share of both. But there's not so much fear and hatred on my part, at times there's even open welcome, sometimes, if it's lucky, scratches behind its ears.

I've always maintained that it can keep our self dignities afloat, more effectively than most other, bitterer pills. Inherent in keeping the emerald deity around is the condition that you must feel entitled to something, and hence, that you are worthy enough to deserve something of this world. This is perhaps the life raft that preserves us from plunging into self-pity. Maybe the overcompensation speaks more of an insecurity in this belief than anything else, but on the face of it, there is enough to tide us over before the real rescue can begin.

**

impeccable timing

A storm came today, and I got caught in it. It was not at all how I imagined it would be, or rather, not how I imagined it would not be. It was, contrary to my predictions, reminiscent of some sort of romance, or a sense of free abandon. The drops came in formidable sizes, each announcing its right to be reckoned with by a righteous splatter on my arm. Soon, uncovered skin becomes coated by glistening sheets of running water, the feet slip in and out of flimsy flip-flops, and pit-pattering footsteps push past with no apologies in their quest for shelter. And the rain just keeps on making its point.

**

pleasantries

This summer is going by so pleasantly. That's my word for it. It's nice. Lots of hangouts and down time. Work's not so time consuming that it gets in the way of being productive. But still, it's not violently passionate...

Speaking of which, thunderstorms have yet to come. I want to see a really big thunderstorm (though probably not be caught in one--it's one of those things that only sound romantic but the essence of which reality would never permit, like glass slippers). I want the same intensity around me but also in me. The heat is sweltering here but it's a languid heat. And the breeze blows but to no avail in our quest for some escape from the air. At the same time, none of it is so oppressive yet. It's just...pleasant--at a standstill, hovering somewhere above limbo but below nirvana.

These are not complaints, and certainly not rage (which, let's face it, is a welcoming tide after those past that crashed into the cliff, their resounding roars lapping closer to the tip of drop-off point. Not unlike those fireworks I saw last night, each exploding closer and closer, until I think the next huge bubble of red and green sparkles will envelope us all) So maybe it's a blessing, I suppose. The pangs, exquisite and insufferable as they are, stand in the future with certainty

...so why be in a hurry to get there?

**