Thursday, July 12, 2007

it's wonderful how nostalgia, when done right, can draw us to recall the past with tender undertones and eventually inspire us to stash away certain periods of our lives with calm hearts and clear minds. the fondest of memories, we could choose to have only those. i choose to keep only those with you.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

the rains have just fizzled out tonight but the cold, damp air remains...enough motive to lament the unavailability of someone to snuggle up with. on another day, self-pity and loneliness would have been recurrent emotions, but today, i'm weirdly doing alright, quite blissful in fact. all's well. and i'm scaling the heights of the world again.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

today, I am solitary as well, relinquishing company for the calmness of thought and heart, Fiona Apple singing in the background how it costs too much to love . . .

Chipped

Now, as I gaze upon myself, I realize that every moment, I’ve been chipping away at my heart.

Where it enclosed you from all around, impermeable, I’ve gouged sections therefrom. Each piece I peel off yields a corresponding yowl in my being, and a gaping vacuum in time’s interlocking hands. This I bear with the might of the weak, the optimism of one who lacks foresight, yet with the authority of a tyrant’s obstinate heart: for this, because this is, I love you more. Nothing could be simpler. It is the earth upon which Euclid’s axioms brace their feet. It is the wind that scares away the ghosts feeding off the green of leaves.


When all this is done, and calm reigns again, our hands would have made sense of time’s brittleness. Our eyes would have regained the clarity once, now, ransomed by distance’s irreverence to love.

Monday, July 2, 2007

solitude


i never imagined that i would live without anticipation, without the exhilaration that comes from living, for something. living for something. prophesies mock me with the insides of my optimism, hollow, helpless.i see, and detest my feet. i walk, and abhor my eyes. to learn to become the sun, to be, simply, just by being a routine. to bathe the world in light, without feeling.

i am my friend. i am my emptiness.

my footsteps are graveyards for smiles, for meaning, for warmth. these slide off of me, after having risen to my throat or my eyes and finding no one there to juggle them with. you won't believe how solitary i've become. asking no questions, giving no answers. dreaming, but only in reminiscence. some days, i neglect to bring myself wherever i may go. sometimes i leave myself on my bed, curled up with an immaterial grime.

and when i come home, i tell myself of the graveyards, of the sun and the darkness outside, of words and thoughts divorced, and in general, of the immitigable flatness of solitude. and i would shiver and toss while i listen, wondering which of me would outlive the other, which of me would yield to the wind and become meaningless altogether.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Think about this...

"In a time of constant transformation, beatitude is the joy that comes with belief, with certainty. The beatific bathe in almighty love, wear smug grins and play their harps and acoustic guitars. Safe in their cocoon from the storms of the metamorphosis, the blessed give thanks for their unchangingness and ignore the leg irons biting into their ankles. It's eternal bliss, but nix nix, you can keep that jailhouse cell. The Beats and their Generations were wrong. Beatitude is the prisoner's surrender to his chains.

Happiness, now that's something else. Happiness is human, not divine, and the pursuit of happiness is what we might call love. This love, earthly love, is a truce between the metamorphs, a temporary agreement not to shape-shift while kissing or holding hands. Love is a beach towel spread over sifting sands. Love is intimate democracy, a compact that insists on renewals, and you can be voted out overnight, however big your majority. It's fragile, precarious, and it's all we can get without selling our souls to one party or the other. It's what we can have while remaining free. This is what Vina Aspara meant when she spoke of a love without trust. All treaties can be broken, all promises end up as lies. Sign nothing, make no promises. Make a provisional reconciliation, a fragile peace. If you're lucky, it might last five days; or fifty years."

- Salman Rushdie in "The Ground Beneath Her Feet"

Monday, April 2, 2007

Your Silence


In your silence, during
your silence, i am a man alone
with no memory, frail
like a browned leaf falling.

No sun and nothing to see,
for mountains of sadness
are shoveled on me. No sound,
no ears; they're tuned to the sob
that knows inexistent hands
will pat it down at the first instance.

Your silence is the crisp blue flame
licking your gift of forgetting,
my involuntary blinks, our night sky
of deafness to everything but our voices.

I am the distance, spanning the highways
of this, your silence. A hoax, a myth,
an illusion, glimpsed momentarily
and gone the moment
you snap yourself back
to the snaking precipice ahead.

Coldness is this itch on my skin,
longing for the warm caress of the ocean.

Breathe unto me
the faint whisper of your exhale
that i may live, dream and feel
this, in this, emptiness filled by my being.
For color. For skies. For joy.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

the drowning man


30 March 2007

“The best in our natures is drowning in the worst.” - Salman Rushdie


In clutching the drowning man, I have drowned myself too.

I have swallowed heaps of salty water - tasted its saline taste and declared it sweet; felt it course my parched throat and claimed it quenched my thirst; held on to the drowning man and deemed each momentary surge to the surface of the sea as sufficient gasps for air, blips of life I blindingly saw as LIFE as it should be.

I guess there really was intent to save me, with as much strength and willpower as anyone would do for love. But a man saves himself first before saving any other damsel – especially at sea when our own natures dictate us to cling to things as we flail and thrash about, dragging the people we care about to our own sinking spaces. We felt the hunger of the seas sucking us in and we buoyed each other up - but only by pushing the other back down into the depths. It was a tragic affair.

Whether I drank too much of the sea to be permanently nauseous, I would never know till later. But for now, I am relieved, utterly so, that I have narrowly escaped its harrowing tempers. I am in solid ground, at last, and I shall walk my way back to inner land – from the sandy shores of the tempting beach, through the bustling, treacherous roads, to home. I shall go back home.

I shall summon courage to visit the seas once again, not now but soon. I would be wise enough to swim in its shallower parts and put on a life vest when I venture out to its deepest waters. I will learn to calmly ride the waves, not fight them nor fear them. I may see a drowning man or two and I may be lured with glorious promises of rescue but I shall remain far away from them. I have drowned once and gruellingly broke myself free – it is enough experience for me.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

birthday letter

28 March 2007
My Birthday


I have often told you, in one way or the other, that being happy is a decision we make for ourselves. As the clock ticks now to signal another year for me, I find myself stringing the tide of seconds through a constant renewal of a decision to be happy.

Even now in tears, I trample upon the suffocating, pervasive ache of sadness. I choose instead to feel its confined sting, to awaken me – a pinch or two of utter pain that resuscitates my heart, allows it to throb once again for life, for me, for family. And then I learn to feel again, and the blood that courses through my veins reminds me of home, of all of you – and I feel alive.

I have never found home here, no matter how hard I try. I have realized most people give in anticipation of what I’d give in return. It is a tiring enterprise, to bargain for acceptance and understanding at every encounter, to rely not on the kindness of people but on fairness and equity. It is the way of the world, and I accept it, begrudgingly at first, but more and more resigned to it now. Equally important, I have learned to breathe, to remember all of you and in that instant, glimpse a gap of clean air in the fog, reach out to it, and exhale.

We are miles apart but ironically, I feel closer to you all now.

Perfection has always eluded me, and our relationships have seen its crests and troughs. But in its frailty, we have built better bonds. I have hurt you, I know. You have hurt me too. But reprisal is the dust we sweep out of our home. We forgive, we love again, we grow - and we become better family for each other.

I am with you now, celebrating my birthday with you all. We would have gone out for one of our customary dinners – seafood buffet perhaps and coffee afterwards. I long for it but the picture is enough for the moment.

Read this letter and stash it as a mere sentimental outpouring. I know you’d find it typical anyway, me – the emotional me. Ascribe it to that and keep your worries at bay. The mockery of this cheesy letter is coming, I know. Honestly, I can’t wait.

I will see you all soon.

With much love,

Ann

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

decide to be happy

I decide to be happy, to revel in the good things in my life and know that I deserve no less than the best and genuine from anybody and everybody. I have faith in the sincerity of my heart, in the kindness of my deeds and in the gentleness of my words. The tears I shed, no matter how often, remain threadbare evidences of the ill spirit others prosecute me for . The tears are never admission of guilt, but are for grieving chances lost, excesses from the well of sympathy that was once so willing to give forth gushing water. It seals itself carefully now, and chooses to gape open to those who I deem worth my time, worth my heart.

I am nowhere near perfection, but I am at a state of greater awareness – of myself - this little girl from so long ago, who used to hide and cower at the often ill-perceived imminence of danger and risk. Many fears remain, but the years have fostered greater commitment and willpower to overcome, to believe that everything passes – this too. I decide my reality and bend the world towards it. The world will bend to bestow me bliss, to grant me people who would love me and whom I would love, to build me a home at any corner of the world, be it in the ephemeral clouds, in the rocky seas, or on solid ground. I am happy, today on my birthday and always.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Catch me


Catch me when I fall. I have gone too far up it’s futile to climb my way back down, each step secure but slow. I WILL fall - hard and strong.

I need you to catch me when I plummet down the never-ending floors of recklessness, deceit and pride, each level seeking to break my fall mid-way so I could once again reside in their confusion. I shall plunge head-down to crack these fearful, crippling thoughts. I shall leap with arms outstretched, clutching nothing from my past life but the garments it endowed me with. Garments of deep realizations and painful insights – these I struggle now to wear and tear, wringing them of every last drop of meaning, losing as much unneeded load as I could off them before that inevitable jump.

Jump - down to where humility and grace are beds of comfort for the weary warrior of the world. I shall rest with you after I wage my battles. Some of them I would have won, some I would have lost. When I’m finally down with you, the tally won’t matter. I would have been with you, and I would have won anyhow.

Be Still

Lazy Sunday Afternoon


What is life but a series of circumstances that present themselves before us, raw and unassuming? We either embrace them or retreat from them, all the time declaring ourselves worthy or unworthy of the good things that come our way. Happiness itself is a decision, a never-ending endeavour to define and redefine ourselves amidst the milieu. It is but waiting to be allowed entry, to commence the slow but steady clearing of dreary clouds and cast itself ubiquitously over the littlest nooks and crannies of our lives. It expects little of us, simply to request that we be still. For such is the nature of a restless mind – its constant quiver drowns out rising melodies from our hearts and silences our spirits.


So be still. In serenity, you could root yourself in the never-ending tide of goodness and beauty, emanating from the most unexpected of people, in the harshest of places, at the most inopportune times. Embrace these as they come, without apologies, without guilt. It is life’s wish for you to own happiness and tread the world with light steps.


Thursday, March 22, 2007

Complete


Lately, I have been reduced to a cacophony of noises, rattling with voices not my own, a mere shadow of these dragons around me, pacing myself with each their breaths until I almost forgot how to do it on my own.

It is now with renewed strength that I face the world again, free of the shackles I have personally locked onto my limbs some time ago, when I was blind and searching. I am older now, wiser to have realized that sympathies are wares you buy with your self-esteem, and pities are but alms for beggars. I choose not to beg, to ask, to seek. I give all that I need unto my own. I am sufficient and complete.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

postponed destiny



In the end, we are all just people. But in the beginning, we are dreams, longing to be fulfilled; in between, we struggle to be on course.

Pain is the sound of gray clouds looming, of uncertainty spoiling the first rays of the sun. It is the lingering scent of regret that suffuses the stubborn will, with iron hands cold to the face, fixing mine eyes to see that I have dangled by the bus of romance—where once I was valiantly welcomed, seated, sated, filled with warmth—hands ghostly white from holding on, long enough now to understand, long enough to overcome myself and see your dream’s worth, which I left dangling for so long, and which I hope to redeem as I dangle now.

From the sidelines, I may have already been scraping off the scars of my demise, but from where the violent breeze inhales momentarily, I could see my being flailing about, groping for a railing of hope, for eyes that look kindly, biased by history and so foregoes the unattached popular objectivity, for the gently mouthed words, of faith still alive, of assured welcome should I make it back in time.

Uncertainty is the tattered clothes ravaged by my utter desire for focus, left hanging on my weighted shoulders by the complicity of time, which long ago I embraced unwittingly with my complacency, old ugly aged like uneaten bread. Only now it’s a quite different kind, as if it has revealed its face, heretofore covered by the shining radiant hair of our proximity, thereby turning its common pang into an unknown and malevolent tumor. How I long to be naked again, or be else renewed by the passage of time, to be able to dream without the interminable fear of being scoffed at creeping in my stomach. But as with everything else, longing is not enough. This I accept without the least grudge, for it comes inextricably packed with the penance long overdue on my part. On the contrary, these I will befriend, like forgotten prophets whose sermons I have afforded nothing but deaf ears. I may yet find contentment in their arms—the spouses uncertainty and pain—a shelter from the instinct to regret anew the distance of the stars. I will hum loneliness in tune with my step, back straight, head bowed yet eyes transfixed on that elusive destiny. Pride is the sole I will wear out in going there, if it hasn’t been eaten up by my innumerable misgivings. In any case, I will trudge the distance if I should wear out the soles of my feet, and bleed the rest of the way. If life should be extremely kind and I find you at the end of the struggle, as if all along you’ve been jogging the chasms of an oval disappointment, ever checking if I’ve done my share of the bargain, then my dried blood caked on the streets of my battleground will have turned into monumental petals, victorious as the flowers you’ve grown in my world by simply walking it.

But all that can’t be farther now. The honesty of the hand that grips my heart to the brink of suffocation, the acrid smell of my singed knees scraping the pavement, the merry pins and needles pitching tents in the hand that won’t let go of hope, and the renewed bellow of the laughing inhuman storm—these are mine now. They are my own. I bear them all in the hope that they are nomads in this desert I’ve concocted. I sever them from your back so you may enjoy the breeze that lies in wait for your vigor, your truth, your smile.

Happiness is still a decision. My voice may fade from your ears, I may be nothing more than a vacuum yawning, but the truthfulness of my words, the scattered conversations that look misplaced in this strange surroundings, remain unadulterated. It is not that love is not enough; only that sometimes people are shown to be unworthy of carrying out its designs.

You are my dream. You are my suspended reality. You are my postponed destiny.