A Gilmore Recap

The way things have been happening lately, there's a metaphor everywhere I look. A truck full of Christmas trees following along the curve of the road leading up to a dingy u-turn in a shady neighborhood that somehow swam with soap bubbles. Church bells in late afternoon traffic on a normal Tuesday. Dogs that get up on two legs to hug you with no intention of humping your leg or stealing your food in the middle of a horrible fight. Ending up at a Korean restaurant after escaping the clutches of a wrongfully empowered Korean cook. Borrowing a frenemy's pair of socks after running out of clean ones. Getting free credit for reporting an entire department of customer service agent smiths. Meeting an actual Asian who fulfills the prophecy of listening to Beethoven every night. Getting Chinese takeout on the first night after moving for the second time in the same month. Breaking my anti-bug-murder policy with a small Auschwitz.

Hell, my blog is snowing, and no one can see it because it's white. A metaphor to cap the metaphors!

Where do I begin?

Let's try this; I'm getting a cat. A temporary cat; I cut a deal with a friend to take in her stray if she let me give it back in a month. I'm allergic and can't see past my nose financially. In my defense, having a cat while being allergic to cats makes sense in the bigger scale of things. After all, I am an asthmatic who smokes and can't really live with the idea of accidentally killing a dog.

That didn't work, let's try again.

Cable guys are NOT sexy, porn lies just as much as fairytales. Neither are electricians, carpenters, plumbers or construction workers. They're all sweaty, hairy, blood-sucking assholes that deserve to die at the stake of their own PVC pipes.

The engine revved up a little there, but we still can't get the good old baby to write about this. Let's try again.

I missed my own birthday again this year. It flitted by me while I was coiled up in a strange bug-infested bed halfway across town with my feet jammed through the arms of my lavender jumper for warmth. I also missed Christmas again this year, I was hosting an irresponsible C-level asshole and his harem as my friends watched awkwardly in their designated corners. No turkeys were harmed in the process.

Funk is hard to get out. Scrubbing a fridge will teach you that your skin can peel off faster than the funk will. My grazed knuckles are proof that violence is not always violent. A month ago, I was scared of the dark. Today, I walked happily through a dark corridor carrying twice my weight like a brave dung beetle because relativity applies in life just as much as it does in particle physics.

It's the 29th of December at 5 in the morning, and I have three homes, three doors to legally go through and three keys to prove it. It's been such an incredibly weird month. December, oh sweet December; you've always been an oddball.

Doors are very important, locked doors even more so. Going through said doors is equally important, especially with a mug of coffee and your fuzzy pajama pants in the early morning chill to prove something to yourself and get used to all the damn silence and all the damn birds. Where I live - one of the places anyway - the birds chirp so much you'd think they're on speed. But that's not what's pissing me off. What's pissing me off is that I'm at the home that has the 420 songbird, and the bitch didn't chirp today. Here's another metaphor for you, go figure, go fish, go fuck yourself.

Funk. It's really hard to get out; even with all the love and all the lasagna that comes with it. I got three keys in multiples of five and I'm really bad at Maths. I used to be better at it when I was young, but things don't always happen to you in the right order.

I need to buy milk and call my ISP for some lung practice.

Santa was wrong; Christmas can be bought. As a matter of fact, not only can Christmas be bought, it can also fit in a sedan with room to spare for an elf hostage or two if you're into that sort of thing. Here's another myth-buster for you; you CAN have enough Christmas lights, especially if you can't afford the juice to feed them. Adults should not be allowed to celebrate Christmas. Christmas is for people that are too young to know what an electricity bill is, or how to count. I'd happily lose a tooth if it means I can see Christmas lights in blue, red and green again. The spectrum is blinding me.

Funk is hard to get out of, but maybe not impossible. I have one functional TV channel and no internet to access my Netflix, but I choose to see this as a metaphor. Metaphors are nice; they teach you things, but they can also fool you. There's a whole bible of them somewhere that confused people into ax-wielding murderers for the better part of a millennium. You must never underestimate the power of a metaphor, but you'd die if you did anything but.

I need to slow down. I'll get some sleep and try again tomorrow. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life; here them sing!

The Jam

The problem with 60s-70s music was that when I was listening to it, it was because my parents were listening to it, so naturally, snotty teenage me was like lol they're so old what is that they're listening to?

So now when I listen to it almost exclusively, because they are now my main jam, it's very ironic.

The thing is with music from that time is that they're so fucking silly. Even when they're iconic, if you listen closely, it's just an innocent national anthem of their boyhoods, and their singers became relics of the time; even when they were snotty teenagers.

Which also gets me thinking; 50s women really knows where it's at.

50s women knew where it's at, 60s women thought they just found out where it's at, 70s women were like oh where is where and what is at it.

But we're here like

You know?


Life has been very fucking creative lately. Talking about burning itches, I thought that growing up as a gymnast would make it easier but it somehow made it worse because now I have to hear my spine crack to know if the old cog is still juicing it up. People don't understand how painful it is to sit still when you've grown up as an athlete. I really need to get back into sports. A sport.

I love bird memes, they're so weird. I also love birds, they have such a basic instinct it makes sense why they're so angry all the time. If you know how to deal with a parrot, you know where it's at.

They are just angry chickens.

My room is so girly now it freaks me out sometimes. I grew up as a pig, I don't know how I became this organized. Now I depend on the order of things, because I can navigate them. But it doesn't really matter because I appreciate the strawberry scents of all the goddamn products. Now, it sometimes feels that when I walk into my room, I'm walking into my personal bubble, and then that bubble became a world and spread into life itself. Growing up is a bitch.

Birds are amazing because they are the evolution of our native organism, so they still have all the goddamn instinct. It's basic biology, the literary way.

I'm sorry, I'll stop posting bird pictures now.

I can't wait till winter is back. I'm soooooo fucking TIRED of summer. It has almost killed me way too many times. Who would have known you could actually be allergic to the fucking weather? Of course, if my body is taking in the whole weathercast, I will be my own little mother nature.

Mother nature has to be there to stop this. December, come soon.

I have decided on the song I'm going to listen to at 12 o'clock on New Year's Eve of 2019, and I will with thee farewell, oh 2018. You have ended now, you can't hurt me now. Bitch.

I was watching random things on YouTube the other day when I found this scary, "The Shining" kind of gem.

I'm not sure what's scarier, the feminism of it under incredible, sarcastic tyranny, and the Indian tv show type of haughty post-colonialism refined men.

Fuck, I'll get back to this later.

The Big Five Eight

Today feels like a school night, but in a good way.

The evening doesn't feel rushed. It swings on with weight and grace as my parents talk over a movie that they forgot on after lunch. The TV fills in the gaps of the fragmented conversations with that electric, white noise of home.

Dad turns 58 today!

He refuses to celebrate his birthday, but we will lovingly disrespect his wishes and buy him a surprise cake tonight.

All Those Hammock-y Things

This week was weird.

I realized how important hammocks can be, and I realized what it feels like to have a friend break your hammock.

I realized the importance of mock crochet, and how each stitch is messy and beautiful and can be undone in any second because it was never meant to make anything lasting.

I realized the importance of having extra cash, but I also realized how cute it can get when nobody knows what they're doing.

I realized the importance of Gaviscon - oh ye holy medicine candy. That sweet white walker lava spilling down your throat and eating the fire in the belly of the beast away.

I realized the importance of (Cocoa Butter - Aloe Vera) After-Sun lotion, especially after the pasty piña colada that passes for Malibu sunblock.

I realized the importance of cheeky sunglasses; they really do make you see the world with new eyes.

I realized the importance of fixing things creatively, and using your resources to make your environment more interesting - in infinitely creative ways.

That's when I realized the importance of fixing your hammock - you know, the one that your friend broke - creatively.

I realized the importance of sitting on the beach, huddled up in all your comfort items, next to a book. That book can be a stolen beach book retelling the story of a little girl who still believed in monsters, and that book can be the majestic "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad - and other stories.

I realized the importance of having a friendly bald friend who knows how to play games with you and keep them up for days - even when you're not

I realized the importance of having a friendly female who knows how to pick dresses and can do wonders with coconut oil.

I realized the importance of coconut oil on the beach.

And the importance of fixing sunglasses.

I realized the importance of having someone around who insists on making, creating and recreating inside jokes - for the pun of it.

I realized the importance of having a flow-y scarf that knows how to stay put on a beach one night, when a very old wanderer came and asked us questions about life, the universe and everything - then left us with an inside joke about quantum physics.

I realized the importance of letting go every once in a while - even if it's on a hammock with half of  my butt out into the wilderness and my fingers remotely calling out weird music in the sky.

I realized the importance of insects to men, and of men to insects.

I realized the importance of taking an extra minute to make sure you're comfortable, and how good it feels to wake up to a beach instead of the brazenly hot asphalt.

I realized that hanging out with a friend inside the water is a whole other island of Pokemon that I hadn't explored yet.

I realized the importance of having electronics within reach, and the importance of having electronics out of reach.

I realized the importance of frying pancakes, and what that means in the bigger picture of things - especially when said pancake is well-timed.

I realized the importance of having nail polish on hand, for whenever you can splay comfortably enough in your seaside cave.

I realized the importance of bungalows, and the importance of the complete absence of urban landscaping in open space.


I realized how that can throw you off, and on again with the swing of a hammock - until you fall in the middle in perfect equilibrium, and figure out how to go to the bathroom without being stalked by any manner of wild beast.

I realized the importance of fat copybooks, and the importance of having mathematics splayed out where your snorkel gear should be.


I realized the importance of Mr. Incredible, and all those sweet animation videos that we view or make in self-defense.

I realized the importance of having secret conversations, and being able to have secret conversations, with your bear-bae.

I realized the importance of post malone, and I realized the importance of pre malone.

I realized the importance of man buns, and the importance of admitting you like them.

Oh, and did I mention the hammocks? I really want one in my room, lol.

Hugging Trees

i looked in the balcony today and looked at the trees the way i did as a kid

it made me realise how much of a weird child i was. Sitting there, looking at trees, in my free time.

the crow nest i was watching is gone, nothing left of it now. i guess the grandsons decided pursuing the family home wasn't important. It was just a hollow in the tree now, and the tree became less of a life jungle thing and more like a dead log standing there like RGB on paper.

which color palate do i fit in now?

Orange Season

I came home today to a platter of oranges.

Grandma loves oranges. I have vivid childhood memories of her slowly peeling them, taking her time to groom them as she would had she been brushing a baby's head. It's how I knew winter was here, back when I had no concept of seasons, or time.

I knew oranges meant winter before I knew I spoke two languages, or what it meant to look at a person and feel safe.

I remember looking at her, as she achingly peeled those oranges for what felt like a small eternity. She wasn't bothered by me watching her, she wasn't ignoring me either. Her presence contained me, her act was inseparable from its environment.

When she was done peeling them, she would make them into little "cat ears", as she called them.

She never faltered while peeling them to take a bite, or steal one of the little pieces to satiate her craving. She always took her time, and she always finished the process.

And then she would give them to me.

Even as a child, who is born selfish, I always tried not to take them. I would lovingly manipulate her into eating them by giving her an ultimatum that I wouldn't eat unless she did, or that I wasn't hungry or felt sick. I would always fail.

I never really liked oranges. They were a lame fruit.

And I ate an orange field growing up.

Today, I came home to find a platter of oranges.

I wasn't supposed to come home.

I was supposed to be with grandma, but I couldn't go.

She said she needed me. They said I was the only one who could help.

I ran through an orange field to get home, only to come home to a platter of oranges.

She wouldn't have done the same.

She would have peeled them too, for me.

Right now, grandma cannot peel oranges.

Or eat them.

I don't think she has for a while, back when she could, because we always forgot to get her some.

I always forgot to get her some.

I came home to a platter of oranges.

And winter is here.

Fading

I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats

With scarves of red tied 'round their throats

To keep their little heads from falling in the snow, 

and I turned 'round and there you go

And Michael, you would fall 

and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime

Of Dark Dentists & Baby Balloons

I sifted through some of my recent blog posts before I started writing this. It seems that my primary complaint about life for the past months has been the same; the rush of it all. Ironically, I've come here to talk about how it wasn't fast at all, because if it were, then I'm in a whooping whirlpool worthy of being the entry gate to Atlantis.

Will Atlantis be there on the other side? Now that's a debate that takes a few thousands years. 

I have a dentist appointment tonight. My second this week, after I ran out of the first. You see, I am phobic of dentists. My phobias are an assortment of pinata candy; they have nothing to do with each other, but are equally explosive if quite harmless. Of all the horrors that pervade our war-torn, famine-shred and drug-ravaged reality, my biggest fears are of the following: The dark, babies, balloons and dentists. 

I cannot trace any of them to a viable starting point, and I'm not sure it would help if I can, despite the insistence of scientific method. Would it help much to know that you're actually just afraid of the knife if a violent stranger is waving it at you? It wouldn't help much, even if you were otherwise just distraught by his shoddy use of language or hobo-chic fashion sense. I know phobias are basically neurological wires that accidentally connected in your brain, and that it takes a whole lot of turning it off and on again for dissociation, but who the fuck cares? I'd rather save my virgin wires for a problem that means business. 

Meanwhile...

I feel older with every passing day. I wish I didn't understand as much as I do. I wish I understood more. But most of all, I wish I didn't have to understand it. 

My boyfriend tells me that when I'm upset, I tend to sound like Tumblr then change the subject. I feel that food should generally by less chewy and shipping be subsidized. 

I have a lot of running around to do this week. A friend I knew from back in college is getting married, it's surreal. I need to buy a dress, and wear it. It's all very confusing. 

I'm trying to find my inner JD. He ran off a couple of months ago and I haven't seen him since. This is my first tree poster. 

What's to May?

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Spring

Spring is young. It gets caught up in its own feelings. 

It feels, untuned, and without ear, merely following the rhythm to an uncharted location. Following where the roads takes it, for the sheer fuck of it.

It's full of energy, that's burned up by a good powerful poem, but is delusional enough, drunk enough on youth, to use the awakening as a transition into another state of equal delusion. Different, is as close as it gets to awakening. I envy Spring, in its hopeful nihilism, in its violent shamelessness. 

It's cocky and impulsive, but when it doesn't have an audience; it usually takes a couple of minutes to catch up to itself, and see through the delusion. 

It takes it time to feel. It feels by default. It feels because it lives, it lives because it feels; it knows no other way to live. 

It makes mistakes, bold and unattended, albeit sheltered and inexperienced. It's drunk without stimulus or matter. It is living matter, in volatile state. A volcano, without shame. 

It grieves without grieving, it creates beauty by destruction, that doesn't destroy. It is infinite, in wearing a cape, stored from last halloween and brought out on April 3rd at 2pm in a fit of disbelief. It is Schrodinger's cat, it is life. Breaking life and reassembling it on a quite afternoon, for no reason, for all reason - unknowing - in violent passion. 

A force of nature, without force. Tender in its violence, vulnerble in its ferocity, and young in its closure. Closure without Reason. Self-centered closure, reached only by need, just as it started. 

It is the beauty of unadulterated force; in its contradiction, in its confidence, in its reason, that has gone mad and lost its path from reason.

Completely independent, completely crazy, and completely destructive, with 0 collateral damage. With 0 actual damage. A cold war, made cold by its unrequited, unnatural nature. Made cold by not finding a worthy opponent. Made cold by not finding a willing opponent. Made cold by not finding an opponent. 

Spring is young, in its readiness. Readiness for battle, that isn't there. Readiness for love, that doesn't exist. Readiness for heartbreak, that's been rendered obsolete by time, convenience and crippling civilization. Readiness for everything, rendered useless - and impotent - by time. Readiness that grieves itself, and only itself, in its joy for everything that's no longer needed by time. Readiness, that isn't needed. A futile, but beautifully powerful, existence. 

Does it know? It doesn't. It's still too young. 

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Summer

Summer takes its time. It thinks it's older. It's certainly taken up enough time. It's neurotic enough. It's confused enough, when it's not looking. When it lets its guard down, traces of spring seep in. In its intensity, it becomes too much of spring to be anything but Summer. Then it catches up on itself, and grieves knowingly. A new feeling; pity. Self-consciousness. Where, on the timeline of living things, did it pick up this terrible habit? It grieves its youth, by being young and not knowing. It grieves its youth, instantly, wasting more of it. 

Because it's young, it enjoys the walk. A walk filled with grief. A walk, heavy with feeling. Feeling, unknown to the old and knowing. A walk that's heavy. It now knows anger, but doesn't know how to contain it effectively. It lets it out in short bursts that are equally young - if not younger - than how it started out. It grieves that too, ironically. 

Then it realizes what it's done.

Summer is bipolar. It rejects is extremity with fashion, leftover from olden times and sheer habit. It talks too much to drown itself out. It doesn't know what it's capable of, because it's too busy grieving what it used to be, and reacting to how it got there in the first place. It thinks it's trying to understand, but it's just lashing out. Like a 19 year old, that just got a license and thinks it needs to use it for something for it matter. Like a 19 year old, that thinks it needs to use something for it to matter. Like a 19 year old, that cannot accept how futile life is, and is still trying to trace the reasoning of adults, along alice lines and rabbit roads that don't exist. It's too young to know that adults don't know what they're doing. It's too young to know that adults are adults because they see no reason; and still wake up the next day. It's still too young to know how to live without reason, or why to live without reason. It's too young to be old, and it still doesn't know it. It's too old to know it, but not old enough.

And somewhere down there, it knows it's not old enough. It knows that's the real reason it's grieving, but it's too young to know it loudly, and the sadness comes out happy, and lively, and full of hope. 

Hope of understanding the past, which isn't true. Hope of knowing what to do, which it doesn't. Hope of seeing, which it's too busy feeling to see for what it is. Hope of feeling like it used to, which it grieves too much to realize that it is. Hope of feeling, which it grieves, not knowing that it's still capable. 

Hope. Distraught hope, fueled by the confusion of youth, one that thinks it's too old too hope, and doesn't know it's distraught. 

After all, it's still young enough to get carried away, but is old enough to be exhausted by it. Old enough to be hurt by it. Old enough to not notice how young it is, unless it's in retrospect. 

It still has fight, and doesn't know what it's for. It's too old.

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Fall

It's now had enough time to think, and grow a little older. It's had enough time to know better, in the ways of living, but not in the reason. In the course of life, it forgot that was the real reason. It's had enough time to take its time to know the reason, and sound like it, without knowing.

But on lonely nights, it still gets hit by bouts of sadness. Existential sadness, without reason. Targeted sadness that has lost aim. Scheduled sadness, that forgot why it made an appointment in the first place. Sadness, for the sheer fuck of it. Without reason, with all the reason in the world. 

Enjoyable sadness; filling time, making time, the only way it knows how. 

It doesn't know why it's here, but it is anyway, and it's too old too question it, but it's young enough to get angry about it. Repetitively, ferociously, without apparent reason, like an old lost battle being replayed in a retired general's head, only the in the general's head, he's still at war. He's at war, but gets lost trying to get to the cupboard. He's at war, but he's forgotten why he's fighting at all. 

Too old to question itself, even in its incessant grief. Even in its constant torture, and elaborate pain. Tequila for consciousness, and a machete wielding mad scientist for a heart, one that's forgotten why it started dissecting.

Young enough to keep up the fight. Old enough to forget why he started fighting in the first place. 

Young enough to fight anyway. 

Young enough to continue fighting, long after he's forgotten the reason, long after he's forgotten he was after a reason, and long after he's forgotten he's kept fighting to remember that reason.

Long enough. 

An ode to time. An ode to life, that can't recognize itself, but remembers it shouldn't be ashamed to feel it, even if it doesn't remember the reason.

An ode to life in anger, anger that doesn't stop itself. In its old age, it's not old enough, just yet. 

An ode to the fall, and its real glory. 

An ode to the fall of a good life; remembered, forgotten, and still remembered, on a visceral level. One that's too important to need reason. One that deserves being angry about, without shame, or the shame of reason.

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Winter

It's now old enough to take its time. It's now old enough not to question why it takes it time, or to judge itself when it slips. It still questions, maniacally. It's already had its fall from glory, it's known how glorious it was, and it's confident that it doesn't need glory, but grieves it all the same, and enjoys it all the same. It's old with reason - long forgotten, but never let go. Reason enough, it thinks, in its existential torture. 

It remembers the anger, but now the anger is enjoyable. It has aged enough to realize the beauty of temporal states - ones without aim. It's old enough to relive, without the joy of living taken away. It now knows the beauty of aimlessness, and how they can't be avoided, no matter how old you get. Especially because of how old you get. It takes pleasure in reliving; not because of defeat, but because of ultimate understanding of the uselessness and aimlessness of life, and the realization that it's found its true and only meaning in wasting its life trying to react to it, rather than understand it. 

It's now old enough to know that's the only way to live, without really knowing it. Knowing is no longer the aim. 

It sings its last victory, in the face of imaginary enemies, with equal vigour and happiness. It exaggerates its wins, and their fluency - all the while grieving a perfectly well wasted life. A perfectly well felt life. A perfectly well lived life.

It gives itself space to have a tantrum, one that's quiet, and tender. One that asks for the sake of asking, asks for the sake of feeling, completely and utterly, and never asking for the sake of knowing. 

Ageing, in its original form. Ageing, for its original reason. Living for its only reason. 

Ageing, that doesn't affect wellness, but improves it. Ageing, that doesn't affect dexterity, but improves it. Ageing, that doesn't affect reason, but annuls it. Ageing, that fulfills. 

It knows its time has come, a long time ago, and its sings itself to sleep, in its own time, and at its own uninterrupted pace. 

It has lived, unjudged, and with complete laughable feeling.

It has lived, without reason. 

It has lived, with all reason. 

It has lived, for a reason. 

It has lived, for the only reason known to man, since the dawn of time, since man knew life for what it is, and never really knew what it was for. It has lived, and accepted the futility.

It has lived. 

The Boat

Leon The Professional

I think being called a writer was the worst thing that happened to my writing. Part of me believes it was the worst thing that happened to my life.

Gibran Khalil Gibran said that those who understand us enslave something in us, and perhaps that is one explanation; with every person that saw a piece of writing and thought it was good, and decided not to say “that’s a good piece” but instead said “that’s great, keep at it and you’ll be a great writer one day.” And genuinely believed it. “You have the potential,” they assured with all the love that comes from introspection on a convenient sunny day over a nice cup of coffee and cake, when all is easy with the world and companionship and nothing bad is happening.

That’s the poison; the potential, and how it tosses and turns with every paycheck and every commendation.

Six days ago, I walked out on my first full-time job. I had to check the calendar and surprised myself, but I’ll get to that later. As I’m tempted to turn this into an honest retelling, let’s just leave it at this: It was one that I deeply cared about that challenged me every day, and one that constantly fueled my tendency to define myself by my work with positive re-enforcement and structural workplace abuse. I was part of a broken hierarchy, containing a group of enabled, incompetent toads who thought they were defined by how expensive their lunch is, and how badly they inflected a vowel in a phony, malicious hello. I was overloaded with work under impossible deadlines with such low pay that when I finally left the place, they had to post 4 separate vacancies to replace me. The irony; why not pay your employees well and treat them like human beings in the first place? Isn’t that better ROI?

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. It isn’t, I decide, because it shouldn’t be. I know the story, there’s no point in retelling it than to blow fire into the embers that I’m trying to kill. It’s counterintuitive.

What I’m here to talk about are the 6 days.

For 6 days, I have been caught into the cycle of crying and working, with no rest assigned to a waking hour. It’s been like I was chained to the desk with a gun to my head, trying to figure out how to work again and when no opportunity presents itself; work on getting work incessantly by applying to a thousand places, revamping my website, posting hourlies, brushing up on sales copies, downloading SEO textbooks, getting into in-depth web analytics at 4 in the morning and taking notes to read about email newsletters the next day. Correction: Feeling bad about not knowing enough about it already.

It’s been a total mess. I haven’t been able to snap out of it, I physically couldn’t. I worked compulsively on virtually nothing, through phone calls and bathroom breaks. I was on a frenzy to learn all that can be learned and find out why it is I’m not working right now, and immediately fix it.

But I already knew why I was not working, it was because I left. Right?

I managed to get an interview at two shitty places, and missed one of them because I just didn’t feel like waking up. I was tempted to not even call to reschedule it, because nothing is more insulting than only getting a bad (Read: worse) job, even not getting a job is better. For 6 days, I doubted myself. I rewrote history and berated myself over wrong decisions and fucking things up, I forgot all the reasons I had for leaving and all the unhappiness that working there caused me. I forgot all the stress, the breakdowns, the sleepless nights, the shameless assholery and the crazy I had to put up with each day. I forgot that I’d started counting hours at the office, and how long they got towards the end. I’d forgotten how much that place broke inside of me, like a goddamn miley cyrus on a wrecking ball, moaning and crashing into walls of sanity and niceness, of space and growth, of creativity and hope.

And that’s when it hit me. For a year, I’ve been waking up in the morning and working on an offensive amount of things and spending my evening thinking about the next morning. And now I’m free. What I’m experiencing is not grief, introspection, regret or an identity crisis…it’s withdrawal.

Corporate life is not built for homo sapiens. It was built around them out of a collateral bad decision, driven by the capitalist obsession with efficiency and profit, and for decades, homo sapiens have been trying to break in their new stubborn cement boots. 

All over the internet, you read stories that go along the same line: “I worked a 60-hour week and had high expectations of myself. The paychecks were a thrill, but I had no life. It wasn’t until I completely burned out that I decided to be a nomad and eat shoes with barbecue sauce off the naked belly of a communist fiddler and only then did I find what I was really missing out on in life. I am happy now.”

It just doesn’t fucking work. That’s what escapes me; millennia of human evolution whose starting point was tribalism, and the BEST thing we could come up with is “Hey, let’s take away human contact and space for creativity and stuff them all in cubicles, put them in uniforms, hold them hostage with an obscene 9-hour work day that they can’t function with or escape so they won’t starve, give them 21 days a year for themselves that they can’t take in bulk, force them to email the next person in an endless, pedantic cycle of uselessness and turn Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs into a giant oxymoron! That’s a sustainable idea! That will surely drive progress and lead humankind forward.”

No, it won’t. It will drive people off glass-buildings every other month, though. You’ve solved the age-old riddle of survival instinct, you’ve unraveled the DNA of the thinking, autonomous being, but you have not created a model where people could thrive.

I remember another quote I read somewhere: We’re all hairless apes with anxieties.

Making the realization that I was experiencing withdrawal gave me the first 3 minutes off I had since I quit. It made me stop in my derailed tracks. What was I doing? I need a break. I needed a break, remember? That’s why I quit, remember? How come I forgot that?

The rules of credible writing say there is a conclusion, or build-up to a conclusion, right about now. You peak, you resolve and you fall. But my gears are stuck on peaking and I’m burning out, and I have no idea if resolution is near, or what this realization could mean for me.

I have decided to take a break…again, and I’m writing this to remind me. This is a reminder to smile, enjoy my time off and the little things, and to regain my sense of time that has been so obviously maimed beyond repair. Regain that sense of time, regain that sense of self, and sense will come in due time.

Here’s to the crossed fingers, the pinky promise and the thumbs up. The pointer has done enough. 

I'll go watch Leon: The Professional, and wake up tomorrow without a checklist.

Out of Focus

The Economist

It's been a while, and unlike every other time it was for lack of time, not intention. It's a time of great change, and perhaps this is what defines this period of my life; that everything feels like it happened a lifetime ago.

Moving is difficult, if exciting still. It's nostalgic, if tainted by broken bonds and forced communication. This is a general statement, but it cannot be any more specific. It is a time when I cannot find ground, granted, but it is also a time when I don't remember the last time finding ground wasn't a belated rationalization. I accept it, and I move on in calculated adult steps, that lack the spontaneous tint of childhood and the illusion of choice, even as I make a choice. I do not know where I'm going, but I know what I want, and for the first time of my life, I'm overwhelmed by the support of friends and loved ones; a curious feeling that I am not used to but am figuring out how to deal with, alongside everything else.

I remember my last letter, it was clearer. A farewell that is emotional and driven with satisfied closure. A memory I will not touch by understanding. This one is not the same; I struggle with many emotions, most of which I cannot record yet, and the rest I will not, even if I did, just because I don't want to admit that I grew up this much.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about this place, but perhaps the one thing I'll miss the most is the dog-eared issue of the economist waiting for me on the reception counter every month, having traveled through many hands, table surfaces, coffee rings and unidentified liquids. An issue that entertains and lends insight as it confounds and lends esteem. A curious, complicated society we live in, where the simple gesture of holding a magazine can turn an impression around.

For me, it was the holy grail of Mondays; my source of hope and awe for the next few weeks. As a copywriter, I'd pine over paragraph twists and loaded sentences, drinking it all in as a student would who'd snuck into an advanced class. And as a copywriter, who procures millions of dollars worth of premium, branding content for other people, I could not afford the 86 EGP I'd invest in an issue each month on my paycheck. On good days, it made me think of third world development and the superiority of what we're investing vs. what we're taking on the bigger scale of things. On bad days, I had to choose between an average commute and a decent lunch.  

The issue was separate from its reasoning, and the feelings that clung to its pages were different from the feelings that clung to it. It reminded me of how much I had to learn still, and what constitutes integrity of profession, passion and fulfillment. I'd keep myself grounded by thinking about the writer's day; how stressful it was, how frustrating and painfully normal it might have been to get this piece through, even as it preached ideals of a bygone age of knighthood and pontificated the tortured idealism of political thinkers that thought a paradise was viable with law and education. How many people yelled at him/her, and how many sources turned him/her down. How caustic the editor was, and whether the writer might have been a conservative right that was forced to go liberal for the paycheck, losing integrity as he/she called for it. Did the paycheck even pay rent? So many factors that could break a fairy tale; and perhaps a sign of this age is knowing these factors and clinging to the magic still - without delusion, but with desperate hands that climb all the way out from childhood's hold and into the pulverized ashes of the real world, so utterly devoid of magic, meaning, stability or probable cause.

I thought of the mystery writer still, what their passions really are, how they thought of themselves as they twisted their own education to fulfill a superior accusatory tonality that comes from a place of right and wrong, points fingers and blames with the authority of an OP Rorschach, and I compared it against how powerless he/she is in person; to every person involved in the process of publishing - be it writer, editor, son, source or disagreeing aunt - and whether they got out for themselves what I'm getting out of their piece on the toilet. Do they know they're creating this beautiful illusion? Did they, at any point? Does it matter? Did it matter?

Does it really matter?

As children and educated teenagers, we hate corporations idealistically. We look on to the matter from the abstract eyes of great thinkers, and get the passion of hate through books of legislated anger and righteous emotional projection. We hate them because they do, and because the feelings were so true, we do not feel the lie as we partake; in all innocence, honesty and idealism that might even trump the author's. We are genuine, but we do not see. It is not our fault, for how would we see otherwise? Through the boring monologues and soliloquies of our parents over dinner? From the tales of woe of our friends? From the bad days of our loved ones? It is not powerful enough to contain a belief; it only commends a passing - if strong - feeling.

Then we grow up, and we revisit our hate for corporations with eyes full of dust and mouths full of memos. We see the little things; the small elements of the process that thinkers looked on and communicated to masses through political frameworks and narratives that divine human rights, justice and fairness from an act as simple as office terms of service. We re-learn the hate with new eyes; eyes that cannot always afford integrity if given the choice between making a stand and making rent. Because of these thinkers' ingenuity, we skip over the Kubler Ross model with the agility of a veteran ballerina, and find ourselves wallowing in bitterness faster than your head could spin at the mention of vacation.

Yet, we grow up. And with the acceptance come the bitter let-downs of idealism and childhood fairy tales of goodness. In getting over one small fact, we get over an entire system of belief, warranted for generations by hope, thought and genuine desire for development.

"Stick it to the big guy!" We giggle. Which? For how much longer? And who's going to feed me in the process of my intellectual jihad?

Thought is paused, for lunch break is over, and one must keep up with the game if one wants to live.

How much of your day is forced upon you by corporate culture? Take a moment and actually think. Is that all I'm worth? Is a meager paycheck worth giving up your head?

Yes, because your head was wrong; you might as well have been looking for giants in the bean stalks. And it's no one's fault, an adult once told you that big friendly giants existed, and that the fight goes on until you find better because compromise is a choice that only the sell-outs make. But who's buying? Is there demand, really?

And yet, I look back with affection. It is not one moment that breaks the shell of childhood; not the birds and bees, or corrupted officials, or the first time you fall prey to friendly scam, or the first time you lose a friend for wanting something different, or for no reason at all. It is not one thing, but many. And it doesn't stop as you grow up. You lose bits of it overtime, and they shatter louder in your head as you think they were the last. That was it, you think. I've finally grown up. This is the last thing I'll have to go through before I know better and the tectonic plates of adulthood settle down into their imperfect crevices. You get better, and you settle, and you wince at the memory, until you're hit by the primordial waves of the second coming and you realize you were still a kid when another part of childhood is broken.

And it keeps happening, and you keep getting surprised. Until one day you see the pattern; and that one day is the only day that you may call yourself a full-fledged grownup. You'll know it when it's here, for it will be the saddest day of your life. It's so sad, in fact, that everything else will feel better afterwards.

Good luck, and keep packing your cereal with your favorite colored latches. Keep buying stationery, and keep investing in glittery pens and other useless oddities because you felt like it. One day, years or months from now, they might be the forgotten relics that tickle your senses back to a time when you were younger, more innocent and better off.

Thunderbolt & Lightning, Very Very Frightening ME

Galileo.

I kid. I kid.

It's a lifetime ago that I sat here to pour my heart out into the uncaring, all-understanding internet. Funny how it wasn't so long ago.

And that's just what I'm here to talk about. I think. The swift changes. How each change is a lifetime and lifetimes are short. Is it always like this or are the early twenties more terrifying than pop culture promised? Or perhaps pop culture is too confused to contain it with any clarity. Is that why people look for answers on Tumblr? Is that why people look for answers?

I now realize where I went wrong. It was around that "Is that why people" bit.

"There are many ways to lose the oldest game. Failure of nerve, hesitation, being unable to shift into a defensive mode, lack of imagination..." - Sandman, A Hope In Hell

But I'm not here to be serious. That applies to both this blog and this material realm.

I write for a living now. I spend my day crafting sentences that craft realities that tend to people's needs, insecurities and delusions. I come home feeling like I haven't written in ages, and I don't have time to write, most of the time. When I do have time, I don't have RAM. I jingle away to bed, where I sift through the cache and debug. I sleep without realizing it.

I fall asleep on public transport now. I'm still not used to it, growing up with frightful insomnia, sleep comes terrifyingly easy now. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I don't have to time to figure out how I feel about it.

As I write this, I have an alarm set for 6:30. It is after all the weekend, and my weekends are a race.

Time is silly. So are corporations and contracts. They like you too much so they lock you up and give you free coffee. We sign our lives away to lovelorn stalkers, and they call it modern day labor law. Gone are the days when the only way I knew my writing was good was when they ran off with it. Now I get appreciation, and it is too sweet. I don't understand it. It makes me sick.

There was an explosion this morning in one of the most populated areas in the city. I called my boyfriend to see if he's alive while I made coffee. I logged on to my home-feed to find people rambling about currency. Joking about currency. Quipping about their inability to afford mid-range coffee. I live at a time where all my friends and my friends' parents are dealing in currency. "I managed to get me 200 USD on Tuesday," they socialize. I am struggling to register reality. I drink as much coffee as I can, but on most days, I go for a cup of tea instead. I no longer see the point.

Grandma had lunch with us last week. I cried when I saw her in normal clothes on our couch. Then I grabbed my resolve, stuffed it back into my pants and went back out to talk about mini-sandwiches.

Sunday after work, I went for a walk. I had to pass by the bank to dump my paycheck until they get around to making me a bank account. It had been a while since I walked, time melted and so did my consciousness. I teleported from corner to the next, in a daze. In my head, I was shopping for apartments, down quiet side-streets that were less glamorous and more human than their bamboozled brothers up front. Less than a year ago, I would have been looking up with a smile on my face. That Sunday, however, I was looking up with anxiety. Will the landlord be psychotic? Will the neighbours be crazy? What will I do to my first burglar? How will I get the contractors to listen to me? This street is too dark, is it safe? How will I react to the first time I have a power outage? I am still scared of the dark.

I walked faster. The ATM was busted. Three people talked to me. I didn't welcome it.

I got lost. I sat on the sidewalk, looked around me for any impending danger and checked my phone. I ordered an uber and slipped away into my daze. I didn't snap out of it until Monday night. I had training. It was also Halloween.

Happy dippy day, I crafted sentences that craft realities that tend to people's needs, insecurities and delusions. I now realize my job doubles as reality. Everyone I know is a writer, some are just shittier at it than others. It exhausts me. I wish people would stop sometimes, but they never do. How would they stop if they didn't know they ever started?

How they don't is one of the things that confuse me. If it takes you an average of 20 minutes to see through their facade, how does it take them years? They all need to fire their agents, take a holiday about as long as the eventual breakdown takes, then come back to work in their human skin, bed sores and all.

A couple of days ago, I realized something was wrong. It was also when I realized that survival is all about accepting that life is pointless. I came to that conclusion with the help of a loved one, who was suffering from a lapse of reality that I'd helped with some months earlier. To my surprise, he'd told me what I'd told him, and it helped. In all the rush, I'd forgotten what I'd said, I'd forgotten the sense it made, and got lost trying to find the sense I didn't remember I lost. What a rush.

Life IS pointless. It's wonderfully pointless, so you might as well have fun.

Public transport is still interesting. I have not changed. I still enjoy the stories, I still leave the headphones at home, but now I feel claustrophobic. I hope that next time I won't, and remember that life is a playground. We forget that realities aren't real every now and then, then we remember. The problem isn't in remembering, it's in forgetting.

I am not unhappy. I am not happy. I am not either. The only description to the state I'm in right now is imperfectly described in the first half of the sentence; the only thing I am right now is 'not'. I am not. I'll figure out the rest of the sentence later, and by accepting, the imperfect sentence will no longer bother me.

I have to go now, my time is up. I'm in the middle of a wonderful weekend, and I have to restart enjoying it now. There isn't much time.

The Sandman is Real

I will speak when I can.

I Graduated

I write this as I wait for Sandman to download on a nameless Thursday morning that followed a sleepless Thursday night, but I'm not tired. I'm hugging a gigantic mug of very shitty coffee in the pauses I take between the sentences, for this is something I need to do. This post is homework, more or less, only not as annoying, but just as hard. And it's been long in the making, I've had urges to sit down and write my heart out at times when I had to time-manage pooping and catching the bus, reworking proposals and creative briefs and getting a 2-hour dent in a three-day long workday. It's been an exhausting blur of a semester and I've finally graduated.

I've graduated.

The cap and gown is not until November or October, and the results are not for a couple of weeks still, but the anxiety won't take rain-checks.

How I feel about this hasn't been as clean-cut as Buzzfeed articles sell it out to be. I was breathless and euphoric when I went through my last slide, seeing my ad on big screen was possibly the closest I would ever experience to how a mother feels as she witnesses her child's first tumbly walk. I resolved to stay on campus until I wrap my head around the fact that I won't be coming back there anymore, at least not in the same way, not to attend classes and not to fight endlessly for basic understanding and courtesy. Closure didn't come, and although my lungs registered the fact by successive bursts of audible air, my mind didn't. I was mostly numb, save for fleeting smiles that crossed my face every once in a while, not staying long, not understanding why they were there in the first place, not remembering. It's not as melancholy as it's coming out, perhaps. What I'm trying to say is, throughout the buzz of emotions blurring by and barely making themselves comfortable before they're interrupted by commercial breaks of numbness, the one that kept coming back and overstaying its welcome was anxiety.

I would have thought it would wait a couple of months, or rather that I could make it wait for a couple of months. The effort is like going up against a brick wall with a liberal mindset, trying to talk it out of the impending onslaught of rocks coming its way and its silence making you rethink your rocks in the first place. The wall is winning. The wall doesn't care.

What next?

What now?

I never really learned to sit still you know. I don't know how to take a break, not one without a deadline anyway. How do people rest if naps aren't snatched? How do people have fun if time off isn't a prelude to...time-on?

The realization is too big to register in one go. How does one register that they've graduated? It's abstract.

The small revelations hit me every now and then, as I rummage for stuff in my purse or look for a missing link, as I brush my teeth or find out that I've run out of snacks for the next day, and in my sleep, in nightmares and odd situations that I don't understand for days. Small bites of ideas, like "This vacation ends when you say so" or "How are you gonna live alone if you're still scared of the dark?" or "What if you can't make rent one of those months?" or "What if you're stuck in the same job for ages and can't leave it because rent is on the line?"

Revelations like "How am I gonna pack all those books? Will I have to get rid of my books? How does one hire movers?" or "If I take that job I'll need a car. How will I afford a car?" or "How do people do taxes in here anyway?" or "I'll need to start a bank account to receive my paychecks now." or "It'll be full-time jobs from here on in, what are they like? Will I walk them off or take months to adjust? What happens if I don't adjust?"

Others like "I'll have to learn how to cook, I can't afford to eat out everyday."

And more frightening ones like "What if things go wrong?"

And the scariest of which perhaps are "What if things don't go at all?"

"What if I can't find a job that I like? What if I never end up in my field? What if I can't find a job?"

And the revelation that now it's called "unemployed", not "on summer break."

But what marks it are the things you can't have, because you're old enough to see priorities straight. And the things you can't have because you'll have to save up for and be your own support. Things that will have to wait. Things that you've been waiting for, for years. Things that have kept you going and got you out of bed for four years.

Only few days ago I had my life mapped out, knew what I wanted and had an idea about what I had to do to get there. But I was only a child.

4 days ago, I was only a child.

23 years on this godforsaken planet and the one thing that never failed me is the 4:20 neighborhood songbird. What will I do when the food chain catches up to it?

Hope is doubt, yet people hold faith as the highest cause. All the more proof humanity is subconsciously annihilating itself.

Good work.

Yellow Brick Road Rage

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Schrödinger's Rory

11th of March, 2016

The Neighbourhood Songbird's Duet

Senior Year

The Shadder

Some creatures hunt. Some creatures forage. The Shadder lurk. Sometimes, admittedly, they skulk. But mostly, they just lurk.

The Shadder do not make webs. The world is their web. The Shadder do not dig pits. If you are here you have already fallen.

There are animals that chase you down, run fast as the wind, tirelessly, to sink their fangs into you, to drag you down. The Shadder do not chase. They simply go to the place where you will be, when the chase is over, and they wait for you there, somewhere dark and indeterminate. They find the last place you would look, and abide there, as long as they need to abide, until it becomes the last place that you look and you see them.

You cannot hide from the Shadder. They were there first. You cannot outrun the Shadder. They are waiting at your journey’s end. You cannot fight the Shadder, because they are patient, and they will tarry until the last day of all, the day that the fight has gone out of you, the day that you are done with fighting, the day the last punch has been thrown, the last knife-blow struck, the last cruel word spoken. Then, and only then, will the Shadder come out.

They eat nothing that is not ready to be eaten. Look behind you.

~ Excerpt from Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning.

Orisinal

I want to buy a house, fill it with puppies and beautiful little things like dinosaur tea infusers and cushions knitted with random references and turn it into a home.

Happy New Year

Of Terms & Conditions

The Archipels