That's blasphemy.
JiayingAm just trying to do the right thing; trying to do the writing.
"Let me live, love, and say it well in simple sentences." --Sylvia Plath
Have not written in a long time. Seems to me writing’s become a side dish. A side dish to busy schedules in school or work, best served in between classes and deadlines, quiet mornings and lonely nights, heartbreaks and angry outbursts.
Right now I’m walking while writing this. Sometimes, it feels as if most of the writing’s done when I’m not writing, if that makes sense at all. Maybe writing cannot take centerstage. Perhaps we cannot just sit down consciously and do the writing. I don’t know but I’m beginning to believe ever so strongly that the process of writing should be something that’s running constantly at the back of our heads, left to its own imagination and autonomy to steer its own direction as it pleases. A process that requires more marinating of luck, ideas, and epiphanies than actual execution. Maybe. I’m not too sure. But hopefully I’ll find out the secret to writing soon enough.
I suppose today’s one of the worst days to listen to Angus & Julia Stone. Something about their voices and their sound that makes you want to curl up in bed, close your eyes and let the world past you with hopes that maybe after you’ve played Silver Coin one too many times—allowing yourself to sink into the strangely comforting beats of the snare,
everything else will fall back in place once again.
She tells me when I’m obnoxious (and proud of it), when my ego is out of control and all she wants to do is strangle me while I continue basking in the glory of my own cockiness; and when I wake up looking like hell, grumpy as hell, I take a moment to get over myself while she takes me as I am; on days when the screws in my head have all gone loose and my mind is out of place, she lets me be and she waits for me to pick up the marbles that I have dropped along the way—although sometimes I’m certain she deliberately kicks them away while I reach out for them because nobody appreciates the insane these days, but she does and she gives me time for it; And when I lapse into my eccentric moments of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, she allows me to run around like an Energizer Bunny organizing and arranging whatever I can find until I’m fine (again)—and she does not rush me. I guess what I mean to say after pouring out my scattered brain is this—I appreciate you, and I love you with all my arrogant, conceited and crazy heart.
We have a problem. We are obsessed with the Truth. This ultimate Truth that governs every little detail, moment, action, of our lives. Maybe there is no absolute Truth, only versions of it—assuming there is an “it” to begin with. Still, we are obsessed with origins, reason, and authenticity. There is no space for fiction any more. Does art for art’s sake not exist anymore? Every single thing has to have a meaning—a subtext, a context, a jab that actually stabs you right there where it hurts.
But dance—explore the footwork of poetry, prance around the fountain of words, dance with me a little and maybe you’ll begin to see the aesthetics of words strung together, carefully negotiating a nexus that means something and nothing at the very same time.
This is a dance that never ends, because the possibilities are limitless.
Since Winterson, I’ve been under the impression that the measure of love is loss. It makes sense, I suppose—we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s lost and gone. Maybe. Makes sense.
But since when did that change? Since when was love measured by “waiting”?
Wait for me. Wait. Stay. Hold. Hold on a little longer.
Since when did all this become a test? A test of endurance.
Perseverance is the key to one’s heart.
In time. It will be worth it in time. Because she will know, then. And she will realize that all this while how much she means to you. But fuck knowing. I don’t want her to know anymore. Maybe for once in my life I don’t want to feel bad for not wanting to wait anymore. There is no measurement to love, because there is no absolute love, but a futile, vain attempt to repeat a semblance of a definitive concept that does not exist in the first place.
You see, that’s the problem with lovers and leavers: Lovers stay; Leavers leave.
Stop. Back this up. Rewind; Replay. No more. .
The measure of love is not wait.
It is the fucking ache that lingers with every hint of spite in your breath, reminding me time and time again that I must, and I should. But the truth is I don’t (want to) any more.
Ask me what the measure of love is.
I don’t write anymore. At least not as much, which might be ironic since I do advocate the importance of writing in so many levels. Perhaps, it’s a linguistic form of reclusiveness. Do it with your heart, or not at all. Winterson says it best. Maybe I am just hiding, trying to tuck myself in a corner of everything, hoping that if I were to hide long enough, all that I was unsure and afraid of would magically straighten itself out. And maybe if I were to stay here long enough, this mess would slowly clear itself out in the natural filter of things—like they never existed in the first place. And I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find stacks of old letters, crumpled notes, pushed to the back of my drawer, but I am. Each time I reach into the dark, pick up a slip of time crushed into a ball, and slowly peel it open—careful not to tear or destroy it more than it already is—I am surprised by just how much I can still make out of all that seemingly senseless fragments, acting only as a trigger to chapters and volumes of nostalgia and memory, echoing and bouncing off the walls within myself. Too loud and too jarring for me to turn away. When the walls you build as a fort end up closing you in, you realize the problem was never external to begin.
Carefully, I stack bricks one on top of the other, making sure they are staggered in formation, never having one directly above another. I remind myself, this has to be strong; stronger than ever. Slowly, I build up walls around me, making sure I am safe inside; safe. But I build this fort around me as if it was ever necessary. People enter anyway, and leave as they please. And who am I to speak—As I build my defense, I build myself up against you. I lock myself up from you. Yet, like a Trojan, you sneak up to me.
I let you in
Willingly, with arms right open, with heart beating from the outside—but why do you always choose to be a riddle? A horse is never a horse, and you are never just you.In the middle of the night, you wake from your slumber, as I stay in mine; you come and you creep into my heart—you tug and you tug and you tempt and you tease whatever’s left of it. I want you to stop but at the same time I am there moving against you, moving with you. I need to stop. Because there is no reason, no explanation for letting a giant wooden horse into your heart in the middle of the night—no reason except for the simplest one—the desire of want; the want of desire.
I let you in.
We are circular in ways like these. A “yes” and a “no”; a “stop” and a “turn”; a blink, and you’re
gone. But you’re back again with my eyes holding your gaze. And I stare right through you, right where your heart should be; only that it’s not there anymore. It never was. I assumed that yours was as intact as mine; except mine is not.
I forgot the simplest of truths: Every one has a Trojan somewhere.
I let you in.
Maybe cynicism is just an euphemism for the indifference that has now plagued your bones and polluted your veins. But it’s fine I suppose, everything takes a little bit of adjustment and a little bit of getting used to. After a while, it feels like you knew no other way of living, you knew no other way of being. And that’s when you muster the courage to look in the mirror and admit that it doesn’t really matter anymore; maybe it mattered way too much, and right now you’re just maxed out.
I rehearsed in my head countless of times what I would say to you when I see you. I practised it—this detailed speech with every single thing I have always wanted to say and never got my chance to. But perhaps I always lacked the courage to actually do so. Because when I see you, and there you are in front of me—So real and no longer a figment of my imagination—There are no words. I lose them all to this fear, this feeling or this hestation that leaves the both of us busking in this infinite vacumn of silence.
I hope one day, you’ll realise I write for you. Not to you. But for you. I write as I breathe—choppy and heavy—the way I string my words together into a beaded chain—and just as I reach over to hand it to you, it slips off my fingers as I slip past you, slip Past gently behind the back of my heel, shadily pushing it under the rug. That which slips off my fingers like the blob of paint I tried to pick up between my index and thumb ever so gently, in a feeble attempt to save what’s left, only to crush it like I would an ant, having its insides spill onto the canvas of Time, staining it a dull maroon. You see, these are not sentences, but phrases. Phrases of phases put together recklessly, as were we. Carefree; Careless. And perhaps, one day you’ll finally realise, the rest of it lies with you and that’s one reason why I refuse to end this post no
Some days, out of the blue, with no particular reason at all, I find myself hit by a sudden wave of fear. Fear that emerges from my insides—it feels like my chest is shrinking, my palms start to feel clammy from the sweat, and I am unsettled. I don’t even know if I may call it fear. What I feel, if it were to be fear, I need to know what the fuck I am afraid of. All I know is, it makes me want to pace back and forth, jump a little on the spot. It makes me uncertain, and shifty. I am taking a half step forward, and I’m back where I started. I am nervous. Maybe I always am. Suddenly, all this anxiety disappears. I am calm, once again. Too calm. Almost indifferent to everything around me. Almost. But almost doesn’t count. I am getting used to this non-feeling. And before I know it, it’s back. That. What is this feeling? Please. Stop messing with my mind.
Perhaps it’s my severe lack of expression, or my pathetic mental word bank. For I can’t find the words to describe the damn way I feel, and that, that makes me (even more) nervous.
I really should be working on my report now but I can’t seem to do so. My head feels like it’s about to implode but it could just be the coffee that is talking. Summer is here, finally. Sometimes it feels like Sweden skipped past Spring, and here we are. Surprise ! The weather has been kind to us, but why do we speak of the weather any way. Maybe within this chunks of words you could find the subtext of everything that I have been meaning to speak. But it does not matter. Indifference is the key to making a difference. Compartmentalizing is the key to happiness. Read my lips. Do you remember the story about the fox? I don’t think you do, because I have never told you the story and you didn’t care for it either. What one has with the fox, stays with the fox and we are forever responsible for that damn wild thing we tamed.
How strange is it for the sun to rise at three in the morning and set at ten. Pretty strange how we have grown used to long nights and schizophrenic conversations with the man upstairs. Now, the summer sends its love, and winter will become but a distant memory.
