Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Fear and Trembling

Child: "I want to die with you."

Mother (laughingly): "No you can't".

Afterwards the child has visions of her parents rotting in their graves. Her parents as skeletons with black holes for eyes and black spaces between their ribs. Their wedding rings gleam against the darkness and the immaculate whiteness of their bones.

The door is cracked open and a beam of light penetrates the darkness of the room. Her parents' laughter floats upwards. They are having dinner downstairs at the big dining table, beneath the crystal chandelier. She hears the clatter of knives and forks, and the music of her mother's jade bangles clinking against each other. The child is filled with a profound and unbearable love. She doesn't want her parents to die. Love and fear assault and trample her, like the invasion of a million Huns. With her heart plundered and ravaged, the child cries herself to sleep.

. . . . . .

Was afflicted with a nightmare of the earth convulsing: a massive earthquake, but could not decipher if it was really the earth quaking, or if it was I who was trembling, thus making my own world seem to heave.

I was afraid, but it did not occur to me to scream, because I succumbed, and to scream would have been to protest. Maybe fear itself is a sign of protest, but I swallowed it.

I rode the earth's violent tremors with the same effortlessness as my fear. It was a consolation to be effortlessly afraid. Electrifying liberation to assume the role of coward and not struggle against treachery. Lucidity breached the tumult, like the unexpected flare of an idea when submitting to the vagaries of thought, but stronger. Fear is always self-confrontation. The extremity of fear was the extremity of myself throbbing to the same violent pulse as the heaving earth.

Monday, November 12, 2007

My Lady Crush

Elle gets stared at alot. Sometimes I watch other people stare at her. Elle is half Japanese, and half I don't know what. She walks with the elegant and slightly haughty gait of a ballerina with hips that sway imperceptibly. Her lustrous long hair nearly reaches her waist. It's hair to die for, like in the pantene ads. If you were to touch it, it would feel like silk, like cashmere. Her voice could be an aphrodisiac. It doesn't matter what she says. Profanity eludes her. She curses like she recites poetry. The professor makes her read out loud because she's good at it. The melodic lilt of her voice, the perfect articulation, the rhythmic ease as if she doesn't need to pause to breathe...You could admire her blind. She is effortlessly exquisite and unaware that she is so. That's why she is effortless: she is unaware of her allure. If someone told her she was beautiful she'd smile politely. Composure never fails her.

Sometimes I notice my classmate's eyes flicker with desire when she casually tosses her coal black hair over her shoulder, when she crosses and uncrosses her legs, when she frowns in concentration...She doesn't know that she is being watched. If she became aware of her magnetism she might abuse it. She might defiantly stare her admirer down. Her admirer might blush, turn away, then chance another glance because he finds her irresistible, and her defiance even more so. Her beauty makes her unapproachable. That's the only thing that's keeping him back. He's told me so. "I wouldn't dare", he says, half-laughing to let the torture out.

It's not necessarily Elle's beauty I admire, it's her ability to attract. I am obsessed with attraction. The greed of each other. I wonder what Elle's admirer would do to her if he got the chance: whether he'd be timid at first, hardly daring to touch his Helen, his Madonna, his Venus. Perhaps his desire would become barbarous. I don't know if Elle is capable of ravishment, of sweating and panting in an unladylike manner. Elle with disheveled hair. Elle with limbs flung in disarray. Elle undone.

Now I understand why I keep looking at Elle. I want her unravelment to be my own.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Malady

The ennui of my current condition is intolerable. I am possessed by the useless languor of monotony. A detached sluggishness has overcome me, and I find myself wishing for the intensity of emotion. But when rage and the spit of my soul finally come to the fore, I will yearn once more for the repose of boredom. This calm fatality perturbs me, or rather, I feel as if I should be perturbed. Tomorrow, or weeks from now, I might erupt into something else, but right now this hibernation is of the worst kind.

A few days ago, I found that I was removed from myself in a way that is difficult to describe. I was in class taking notes, and for a split second found that my hand was moving at its own will. My hand was a machine having no relation to my inner presence. I had become my own observer in an almost clinical sense. It was a moment of amazement, terror, and utter alienation.

I went to him in a half daze. I needed him to tell me who I was, and to save me from my soul's amnesia. I'd have believed anything, just for the sake of conviction. I'd have made him my faith. I don't know why him. I told him I wanted to cry about nothing. My need for him was perilous. I didn't care. Desperation is when you don't care. I needed someone to drag me out of myself. I couldn't have liberated myself on my own without the horrid feeling that I was indiscriminately defecating my soul on the sidewalk. I couldn't, just couldn't, without him.

But today with my placidity I can do without alot of things, even him. He was only crucial in my moment of need, like how I can suddenly become Christian again during a crisis. Today, I can easily ignore him. Tomorrow I might need him again for my intoxication. The cruelty of my nature frightens and disgusts me.


Monday, October 29, 2007

Bare

Night.

The air conditioning isn't working. The heat keeps me up.

intolerable.

Only the sound of the fan whirring. Occasionally a dog barks in the distance. My body is damp and feverish above the sheets. I turn to my side and look out the window. More night. Not a star. Dark and frightening vortex.

Heat. Heat. Insufferable. I curse my body to feel.

My camisole sticks to my skin. I fling it off. It drops over the side of the bed onto the floor.

I need to move. Discomfort is making me impatient, restless. So I get up, walk over to the bathroom, and splash cool water onto myself. In the stillness that ensues I become afraid. As much as I love the darkness of night, I am still afraid of it. I never want to go blind.

I quickly walk back down the corridor. Then collision. My hip meets the angry jut of a table edge. Grimace. Darkness is cruel. A day later he sees the bruise and asks if it was him. No it wasn't you. He smiles. Then without warning, pulls me to him and bites me hard on the bruised hip. I cry out. He says he wants me, wants to possess. He shoves, grasps, is rough. But I want to possess too. I fight back, fling myself onto him. He throws me off. His shadow is above me, my arms are pinned. I make to knee him in the groin and he starts back. I manage to pounce on top of him again. The struggle continues. Wordless grunts and heavy breathing. Love and madness. The deathly expression. It stops when he has me by the neck , smashed up against the wall.

He waits to see what I will do next. I hold his gaze, and reach down without looking away. I find what I want. His strength fills my hand. Soon I can feel his ragged breath against my cheek. At one point his eyes seem to implore. Then he is far away. His grip around my neck tightens. I nearly choke. Then a final moan. Wetness against my thigh.

Our bodies fall away. The aftermath makes me feel lost, but he tells me, "I' ll have you yet."

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Disenchantment

It is raining. I go grudgingly, but with the slight hope that something inspiring might come out of my encounter with a man so attached to the earth. A friend of mine has urged us to meet. I have agreed because it will help with my research. According to my friend, this man grows his own food and is "spiritual". He is alot older than I. The rest I do not remember. His countenance is a faded memory (well it was never a memory) and I do not care to fabricate it.

I meet him on the edge of the university campus and we walk rather hurriedly to his garden nearby. When we arrive I am disappointed by the wasteland I see: rocks everywhere, junk littering the ground, no verdant oasis, no profusion of the earth's bounty....

The only awe-inspiring plant life I see is a mammoth accumulation of long, pointed leaves with jagged edges. Somehow it reminds me of the spikes of a dinosaur. It could easily have existed in the jurassic age. He says that one day it just appeared, and within days, had grown to a stupendous height and girth, and at its very top, it had sprouted a large, red flower. Too bad the flower is gone now. I would have loved to see it. He points out a patch of squash plants upon which, grow wilting, trumpet shaped flowers of a faded yellow. I spy a little squash which appears as if by some freak accident out of the rock covered soil. Then he shows me the tomato plant which seems to droop a little beneath the rain. The tomatoes are either a pale yellow or a muted red. We walk two paces and he shows me a little rosemary plant with stunted, needle-like leaves, then we move onto a patch of arugula, potatoes, basil, onions...

I feel nothing. I want to get out of the rain. He assumes I am ignorant and keeps asking if I know what a potato is, if I am familiar with arugula, and so on...I find it hard to believe he thinks I am that stupid. For a moment I think perhaps his conception of a potato is different from mine, and that he means to imply that he has some kind of esoteric knowledge of what a potato really is. Naturally, this strikes me as equally absurd. I am irritated, but it bothers me more that I am left wanting. I wanted to devour something with my eyes, to smell something in the air, but if there is abundance, it is only beneath the soil. All I perceive is the paucity of plant life, and the mumbling determination of an old man consumed by his lonely vision of a lost Eden. But I wish I can see what he sees. My cynicism has a habit of blinding me. Delusion or not, I admire someone able to contrive for himself a paradisical niche in a world corroded by the destructive forces of today.

After he has picked a handful of arugula and tomatoes, we venture into an empty classroom to talk and have lunch. He casually places the unwashed vegetables on the table, and we proceed to eat them as they are. My palate must be absolutely destroyed by inorganic, chemically altered supermarket fare, because try as I might, I cannot tell the difference. "What do you think?" he says, as I place an arugula leaf in my mouth. It is arugula as I have always known it. "It's stronger at the finish", I say, partly hoping to induce by words, the novelty of experience I certainly did not feel or taste, and partly to appease what he was expecting of me. Next he urges me to try the tomatoes. "Here, you will notice how many more seeds they have, unlike the supermarket variety". I pop one in my mouth. It yields too easily, and without the pleasant burst I was anticipating. The seeds are sparse. I concentrate harder. Where are the seeds? I notice that he is looking at me with a slight smile. I cannot bring myself to say anything because of my disappointment. I nod my head enthusiastically and assuming that I am silenced by amazement, he breaks into a grin. Then he takes half a loaf of bread out of his sack and cuts a sliver off with his knife. He tells me that he made the bread with rye and wheat grown on his family's farm. It is stale, with the slightly sourish odor of yeast. It tastes natural, but by no means a gastronomic revelation.

He talks about the miracle of plant life. He repeats himself in many different ways - ingenuity is the garb of his mundanity, or perhaps I should say, his simplicity. It makes me wonder if we are all just repeating ourselves in creative ways. I say little as usual, but he asks about my literary studies. I tell him about the painful beauty of human perseverance, and the writer's endeavor to wrangle out of the inner chaos, one golden word, and then another, and another, until inner disorder transforms itself into outward expression. He likens it to the cycle of plant life - how the plant struggles continually at each season to emerge from beneath the darkness of the soil, and into the light.

At the end of our conversation he gives me a plastic bag. Inside, there are three fava beans. He tells me to put them in a shallow dish of damp tissue and to wait for it to sprout.

I have waited nearly a week The seeds have grown moldy and I don't really want to see him again and it's just awful that I am revolting against the presence of such a kind man.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

The Pianist

I have been watching him for awhile now, from a shadowy corner of the auditorium. There is no danger of him noticing me. He is completely absorbed by the immediacy of expression. His hands touch the keys and there it is: his soul professed in sound. I envy him. I nearly cry, because I wish I could let it all out as he does. He sways. His eyes are half shut. He transports himself. I don't know to where. Oblivion perhaps. The dissolution of self into sound. He keeps going and going. Hands roaming across the keys with the dexterity of spiders. He exhales music with unbearable perfection. I inhale perfection that isn't mine. I am tortured. Envy. Envy. From the inner primordial chaos he can produce an immeasurable expanse of penetrating, beatific sound. And I, barely one clear note that will ring with equal precision. Paralysis. My mind is numb. I think I am mesmerized.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Tracksuit-Lama

My foot was falling asleep. A squat, lardy, bespectacled, dumpling of a man in a tracksuit was reading a sutra through beady eyes I could barely make out. He stood before 20 or so college students who sat cross-legged on scarlet cushions. Behind him were vivid images of bodhisattvas and framed photographs of this lama and that, including an autographed image of the Dalai-Lama. Thankas of the bodhisattva, Avalokitesvera were unfurled over the windows, blocking most of the light.

The man, who was a lama, recited buddhist prayers like a schoolboy stumbling over his verses. His chin warbled as he struggled along in an emphatic American accent, occasionally losing his place then starting up again.To my weakness, I couldn't go beyond the comedy of this being who was nonetheless trying to expound the profound wisdom of the dharma.

In front of me sat a girl whose doughy arse bulged out of low-cut jeans. To my right was a young buddhist enthusiast and the most eager of the students. He wore an ethnic inspired jacket and was thinner than me, girlish in appearance. He sat bolt upright, transfixed by the lama in the tracksuit. I couldn't stop staring at his effeminate hands. A person of 2o years or so, his voice still echoed with puberty. What a delicate human being, I marveled in silence, as my attention strayed towards a prayer wheel, whirring mechanically amidst the nasally drone of the Tracksuit-Lama whose pudding-like form had not budged once from his firmly rooted position.

I reminded myself that this place was sacred, but I felt the cruelty of a snigger playing upon my lips, attempting to breach my self-restraint. I chastised myself, thinking that I should attempt to see beyond the absurdity of appearances, but it was horrendously hard. The immature need to giggle overwhelmed me and the threat of those bubbly emanations dammed up inside me made me fidget. I bit my lips, glanced to my left, and saw my friend listening attentively to the Tracksuit-Lama. Everyone else was taking him seriously. I felt silly, mirthfully so. The comical figure of the Tracksuit-Lama had awakened something in me which convention and respect silenced. Sometimes we readily consign ourselves to solemnity when we can just as easily yield to euphoric laughter.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Moment of Terror

He's half-dead when I see him. Cigarette in hand, his hair disheveled, and eyes that keep squinting as if it hurts to look. Books and papers strewn across his desk spill onto the floor. His normally spartan room now cluttered with objects reflects the aftermath of some inner madness. He's calm now,sort of dead and wrung out. There's no where to sit, so I shove a few things to the side of his unmade bed: notepads, broken pencils, three different thesauruses,an ashtray with some of its contents spilled onto the sheets...ugh..

"Sorry", he says with a slight smile. I didn't notice that I had expressed my disgust out loud.

"How have you been?" he says, as he toys mindlessly with an empty bottle on the desk. He doesn't look at me, just stares absently at his hand fiddling with the bottle.

"Better than this", I say indicating his messy room, and he gives a short laugh.

There's a long silence. Light streams through the window and warms my face. I stare at him - a solitary figure, slumped and defeated in his chair. Crumpled pieces of paper: the ruins of thought, lay at his feet. He is a pathetic (it pains me to say "pathetic") image of corroded vitality.

He sees me staring at him. My expression must have been honest because he says: "Don't pity me". But in defending himself he seems all the more vulnerable. He is weak. His weakness is terrifying. His overwhelming humanity is terrifying. With terror there is a moment of suspension, of transfixion, where one experiences the unforgiving frankness of the soul. In my moment of terror, I understand him more than I have ever understood anyone in moments of love.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

The Threat

He said I was beautiful. He seemed afraid, maybe because he said it in spite of himself. He was helpless because of me; the unintentional me. The perversity of human nature made it so.

I was helpless too. I had surrendered myself to the word "beautiful", and in the moment of its utterance, had tried to breathe life into it so that what he said could be true, more for him than for me. No, for me as well as him. I needed to verify him so that he would verify me. It was the culpability of love. The word "beautiful" was as malicious as its loveliness. Vulnerability trailed the last syllable and suspended itself between us, but I snatched it away with a kiss.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The Terrace

He lifts the glass and the ice clinks. Then setting his glass down again he glances at me as if to ascertain something. The chair creaks as he shifts backwards and smiles faintly. Then he shakes his head and sighs, running his hand through his hair.

"You're a prude", he says. I shrug. He begins to tap his fingers on the table.
"You're just demure...", he says, still trying to categorize me. "You have no signals whatsoever", he continues. I remain silent.

Suddenly he drags his chair next to me and resumes his former position - his back against the chair with one hand supporting his chin, looking at me contemplatively.
"What do you want?", he asks. He brushes against my arm as if it were the most natural thing. I pull back. I feel like defying him.

He frowns almost imperceptibly, but then looks up and smiles benevolently, acquiescing to my resistance which he no doubt finds stubborn.

"You won't give in," he says matter-of-factly and sighs again.

"Either way I'd lose you", I say.

"I shouldn't matter" he says quickly, brushing the matter off.

He gets up abruptly and walks towards the wall, leaning over it with his arms. The terrace overlooks an unkempt garden, dully illuminated by the house lights and filled with weeds and potted bougainvilleas. In the distance are the shadowy rooftops of various houses, obscured by the vague outline of trees.

Suddenly there is the sound of a car approaching in the driveway below. Its headlights mangle the serenity of the surrounding shadows. I can hear people traipsing up the stairs. Laughter and girlish squeals drift towards us. And then they are here, slapping him on the back, assaulting him with hugs, compliments...everything merging into a general loudness. More girls coming up the stairs, sparkling jewelery, bare mid-drifts, giddiness...

In the midst of the impending disorder he casts me a glance. A girl hooks her arm into his and I recognize the gleam in his eyes. "Time for me to go" I say, and I turn to leave before the party starts. I'm relieved he doesn't try to stop me.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Again

I'm leaving again, unwillingly. I've been leaving for the past eight years and it wears me out, harrasses me with dread, tires me with prolonged anxiety, makes my last week here a mere descent into future misery - the absurd pursuit of a college degree I'm not going to use, the deviation from passion, the delay from happiness, etc.

I suppose I'm horribly immature. I'm lots of things without meaning to.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Discrepancy

I found him tiresome, but the moment he left I wanted him once more. It's not indecision that plagues me, but an irreconciliation between reality and ideas.

The road was winding. Not a sound except barking dogs and dead leaves being crushed beneath our feet. There was no hurry. Not that I cherished him so dearly. I didn't mind his company. At certain moments it got a little weary, but no more weary than boredom is. For the most part he was just there . We were together out of my indifference and his willingness, but when I was alone once more his absence disquieted me. What was previously insignificant to me emerged as lost familiarity.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Across the Counter

A customer walked in with a funereal air. She was dressed in shapeless black and her twisted smile made her seem sinister. Her lips curled as she spoke. Disdain seeped out of her sluggish voice. She conversed with distaste, and was like a reluctant corpse caught in the mundanity of living.

I had no courage with her. Offered her a weak smile. Failed to look her in the eye. Tried to wither away to inexistence. Shifted from one foot to another and tried to quell the inner shudder. Then gratitude that the correspondence was fleeting. Just a malefic shadow of a crow flickering across the serenity of my vision.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Distress

The opposite of flowers is blood. The humming of a thousand dragonflies drew near. I saw the distant figure of a man approaching, but he never came close. Everywhere the silhouettes of frightened but silent birds weaved patterns on the hard, cracked earth.

Even from the distance I knew he was a man of carefully chosen wars. Prone to false alarms and easily startled because he was really a child with undue sensitivity.

Then the dragonflies devoured a field of ripe pears. They flicked maliciously and abundance dwindled until there was nothing left but carcasses and a lingering scent of aged sweetness.

Above, the clouds were thick as smoke and choked the air. Strange light came from nowhere. I was in a land of alien sorrows.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

hushed

When I was little I hardly spoke a word. I would've sold my voice for a dollar, or nothing at all because speaking frightened me. I didn't speak, I whispered. Trapped by timidity my only articulation was through pen and paper. There was another world I lived in...that I still live in. There were times when I wanted to speak, but could not. Silence made me involuntarily secretive, and alone, but not always lonely. I'm still a wanderer in shadows, less afraid, but just as quiet.

Monday, June 18, 2007

The Lost Girl

The girl was lost in a fog. She tried, but her efforts only made her lag behind. Her speech was deliberate and she took pains to enunciate each letter. I couldn't tell if she was happy. Perhaps she's not aware enough to tell if she's happy or sad. In any case she matters little to herself and I should refrain from using "either/or". It's never that simple.

She made me her duty, and with the utmost tedium would ensure that I had everything I needed, but she did these things out of habit, not concern. Good manners are indoctrinated, and not always experienced as a practice of well-being. Often they're just necessary precautions. Whenever I glanced at her she would look back at me with hollow eyes. Then I could not tell if she was being sincere, but it's only me that judges and doubts. She was just there, unassumingly so, as if she posed no significance, as if she was on the verge of dissipating, dissolving...She was an unfilled form, a mere outline of a girl.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Deserter

She was forgotten because she was old. She sought the dramatics of death because she was forgotten. The lone woman with the permed hair and fine wrinkles was killed by the hand of desperation because loneliness is murderous. When the day ripened they found her there, with stale flesh reeking of desolation. They said they didn't know she had it in her. I suppose she was always misunderstood.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Rumination

I wonder if failing to tell the difference between reality and illusions is ignorance or a resolution of inner dichotomies. My inability to conclude leaves me with the half-truth. Sometimes I find that I'm awfully good at mimicking. I watch my hands lurch across the keyboard, creating an imitation of myself and a forgery of the world around me. Then I cringe at my poor translation of events. Sometimes I'm filled with chagrin, but I keep writing anyway 'cos there's a mad scribe in me at full throttle. Seized by some despotic passion or perhaps rage, I continue in spite of myself. The pen administers the purge. Everyone understands the exorcism of writing. Often I find myself the priest of my own confession, appropriating the extent of self-flagellation - castigating myself for what I meant to say but could not say, suffering the evasive quality of words, the insufficiencies of language, the horrendous web of linguistics. Then the resort to metaphors/ literary tropes, the interpretative potential, the exploitation of ambiguity and abstraction, and finally the failure to distinguish between fact and fiction. And the imperishable question if it's a failure worthwhile.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Something Inconsequential

So we trudged up the hill, Tess and I. It was as vertical as you can get and we cursed at the extreme inconvenience we had to go through to get to the professor's house - a lone fortress that emerged more and more on the horizon with each uphill step. It wasn't really a fortress, it just seemed rather formidable from its lofty perch with the setting sun glowing from behind. It looked quite surreal.

The neighborhood was eerily deserted and the silence seemed unnatural and much too obvious. Having ridden in a noisy, crowded bus to this side of town, the strange silence perturbed me even more. Everything seemed stagnant, unfamiliar, distant yet sharply present.

"This place feels weird" I say, half-panting as we plod up the damn hill.

"It's your imagination" says Tess.

"Why are you whispering?" I say.

"I'm not whispering, I'm talking in hushed tones."

"I don't even feel like going".

"C'mon, it'll be fun to see how the professor lives. Debunk the mystery 'n all that shit".

"Maybe she'll lock the door behind her and have us for dinner or something."

"Oh please..." laughs Tess and rolls her eyes. "You're kidding right. Just stop thinking. You always get high on your imagination".

"You're getting high on suspense," I say, as we stop outside the house and she rings the doorbell.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Solaced

The peaceful rising and falling of his chest was an interminable lullaby. Silence is so much more fragile when another is sleeping. I watched the light inch across his chest and fade. Day had surrendered gracefully to night. But in darkness he still seemed to glow, as if he held some residue of the sun.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

The Ugly

Yesterday we pondered for hours on the nature of violence. Or they did - the other students. I listened to what they said but I didn't understand, and I didn't have anything to say. I don't know what else there is to comprehend about human brutality other than the fact that it is brutal.

During moments of their opinionated speech I felt a profound frailty of myself and the mysterious persistence of existence I became aware of the fact that I didn't understand my own pulse.

The words "heinous" and "bloody" emerged from the mouths of the others. They spat them out. Venomous pits spewed from abysmal pits. I was surrounded and fissioned by nuclear voices.

In dismantling/ gutting the darkness of ourselves we tend to vomit our souls. I hate that class. It requires too much vulgar courage and savage thought.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Last Night

There's a flicker in the oasis of his eyes. He seems calm. He always does, but there's a slight and unexplainable shift in his persona. A barely perceptible ripple of energy that I can feel beneath the warmth of his skin...

I have him pinned beneath me, challenging him with my gaze. Angelo looks back at me unperturbed at his trapped state. He could probably toss me off with an effortless heave. I don't know how he always manages to be so composed. He looks as well-kept as when we first started (though it was only a few minutes ago). He had chosen restraint. I had not.

Suddenly I feel self-conscious. My naked body feels damp and flushed, and my breathing is heavy. I let go of A beneath me, and reach up to my tousled hair, trying to comb through the impossible knots. A laughs, and for a moment reaches up and occupies himself with my hopelessly tangled tresses. I notice he still has his pants on. God. I'm a complete wreck and he's still half-clothed. I shift slightly and tug at his belt, half berating myself for my negligence.

But suddenly I find myself beneath him. He's on top of me know, flinging the belt off and kissing me hungrily. His force surprises me. His hands are pushing my legs apart impatiently. I unconsciously resist. An instinctive fear had arisen in this sudden assault. Remembering where I am, I start to push against his chest to overthrow him and regain control, but he barely budges. I make as if to kick him between the legs, and he immediately starts back. I take the opportunity to arm myself with his belt which had landed on the nightstand next to me.

"You little bitch", he says, half-sneering behind the smile that was spreading on his face. He rips his pants off without taking his eyes off me. Then he advances, and "thwack!". The belt hits his skin harder than I had meant to. I freeze, horrified that I may have hurt him, but he snorts and says, "My dear, that almost tickled". Wrestling the belt out of my hands, he tosses it to the other side of the room were it lands with a dull thud. He pulls my legs down so that I'm lying beneath him, my hands pinned beneath his. I expect him to attack me like before, but he doesn't move. Angelo just looks down at me smiling. And for a moment we linger like that, until I wrap my legs around his waist to pull him closer. I feel his hot breath on my ear, and with our bodies entangled, he feels like an extension of myself. If he were to pull apart a horrible vulnerability would overtake me...

Friday, April 27, 2007

Succumbing

A slight breeze. The shutters flutter momentarily, leaking sunlight into the room. I catch a glimpse of cerulean sky. There's nothing here but the clock ticking and me waiting for the day to die. All I feel are the contours of the hours. In a moment this calmness will be unbearably vacuous and insipid. My heavy-lidded passivity will evaporate in the warmth of some emanating ardency. A little while more and I'll have to peruse, pursue, my desires - the only helplessness I enjoy.

Monday, April 23, 2007

The Smirk

"In approximately forty-eight hours I shall try to fit forty to fifty people in my apartment". The heathen settles back in his chair, with an air of satisfaction, whiskey in one hand and cigarette in the other.

"That's nothing new. You have parties all the time don't you?" I respond indifferently.

"Yes, but all my current and ex-lovers are going to be there." He takes an abrupt puff at his cigarette and exhales with his head tilted slightly upwards. His arrogance betrays him in this gesture.

"And what's the logic of this suicide?" I ask, wondering if I should feign surprise, but I'm too accustomed to his ways. It pleases him to shock people, so I comply by adding, "You're mad".

The heathen laughs in glee and takes another drag of his cigarette. It always pleases me to see the eyes of the other scintillate. "Logic?" He says. " Pleasure has no logic. I'm curious to see what happens."

I contemplate this. I know he delights in a spectacle, and images of vaudevillian horror enter my mind. Forty bodies crammed in a tiny apartment, sweating and breathing in each others odors. A conglomerate of people getting high on each other in their gas chamber of hellish ecstasy...

"It'll be civilized," he smirks, glancing at me as he stubs out his cigarette.

"I didn't know you had forty to fifty lovers".

He gives a short laugh. "No of course not. Some of them are potentials. Some of my guy friends are coming too..."

"Fifty lovers in one room..." he adds, seeming to ponder. He breaks his own reverie with his customary abruptness: "Sometimes I can't tell between heaven and hell". He takes a last swig of his whiskey, looks down at his empty glass and for a moment appears morose. But then the smirk rehabilitates itself, effacing all traces of vulnerability. His visage assumes once more, an impenetrable smugness.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Heady Stupor

Words trickled out of his mouth. His deep and hushed voice lulled me even more. I swivelled in my chair. I wasn't in the mood for conversation. A dreamy slothfulness had overtaken me. He continued to muse philosophically. I drifted in and out of what he was saying, marvelling silently every now and then at a pretty sounding word or phrase without trying to make any sense of it. I listened to his voice without understanding. His voice always calms me. I immersed myself in the nectareous sensuality of that sound.

Suddenly he is silent. He looks at me expectantly. I stop twirling my hair which I didn't realize I had been doing. A trace of a smile appears on my lips and his. " Was I soliloquizing?" he says. I fidget. Sigh heavily. And without much reflection I posited myself on his lap, deliberately brushed my hand past his crotch, and with the languor that possessed me, explored him as if I had never encountered him before.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

An Expulsion

A man was spewing vulgarities on the bus. Uncontrollably cursing some non-existent transvestite. I was behind him and far away enough but I still recoiled. "Motherfucker mother fucker motherfucker". He went on and on in a helpless tirade. Denunciation, then silence, then denunciation again. He was in the grip of some profound hatred, his head held high in indignation. He was a gurgling gutter. Horrid and foul. It repulsed me, and this paragraph is the leftover stain of that besmirched bus ride.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Irked

I get irritated every tuesday on my walk home from school. There's always this old man, more medium-old than old, who sits outside a church and sings at the top of his lungs, flinging his faith into the air. His voice is raw, solemn, unbearable. Everytime I pass him I have violent thoughts of wrestling his hym book out of his hands and bashing his head against the wall. It bothers me that every tuesday this holy man provokes my unsanctimonious thoughts; that whenever I encounter his figure hunched against the wall of the church, it becomes obvious how easily suspectible I am to annoyance. Everytime I encounter him I encounter my own weakness. It's a little thing to get vexed over, yet I'm more irritated, this tuesday than all the other tuesdays. Maybe it's PMS or something.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

The Heathen

He's like an angel about to fall, and he prides himself on this perilous existence. He's articulate,witty, animated, restless, and prone to extreme indulgence. He takes his pick from his buffet of women. I don't know how many he's had. If these victims of his persuasion all knew each other there'd be some sort of revolt, but as a skilled charmer he'd probably be able to reinstate the spell, or at least save himself. He has a methodology when it comes to women that he claims never fails. Ironically it has something to do with restraint...

His laughter always startles me a little. It is always sudden, and almost seems as if he is shouting, as if he is trying to project himself beyond his own physical sphere. The same with his gait - when he walks he seems to precede himself. Vigor spawned from his endless destinations perhaps.

I don't understand him, or rather I don't understand his need for continuous engrossment. He's not flighty in any way. He's anchored by sensuality, and its cessation would most likely induce bouts of depression.

Speech comes easily to him, though he speaks more in gestures. I can't explain it. It's as if he gestures with his voice. Profanity is a rhetorical device he uses to make himself seem more valiant. He associates audacity more with courage than stupidity. In any case saintliness doesn't suit him, but he's quite the gentleman. A vulgar knight. A shimmering vision of danger and chivalry (I lack better words to describe his non-generic magnetism), which is probably what his damsels fall for over and over again. He offers them the chance to be vulnerable and then saved.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Argh!

I'm trying to concentrate on my essay, but my ear keeps gravitating to the birds chirping deliriously outside my window.

I can't bring myself to close the window.

So beautiful yet so irritating....actually, more pretty than beautiful.

wonder what it'd be like if things didn't exist within the cracks of contradiction.

I can't seem to prioritze right now. To close the window or listen till the chirping fades? this is silly. I'll just leave the damn window open and attempt to slightly ignore.

But it's stopped now...

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Self-Portrait - A rough sketch

Today I feel like eking myself out in words. Not that I need elaboration. On the contrary, my silence would be more fitting. Ironic, that I intend to use words to describe my silence, which is myself. But that is what we are: ironic.

At times images of solitude pervade my mind: a swan gliding on a rippling lake, an empty field under the cotton sky, a leaf floating gently down to earth. I don't know what these photographic snapshots serve. I am not always so placid. Perhaps I metaphorically define myself in landscapes. In any case, the blatant romanticism of it all sometimes bothers me. Sometimes my own words make me sick. But often for me, eloquence exists in emotions more so than the intellect. Sensitivity is my weakness, yet this vulnerability leads me to the beautiful.

And suddenly the words evade me....I think I am being coherent only to myself. Maybe honest self-definition is more impossible at my age...

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Books

I spent the week inebriated by books. Books mandated by my college professors. I am constantly submerged in the articulations of others. I live more in their realities than my own. At times it seems it has made my life fiction. Images of war and paradise merge in the terrain of my mind...more blood-stained earth than abodes of loveliness. If these geniuses of the pen write of happiness, it is always tinged with the shadow of a fated tomorrow, or that of vanished yesterdays. As they write I imagine their creased brows, and the difficulty of confronting themselves reflected on the page. The brutality of honesty is always there. If they lie, they know that they are writing lies. Ink is the blood of conscience.

There are writers who frolic in the worlds they create. Writers of my past. They became gods in creating their own utopias. Their only agenda: to create a nest of dreams and prose (a word beautiful in iteself) like pillow-soft lullabies: the world of children. Those were the books I savored like hard candy.

Now I am almost victimized by words of knowledge. The world of the adult, of responsibility, of crimson rivers which the socially responsible wordsmith dips his pen into.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Angelo

I stretch with feline languidity beneath the thin white sheet, the vestiges of sleep are still heavy in my limbs. He is standing by the open window, half-covered in shadows, looking out at the enroaching dusk. Outside the sea is noiseless, calm, no longer breaking violently against the rocks. Hearing the sheets rustle behind him, he turns. His silhouette is outlined by the dying light behind him. He hasn't bothered to dress. The glow of a cigarette hovers between his fingers and the scent of tobacco reaches me with the salted breeze.

My dark angel.

I stretch my arm out lazily towards him, and he takes a step forwards. I see him clearly now. He stubs out his cigarette. The curtians billow gently behind him. He looks at me again with a serious expression. "Delilah", he utters, his voice deep and low, seeming to escape from a crack in his soul. The single syllable leaks into me, caresses me like the warm froth of the sea, what Camus called "the saliva of the gods" (such carnal poeticism). Then he takes another step forward and pulls the sheet off my body, letting it drop to the floor beside him. I look up at him expectantly, and his eyes, almost blue, meet mine. They peruse my body as he walks slowly, deliberately, around the bed. He looks at my exposed body intently, calmly. It is so still and silent I can hear his breathing. I am the object of his intention as he circles the bed almost contemplatively. Or is it with an inner, vulture-like viciousness I am not privy to that he does so?

Finally he looks into my eyes again, and I frown slightly, because I am stranger to his thoughts. My frown is returned with a smile that falls deliciously upon his lips, bringing a gleam into his eyes. "Delilah", he says again, strongly, as if convinced of something. He has many ways of calling me to him. Then leans down towards me, his warmth touching mine and seals my name with a kiss.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

aftermath

And I miss him. But why should I miss him. A man is a man is a man. He is just a man, fallen, no half-fallen, not altogether fallen to the world like everyone else. Except his poetic intrigue the silent undulations of exchanged emotions and occasional glances that flit across the surfaces of each other. Skimming…like fallen leaves gliding across the reflective sea. Of sounds he is nothing but a bass note, which is everything like earth and wood and smoke. I need to know what’s beyond the trigger. I felt the morose boy in him. Felt everything sane and valid. Safe and sound – the danger world, the honest crusade. The beautiful pain of affection that coursed through my body like a humid breath. And I should have kissed him, to make him less likely to forget.