Who.. Are You?

I used to do this thing when I was a kid, where I would just lie in bed, lift my hand up high and just stare at it for hours and hours. Partly because I had nothing better to do, but mostly just so I can think about it; how am I here, or if any of this was real. I'd focus really hard hard and wonder how on earth I was breathing, and where I am and I'd imagine myself watching me from space, the black nothingness and stars so bright, and say, hey, look at that, it's me: the speck. Is this a dream, and if so, whose is it? And if it isn't, then how is this happening? I would see all of this in my hand, for hours and hours, lost in thought, only a hand, I told myself- but what is a hand, really? And then I'd start repeating the word over and over again till it lost all meaning, and only after I broke that barrier that was my current understanding was I free to ponder, with no belief holding me back, what everything the world taught me was really me.

Someone made this, I repeated over and over, in my head, and out loud, it explained everything. And as a kid, I was told as much, but I was also told never to question it. God, that is. So I left it alone, but everything else was fair game, and the game always lead me to the same conclusion, which was god. And then I found myself questioning my inability to question god. I mean, if I believed in him wholeheartedly, why wasn't I allowed to just delve into that part of me that yearns to know, because it wasn't just curiosity, it was almost paralyzing, it was the reason I stared at my hand all day, and it's why I could do just that for so long, because I was told not to cross the line that was questioning god's existence, and so I stayed in mind limbo. Neither thinking or not thinking about, just lying on my bed, all day, and staring.

Fairy tales.

What about them?

They say they’re overrated, and they’re nothing but lies. This and that, and in a five worded summary, just plain ridiculous at times. But in reality, they really aren’t that far from the truth. Because however different the circumstances, by in large, the subtext applies to every aspect of our lives. Whether it be taken from a real life incident and tweaked for the minds of the young with unicorns and pixie dust or if it was just a subconscious thing. Simply, all fairytales are nothing but analogies to far greater simple tragedies in life.

But of course, we knew as much, because after all, we write what we know.

Take any Disney movie, strip it down to a basic idea, and there’s the spark that started it all. For example, Aladdin; a story about a girl and a boy, both wanting more out of life, both trapped by social status, and controlled by money- or lack thereof, and both outcasts on opposite sides of the social spectrum. On one hand, you have society questioning the worth of the poor, and on the other, we have them questioning why money would make anyone miserable. Because from their perspective, money is everything, and if you have it, why are you complaining. But it wasn’t that Jasmine wanted more, it was just that she wanted something different, and she was condemned for that. As is the case for Aladdin: when you don’t have the money, you spend your entire life striving to be noticed, as both a human being and a respectable young man.

A not so Disney reference to elaborate on this would be Wuthering Heights. If you’ve ever read it then kudos, but if you haven’t, then basically the character of Heathcliff was taken in by a rich family, he was treated poorly by the older brother and everyone ridiculed him and blah blah blah. But after a few years, he runs away, only to return later on as a successful yet mysterious business man with money coming out of his hands, feet and kisses. And suddenly, he was accepted by society. Moral of the story, money money money.

Another example is Beauty and the Beast, and this specifically applies to the female youth of Saudi Arabia. Stripped down, this is a story about a beautiful girl being ridiculed for wanting an education instead of a marriage. “Why would you want knowledge when you can easily seduce any suitor you please and have him give you the world?” said the poor ignorant soul. That’s what they whisper when a girl is lucky enough to get what she wants; when she’s lucky enough to leave this place. Moral of this story, beauty is a substitute for education. And if you’re one of those few who look past that, and if you’re in the even fewer who are denied that, then I’m sorry for your life.

Ignorance is what binds us to our shiny strappy heals and away from any window, razor, or prescription pill bottle, and anything else just shows you how strong you really are.

Rapunzel, also in Saudi Arabia. Basically, she’s a girl trapped in her house, given everything she wants and whatever she needs, told it was all done for her protection. The world cannot be trusted, they say. You’re constantly being told that you’re special, and then on one fine April morning, you realize that it’s nothing but a lie; a lie to keep you sedated and away from thought, because thought is always suspect, thought is not to be trusted, and thought leads to things like the truth, which is bad, very very bad.

So, it begs the question, where exactly is the lies, the fiction, and the silliness? People only see what they see. There isn't more to any story, there is no other side.

Ponderings.

We judge to cover up our own insecurities
I can see right through your words
Beyond the superficial and straight to your fears
So intangible yet so visible
Those walls are useless against these eyes
Because i refuse to judge
So i became perhaps not pure like white
But crystal clear

We smile about the past when we are seeking escape from the present
We smile about the future when we believe in the present
We smile about the present when the rest is forgotten
There is no past present or future
The past is gone
The present is past
The future is present

True emotional joy becomes physical
Happiness comes and a smile is formed
Hate comes and a war is begun
The world appears only in the way we choose to view it
It can be the world of love or the world of hate
Or it can be grey
Grey skies, grey days, grey nights
Money may not be everything
But at least you can afford to add some colour to your life

Life doesn’t make sense
That is the only way for it to make sense
There is no logical explanation for everything
The sooner this is realised the better
Someone once said,” My concern is not that you have failed
But rather whether you are content with your failure”
But what happens when you become satisfied with failure?
When that which you most feared becomes your only companion?
Will failure treat you right?

Concrete Loop

Why do you get up in the morning?
Do you wake up and think you have no choice but to work
And fight in the rat race of corporate ladder climbing

Why are you going to school?
Struggle with grades so other people access your intelligence

What is your obsession with the media?
You cant have it so you pretend to adore it
And then channel your hatred for the people right in front of you

When did the word of a policeman count more than yours
Or the verdict of a judge
No one fights the power anymore clearly
Because my innocence is reliant on a jury of my peers, not likely
Take my body in cuffs but free my soul to wander
The earth is mine and yours, dont kill it with lust

Are into myth or fact? What is the difference?
Ever feel like your existence is insignificant
The day you get shot
Will someone rise and kill your killer without question
A well lived life is in your head
Power is a figment of greed
The leader is only as powerful the people under him
Don't empower the evil within you to a point of no return
I see my friends and parents walk around always angry at the littlest things
They have all put their emotions on edge
I used to be sad for no real reason
The quest for happiness is really just a quest for money
Don't deceive yourself to believe other wise
The fact that you are reading this proves my point

For those of us living a life created by other's sweat
Be very careful because even the life you live in borrowed
Tomorrow is just as powerful as tonight

In a world of so much uncertainty, moronic
Some of us still go to bed with plans, idiotic

I was just back at my village
For those who dont know what is. It is not mine. I'd like to think I am a part.
Let's just say it is considered archaic and tribal by the 21st century
It's an island with no drivable roads, electricity or flowing clean water
But people live to be over 75 years old
So what if I dont drive a car or speak your English
The construct of your norm is void of true fact
You live a life of dictation with knowledge
Ask yourself how your language was created
Why you think up is up and down is down
YOU WERE TOLD BY SOMEONE BEFORE YOU, WHO WAS TOLD THE SAME
Don't be caught in a cycle and die struggling in it
Sure when in Rome do as the Romans do
But be sure to remember you will be judged as one
Putting yourself in the system puts you at risk, especially when you expose yourself
Living a ''simple life'' is really worth something
You can still have thoughts and views
Ghandi lived a simple life and still made changes
MLK was not a man of great wealth to speak his might
Many more examples live on and have passed away

Living above your means in your demise
Wanting a life you cant have is your defeat
What is wrong with little, it's enough for most

STOP your obsession with the media
Musicians and actors are paid to deceive you
It's not a job anymore, its a cargo cult
Amassing your health for their joy and inner pain

In this post I am not wearing clothes for a reason
When it comes down to it, I am a nude naive human
Putting on a like-able facade
Wake up and smell the propaganda
Laced in your daily nutrition
Ground up in your thoughts, fine powder
Don't overdose, pupils dilated

Are you under a spotlight gnashing your teeth
Singing karaoke when you have no real talent
Smiling and laughing to hide your shame
Crying with pain, under bloody drops of rain

I cant really talk if I still live with my computer
But to truly change I must break free
That day is coming, I shall get my freedom
Are you free? Are you questioning?
Own your freedom to doubt.

Shontelle - Perfect Nightmare

And then she woke up and screamed.

Glimpse Tomorrow.

History is largely told as a chronicle of great people doing great things. But, for most of us, life is not made up of big moments. It’s made up of small moments. And with every small choice, with every small decision, we are defining ourselves. Are we proud of ourselves, or are we disappointed by who we’ve become? Life rarely turns out the way that we plan. The unexpected happens, and it surprises us with new and exciting possibilities. But, sooner or later, reality hits you in the face.

My mother never imagined having to start over as a single mother with two grown kids, but, when the unimaginable happened, she adapted. She found strength. She moved on. And I hope when my life doesn’t go the way that I planned— which it certainly won’t— I can handle myself with the same grace and strength that my mother has taught me. She may not be an Olympic athlete or a world leader, but, my mom is definitely, my hero.

The representative from Jingle Town has the floor...

To paraphrase the great Jane Lynch, I’m nothing if not falsely arrogant. My mind is a wonderful place, and I tend to brag about that little aspect of my personality a bit too much- or some would say. Actually, those people are lying; I never brag, I just state the obvious. Is it my fault that I have been simultaneously cursed and blessed with a superior mind? No, so let’s continue.

But behind that air of confidence; that public façade, the veil-if you will, lies as always, an insecure little girl. Well, not little, but that’s a story for another day. Scratch that, I’ll never tell you that story. As a matter of fact, as we speak, I’m locking it away in a chest and hiding it in a scary attic. Anyway, that’s not really news to anyone. We all have our little fears and inhibitions, don’t we? We are a generation of broken people because we were allowed to speak. Because however insignificant, we had a voice. In retrospect, it seems as though that in an effort to silence said voice, it was answered with wishes of hope and promises of happiness and dreams being lived in the face of social adversity with belief as our only weapon and having faith in one’s self as a cigarette in your pocket.

But you see, my beliefs have made a pessimist out of me. Did I set the bar too high? Did I not get the memo? Because, apparently, me and a handful of people are living the lies of a promise, given to us by the people we thought wanted the world for us. But as it goes, the English dictionary needs an update on certain definitions, because by today’s standard, a promise is nothing but a blatant lie.

Moral of the story: I can fake anything I want to, from ambition to potential, because at the end of the day, nobody will ever get a chance to see it all play out. So by all means, smother me in promises and I'll shower you with, what's that you call it? Oh yeah- teenage angst.

The teenage years, let's hope.

The closer I get to the possibility, the further away the reality seems. I try to run, but people are holding me back. I try to break free, but the bruises on my arm tell the story of how that goes. No matter what I do, I'll always know that I'm wasting my life, my youth. I could have done, seen, and learned more. I could have been frowning less, and smiling more. I could have loved instead of hated. Happy could have been my default emotion as opposed to a rare occurrence. I know that I'll always look back and pity myself. Though, I do hope I know better when I leave adolescence and youth behind and brace a day where all this angst and hate goes away. I really do wish that, twenty years from now, I look back at this ol' blog of mine and see the words of an immature brat and not the truth.

Current State.

HAPPY NEW YEAR Blogsville!

I completely lost track of my blog, no surpise there.
Optimism is on vacation, and I'm fretfully awaiting his return. He promised he would write. He does. But not enough. Cynicism took it upon himself to operate in his stead barking out orders he never would have gotten away with previously. He's got everyone on a Melancholy Diet. Though they slip out of his vigilant eye occasionally, he makes sure they report to the ICU and are administered The Drug intravenously. His buddy Pessimism has returned from back east choking everyone with the foreign stench of his cigarettes. The halls are consequently dark and grey requiring gas masks to get through.
Hope sleeps twentythree hours a day. Ambition is bored and unmotivated scratching his new belly while he flips through unstimulating TV channels. Attempting to get an ounce of the tonne of work piled up on it's table.

Fate.

I believe in the little impossibilities. That you and I are listening to the same song. That we’re looking at the same moon. That I just missed you at the convenience store. I believe that one day the stars will align to defy the odds. I believe that I’ll be waiting in line to order a smoothie and hear that oh so familiar, yet so distant laugh. I believe that I’ll stop breathing, that the world will stop breathing, and a smile will paint itself across my face. I believe that at that moment, and only that moment, will I be overcome with disbelief.

It's raining.

It’s 22.54. I might be the only one, but I adore this weather. I could live it in it everyday. This sense of macabre just lulls in the air, weighing down all the clouds. And it threatens. For hours, minutes, it threatens to pour. Then it does; that first drop of rain, that unearthing of dust, the darkening of the pavement. It’s all beautiful. It’s so serene, like the world is connecting with you. And in the silence of everything, the raindrops cull your racing mind, your racing thoughts, your racing heart.

How high can a broken man cry.

I'm tired of making the best of what I have. I hate that I have a privileged life that people can use against me. I'm tired of feeling guilty about how and what I feel and having to justify it every goddamn second . I am physically sick in every literal sense of the word in seeing broken pieces of good people lying around the floor; constantly subjected to the feet of the ignorant, and for what? To further prove their superiority? Hey! We broke you. Now, we're gonna smother what's left of you into dust. We're gonna reduce your existence into nothing but specks of nothing to permeate the air for young dreamers. As if to say, this is what will become of you. This is a warning. But being the optimists that they are, that we were, they smell potential. They don't cough, they inhale. All that whiff of ambition was nothing but hope masked as a threat. The tragedy of reality disguised as a sweet scent of possibility. We were just cursed with seeing the good in things.

Is it wrong that I want something different? Not better, just different. From where I am sitting, it feels like a crime. They tell me I'm not thankful. They say that I'm selfish. The world doesn't revolve around you. Well let me tell you something, MY WORLD DOES. I'm allowed to want things that you don't approve of. I am entitled to my emotions as much as you are to your beliefs, to your logic, to whatever the fuck is in that sorry excuse of a skull.

One day all that dust is gonna gather and suffocate all that's left of the world; all who let their feet follow an empty voice, not bothering to look down at the broken pieces of hope they were stepping on.

Melancholia:

A heavy heart and a foggy mind, blurry eyes and weighed down lungs. In the shower, tears hit the ground with the same force as the dripping water, and your fake love. You stare as the drops hit your palm, expecting some sort of epiphany to reveal itself in the creases of your skin. Finding none, you avert your gaze towards the tiles waiting for some revelation to shout at you. But epiphanies don't come as they do in the stories. They don't appear just as you near rock bottom. They wait until the world beats you to a scintilla of your original self. They wait until you're all but gone. They wait, if they ever come at all, they wait forever.

------
this is nowhere near as good and coherent as it was in my head.

for a moment,

i was released from this corporeal vessel, and i was watching myself from afar. for but a moment, i questioned my reality, i questioned my existence. too fleeting for my mind to have processed it. i saw my hands and my screen, and i saw the letters on the keyboard, i saw white and orange and yellow, but none of it made sense to me. then i was back to reality, back inside my body, and that out of body experience -as we call it- was over. its remnants are still hanging over the clouds of my mind. like those foreign thoughts have evaporated and are now suspended in a mist at the roof of my cranium, waiting for a crack, so they can seep in again and carry me away with them. To you. If only you knew..
x

New Leaf. Old Leaf.

I decided that I'm not going to relive the past few days in my running memory. I won't absorb it. I won't believe it. I won't think past this summer, and when this summer is over, I won't think past the fall semester, and so on. I have a plan, a large plan. It resides in my head. The only people who know of it are the people who approve of it, the ones who would encourage me. Anyone who has the ability to actually stop me cold in my tracks and shed light on all the obstacles before me has no idea of it. They don't know how ambitious I really am. They don't know how big I want to get. They don't know how far I'm willing to go. Expecting to go. If I let their poisonous words infect my brain, I'll just collapse.

The only thing I have is my mind. It's my only refuge and my only escape. When I'm longing for something I can't get instantaneously, I get it for myself in the recesses of my imagination. When I want to spend a day on the beach, a book in my hand, a cold drink on the table, his warmth, I'll close my eyes and make it happen. When I wake up and yearn to look into…his eyes, I simply close my own. If I want to step out into the frigid rain of the city streets, by God, I'll do it. I won't shut out my thoughts because my thoughts are the sole reason I keep going. The possibility of everything in my head becoming a reality is my only reason for pressing on.

So, yes, I will shut out my brain, but only that one tiny part, that dark infectious hole that seeks to poison everything around it. Green with envy and marred with disgust, it takes pleasure in watching hope collapse.

And I refuse to let it prevail.

I can't.

I Dreamed a Dream - Glee.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame
...
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

Nowhere Else to Go.

I have so many thoughts jumping around in my head, but I can't write them down. None of them are particularly insightful or eloquent, they're simply things I would like jotted down. I feel like I don't have the time, although I've been at my laptop for the past two hours and will be for another hour, but there's just so much on my mind, it's all a-clutter.

In short, I love Rome. I honestly didn't think I'd love that city as much as I did. It's breathtaking, the people, the atmosphere, the food, the places. It's like a not-so-homey city – the people I encounter on a daily basis, come and go, I live in the vicinity they call a “vacation”, it's definitely not urban, but then everyone's so lovely and everything is so close. Everything about it. The mystery, the darkness, the grandeur of Colosseo, the enchanting little cafe’s, the cobblestone streets, its almost as if your in the presence of something truly…historical? Magical. And my words are failing me. But the life I lived there for less than two years is the life I want to live for the rest of my life. Ive been to 23 countries (and counting) in my 19 years on Planet Earth, its astounding the diverse cultures, history, traditions, customs and languages you come across. The people you meet. The minute, yet vast impact they make on your life. To be honest, I complain a lot but I would not change my life for anything. I just happen to be another fortunate ungrateful being but, hey. We’re all allowed our monthly rant quota. :)

I didn’t fall in love with Sydney when I saw it the way I did with Rome, I just might be rethinking my life plan.

Amidst the Greenery.

It physically pains me to see the world rushing past me while I stand there frozen. And it's not a fear, knees buckling induced type of inaction, it's just that I can't. I'm glued. I'm stuck. I've stared into the eyes of truth and it's turned me to stone. My fingers are haunted with the memory of movement, the sensation of blood flowing through their veins. My arms recall the excitement of goosebumps. My hardened heart tries to remember what it felt like to beat, what it felt like to quicken with anticipation, with fear. My eyes recall tears, my mouth craves moisture, my tongue longs for a taste of salt. The kisses of wind are wasted on my numb body, the whispers of trees fall on blind ears. Laughter fractures my stone, painting jealousy in its everlasting cracks. I try to smile, but the corners of my lips split and break until I'm left with nothing more than a wretched scowl. And there it is, my stone edifice, my testament to my wasted loyalty. There stands my failure. There stands my lost hopes and dreams. There stands everything I would have fallen for.

Verbal Constipation

You know when you have so much to say and so much to write, then you go and write it down, and you stop less than a paragraph in? There's still so many unwritten words, but to add anything would just be redundant because you've described everything fully; you're just in that state of mind where you think it's not perfect because you're the author, and only you know how it completely feels, and your chest doesn't feel light enough yet? And then you try to articulate everything into words. You try to make sense of it all, but then it either sounds contrived or superfluous. Or it comes out sounding like some cheesy metaphor and you erase it, and it's short again, and seemingly incomplete. I know it's quality and not quantity, but the quality simply doesn't seem up to par.

This post ends here because of the aforementioned points.

Soliloquy

I often found myself wishing for a reason for heartbreak. Wishing for someone that I loved so much, there was actually a reason for me to have some form of fluctuation in this stagnant heart of mine. But they say be careful what you wish for, and I usually am, but not this time. In the dark of the night, my jaded mind on the pillow, I come to the realization that I am heartbroken. This weary muscle in my chest is chipped and faded, weary and unmotivated. I do have a reason. Just not the reason I wanted.