this is not the only story you can tell
2/2/2007 at 8:49 AM
this pain won't last forever.
On January 1, 2007:
With the company of a couple of unoccupied plastic swings (one of which was broken), I did the traditional, fastidious pre-New Year brooding and pondering and "resolving" and staring at the expanse of dark blue that was pierced by gold trails of pyrotechnics every once in a while. Soon it proved to be rather vapid and I diverted my attention elsewhere. The chains of the swings beside me groaned when the wind pushed them.
I liked the way the park was empty when I got there, and how a few minutes later, little groups of people or a person would go there for the same reason I did. Some would sit on the other set of swings, some would sit on the bench, or lie on the slide, some hunted for fireworks in the sky. I thought of starting up a conversation with one nearby who had his gaze at me for quite a while, but I just held it until he turned away. I found it funny that at any one time, at least one person was looking down into a glowing rectangle white screen. Everyone was trying to send something to someone, including me. This caused major air traffic and if the message was sent, it would only get there some six hours later. This happens around the whole world, every Christmas and New Year. Everyone tries to get to someone else, be it a "Happy New Year!" or something much more than that, I would like to know how many people spend about an hour composing a single message to another person, trying to suitcase everything into 160 characters. It's hard, I've tried it.
Yet, imagine the things all these people weren't saying, besides their stories and the stories within their stories, a "Happy New Year" could mean Hi I still think of you, I miss you, I would love to hug you for a very long period of time, until it turns blasé or until every detail of this emphatic event the friction of the cloth the breathing in and out the smells the ruffling of hair - is indelible in my head and will enable me to recreate in dreams flawlessly. I want to talk to you would you like to go out for coffee some time my treat, and as much as I want to talk to you I will just stare down at the brown of my coffee, for fear my talking might give away I am in love with you instead of I love you why do people fail to distinguish the two?
I was called to go back home and I watched groups of stars move towards and past each other, I had never seen that before until then and it was rather marvellous.
---
If I died I'd like to be able to open my e-mail inbox, thanks. Just to see. I remember a similar question in one of the letters in my letter box, something like, "what happens to emails when its owner dies?" given that the account did not have an inactivity limit. Here is another answer.
When I was doing research for my paper on adolescent depression, I landed myself on a page in which published was a love letter to someone who had taken his own life. It was beautifully written and it crumpled me.
(Excerpts in italics from http://www.mental-health-matters.com/articles/article.php?artID=443)
If. What a useless word! A ticket to an eternal preoccupation with the past - and with how it could have been. It was the way it was. It is the way it is. And that is that. We make the choices we have to make. Yes, we may look back and realize how wrong or foolish we were to have taken the route we did, but the fact remains we can only make today's choices with today's information, wisdom, and providence. I realize all this now - but heaven alone knows how I have stretched the tape of my mind's eye, rewinding and re-playing those last few conversations, imagining what would have happened if...
Your e-mail inbox will be the end of imagining. In here would be the stories they don't tell. In here would be an epic of What Ifs. People would pour out every possibility. What was imbedded in other stories would stand here, stripped. If my memory serves me correctly, Mr. Erdogan had said something (this is paraphrased) like "I like you means I will write the possibility of us everywhere." Stripped, but unseen. They would tell you how they watched you breathe, watched the wind in your hair, how many laughs you had, the way the morning light beautifully brought out the contours of your face.
It has been ten years since you made the split-second decision that was to change the world. It certainly changed mine. For ten years I have stood mummy-like in the centre of a spiral of questions that bounced back off the stars to return unanswered, just the same questions ringing ever louder in my ears.
They would ask questions, they would ask themselves, conducting monologues in front of you. Why didn't I tell you earlier? Maybe, at one point, they would ask you, almost blame you. Why had you given such security that we would have all the time in the world? But this monologue would help them realize that if anyone should be blamed, it would be them. They thought it could wait. It did, for a while, and during that while they made plans, so many plans, they would tell you these plans. Plans are everything, plans are everyone's future. They would tell you You were in my plans, you know.
You would wonder why everything you chased after, the sense of importance you were looking for, only showed itself to you posthumously.
That girl on MySpace, Anna, I still check her page from time to time and it always breaks my heart. They tell her about their day, how they like the way the song on her profile still plays, how MySpace is so fucked up that it shows her status as Online, and how they wish it wouldn't do that. They tell her how much she is loved and missed and how certain things and places remind them of her. She had given so much to all these people, instilling herself in their lives and everything else around them. In a perfect world people would not die, not like this, they would not change lives this way.
On January 1, 2007:
With the company of a couple of unoccupied plastic swings (one of which was broken), I did the traditional, fastidious pre-New Year brooding and pondering and "resolving" and staring at the expanse of dark blue that was pierced by gold trails of pyrotechnics every once in a while. Soon it proved to be rather vapid and I diverted my attention elsewhere. The chains of the swings beside me groaned when the wind pushed them.
I liked the way the park was empty when I got there, and how a few minutes later, little groups of people or a person would go there for the same reason I did. Some would sit on the other set of swings, some would sit on the bench, or lie on the slide, some hunted for fireworks in the sky. I thought of starting up a conversation with one nearby who had his gaze at me for quite a while, but I just held it until he turned away. I found it funny that at any one time, at least one person was looking down into a glowing rectangle white screen. Everyone was trying to send something to someone, including me. This caused major air traffic and if the message was sent, it would only get there some six hours later. This happens around the whole world, every Christmas and New Year. Everyone tries to get to someone else, be it a "Happy New Year!" or something much more than that, I would like to know how many people spend about an hour composing a single message to another person, trying to suitcase everything into 160 characters. It's hard, I've tried it.
Yet, imagine the things all these people weren't saying, besides their stories and the stories within their stories, a "Happy New Year" could mean Hi I still think of you, I miss you, I would love to hug you for a very long period of time, until it turns blasé or until every detail of this emphatic event the friction of the cloth the breathing in and out the smells the ruffling of hair - is indelible in my head and will enable me to recreate in dreams flawlessly. I want to talk to you would you like to go out for coffee some time my treat, and as much as I want to talk to you I will just stare down at the brown of my coffee, for fear my talking might give away I am in love with you instead of I love you why do people fail to distinguish the two?
I was called to go back home and I watched groups of stars move towards and past each other, I had never seen that before until then and it was rather marvellous.
---
If I died I'd like to be able to open my e-mail inbox, thanks. Just to see. I remember a similar question in one of the letters in my letter box, something like, "what happens to emails when its owner dies?" given that the account did not have an inactivity limit. Here is another answer.
When I was doing research for my paper on adolescent depression, I landed myself on a page in which published was a love letter to someone who had taken his own life. It was beautifully written and it crumpled me.
(Excerpts in italics from http://www.mental-health-matters.com/articles/article.php?artID=443)
If. What a useless word! A ticket to an eternal preoccupation with the past - and with how it could have been. It was the way it was. It is the way it is. And that is that. We make the choices we have to make. Yes, we may look back and realize how wrong or foolish we were to have taken the route we did, but the fact remains we can only make today's choices with today's information, wisdom, and providence. I realize all this now - but heaven alone knows how I have stretched the tape of my mind's eye, rewinding and re-playing those last few conversations, imagining what would have happened if...
Your e-mail inbox will be the end of imagining. In here would be the stories they don't tell. In here would be an epic of What Ifs. People would pour out every possibility. What was imbedded in other stories would stand here, stripped. If my memory serves me correctly, Mr. Erdogan had said something (this is paraphrased) like "I like you means I will write the possibility of us everywhere." Stripped, but unseen. They would tell you how they watched you breathe, watched the wind in your hair, how many laughs you had, the way the morning light beautifully brought out the contours of your face.
It has been ten years since you made the split-second decision that was to change the world. It certainly changed mine. For ten years I have stood mummy-like in the centre of a spiral of questions that bounced back off the stars to return unanswered, just the same questions ringing ever louder in my ears.
They would ask questions, they would ask themselves, conducting monologues in front of you. Why didn't I tell you earlier? Maybe, at one point, they would ask you, almost blame you. Why had you given such security that we would have all the time in the world? But this monologue would help them realize that if anyone should be blamed, it would be them. They thought it could wait. It did, for a while, and during that while they made plans, so many plans, they would tell you these plans. Plans are everything, plans are everyone's future. They would tell you You were in my plans, you know.
You would wonder why everything you chased after, the sense of importance you were looking for, only showed itself to you posthumously.
That girl on MySpace, Anna, I still check her page from time to time and it always breaks my heart. They tell her about their day, how they like the way the song on her profile still plays, how MySpace is so fucked up that it shows her status as Online, and how they wish it wouldn't do that. They tell her how much she is loved and missed and how certain things and places remind them of her. She had given so much to all these people, instilling herself in their lives and everything else around them. In a perfect world people would not die, not like this, they would not change lives this way.
somedays aren't yours at all
1/8/2007 at 10:39 AM
they come and go
as if they're someone else's days
they come and leave you behind someone else's face
and it's harsher than yours
and colder than yours
Footprints. That's it. It's the footprints they leave behind as they walk out. Some leave footprints so immensely deep that when you run after them to try to lasso them back, you fall in and are left to wait. For Time to finally help you out of it. Then you see the light again, but in an abject, circumspective way. The pain from the fall does not cease, constantly insinuating you of its existence with sudden, jabs. Or its tiny voice that damns you into eternal introspection. It throbs in you, dully but surely, loud enough for only yourself, the only one who cares, to hear.
as if they're someone else's days
they come and leave you behind someone else's face
and it's harsher than yours
and colder than yours
Footprints. That's it. It's the footprints they leave behind as they walk out. Some leave footprints so immensely deep that when you run after them to try to lasso them back, you fall in and are left to wait. For Time to finally help you out of it. Then you see the light again, but in an abject, circumspective way. The pain from the fall does not cease, constantly insinuating you of its existence with sudden, jabs. Or its tiny voice that damns you into eternal introspection. It throbs in you, dully but surely, loud enough for only yourself, the only one who cares, to hear.
she can read, she can read
1/3/2007 at 9:04 AM
Just something from my online journal to salvage this page until I have more time to attend to it:
What is the one film you never get sick of? Anything new happening to you this year? Do you ever notice a person's eyelashes? Have you ever marvelled at the contrast between the green leaves of trees and the bright blue sky? Striped socks or polkadotted socks (I prefer striped ones, because polkadotted ones become ugly once circles are distorted by the contours of the foot)? Do you like massages? If you see a lot of hands for a long time, do they suddenly appear jelly and weird-shaped and downright creepy? Has a stranger ever asked if they could take your photo?
On crying
Weakness? Hardly. It means you are human. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on how you view life, but if you can read this then obviously you are human and we pathetic living creatures have to deal.
Feeling weird and different is not crying despite insane amount of upsetting happenings. Not that I am not upset about things that used to upset me, but now I just react differently and it's worse than just fucking crying my eyes out.
On Little Miss Sunshine
Adorable! Charming! I don't know whether to laugh or cry at it, it is a beautiful movie. Although, I felt that the lead wasn't very dominating. Little Olive who brought about the whole story by qualifying for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant did what was an inch far from a *t**p***s* (avoiding spoilers) for her performance was the big climax of the film, but other than that she was pretty much out of it. Dwayne stole the show, in my opinion. Dwayne the quiet and - when we find out later in the film - c*****l**d.
On karaoke singing/karaoke machines
Why was it even invented?
On writing
"So have you decided whether to take journalism in college? {sic}"
"Oh, sir, I decided on that a long time ago."
Liar!
On time/life management
I am Adrienne's pain in the ass procrastinating mechanism. For years I have successfully made her postpone and eventually eradicate the pathetic little plans she enumerates in this pathetic little space on the Internet. Right now, she has some serious penwork to do for her friends, her lousy way of justifying her existence, but I say, Look! A book to read! You can't work during the day, you have all night to do it, who needs sleep? Even though I see she has already written so much over here in her head, it's nuts, she is fucking pathetic, why does she even bother, really.
Oh, I must mention, my buddy in charge of the paranoia department next door does a beautiful job making her fiddle with her phone all day, debating in her head that she should Not send that text message because she is, in fact, an anti-social loser who can only communicate best non-verbally and deserves this slow tragic dissolving out of people's lives. He is also the brainchild of the brilliant "Your Side of the Court" - a short film that was released in the dream realm about five months ago. Fantastic work using just a tennis court and backs turned away (courtesy of memories). His rival couldn't outdo this one. Hope's been pretty much a silent, abandoned place these days, I pass by there a couple of times a week. You didn't hear it from me, but Paranoia is probably going to take over Rationality completely, everyone thinks so.
His motto? "Her reality is what I make it to be."
What is the one film you never get sick of? Anything new happening to you this year? Do you ever notice a person's eyelashes? Have you ever marvelled at the contrast between the green leaves of trees and the bright blue sky? Striped socks or polkadotted socks (I prefer striped ones, because polkadotted ones become ugly once circles are distorted by the contours of the foot)? Do you like massages? If you see a lot of hands for a long time, do they suddenly appear jelly and weird-shaped and downright creepy? Has a stranger ever asked if they could take your photo?
On crying
Weakness? Hardly. It means you are human. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on how you view life, but if you can read this then obviously you are human and we pathetic living creatures have to deal.
Feeling weird and different is not crying despite insane amount of upsetting happenings. Not that I am not upset about things that used to upset me, but now I just react differently and it's worse than just fucking crying my eyes out.
On Little Miss Sunshine
Adorable! Charming! I don't know whether to laugh or cry at it, it is a beautiful movie. Although, I felt that the lead wasn't very dominating. Little Olive who brought about the whole story by qualifying for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant did what was an inch far from a *t**p***s* (avoiding spoilers) for her performance was the big climax of the film, but other than that she was pretty much out of it. Dwayne stole the show, in my opinion. Dwayne the quiet and - when we find out later in the film - c*****l**d.
On karaoke singing/karaoke machines
Why was it even invented?
On writing
"So have you decided whether to take journalism in college? {sic}"
"Oh, sir, I decided on that a long time ago."
Liar!
On time/life management
I am Adrienne's pain in the ass procrastinating mechanism. For years I have successfully made her postpone and eventually eradicate the pathetic little plans she enumerates in this pathetic little space on the Internet. Right now, she has some serious penwork to do for her friends, her lousy way of justifying her existence, but I say, Look! A book to read! You can't work during the day, you have all night to do it, who needs sleep? Even though I see she has already written so much over here in her head, it's nuts, she is fucking pathetic, why does she even bother, really.
Oh, I must mention, my buddy in charge of the paranoia department next door does a beautiful job making her fiddle with her phone all day, debating in her head that she should Not send that text message because she is, in fact, an anti-social loser who can only communicate best non-verbally and deserves this slow tragic dissolving out of people's lives. He is also the brainchild of the brilliant "Your Side of the Court" - a short film that was released in the dream realm about five months ago. Fantastic work using just a tennis court and backs turned away (courtesy of memories). His rival couldn't outdo this one. Hope's been pretty much a silent, abandoned place these days, I pass by there a couple of times a week. You didn't hear it from me, but Paranoia is probably going to take over Rationality completely, everyone thinks so.
His motto? "Her reality is what I make it to be."