I feel easily exhausted lately. Bleak. Dull. I can pretty much summed up more adjectives to describe it, none in a positive tone.
Sometimes I wish I could just turn myself inside out, wash it clean, put it under the sunlight for a merry good time of drying up, so I can be something again. Something other than this.
Black with soot and dark with anger I cannot decipher.
Rains. It always rains here.
I used to not mind the grey. It brought light to things that usually people don't pay attention to. To things I usually don't pay attention to.
Like the color of your socks. The golden gleam on the wristwatch my grandfather gave me when I was 12. How light blonde Trey is, and how her olive skin is flawless and is actually glowing. Which makes me jealous. Hannah's boots show it's outstanding quality underneath the drizzle.
I used to not mind the grey. It accentuates the warmth in the smallest places. Like the corner between your neck and left shoulder. The faint beat of your heart behind your left earlobe.
When it rains, strangely, I seem to unable to remember what it's like when it's not raining. How does it sound like, smells like, looks like. The grey puts a heavy blanket to my senses and memory. It is now. Now and no other time.
Now when it rains time stops still while everyone else is running. Running to avoid the rain.
I think I shall stay and try to remember how once I used to not mind the grey.
Wednesday is Wotan, or Odin's day.
Somehow something related to knowledge or enlightenment often happened to me on Wednesdays compared to the other days of the week.
Friday is my favorite day. It's the shortest longest day before weekend. The strange paradox of this day is exhilarating.
I hate Saturdays because usually I feel so alone.
Sundays are worse because suddenly the weekend is going to be over and a new week will start.
Monday is by now a monster, fed by so many bad thinking of Oh-How-I-Hate-Mondays.
Tuesday, I think, has that middle-child syndrome. Of being there but not really being there. Never really gets noticed by people who fusses more on Monday and Saturday and Sunday.
Thursday is the strong and silent type, because people who pretend to be procrastinator, but actually knows a great deal more of better, will actually run errands on Thursdays. Because Thursday is Thor's day. You can almost always count on Thor.
"So what do we do now?" You asked as we sat feet on thighs underneath the kitchen table.
I think I will bring Tuesday a bowl of soup, sit with her and talk about what people should think about the months of the year.
No sleep over was your original rule, but you eventually let me stay every once in a while. I brought along the copy of Joyce's Ulysses, taken from R's bookshelf months ago, the copy I had brought everywhere in hope that reading it will make me understand R better. You know this. I still had not managed to go far reading it. Page fifteen. Page fifteen after more than eight months. You never let me read the book in your bed. It was as if you were jealous.
"Have you gained your sovereignty?" You suddenly asked. Oh that. The original plan that went with your original rule. I still kept it and brought it around and about. Secured within my mind. A bit just like the Ulysses copy. It didn't go far either. Just like my progress with Joyce.
"Tell me what you did during the weekend," was actually my reply.
"I had to run some errands, the weekend stuffs."
Yes, your weekend stuffs. Which basically, generally, splitting your energy into more than five things going on at once. I thought of this with pity instead of admiringly. These five lives you're living in, almost dropped the "v" out of it I did. "V" just like I said to you once, "for vaginas. Plural." And you told me it was unfair and made you almost hate me that instance.
You fall under the category of BS in my book. But I never told you this. I was reading Ulysses in your bed. The map to the stars. The key to the heart of R. And you knew what it was. And you immediately took action to it as you usually were. A coup d'etat.
I guessed you as I, had already known the answers, deep, deep inside. I will never be one of your multiple lives. You will never be included in my navigational purposes. Yes, I have gained it, the sovereignty. In the oddest way and at the oddest place. As you shifted your focus unto pleasure, started yet another of your game of hunt the hidden treasure, I turned the light off. We never needed maps in this terrain.
The Drugs Don't Work, I Want to See Your Face Again
I wonder what all these new drugs do. I guess to have no more fears. --- Rufus Wainwright
Chemicals stopped me from despairing. When I was weak, it gave me the illusion that everything is amendable. I could just leisurely glided on like nothing happened. A short cut for the dreaded dark long tunnel.
But, chemicals stopped me from feeling. It took me nearly half a year to regain what I lost; a speck of warm sunlight in a cold cloudy day. Something so taken for granted, so minuscule for other perhaps, but to me it's more than I could afford.
Now. Now I am plainly scared shitless. It's not only the dreaded long dark tunnel, but also the junctions within it. An endless maze to God knows where. You know how bad my eyes get in the dark.
Can I please hold your hand this time, so as not to get lost?
This morning was the second morning I woke up with a bitter taste left on my lips The dreams tailing up my last two dawns were not the best of kind I was chased up, chased down, once by zombies, once by thieves and robbers, present in both the strong urge to protect the invaluables: first it was my life, second it was an unidentified object of insurmountable preciousness But it was last night I was betrayed
On my way to work, not lulled by the dim noise of traffic, in the back of my head was a riot of questions Why these dreams Why now of the time of the year Why now of the time of my life Why these dreams
Dreams are often quite funny things to explore, implore, best and worse made a subject out of your usual behavior
What are men without their dreams? One afternoon few years ago I watched my pets napped and suddenly doubted the privilege of dreams for men alone Yet from experience, dreams offer a hefty explanations for things which left lurking in the darkest part of the mind
My mind
I had often been accused of losing it, or for not having any
It failed to rain despite of the dark hanging in the East sky. Naturally it was hard hot, humid, and disappointing. A wisp of rain did come later in the afternoon, but it went after a minute, and we were already tangled in the awkward parts of the bed to even notice or even wanting to celebrate. The moment we stirred to catch a droplet of the rain, it had subdued and left us, again hot, humid, disappointed and exhausted.
Deciding to sit at the back porch, there was a silent agreement not to complain about the stalled rain and our wasted effort. Our bare skin rubbed next to each other in the minimal comfort of the old cheese-holed couch. There was wind. It forced sleep as it caressed the eyelids. The dogs resorted to the same old spot they always laid on. My head was very light.
Everything in the house is relatively old. The kitchen is relatively new but the appliances set about and in it were old. The garden is relatively new, but the grass already grew tired, dying. The dogs had grown a habit of digging the earth in the flowerbed without apparent reasons. The earth is never new, the digging is also ancient.
I’m relatively new. I hadn’t spent enough time in the house to make me no longer new.
We were new. This is undisputable.
We had the silent equivalent of a loud row at dawn because he failed to show up at the required time, and when he did show up he was drunk, although not drunk enough to laugh about it. He blamed me not calling. I blamed him for not listening. We made up before the sun came up.
“Do you ever get jealous? When it comes to me, I mean.”
“Jealousy wastes my time. I have enough to think about right now, I don’t need to add it up with jealousy.” He didn’t even stop to contemplate. I didn’t pause to analyze this. But…
Suddenly I felt really old. His moves were old. I felt we really are old enough, old enough for almost anything. Of course, I didn’t say what’s in my mind. He didn’t say anything either.
We got up and left the house under the watch of the dogs for our dose of air-conditioned room with decent coffee. Along the way I stared jealously at our hands not holding. In my head I can hear myself saying, “Do you think it’s because I’m not young enough for you?”
Ethan and I had an old history of masochism. We enjoyed tortures. Nothing physical, but it was as bad.
He often would accidentally slip his tongue and told me he went out with this bitch I hated. He spent the weekend with her after we had silly fights, which in frequent exceeded the mortality rate in a third world countries. As a retaliation I would let a guy, whom I knew he considered as rival and happened to be somewhat a close friend of mine, to take me out on a sort of a date. The sort of date you have unpretentiously with your best friends, but to a place where the whole school can see, so he would definitely hear about it.
It was also the endless exchange of verbal abuses that went on for the two years we had this co-depending and abusive relationship, if it could be called a relationship. At my senior year I left home for that vacation, and whatever that was, it was ended.
I could say I ended it. By never returning his calls nor messages. It was never really official. He just kind of ignored me back. This competition thing with him. And "we" just faded away.
And then, one evening, two weeks ago, I saw Ethan again for the first time after 12 years. He's older. Still very good looking. It was in a function. People were crowding the small hall. And my eyes found him just like decades ago, the school dance in the gym.
He had with him this time, an arm candy; skinny, unblemished skin, long silky straight hair, bright inhuman smile.
