Untitled (IV)

Whenever I notice a man wearing a suit while holding what seems to be a professional camera, I immediately imagine, as in a kind of Pavlovian reflex, a wedding. Perhaps it’s the weekend and there’s nobody walking on the sidewalk except for this man. Every walker arrests my eye. I watch them mechanically, from the corner of my eye as if acknowledging their presence only half-way. This semi-conscious watching overlaps the busy rattling of my thoughts. I’m unsure if I enjoy the aggressive air conditioning spreading an obviously unnatural breeze inside the bus. The bus reaches my destination and I get ready to get off. As I get up from my chair, an arrow of cold pierces through every limb of my body making me reluctant to that movement. As I walk out of the bus, I feel pushed inside an asphyxiating heat whirl. The hothouse outside slowly penetrates my temporarily frozen body and the sensation becomes more bearable as I get used to the heat. My mind was still frozen, bearing the disturbing memory of the previous cold space.

It was the wrong bus. I stationed myself in the vicinity of the station with my legs crossed and gazed in the direction from which my bus was supposed to come. In those moments of tiresome expectation, you almost believe that if you stare hard enough that will suffice to make that bus appear. Instead, a tense tediousness installs itself and time suddenly dilates itself allowing any waiting mind to scrutinize the horizon line with a critical. I thought the bus was just around the corner. Instead, a beefy body emerges from the much gazed at street corner. The boy was wearing his large pants and California-style hat. His outfit sufficed to make that statement he certainly had in mind.

“Here, you can sit down, if you want to” he said.

As tempting as that sounded, I had to decline.

“No, thanks, it’s making my skirt crease.”

“You don’t happen to have an iron, do you?” he asked me.

“Excuse me?”

In the meantime, my bus had arrived. My interaction with his New York attitude was joyously drawing to an end.

“My bus is here. I have to go.”, I said.

“Nice talking to you. Good luck with your creases!” he added as a coronation of our short-lived conversation.

Untitled (III)

           Where exactly was she taking conversation I did not know, but Madeleine used sinuous ways to make that spark in her thoughts pop out. I waited patiently for the sound of that pop. I knew it had to be something. The pure theory of our conversation as well as the raw reality that clung to it captivated me. I’d easily get the hang of it. Maybe that’s why we got along so well.

“Now you see those two oranges sitting on the table. Let’s pretend there’s this molecule somewhere in the outer space. And we don’t know about it yet.”

“Ok. That’s a pretty strong possibility”, I added.

“And also, that maybe by the time we get to acknowledge it, it will have moved here, here and there. But we’ll only know it existed here, at the point where we found out it existed.”

“And all the other points in which it existed are a collection of missed molecules. Or

maybe just missed opportunities. “

“Exactly. We’re blinded by our physical and mental limitations”, said Madeleine.

“That’s what Plato used to say when he tried to explain that we’re citizens of the cave. Light, dark, knowledge - all illusions, prisoners on the walls of the inescapable cave.” I  said as I reminisced some of the stuff that caught my attention during my high school philosophy class.

“Yes, I get your drift. But think about this as well. Macroscopic and microscopic level. You know the pattern in which planets align to?” Madeleine liked to branch off the conversation to unsuspected but nonetheless captivating areas.

“Yes.”

“And then this pattern is reflected at the microscopic level.” At this point, I wondering where she was taking it.

“What about humans? Where do we fall? Who holds the pattern?”

“We should as well. Humans have reason and emotionality. What you described before was mineral. No reason there.”

“That’s what I wanted to touch”, said Madeleine. “Is there one? And what is the pattern  that connects humans exactly?”

I hesitated for a moment, resting my chin on the back of my hand . Then, I said:

“Reason. It has to be reason. That’s it. Reason is the glue or, in another world, reason is the orbit on which we gravitate around each other. Or love..”

        I caught a subtle twitch on Madeleine’s face. She looked at me, then sideways as if searching for an answer in the space that surrounded her. This sight appalled me as the thought that answers float around us freely wearing fine disguises that only the sharpest of minds could unveil at the cost of a fleeting moment’s whim. 

    As she looked back at me, her composure changed and the light on her face blatantly shouted “Evrika!”.

“Um, I was trying to think”, she said.  Yes, I found it.”

“What exactly?”

“Anthroposcopic. That’s the human level.”

Eyebrows rose independently of my will, but she was right.

“It’s yours. You coined the term. You know, your theory about macro reflected into micro reminds me of something else. I think it all bleeds into Leibniz’s theory on the harmony of spheres. He said that there’s a sort of music between spheres that connects everything. I think there is. Nature speaks of it in small bits every day.”

Untitled (II)

    A royal air floated about the wedding we both attended. An English-looking lady just enhanced the feeling. In many ways, she bore a striking resemblance to the Queen. But a rather human Queen, one that lets feelings and warmth drip when the occasion calls for it. She was wearing a pretty exquisite pair of earrings. The lively spark in her earrings mirrored the one that lived within. We happened to share a table that evening. The sympathy I nurtured for the lady helped me grow the courage to ask her if she had any English roots. She was from London. Her husband told me how she came to America as a nanny and then they met so she stayed. They had been married for 52 years. Beautiful, I told them.

  "Are you English as well?" she asked out of sympathy, I think.

  "Um, no I'm not", I answered with a slight touch of embarrassment.  

     I think my freckles made a pretty obvious statement that I had little to do with the stock of the Angles. However, deep inside I wanted to. English imperialism exerted an immense seductive power over me. It began long ago, I don't believe I recall its early origins. There were times when the spirit of England dwelled in my university city more than it did in England itself. Or perhaps it was the faultless Victorian air I decided to embroider my vision of England with, a vision in which manners and a sharp delicacy of feelings didn't shatter the quality of words before they left their shell. Against all odds, life offered endless opportunities for occurrences of the kind. I found myself nurturing feelings of slight regret for the way modern times presented themselves, but my grain-like sentiment weighed close to nothing in a sea of I what I perceived as mainly blunt remarks. Granted, some of the old spirit had survived, but its shine was largely waning under the pressure of some sort of invisible pressure. I must confess I wasn't extraordinarily thrilled with the perspective. On many occasions, I was bruised by the coarse edge of a phrase, but the nonchalance of the speaker eased the moment.

Untitled (I)

The flight went smoothly according to most passengers and myself as well. Entertained by Natasha Bedingfield's "Take Me Away", I tried to tune into the state of mind of a regular traveler. I was so self-conscious that it almost hurt. My palms caught a slight film of sweat that I tried to do away with using the complimentary towelette I was offered. It was my first flight and my heart pounded with excitement at the thought that at the end of this trip New York will be there to say "hello". There's always something emotional about firsts. Excitement and nervousness dwelled inside of me in a strange mix, topped with the youthful confidence that I will make it all right in the big city. It was around four o'clock int he afternoon and I must have been flying for at least ten hours now. Outside the window, the island grow bigger and bigger like a fast-replicating cell. As we were approaching the land, a lead-cold ball was forming inside my stomach. I looked down through the window and it looked as if the largest map I've ever seen was stretched out  like a living giant in front of my eyes.  The view was majestic. When the landing began, the lead ball seemed to get bigger inside of me, but I somehow felt both relieved and anxious. Eyes closed, I told myself that I had to remember this moment because it was a first. So I tried to heighten the intensity of the moment by allowing every small bent, creak and gentle downward swing to slip into the cracks of my memory. I was into the habit of tucking in certain memories like you tuck a baby to sleep, letting them nestle comfortably enough to preserve a certain layer of security. Of course, the process is selective and subject to whimsicality, but that's precisely what sets it apart from other memory functions. 

Once landed, I went through the usual formalities of customs and picked up my baggage. I thought it all went well and that I was finding my way pretty well until the thought of being alone in the big city stared me in the eye with a cold insistence. I looked around and saw groups of people talking. I passed them by and I overheard someone say "Delaware". That's where I was going too. The next thing I know, I was riding a cab to Manhattan with a rattling Polish lady and a Canadian boy. The lady had come to America to help her daughter out with her new-born baby. She was doing a wonderful display of that Slavic quick temper when things would go against her desire. At that point, that's precisely where they were going. She had little reserve in displaying her dislike for America; and for her daughter's scandalous decision to live in the country aforementioned. This discontent seemed to build up as she mentioned her daughter's marriage to a Portuguese. Somehow, the Portuguese thing seemed to set her off even more. The Canadian boy and I were just listening. He must have been twenty-four or twenty-five, with soft, almost feminine features, accentuated by a fine pair of glasses that gave him a weirdly sweet nerdy air. He started chatting with the cab driver. There was something soothing and charming about the way he let words come out of his mouth that stood out against the Polish lady's coarse mannerism. In the meantime, I kept quiet and enjoyed the moment, trying to absorb the novelty of the scenery through every pore of my skin. The black leather of the cab seats kept us still in a hot clasp that merged with the clammy Manhattan air. In the distance, the big city lurked growing bigger, like an approaching beehive teeming with life. We crossed a wide bridge bordered by perfectly parallel yellow slender tubes hovering over our heads as if someone had fast-forwarded a silent motion picture. New York loved yellow and speed; not particularly in this order, but the feeling was there. The engine stopped, interrupting my late afternoon daydreaming. I was out of the cab, onto the sidewalk with the Canadian boy. The noisy Polish lady had already met her daughter and off she went. She parted with us leaving behind a sharp "Goodbye!".

The heart of Manhattan. I looked around and I couldn't help feeling small against that crowded conglomerate of tall buildings and the hallucinating buzz it oozed. New York had an impressive capacity of captivating you with the sharpness of the present moment that I must confess, was fairly new to me. Suddenly, the skyscrapers' windows were myriads of eyes casting a scrutinizing gaze over every move I made, but most importantly, every thought I let slip through my mind. I secretly hoped Big Brother wasn't watching. 

That Spark

Photo retrieved @
http://www.sparkthefilm.com/images/poster_600.jpg

The music box. There's one inside that sings and dances when I peep within. When I dare to allow some whimsical change in nature put a smile on my face. Something inside grows wings, tries to fly but it can't. It's trapped inside, but at the same time isn't, as it moves me and with me. It's a beautiful paradox I've stored for a long time, kept it there silently, rather unknowingly than silently. I've let it grow and grow like a fairy tale stock just recently. And to my surprise, good things happen to those who wait and...toil. Trapped in the web of my own logic, I go back to some simple thinking. I take a bow, put on the clothes of meekness and re-evaluate the self. That self that I've claimed to have known for a fair amount of time, only to realize how little do I know about sparks that occasionally surge to signal that there is something deep down that my busy mind and blind heart haven't taken the time to acknowledge. It's a bitter-sweet feeling to find a long-forgotten spark, a spark that brings back in a flash, the memory of something one loved. That's the sweet feel. But when one piles up lack of time, preconceived ideas, others' ideas and a thick layer of time, that spark is covered up under the weight of so many no's. But what a relief is it when by some serendipitous twist of the faith it shines again. It's the spark of some liking, of an old-beaten path that leads to much desired sense that there is something inherently good that one can do, despite its perfectly human flaws. It's the voice of a calling. But how do you explain when you love something or someone?You don't. If Maurice Sendak doesn't I probably shouldn't either.

Little Red Riding Hood Revisited

Photo retrieved @
fineartamerica.com

We seem to be constantly haunted by fairy tales. They’re old, dusty, witty but not at all rusty. We all had an encounter with them at some point, we passed them by and thought they would be just another literary memory. But they are back. Red Riding Hood and others resurged in modern suits. If it suits them well or not, it’s not for me to judge, I just acknowledge their subtle arrival. Wanda Gag’s take on the red-capped girl takes the reader into the crude whirling reality of an urban nightmare. The home is no longer a safe haven for the child, but the center of her utmost unhappiness. Emotional and sexual abuse is what Gag pictures in her “Wolf”. Additionally, she deconstructs a couple of myths associated with fairy tales. She depolarizes characters, and in doing so, we have a sense that human complexity is being honored at a higher extent than the rather simplistic view that fairy tales usually adopt when filtering characters through the tight good/evil dichotomy. However, we do have a clear sense of the pure evil figure, the abusing “wolf”. The urban Red Riding Hood is now at a watershed: she needs to decide her own faith. Unlike Perrault's passive feminine figure, the renewed Riding Hood asserts herself through reason, processing and the ability to make a decision that will result into escape from the “evil”. Grimm’s hunter is not there to rescue her, let alone the prince whose charm doesn't suffice to make him appear. Whatever happened to both of them, the reader is left adrift. An entire mythology of the golden age fairy tale is left behind, and rightfully so. 

Wanda Gag abandons a long held tradition of the fairy tale narrative only to follow the same path that Perrault first took when he collected the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Gag may not be addressing the French aristocrats of the 19^th century, but she is essentially faithful to the function of the text, that is appealing to the audience through an honest reflection of the contemporary social background. She doesn't punish Red Hood like Perrault did, but she offers her redemption. Not only is Red Hood rescued, but she comes to a safe shore through her own doing, which to the patriarchal ear of Perrault would have been a pretty jarring idea. Gag celebrates the female hero and in doing so, a feminist undertone floats around the text, leading the audience to both a nightmare tale, but also a redemption tale that empowers the woman. 

Language on the Flipside

         The process is dainty, painful and sprinkled with joys and sorrows. It sounds awfully a lot like a marriage, doesn't it? You seek compatibility, equality, but you’re stricken at times when you realize that the ideal of direct equivalence quickly vanishes under the sword of relatively irreconcilable differences. But it’s not differences that bring two languages together, but the sense that in the process of trying to make head or tail of something, the other language will provide a similar echo. Not a faithful reproduction, but a similar one. You’re content when that almost miraculous metamorphosis takes place, as if under the spell of some cunning magician. I’m not sure if everybody found the right inner magician, but the search doesn't offer a stop sign to the seeker. I've learned that the need for that natural equivalence is perhaps a never ending quest, just like you’ll have to keep on walking if you chose to be a walker. 

          I've also learned that the most strenuous process is the bringing together of two lines that just don’t make the cut even though common sense says that they would. But to the acquainted eye, that fine discrepancy emerges and separates. And when the eye conquers the discrepancy and light shines onto the harmonious match, you find again that the journey starts all over again. Sisyphus wakes up to another day only to find out that the stone will need to find its roll again up the hill. And the more you roll it on one side, the flipside is deemed to abandonment and a micro-desert of knowledge slowly crawls onto it. It slowly grows until the memory of the road slips into oblivion. Oblivion sneaks upon the other side of the stone while bringing to an unpolished state what once knew every winding of the road, every fine piece of gravel in the road. But what could the stone say? Its language is silence and the squeaking sound produced when the stone pays its respects to the ground it calls home.      

A Thing Called Writing

Photo retrieved
@ http://www1.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers/idea.jpg

There’s a strange quality about solitude that makes is appealing to writing. It’s finding yourself stripped off that coat of utter self –losses in social energy. When that energy remains unwasted, its tension translates into strands of thoughts that come together to reconcile the being. There, in the silence of social solitude, a mind churns, tosses and turns. Big crowds have that great feel of loneliness most prodigious for writing. It’s as if you’re watching a live performance in the comfort of your seat. Possibilities of quality interaction are be rare opportunities, and when they do happen, their light shines through the grim landscape of carelessness. Yeah, carelessness to everything speaking in lack of words or sounds. Deaf, mute, and blind, the city keeps on going. Dazzled, I break in a sort of dance to a music limited to my ears only. I try to freeze the little miracles sparkling in the city mud, to make sure they don’t die under the hard pace of forgetting. And when I do freeze them, I think of this delicate preservation could happily marry words. I’m hoping I can’t turn that union into a traditional marriage, because when you come to think of it, those are the ones that stand the test of time. If there’s something I despise about modern times is the mere flimsiness that makes oblivious to the human kind’s tiny treasures.

    And when the time is ripe, perhaps harvesting thoughts will occurs. It’s just a projection based on the common sense assumption that there’s some sort of universal design responsible for the development of cycles. I couldn’t think of a different turn of events, as I’m confined to patterns and cyclities that I’m still grasping while fumbling through clay words.  What will actually bring in the end, I couldn't say, for foresight hasn’t struck me yet. But there’s a chance that thoughts macerating isn’t wishful thinking and that through some unconscious process, something will surface. Anything. 

Fragments of Thought

Endlessness lurked in the eyes of a word. 

***

It had been a long time since she last felt the grim caress of am autumn rain. There was something organic about it that transcended nonbeing, and the sense that the slow constant flow of humid lines was the writing of a story, and that we, as humans, are constantly disrupting the writing of it with our careless walk. More like standing in the way of a miracle; with our gregarious gestures, careless talks, petty talk.

***

Under his heavy pace, snow gnawed, and  turned; and winter dawned upon us once again.


***

I use others' words to resurrect the stagnant waters of the self, and as they are cast the ripples they produce are my own, a faint echo of a distant state of mind, one that failed to meet words at the right time. A tardy arrival, but still an arrival.


***


She stayed away from the world so that she could write about it.


***


She remembered those instances of the past as if they were a historic record, no emotional echo. Like one recalls a historic battle. The sight of the much expected blood shedding, a sword held out high in the air and somewhere lower in the picture frightened defensive faces.


***


There's room for time. And then there's room for silence. There's room for silence that heals, there's room for silence that regenerates.

An Itch

Everything has a departing point. Everything has its one in a blue moonness. I guess you just to choose to ignore it until one day it just hits again. And you prefer to ignore the source of the blow and continue with the flow of your life until something inside catches up with you. I hate to say it, but it does. And then you’re done: that comfortable numbness is completely done with and you wonder what is there be done with yourself? Because you'd start to sound like a character in Beckett, and to be honest with you, not much credit is being paid to a speech of the sort, outside a literary context. They sound great on paper, and then on stage too, right? But in real life, things don’t reel the same. And it’s painful to see that the same things that a constant of what should have been a cozy memory of the past is actually a feeling of the present. It’s sickening that there’s so much emotional anesthesia out there, that such offhanded “coolness” needs to be paid homage to in the cruelest of ways. But then comes the edge, if edge is what it takes. And in the throes of some edgy scene, maybe some room for suppressed emotion is made. We’re immune to the classical fairy tale scenario in so many ways, that only some earthly sad reality is emotion-awakening. Oh, when it the means reach their scope, beware of the excessive use of Kleenexes around you! The emotion is cheap, but the moment has some sort of sacredness left: if beauty doesn’t move us, then at least decay does it.

Everything has an end. And if the beginning was paid such little importance, why would the end be given a different treatment? How I came about this train of thought is of little importance to you, dear reader. It’s just a temporary itch you need to get rid of. Sometimes.