Non-Morse Tapping

tHey picked this day to light the sun. Here I go, I am sitting on a bus room full of people and just time away from taking the train in the sky. My parentals are with me. I am to write, I am to read and do exercises so that blood can travel where/while I travel. It is a go, and it is breathing; where I sit and when I stand. There aren't thoughts I give away just ones that are beginning and then stopping. It is a Friday, a Friday of emotion. A Friday where I just felt love. A Friday where I just sat and felt.

This is me talking about my feelings. This is me going on about my freedoms. The sun is shining through the steel sponging outside the window. I have forgotten about me. My right wrist suddenly pains a dull, gravity pain. And I am still typing out these words.

Packing is a deal, because it has to be done right and mama will ensure it is done so. I imagine that on the yondering train I will be wandering about in my memories, a boy with a ball, a boy with a turtle on a string, a boy with building blocks, a boy pretending he is a mode of transportation up a mountain during winter. In the background will be Sarah McLaughlin. In the background will be André with "Lasa-ma papa la mare"

vreau distractie si soare
m-am indragostit lulea
am aflat ce-i dragostea.

Then in an inbetween, perhaps on the flight from KL to Schiphol, where I will be drafting an essay on Kipling's Stalky & Co. Maybe I will watch a movie.

The other person next to me has a slide open that is titled Degradation of amino acids. I hope the food on the plane is good. Probably will be in compartmentalised containers, airtight so that when I pull the lid off and it is quiet enough I can hear the food sighing its no-longer-asphyxiated sigh.

Today I say goodbye for a month to mattering people. Many arms around my back, many of mine around many of their backs. And squeezing, then releasing our no-longer-asphyxiated sighs. I want it to be a necessary air that I breathe, a shared air, an air of dawn during a crepuscule.

I am aware that this too shall pass, and it is with that awareness that I yearn to catch the train. There are these words that I have written, and they point. I have forgiven them, so I think them not rude anymore. I have let them keep pointing. Right now, they are pointing at somebody. I don't know where he is. I don't know who he is, if he was the same he that wrote this or another he that just pointed and another he carried over his pointing into this retina-hitting hieroglyph accumulation. Ordures ou trésor (trés or, ha).

I am waiting for the final words, so I can end. Though I can end here. Or here. Or here.

(Or, ici) Where?! Where?! On Earth. In New Zealand. In Auckland. On Symonds Street. At IC2. At computer 2C07. On the keyboard. On the J key, or the F key.

_

and then

In less than twenty-four hours I will be in an airport, perhaps waiting in a queue, waiting to check in for a flight that will take me 17,000 kms to Romania. This past over-a-week has been the feelground for a confluence of emotions nostalgiques, all previously-tied memories that have been opened up by the possibility of their reexperiencing. These emotions have been shadows, grass blade ticklings on a farm scale - I have felt the wind move them as it moved through me. This is a wind that will carry me in a plane to visit again the land I was born in, the streets I frequented as a child, the asphalts and gaps I stepped in as a boy.

It feels as if now the memories are soluble in the present, and remnants are revived. I do not want to have expectations as to what I will see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, in the Romania of April 2012. Having spent about nine and a half years away from the land I called acasa, the prospect of going back is enticing and tempting to the mind, bringing to attention all these things that I have forgotten. 

But I know I am not going back as a child. I am not really going 'back', just... going. It is not a trip through memory lanes, though I feel at times it will definitely feel like that. I do not want to reexperience, to reimmerse myself in the nostalgic memories as I once did, partly because I want to leave the memories as they are, protect them, and partly because I know the memories for what they are, appearances, once-is-now-gone. Instead, I want to live and be there as the place is now, as the people are, as I am, and then

Ribboned Air

In the raindrop that hangs,
while it rains around,
the tension delivers a song;
hold on, hold on,

even if palms are forcing
temples into each other

while the daydream has still
yet to sound, resound

O'er scenes, bright yellow exclamations,
Yes! there's missing feelings
when palmskin meets chest
meets flicking of a tail
of a monkey silhouette
in the savannah sunset,

hold on, hold on,
to the pavement over streets,
over rivers, over feet
dwelling underneath
soles meeting when puddles
are unmade.

On the Glass Plate

There comes a time... there are points in my life... See I find it hard to picture what I want to say, but that's, in a way, the point, isn't it? Here's how things stand at the moment. I am happy. Girlfriend, happy. About to go to Romania, happy. Friends, happy. Work, happy. Family, happy. It's like the miniscuses of contentedness have all aligned and I feel great. I chose the word happy because happy doesn't really say anything in my mind. I don't live to be happy, though the moments of happiness are nice. I have to come to see that happiness is fleeting, but calmness and peace need not be.

The current state is an unusual one, though one of usualness, because of its afore-distant, now-near-but-removed familiarity. I am a writer of pieces, shiverings along a spine rather than the whole elastic seismic wave. I am homing in to a now, the now, and see in it contentedness, something I recall striving for a week or so ago. I wanted the feeling of it, and there it is. A week ago I was feeling less balanced, struggling with some assignments and having worries about this or that but lessons have been learned as the days since have crossed themselves off the inexistent calendar. So now I am here, with my test tubes/jars around me, miniscuses all at eye level. And I feel content. I would like to call this state, the glass plate. Maybe I'll find out why.

When I feel unbalanced and stressed, I tend to want to get away and I utter a silent prayer to peacemakers to make some peace and spray it in my nearhere so that I can breathe it in slowly while I walk awake and while I sleep so that the next day I can wake up and see my room as a room and not a chamber of secrets and unfolding dramas. (Long sentence) When I feel unbalanced, I struggle, and the struggle forces me to call for peace, and it comes. (Shorter sentence)

Now, having acquired that state, I know not to try hold on to it because even this will fluctuate (as I have learned many times before). The miniscuses will elevate and submerge depending on the amount of blood that I am to pour and the amount that will spill. So here I sit, on the plate, floating, and I know I am in this particular spell for a unknown limited time. Cool.

I just wanted to write that to make sure I can see it. I am not going to plan my next move, because where I will be needed, there will I be.

I am going to Romania in 9 days, after nearly 10 years of being away from my birth country. Throughout these years lived in New Zealand, I have experienced varying levels of nostalgia, most strongest earlier on, and then fading in strength as the memories faded. Now, being so close to going, I am feeling a resurgence of emotion for the place I am going to, not intense and attention-grabbing, but rather subtle. I haven't yet put words to it but they may come, or they may not. But it is so that I felt, tonight, when I was washing dishes, that I had already left. (left is an anagram of felt) And I began thinking about New Zealand, and how I have never felt like I belonged to it, though ties were here. And then about Romania, how I feel now like I no longer belong. I kind of like the idea of not belonging anywhere. It makes me feel free.

So I wonder why I have been trying to belong, wanting it, in the past? Living seems to have taught me that to be free, I have to free.

i am a fragment. I am the whole.

Man, these others living me, they've kept me wondering why I find it hard to be consistent, stable, but I think I get it now. Last year, no, the year before, I wrote a post about there being a difference between I and i. I is the greater, overarching self, while i is the smaller, fragmented, self. I is the palm that the i lives its life in. You can see that even visually this is represented: there is a separation in the i that does not exist in the I. Because of circumstances and my reaction to those circumstances, because of growing up and social conditioning, because of looking for answers and being influenced by people that have come and gone and yet come and go, I see now that there is not just one i in an I, but many. The idea is quite fascinating, that I have multiple selves in me, and it reminds me of schizophrenia, though I think the key difference in this case is that the I, the palm, is aware, and becoming more aware of these inner goings-on, and so I do not totally get lost in the playings of my smaller selves.

i am a fragment. I am the whole. Let me exemplify: last night I went to a 21st party for one of my closest friends. A lot of people I knew, were there, and I came with my girlfriend, who did not know so many (and she's probably reading this so ><) and I was trying to help her fit in, to take care of her, while trying to mingle and see a lot of the other people there as well. Overall I think it was successful because she did get to know more some of my close friends and I got to see others but I did not feel like I connected much. I started drinking a bit, thinking it would ease me in and make it easier, and that made me more conscious of the i that was operating at that time - the eager-to-please i. I remember having been tipsy a few times before, and those times I would be smiling, laughing, uninhibitedly enjoying myself by helping others enjoying themselves. This has taken the form of joking, and it has also taken the form of consoling. My point is that this i is putty, mould. If you need a joker, i'm there. If you need a fool, i'm there. If you need an ear, have mine. When people ask me whether i'm a happy drunk or an angry drunk, i say i am pretty happy because i am eager-to-please, a take-carer. This becomes more accentuated with alcohol, because i don't make reservations, whereas i am more careful when sober. I discovered it difficult though to try to please everyone last night, especially before I started drinking, because i was trying to look after how she was going and how my friends were going too. Drinking exacerbated it but the 'problem' was still there in that i could not find ways to please everyone, and so i felt, in the moment, like i was failing trying to please anyone. I wasn't aware of my doing that until I got home this morning and reflected. This is a commonly seen self, in a way my public self, because it comes out whenever I am in a social situation. It is designed to gain approval, to please, and based on the degree of its success at this, it is itself happy. This is a fragmented i, because it is dependent, it is in want of approval from others, it wants reassurance. I never figured I was so dependent until I realised this modus operandi, this autopilot that tries to dispense rays of sunshine on demand, and how so often it fails to satisfy its high standard it sets itself.

I do not know if I can change this i, but I can watch it, and in watching it, not be so absorbed in its aims. Last night, I dropped my phone on the floor while taking some pictures, and I remember not being phased at all, except when I picked it up it said "Insert SIM Card" and so I took the battery out and replaced it and it worked again, thankfully. Then I noticed the plastic case that covered the front part was missing, and I looked behind and there it was, on the floor. I grabbed it, put it back on, but it did not fit anymore. There were cracks in two places as well. My phone itself looks intact - the cover took the impact. Could be a metaphor...

Today I am resting, and I think that having been through last night and having made this realisation, I can be more comfortable choosing who it is I want to be, and balancing this with who I am.

Not Knowing Why

Don't worry. Be happy. Don'tworrybehappy. Ain't there some loving for the undergrowth, for the passed-participled peoplefeelings that tend to irk and grumble in a lesser appreciated part of the stomach. I'm talking about emotions and expression of them.

Insofar as life has been lived, there's reasoning behind why emotions come to us, why we feel the pull of something in a certain direction, why we like a particular song. I've lived that. Messages, from something I cannot comprehend; guidance, for something that's best. That remains. The more acceptable an emotion is, the more easier it is to feel it. Even victimising oneself is easy to do when one knows they are going to be pitied and thus fed the return-movement of the energy they are spilling out in their outward display of turmoil. That's been a recurrent blueprint of my behavior, that is, until I noticed it - then it began to change, little by little. And for those emotions that are easy to feel, we can find reasons why it is easy to feel them because the circumstances around us seem to be shaped towards their justification. Serendipity may have a hand in that, or maybe that too, is but a life-employed tool. I exemplify: Boy sees girl. Boy admires girl from distance. Boy meets girl. Boy gets to know girl. Boy develops a liking for girl. Boy asks girl out. Boy goes out with girl. Each of these steps is acceptable, done and done, and the world is ready to see the scenario play out. The props are arranged, the lines can be said, voilà drama, voilà relationship, and the emotions that are associated with that are évoquées. Lighting's in the right place, you notice later. So is the audience placed and pleased well to watch it unfold. Stories.

Now, I can't say that what the boy feels for the girl he feels because of the circumstances, or life orchestrated something else entirely that seemed to just take this circumstantial form but had a different purpose. Life's choice. What I want to return to is the justification. Why did the boy feel what he felt for her. Reasons are now heard.

All's well. But then what happens is there's a slew of other emotions from the palette that the brush accidentally (doubt it) streaks over the lifesituationcanvas. Fear, angst, anger, anxiety, rainbows. And this confuses the justification-cloud. If I'm happy, it could be because of reason x or y! If I'm sad, reason z or w. If I'm bored, reason x and y and z and w (overstimulation). If I'm sad, reason x^2. If they were easily boxable emotions then I am seeing that perhaps (yes, conjecture) that it is easier to pencil in ticks next to plausible causes depending on circumstances, even if they are 'negative' emotions.

This fifth paragraph breaks at my point. Emotions that are blurs. Emotions that are hues and the overlapping part of several Venn diagrams pancaked together. Emotions that centipede and devour leaves and then cocoon and butterfly. Emotions that fall in the drops of rain and slip down window panes, leaving trails that evaporate. One moment they are there, the next they are there, now they are there again, and it feels in the heat that they have never left but they do, whether it is by their perte en oubli, or overstimulation, or via ignorance through lenses defocusing. And I don't know why. Not why they disappear, though I don't know why they disappear. But I don't know why they come.

II exemplify: Whitney Houston died recently. I didn't much pay attention to her music during her life, though after hearing some more of it on television, it caught my attention that she was quite talented. Now, usually songs carry some sort of meaning or seed of knowledge that sprouts just at the right time that guides me in a particular direction. Sometimes it seems unlikely, but the messages are there and at the right moment, I click. So perhaps this is on its way with all of this, and I am just interjecting because I find myself aware of the process and somehow fascinated by its goingon. Life has many Hermes/gay messengers. Bear with, back to the point. How will I know if he really loves me? Doubt. It's been stuck in my head, but this is what my mind can come up with for the meaning of this song. Now that I just saw the lyrics online though, I noticed that yes it is about love and doubt, and perhaps how it could relate to me. Lightbulb.

The song is concrete-enough. With emotions, there's more of a boundary-haze, so I be not sure where is where. I haven't actually pointed to a particular vague emotion because I don't feel comfortable with this medium of expression. But there are things I feel that are not conventional or, couldsay, acceptable, in the minds of others. I accept them, because I have put the sword to my own neck and wasn't able to unfeel. But then the tension comes. If these are feelings that aren't normally expressed but ought to be expressed, then I do not know the medium for doing so. Expressing them in any case, is risky, because I don't even know where they come from, or how can they be justified. I know I feel them though. So the question comes, do I just feel and wait for the feelings to pass through my digestive system, or do I feel and outfeel and actfeel, committed, insecurely, to them. Like throwing liquid out of a bowl. I don't know if it's acid. I don't know if it's water. Will I be killing the ducks outside, or waking them up with a little rain.

It's fascinating. Don'tworrybehappy. How will I know is what I have been trying to know, but again I can't know how I will know, I will just know when it's the moment to know; I will know when I know. Encore, it seems. Well, fun to have written this.

This week's English 344 reading on "Risk and Investment" in performance (and writing) carries significance. Risk means exposure. I consider why I write. To expose, to understand, to release, to communicate with myself, to go through a mental process. It comes down to this: if I am serious about writing - no, about living, since it is our umbrella and our rain - then I can only matter if I am invested, and thus if I expose myself, if I vulnerabilise myself, what I am is going to be... used, done, appreciated. God, that's scary. God, that's necessary.

I admit, then. I don't know what is going to happen, nor why, nor why I feel how I feel, nor why that. I might know in hindsight, if I get that. I'm just bridge-walking, peering over the edge at times like now, when I don't know a stone from its absence. But I'm going across.

Attraversiamo