Vibrant

I like light, color, luminosity. I like things full of color and vibrant.

– Oscar de la Renta

 

Friday Thoughts

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag

 

Thursday Wisdom

Genuine artists talk to us about ourselves, more specifically about those parts of ourselves that we keep hidden – the strange parts, the dark parts. But these people wear their strangeness as a badge of honour, making it an important part of their identity. This is why they touch us. This is why we really want to be them. What we really envy is how open they are with their strangeness, when we are afraid. Deep down, we all know that one only becomes an individual when one stops hiding their strangeness.

~ poems and stories

Quote Me

Do you have a favorite quote that you return to again and again? What is it, and why does it move you?

That would be a quote from Erik The Phantom as Susan Kay wrote it. Strange that this specific quote is nowhere to be found elsewhere but in the book itself. It is not included in the list of quotes from the same story/movie in Goodreads or BrainyQuotes. You must read the whole book to find it. I like this particular passage because it is dark, dry, cynical and oh, so true. It goes like this:

“Happiness is like the first intoxication of morphine. It doesn’t last very long.”

 There is also another quote from the same character in the same story that I like a lot. Again, it exists nowhere but in the book. It says: 

“Time ravages beauty and preserves plain(li)ness.”

Ordinary day with ordinary people

I was bored so I decided to go shopping, check out what’s on offer, January is after all a sale month. A month-long shopping extravaganza for die-hard shopaholics. I am not one of them. I don’t like crowds to begin with. But crowds that mad frenzy consist of mostly women are dangerous. They are possessed. Eyes vacant, hard determined look on their faces, blindly moving forward, always in a hurry, ready for anything. Scary.

But yesterday I thought I will gamble my chance of being trampled over or get killed and headed for the city. I found the place surprisingly quiet (quiet for this time of the year) I could navigate the streets without so much trouble and able to browse in the shops in peace. Maybe because it was a working day. I will never dream of coming here during the weekends. I’ve learned my lessons.

From between clothes racks patiently scrutinizing every item on sale for fun, I looked up and terror gripped me by the throat I could hardly breathe. Directly opposite me was a tall woman dressed in full black with long dark straight hair and a complexion devoid of any drop of blood she was ash grey. Compare to her, Morticia is a joke.

Look, I love Gothic. I dress in Gothic style once in a while, one look at my blog page and you will know I’m a fan of the dark side. Edgar Allan Poe will always be my hero and Stephen King will always be my favourite author, but this woman is something else. What she is goes beyond fashion statement. It’s not the fact that I can’t place her ethnic origin, or her age or the ethereal way she moves (there is nothing ethereal about her physically for she’s massive) but the feelings she evokes, (in me) the sense of something silent but imminently dangerous like a poisonous cobra poised to strike if provoke or a highly trained assassin who is not your enemy but don’t stand on her way. The feeling of if she chooses, she can harm you in thousands of different ways was at that moment undeniably real.

She didn’t even glance my way. She proceeded in her unhurried manner, a melancholic look on her bloodless face and I was scared. So scared I avoided being in the same aisle with this being.  As I watched her glided away, her long black pleated taffeta skirt softly blowing behind her I thought: Who is she and why she looks like that and why I am scared?

I tried to forget what I saw and went in and out of the shops to calm myself and I almost succeeded when coming out of a sports store I saw a man holding something I cannot decipher. He seemed disoriented, looking for something, gone this way, doubled back and went to the opposite direction just to come back again in the middle of the square. You would probably not believe this but he looked like he just stepped out from the set of the Highlander movie. He could be the perfect antagonist to Christopher Lambert. If he would reach under his long black leather jacket and produce a sword and start hacking people’s heads off, it would not surprise me at all. He was dressed for the part perfectly, down to his Doc Marten’s black boots, spiked dog collar and Mohawk hairdo. Like the woman, it was not a fashion statement but a way of life. Simply being themselves. My companion said, perhaps they were together and he was looking for her. I told him that whatever it was, I’m out of there.

We agreed to leave the main street and headed to the small cobbled alleyways to drink coffee somewhere, anywhere.

We like little authentic secluded places to eat, like home restaurants managed by a family or artsy small (trendy) cosy places with limited menu consist of unusual combinations of healthy alternatives fresh ingredients. Combing the establishments on both sides of the street, I saw a door propped open by a bistro chair next to a single table standing on the narrow sidewalk the two items teetering on the edge of the street. I went in and saw that the place contained nothing but a small counter at the end and a couple of tables and chairs on my left standing on a platform leading to a narrow staircase upstairs.

There was an Italian looking lady at the counter wearing a black t-shirt with the restaurant logo on the front and black slacks, a black apron tied neatly around her middle. I smiled at her and said hello. She didn’t return my greeting so I was forced to come closer. What followed was according to my companion more disturbing than the bloodless woman in black and the highlander guy altogether.

The lady stared ahead of her (above our heads) vacantly, unshed tears adorning her sad, sad eyes. She rocked herself back and forth and didn’t react to anything I said, as if we were not there at all. She just continued staring into space oblivious of what’s happening around her. I heard muffled voices up the stairs but couldn’t make out what was being said. Slowly, I walked backwards keeping my eyes on her somewhat confused and for the first time in my life speechless. I didn’t know what to think or make of the situation. Halfway to the door an Italian looking guy came down the stairs and greeted us as if there was nothing wrong, he didn’t even look at the catatonic woman at the counter. He told us that they were about to close for the day and they were out of provision. He smiled and excused himself, closing the door after us.

We walked silently to the car forgetting we were in dire need of refreshments. We didn’t talk about the incidents till after we came home and even then both of us have no clue where to begin. Whenever I think about what I’ve witnessed that day, it’s like recalling fragments of different films I have forgotten I’ve seen in the past. It’s so unreal I can’t believe it really happened. I can think of hundreds of different scenarios and invent thousands of different stories about those people but the truth is I don’t know the truth, I can only guess. And maybe it is better so.

Monday Thoughts

A woman who doesn’t care what others think about her is a dangerous creature. Dangerous because she is blunt and straight-forward. Dangerous because she will speak her mind and wear her heart on her sleeve, even against the standards of society. Dangerous because she speaks the truth.

She has no fear, nothing holding her back. She is powerful because she values herself without the bonds of social pressure. She has her own conscience guiding her, and where there is no fear, there is room for creativity, passion, power. Where there is no fear there is room for everything else.

And that kind of a woman is a misfit. But in a world where everyone is trying to fit in, we need more misfits. A dangerous woman is worth fighting for.

by Shivee Chauhan

Optimistic

How do I fuel the fires of optimism at -30C? Well… I think of my annual holiday which I normally take on the first week of June. I try to remember how it was, the weather, the ambiance, the view and the feeling of everything possible nothing is a must. I try to imagine the sun on my skin, the laid-back pace of life, the beautiful food and the sand between my toes. All of that motivate me to go on, to hang in there because there is something to look forward to…

Friday Thoughts

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in … but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

 

THE LETTER I WROTE TO MYSELF WHEN I WAS AT THE LOWEST POINT IN MY LIFE

Build walls that protect you once again, don’t lock yourself in, though. Build a door in it and windows in it, decorate that wall with posters. It’s not sad or lonely to build walls, just don’t build them so you can lock everyone out, or to lock yourself in. Others will never get tired of watching you from the outside, you’ll get tired of looking out. Don’t make yourself miserable. Protect yourself, okay? 

Do you feel like a mosaic piece in a world of perfect masterpieces? I feel like that. I’m just a glued figurine of all the pieces that people tore off, pieces of myself that I voluntarily gave to people, pieces they took without my knowledge. And at night I used to look down and see which parts of my soul were missing, have you ever done that?

Read the full article here. 

Written by Oshin Ahlawat – A young poet and writer based in New Delhi, India. “I believe people who write are like tornados and cyclones. We wreck a lot of lives; for better or worse. It all depends on the people who read our work. They decide where the damage is going to be; the heart or the mind and whether it’s going to be for the good or for worse. I wish to give them the choice to decide that. I’m just going to focus on doing what I want”, she says. 

Thoughts

You are the music while the music lasts.

-T. S. Eliot

 

Fallacy,nothing more than that…

We delude ourselves with fallacy, the belief that we can be truly happy.

It’s embarrassing how we can lie to ourselves in such a cruel deceptive way.

There’s no point in masking misery when it cannot be escaped?

I learnt the truth when I was seventeen. From that day forward, my heart changed.

The day He married me I became colder than ice.

I can never feel the same again. Nothing can wash away that pain of the past; no one can protect me from the suffering his end brought me.

A past of torture, years of rejection, days of fear, too frightened to express myself because of what might happen, driven to panic, to paranoia, constantly terrified the world may abandon me, each day plagued with exhaustion unable to find rest.

Why do you think I am filled with so much sorrow and such pain?

I bear loathing even toward my own pleasure and lust, it serves only to bring sorrow afterward, yet I do it in the name of true love.

This life is why I utter the words “I do not care” Next time someone asks me if I am happy; I shall say… that does not exist for me…

~Emmaessence on DevianArt

Alphabet

Found this while walking along the promenade in Spain and I thought: What was the intention behind this work? Is there a plausible reason why they put it there? 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Alphabet 

These Fallacies I Build Up In My Head

Hate love poems.

I am sick to death with…

 

“How soft are his lips”

“The curve of her hips”

 

I don’t want to write about these fallacies I build up in my head anymore,

And write in my blog to show the world;

Pretending I am some great poet.

The world is filled with billions of topics, and yet,

Nine times out of ten,

Amateurs, with their books of words

And rhyming dictionaries, (like me ha ha)

Chose to write about an emotion, a fear of loneliness.

 

“Her golden hair”

“His chocolate stare”

 

I can’t take it anymore.

One after another, marching onto the page,

I squint in the glaring artificial light trying to decode them

And pour out my own thoughts on love

With bad rhyming and questionable syncopation

Poem after poem after poem…

 

“I feel his hands upon my neck”

“When you’re gone I am a wreck”

 

And I sit there, on the front of the computer

Writing, typing, thinking, and wish

With every single bone in my body,

Going past the bones and wishing with every inch of myself,

That I was anywhere but here…

~ found treasure