all too familiar;

"Tell me something, Toru," she said. "Do you love me?"

"You know I do," I answered.

"Will you do me two favors?"

"You may have up to three wishes, madame."

Naoko smiled and shook her head. "No, two will be enough. One is for you to realize how grateful I am that you came to see me here. I hope you'll understand how happy you've made me. I know it's going to save me if anything will. I may not show it, but it's true."

"I'll come to see you again," I said. "And what is the other wish?"

"I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"

"Always," I said. "I'll always remember."

*

"Do you really promise never to forget me?" she asked in a near whisper.

"I'll never forget you," I said. "I could never forget you."

*

Once, long ago, when I was still young, when the memories were far more vivid than they are now, I often tried to write about Naoko. But I was never able to produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happy. Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start - the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless. Now, thought, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts.

The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.

The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me.

- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

.

.

.

x can't believe I took forever to get started on his books.. 

x ... so familiar, so familiar.. 

x L

the eternal disappointment of life as it is;

Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much hit sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They're struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness: The eternal disappointment of life as it is; the relief of unexpected reprieve; the fear of dying.

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.

x

So... I backspaced and retyped and deleted and retyped a lot. Managed to hit about four paragraphs and then I thought, what I think about love(yes your boring old boy meets girl love) was too personal over here. To sum it up: I used to think I was a hopeless romantic until something happened along the way and hardened something inside of me. If you were to ask me how I feel about it again, it will always be different. Nothing definitive. But it'll mostly be filled with silence. And maybe a shake of a head and a fidget. Or a shrug, or a pout. Each carrying its own weight in the silence. Or maybe you can put an emotion to an action. A shake of a head - lies. A shrug - a denial. A pout - loneliness. But can everything be comparative to something else? So I place my thoughts in silence. You can call it ignorance, you can call it naivety, you can call it lack of experience but I call it.. my idea that quietly brews in my head. 

That said, I remembered pieces of conversations I have had in the past years with friends of mine over coffee, in a quiet room, and yeah, over a good shit.. but mostly, places under the black sky plastered with tiny frail stars.

1. I never fully expressed how I feel. But the genuineness between the hems and haws, silences and difficulties to come up with something or anything is there, my friend.

2. It feels like I am an open book all the time and it seems easy to read me but..

3. I feel that nobody really knows how I really feel and what I really think. That you may think that I think in a certain way but... it's always changing. So...

4. It's hard to place a word or string words together to describe what I feel or how I think.. "When will you ever learn that you can't put a word to everything?"

5. I think this is what you call, "Going in circles"

6. What's my point? I don't know my point. But I guess the point is, I tried sharing something personal but it either turned out to be too much of a hassle or the fact that, it really was too personal.

7. And another point? Let's put the Heart out there.

x L

the eternal disappointment of life as it is;

Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much hit sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They're struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness: The eternal disappointment of life as it is; the relief of unexpected reprieve; the fear of dying.

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.

x

So... I backspaced and retyped and deleted and retyped a lot. Managed to hit about four paragraphs and then I thought, what I think about love(yes your boring old boy meets girl love) was too personal over here. To sum it up: I used to think I was a hopeless romantic until something happened along the way and hardened something inside of me. If you were to ask me how I feel about it again, it will always be different. Nothing definitive. But it'll mostly be filled with silence. And maybe a shake of a head and a fidget. Or a shrug, or a pout. Each carrying its own weight in the silence. Or maybe you can put an emotion to an action. A shake of a head - lies. A shrug - a denial. A pout - loneliness. But can everything be comparative to something else? So I place my thoughts in silence. You can call it ignorance, you can call it naivety, you can call it lack of experience but I call it.. my idea that quietly brews in my head. 

That said, I remembered pieces of conversations I have had in the past years with friends of mine over coffee, in a quiet room, and yeah, over a good shit.. but mostly, places under the black sky plastered with tiny frail stars.

1. I never fully expressed how I feel. But the genuineness between the hems and haws, silences and difficulties to come up with something or anything is there, my friend.

2. It feels like I am an open book all the time and it seems easy to read me but..

3. I feel that nobody really knows how I really feel and what I really think. That you may think that I think in a certain way but... it's always changing. So...

4. It's hard to place a word or string words together to describe what I feel or how I think.. "When will you ever learn that you can't put a word to everything?"

5. I think this is what you call, "Going in circles"

6. What's my point? I don't know my point. But I guess the point is, I tried sharing something personal but it either turned out to be too much of a hassle or the fact that, it really was too personal.

7. And another point? Let's put the Heart out there.

x L

Sunset & Echo;

Sunset & Echo - Correatown



When I go out on my own
I tell myself, I'm not alone
Going past the same old places
I'm looking for familiar faces


When I go out on my own
I steel my heart, I'll never show
All the worries on my mind
I smile hello and I walk on by


Uh oh, here comes the night
Here comes the hardest part
Here comes the fight
Oh, here it comes the night
Here comes the hardest part
Here comes a fight
Quiet nights mean quiet
Quiet nights mean quiet
Quiet nights mean quiet


When we go out on our own
We tell ourselves we're not alone
Going to our favourite places
We're looking for familiar faces


Will I see you?
Will you know my name?
Will we care?
Will we feel the same?
And will we listen or will we talk?
Will we laugh?
Will we walk?


But you're not used to,
Fear the quiet nights
I used to long for city lights
All the sounds and all the faces
And all, you're still captivated


Oh, here comes the night
Here comes the hardest part
Here comes the fight
Oh, here it comes the night
Quiet nights mean quiet
Quiet nights mean quiet
Quiet nights mean quiet
Quiet nights mean quiet






x

She turns around, face flushed and tries to meet his frowning gaze. Nope, she thinks, I can't look at him. She takes a step closer.. and another, her eyes fixed on the floor all the while. She tries to gesture, but these hands, these hands don't listen. Nothing ever does. Only him. So she clears her throat, takes a deep breath, and feels the familiar warm rush in her eyes.

"I don't know what to say or how to feel. I just know that looking at you, thinking about you, trying to be the same for you just makes me cry. It just... the tears, it just falls. I don't know what it means, I don't know how to show. I can't ask because nobody knows. So I let them flow while I try to find a place for them. They don't wash away in the shower. They don't hide in my pillow. They only trickle along my skin and skirt the lines on my face. They don't seek a place to fall into, for my hands can only but catch them and not wipe them away. They get angry and blur when there are flashes of you in the dark. And when they get angry, I fluster. I panic. I try even harder to find them a safe place. I try to squeeze my eyes shut, I try to pray them away. But as hard as I try, they try harder to resist. They resist the duvet, they resist the thinnest of fabric. They push and push like the heart, trying to beat against time. I try to tell this heart, please slow.. Maybe then they will listen, maybe then they will fear, or better, the tears will stop fighting if this heart will bring me to a still."

She steals a glance.. maybe two, but all she see is just a hollow face. An empty still heart. She wants it to beat again, maybe.. for her?

"But when the tears touches the tip of my tongue, I realized how very stale it is.. and how very bitter the aftertaste can be. And it echoes you. You give me the best of everything - the light-headed sweetness and the cruel bitterness. And it dawned on me that these tears belong to you. They look for you, they yearn to be kept away by you. A flick, or the lightest of touch and they'll fall away with you. They don't want to be in your shadow, they want to feel your light. But if they can't, if they can't rage against the night, they'll die with the quiet of the night. And that's what they do, they fall into submission in the hard cold silence. Every single time. No more chasing of lights, no more racing the heart. They leave the chasing to be done in reality when they tire. They led me here to tell you they can't take it no more. They're done looking for you. But I know they'll never be done, they'll never be done unless they can take me back to the past where light didn't exist. Where they've never wanted a safe hiding place in you..."

He tries to reach out to her, his fingers unable to find her. She doesn't need an obligatory pat, let alone a hug - she just wanted an answer. She swallows (her pride perhaps?), and slowly lifts her eyes to his. With her lips quivering, "So please, please tell me where do I keep them if you don't want it? Even if you're all they think about? I... I just need to know, because they threaten me all the time. I just need to know, need to.. need. I.. I don't want them needing you anymore, I just need to know what to do.. what to do with them. I want to do without them. I want.. I want so many things, too many that one should ask for," she nodded her head, "but this, this is the one I want the most. To not want you."

And with that, they held the longest gaze they never should have had. 

x L

a little happy;a little sad

"If I had a camera," I said, "I'd take a picture of you everyday. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life."

"I look exactly the same." 

"No you don't. You're changing all the time. Every day a tiny bit. I'd if I could, I'd keep a record of it all." 

"If you're so smart, how did I change today?" 

"You got a fraction of a millimeter taller, for one thing, Your hair grew a fraction of a millimeter longer. And your breasts grew a fraction of a - " 

"They did not!" 

"Yes, they did."

"Did NOT." 

"Did too."

"What else, you big pig?" 

"You got a little happier and also a little sadder." 

"Meaning they cancel each other out, leaving me exactly the same." 

"Not at all. The fact that you got a little happier today doesn't change the fact that you also became a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you've been the happiest and the saddest you've ever been in your whole life." 

"How do you know?" 

"Think about it. Have you ever been happier than you have now, lying here in the grass?" 

"I guess not. No." 

"And have you ever been sadder?" 

"No." 

"It isn't like that for everyone you know. Some people, like your sister, just gets happier and happier everyday. And some people, just gets sadder and sadder. And some people, like you, get both." 

"What about you? Are you the happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" 

 "Of course I am." 

"Why?" 

"Because nothing makes me happier and sadder than you."

YOU DON'T KNOW IT

Pop and easy listening music is created for a reason. Other than to suck your cash and blindly following cults but.. you know, keeps you away from the heavy stuff.

And I should get away from the heavy stuff. Does that mean I have to get away from reading? I should seek a balance. Yes, a balance. How will I seek balance? Thou shalt not think?

*

I'm starting to get away from wallowing in this war in my head wondering what's the purpose of life and things we do.. But somehow I know I'd come crawling back for answers. But let me just drift in and out of my consciousness first before trying to figure out reality.. come to think of it, I have the rest of my life to figure out reality. But what's there to figure out right? I'm gonna resolve to back to the path of the pull between resistance and submission.

Sometimes being an empty vessel seems to be the easiest. You may be the fool, but guess who the joke is on? Yep, the world. Joke's on the world.

Why so cynical?

*

Reading. Looking at allegory, metaphors, analogies, introspection, theories etc. just gets you thinking you know? It's amazing how layered and complicated and mysterious you are. Yeah, you. Your head, your thoughts, your heart, body, mind, soul, spirit... Mmm.

Excerpts. I love excerpts. So I will bombard this with excerpts. Because I need to shelter these words other than in my head.

*

 The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller

"They stood in line, like people in a store. When death was served to someone, everyone moved up a place. What did the milk of the fog know about it, or the currents of air, or the curve of the tracks? A death is as cheap as the hole in your pocket. You stick your hand in it, and your whole body has to go along. The more people died, the greater the obsession of those who remained."

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

"Strange about learning; the farther I go, the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago, I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it."

"The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories, the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are. That's what I discovered about myself last night. I told myself I was wandering around like a lost soul, and then I saw that I was lost."

*

I realized that I have so many different thoughts and opinions on everything. And it needs to be coaxed to get it out of my system. These words aren't familiar but they're all mine. It's amazing huh? The human mind.

UNTYING;

Our illnesses, our mothers thought to themselves, are a knot with which to tie our children. Even though they're far away they will remain tightly tied to us. How they wished for a child who would find a train, ride through sunflower fields or forests, and show its face at home. 

Our mothers hoped to see a face that showed tightly tied love in cheek or brow. They wished to see the first few wrinkles, signs that our life as grown-ups was harder for us than our childhood had been.

But they forgot that they were no longer permitted to stroke or slap this face. That they could no longer touch it.

Our mothers' illnesses sensed that, for us, untying was a beautiful word.