It is often said that people should begin to think out of the box. Look at things differently, think laterally, revolutionise the world by thinking on the other end of the line that divides sheep from shepherd… but some things don’t ever change, and are fixed in our thought processes like that damn iceberg that the Titanic hits EVERY TIME YOU WATCH THE MOVIE.
One of these static instances in our lives are emotions. Emotions are a tender, mysterious facet of our lives – volatile one second, and last lifetimes the next (love can touchhhh us one time…and last for a liiiiiiiiiiiifetime – sustaining the Titanic theme). Let’s talk about the latter. It is indeed possible to feel a stroke of emotion so profound, that you can’t help but allocate a person to a box. An unchanging, eternal box, that no matter how many times you cover up with different wrappings, bows and glitter, at the core you’ll always feel what you’ve felt for that person at first. In this instance, I’m speaking from a romantic perspective. Yes, we all have that person that we call a ‘friend’ these days, but you’ll always carry feelings for.
These boxes are special, secret treasures that usually linger at the bottom of our emotional cupboard. Some of us never open the box again, for fear that there’s nothing more than a superficial Jack In the Box waiting to spring out and hurt us again. Other people have so many boxes that they lose count.
I know not whether these boxes are emotionally healthy, or if they hamper development into a full person, but I do know that I’d rather have a deep love covered in luminous friendship gift wrap, than an empty box…and an empty heart.
Will you open your box? Think out of it? Or climb into the box, next to the Jack inside.
Thursday 19 January 2012
Sunday 15 January 2012
Rahhahaejf-]w4t-034yt- 9h4
All I’ve ever prayed for was to be happy. Perhaps that’s the most elusive emotion – not love. We shouldn’t even glance at love anymore than we should look at a caramel swiss roll – it’s nothing more than a path to happiness, though some prefer the physicality that comes with such love.
These days, my mind is clouded. I can’t even begin to tell where my thoughts come from. Am I thinking this? Am I really feeling what I think I feel? Or is it the pills? Countless hormonal manipulative pink pills have found their way through me, to a point where I begin to doubt my very essence. Yet the sad thing is how dependent I’ve become on them. They seem like the only solution. I mean, all I’ve ever wanted can be surmised in a single, unpretentious sentence: healthy babies, a body close to skinny but flattish and a PhD in theatre or philosophy. But not all those things can come to me right now, so I have no choice but to mount the horse of life’s prerequisite waiting phase and gallop through the meadows of muggy heat and straw fields calling out for the straw dog that’ll never come and bark in response to my please and oh how I’ve pleaded and cried all in vain for what for what I really don’t know but maybe when I find it I’ll become happy and I won’t have to lament on the life I’ve wasted trying to get to the life I want but is it what I really want or am I making it all up when all I really want……
Is to be still.
These days, my mind is clouded. I can’t even begin to tell where my thoughts come from. Am I thinking this? Am I really feeling what I think I feel? Or is it the pills? Countless hormonal manipulative pink pills have found their way through me, to a point where I begin to doubt my very essence. Yet the sad thing is how dependent I’ve become on them. They seem like the only solution. I mean, all I’ve ever wanted can be surmised in a single, unpretentious sentence: healthy babies, a body close to skinny but flattish and a PhD in theatre or philosophy. But not all those things can come to me right now, so I have no choice but to mount the horse of life’s prerequisite waiting phase and gallop through the meadows of muggy heat and straw fields calling out for the straw dog that’ll never come and bark in response to my please and oh how I’ve pleaded and cried all in vain for what for what I really don’t know but maybe when I find it I’ll become happy and I won’t have to lament on the life I’ve wasted trying to get to the life I want but is it what I really want or am I making it all up when all I really want……
Is to be still.
Saturday 14 January 2012
Why I want a Baby
There has never been a love more pure than that which emanates from fresh eyes. Open to the world for the first time, yet a part of it for 9 months, your voice has been a guide to a fragment of infinity with tiny feet and hands. Love’s purity is surpassed only by the profound dependence of a baby on it’s caregiver, a complete trust and promise considered unholy when broken. Regardless of the individual they grow up to become, and the inevitable rage they’ll harbour against you in their teen years, the few fragile years of babyhood is enough to make me want to have my own.
‘Friday, I’m in love’ falls away when it comes to my baby – naturally, the loving environment is usually permeated by the nappy-drenched odour emanating from baby’s cute little bin – yet there’s an inexplicable consistency of emotion when it comes to tiny laughs and smiles, coupled with curious eyes. The constant occupation a baby gives would serve to fill the many holes that are fast becoming apparent in the fabric of my existence. This little being is one to protect, care for, raise and cherish while I may.
The process of raising another human being is known to catalyse deep maturity and an understanding of the world exclusive to caregivers. How does it feel to be the very backbone of an entity beyond your body ? How does it feel to hold in your arms a being comprised of half your genes? For once, undivided love is justified by baby’s very existence : whereas superficial love for members of the opposite sex fall flat on looks and courtesies. I want to know what that deeper love feels like. I want to know who I am, by looking into my baby’s eyes and seeing life reflected against a completely clear pane of truth.
On a more selfish line of thought – baby would become a chance to pass on all I’ve learned about life. A way to manifest my ideals in a different life, and watch as they take shape and form a unique entity raised by mine own hand. If baby will let me, I shall be the salve to a cruel world – until baby finds a soulmate for this life, like the characters in all those romance movies I would’ve watched with baby.
Life isn’t all moonshine and roses, I know, and with the thorns that baby brings, I’ll be able to learn salient values like patience, selflessness and tolerance for the whims of baby and the needs that come with.
I want a baby…but would baby want me?
‘Friday, I’m in love’ falls away when it comes to my baby – naturally, the loving environment is usually permeated by the nappy-drenched odour emanating from baby’s cute little bin – yet there’s an inexplicable consistency of emotion when it comes to tiny laughs and smiles, coupled with curious eyes. The constant occupation a baby gives would serve to fill the many holes that are fast becoming apparent in the fabric of my existence. This little being is one to protect, care for, raise and cherish while I may.
The process of raising another human being is known to catalyse deep maturity and an understanding of the world exclusive to caregivers. How does it feel to be the very backbone of an entity beyond your body ? How does it feel to hold in your arms a being comprised of half your genes? For once, undivided love is justified by baby’s very existence : whereas superficial love for members of the opposite sex fall flat on looks and courtesies. I want to know what that deeper love feels like. I want to know who I am, by looking into my baby’s eyes and seeing life reflected against a completely clear pane of truth.
On a more selfish line of thought – baby would become a chance to pass on all I’ve learned about life. A way to manifest my ideals in a different life, and watch as they take shape and form a unique entity raised by mine own hand. If baby will let me, I shall be the salve to a cruel world – until baby finds a soulmate for this life, like the characters in all those romance movies I would’ve watched with baby.
Life isn’t all moonshine and roses, I know, and with the thorns that baby brings, I’ll be able to learn salient values like patience, selflessness and tolerance for the whims of baby and the needs that come with.
I want a baby…but would baby want me?
Tuesday 10 January 2012
The Identity Pool
We never see it coming, until we become what we hear other people know us to be. All around us, thousands of souls seeing the way we walk, talk, smile or frown – whether they take note of us or not, our outer identity is established at a billion thoughts per second. Love, hate, appreciation and rejection amalgamate in thoughts beyond your own, creating a person you may not even recognise.
Who are you?
Are you the hero of this story, and you don’t need to be saved, like Regina Spektor claims? Are you the adjectives your peers use? Or are you who you say you are? Readily, our personal opinions may be far from the actions manifest in the earthly realm. One who perceives herself as ‘kind’ may shirk from beggars or choose to ignore a limping puppy while rushing to work. Degrees of adjectives shouldn’t impact on the persona you choose to create, but don’t venture to be something you’re not because of how people (incorrectly?) perceive you.
For example, should someone dub me to be ‘shallow’, there’s no reason to empty your philosophical pool, and lay in the cold cement complaining of how you wish you were anorexic. Yet neither should you venture to fill the pool to a point where it overflows to dub yourself ‘deep’, either - for you’d drown.
Don’t let your identity get you in head deep. I guess, at a younger stage of our life, it’s still much like steam, sometimes thick and solid, sometimes there’s so many spaces and vague whisps waiting to merge into the atmosphere of life.
Who are you?
Are you the hero of this story, and you don’t need to be saved, like Regina Spektor claims? Are you the adjectives your peers use? Or are you who you say you are? Readily, our personal opinions may be far from the actions manifest in the earthly realm. One who perceives herself as ‘kind’ may shirk from beggars or choose to ignore a limping puppy while rushing to work. Degrees of adjectives shouldn’t impact on the persona you choose to create, but don’t venture to be something you’re not because of how people (incorrectly?) perceive you.
For example, should someone dub me to be ‘shallow’, there’s no reason to empty your philosophical pool, and lay in the cold cement complaining of how you wish you were anorexic. Yet neither should you venture to fill the pool to a point where it overflows to dub yourself ‘deep’, either - for you’d drown.
Don’t let your identity get you in head deep. I guess, at a younger stage of our life, it’s still much like steam, sometimes thick and solid, sometimes there’s so many spaces and vague whisps waiting to merge into the atmosphere of life.
Monday 9 January 2012
My Story
For the first 14 years of my life, I always thought I’d become a writer. I was published in two poetry anthologies – once before and once during early puberty and had filled 3 hardcover books full of hand written stories – one of which was dictated to my mother since before I could write by myself. I look at the ink, now, as a mother looks at a child she hasn’t seen in many a year. A profound distance purges the empty longing between me and the words that I can’t quite seem to grasp onto, anymore. And I know exactly where it started.
If you had asked me what I planned to do in grade 8, I instantly responded with the word ‘writing’. I obviously hid the true meaning of this word (that being crafting fiction novels) behind the title of ‘journalist’, but as time progressed, I found the inner light I kept blazing within me seemed to dissipate, as the sun surreptitiously slips away before we realise we’re in the midst of the moon. Throughout my primary school life I had received the English award, with my ‘creative writing’ receiving particular recognition in grade 7. It buoyed me, filled me with so much excitement and hope. Steadily, though, my writing began to assume a different tone.
Eager to prove myself, and longing for some confirmation of my so-called ideal job, I began to abuse words. In the eyes of my grade 8 English teacher, in the second term, I concocted an essay of verbose monstrosity, something illegible to the average reader : a vile labyrinth of Latin catchphrases, metaphors and arbitrary descriptions. Yet, I saw it as a masterpiece of the abstract. I had simply written the conventional as ‘lanoitnevnoc’ and inserted it diagonally. If you looked past all the logorrhea, you would’ve found the golden egg of my meaning. I remember this ever so clearly, because for the remainder of that year, I had never questioned my identity so deeply. Grade 8 was shadowed, afterwards, but I do remember the deep despair and realisation that I really wasn’t who I thought I was – and I certainly won’t become who I thought I would be.
That’s not to say I didn’t try. Indeed, I muttered oaths under my breath that people would regret eschewing my dreams, and one day I would prove myself capable. Perhaps that day came when I received a Gold certificate for the De Beers English Olympiad, but it was hardly anywhere in the top 10, and thus irrelevant. But… I digress.
Thereafter, the criticism followed :
“Writers don’t make much money, you know.”
“The field of journalism is overrated and inundated.”
“It’s a tough business to make it in.”
From the end of grade 9, I found some joy in debating, and we all found a new façade to pose as my future career: lawyer – although I emphasized thoroughly that the extra curricular activity and the actual field of study have but a smidgen of similarity. Whenever people would pose the question of what I was to study, I would throw out various fields and say I’m still thinking about what I’m meant to do.
Some people in this world are lucky - they’re born with a burning passion for what they’re meant to do. Some people have their decisions made for them by wise parents, and have had their entire path guided and moulded by these paternal forces. I, on the other hand, have been a lonely scrap of paper floating through countless pipe dreams and aspirations, only to carve them out on a MS Word document and post part of them on a little blog on the corner of the internet.
Indeed, I have become conventional. Part of me longs for the prideful irreverent plays I used to enjoy with words. The all absorbing passion, and the darkness with which I would write poetry.
And the other part wants to forget every moment of it.
If you had asked me what I planned to do in grade 8, I instantly responded with the word ‘writing’. I obviously hid the true meaning of this word (that being crafting fiction novels) behind the title of ‘journalist’, but as time progressed, I found the inner light I kept blazing within me seemed to dissipate, as the sun surreptitiously slips away before we realise we’re in the midst of the moon. Throughout my primary school life I had received the English award, with my ‘creative writing’ receiving particular recognition in grade 7. It buoyed me, filled me with so much excitement and hope. Steadily, though, my writing began to assume a different tone.
Eager to prove myself, and longing for some confirmation of my so-called ideal job, I began to abuse words. In the eyes of my grade 8 English teacher, in the second term, I concocted an essay of verbose monstrosity, something illegible to the average reader : a vile labyrinth of Latin catchphrases, metaphors and arbitrary descriptions. Yet, I saw it as a masterpiece of the abstract. I had simply written the conventional as ‘lanoitnevnoc’ and inserted it diagonally. If you looked past all the logorrhea, you would’ve found the golden egg of my meaning. I remember this ever so clearly, because for the remainder of that year, I had never questioned my identity so deeply. Grade 8 was shadowed, afterwards, but I do remember the deep despair and realisation that I really wasn’t who I thought I was – and I certainly won’t become who I thought I would be.
That’s not to say I didn’t try. Indeed, I muttered oaths under my breath that people would regret eschewing my dreams, and one day I would prove myself capable. Perhaps that day came when I received a Gold certificate for the De Beers English Olympiad, but it was hardly anywhere in the top 10, and thus irrelevant. But… I digress.
Thereafter, the criticism followed :
“Writers don’t make much money, you know.”
“The field of journalism is overrated and inundated.”
“It’s a tough business to make it in.”
From the end of grade 9, I found some joy in debating, and we all found a new façade to pose as my future career: lawyer – although I emphasized thoroughly that the extra curricular activity and the actual field of study have but a smidgen of similarity. Whenever people would pose the question of what I was to study, I would throw out various fields and say I’m still thinking about what I’m meant to do.
Some people in this world are lucky - they’re born with a burning passion for what they’re meant to do. Some people have their decisions made for them by wise parents, and have had their entire path guided and moulded by these paternal forces. I, on the other hand, have been a lonely scrap of paper floating through countless pipe dreams and aspirations, only to carve them out on a MS Word document and post part of them on a little blog on the corner of the internet.
Indeed, I have become conventional. Part of me longs for the prideful irreverent plays I used to enjoy with words. The all absorbing passion, and the darkness with which I would write poetry.
And the other part wants to forget every moment of it.
Sunday 8 January 2012
There's A Ship in my Metaphor
As a human, how do you define yourself?
Is it your job? Your degree? Your God? Your peers? What fundamental attribute of your life anchors you to the ground, and helps steady yourself? Choose carefully. In life, with it’s innumerable ups and downs, such anchors may lift, and set your identity ship adrift. Cue the unfathomable sense of displacement and confusion. Resilience is what everyman needs to make it beyond the tornadoes of life that constantly shake at us. The bows and sails must be pliant yet steadfast, and your sense of salt water forever fresh should you need to swim.
Definitions come and go. What Oxford claims is a word today, tomorrow shall be a fading colloquialism that your grandchildren laugh at.
If you’re lucky enough to have them.
Words, that is. Children are all over, little animals.
Is it your job? Your degree? Your God? Your peers? What fundamental attribute of your life anchors you to the ground, and helps steady yourself? Choose carefully. In life, with it’s innumerable ups and downs, such anchors may lift, and set your identity ship adrift. Cue the unfathomable sense of displacement and confusion. Resilience is what everyman needs to make it beyond the tornadoes of life that constantly shake at us. The bows and sails must be pliant yet steadfast, and your sense of salt water forever fresh should you need to swim.
Definitions come and go. What Oxford claims is a word today, tomorrow shall be a fading colloquialism that your grandchildren laugh at.
If you’re lucky enough to have them.
Words, that is. Children are all over, little animals.
Saturday 7 January 2012
Random Thought Too Long for Twitter
All my life, I’ve been poorly influenced.
I realise this now. How all the floating thoughts fabricate the single stormy sky, and makes me see the sickening parallel between the things I’ve been and the things I am in MTV videos of meaningless relationships and smoke, flashing lights in abundance. ¾ of my love life seems to have come from the video for We Found Love by Rihanna and Calvin Harris, whilst the rest was a happy, hot mess with My Chemical Romance’s Helena playing in the background.
What happened to the decency, faith and humility my parents strived to give me? Did one of my role models eat it all, only to vomit out my life?
I realise this now. How all the floating thoughts fabricate the single stormy sky, and makes me see the sickening parallel between the things I’ve been and the things I am in MTV videos of meaningless relationships and smoke, flashing lights in abundance. ¾ of my love life seems to have come from the video for We Found Love by Rihanna and Calvin Harris, whilst the rest was a happy, hot mess with My Chemical Romance’s Helena playing in the background.
What happened to the decency, faith and humility my parents strived to give me? Did one of my role models eat it all, only to vomit out my life?
The Pretty Petty Purgatory Party
I’m standing on the edge. A glorious vantage point, allowing me to absorb all that I’ve done, in this small patch of hybrid vegetation that I call my life – however, that view is temporary. The very ground my feet tread at present is ashen, cracked, spouting vicious flame through tiny pores. Dante spoke of vile insects with stings bound to chase people that stand where I stand: a horrible state of purgatory.
There’s about 3 weeks left until I leave my home, for university and a strange new world. The thought sickens and terrifies me, yet home itself is often intolerable. A slow and steady rope thickens around my neck each day, made of my own soft pink duvet cover and my mother’s castigation. Where do I go? What do I do? Perhaps the only path left is forward; face my future fears to appreciate the roots of home. Part of my reasoning is how healthy being away from my mother should be; theoretically I should grow to miss her, to a point where our bond should grow.
The ground I walk is as treacherous and fickle as a newly formed coat of ice over a lake – friendships I had made out to be a golden investment have begun to rust, my secure place in ‘the system’ sways like the air after an impulsive sneeze and my metaphors are beginning to not make any sense. It’s as if, at this point, my identity is so unstable, that the picture I’ve ultimately painted of myself is me laying on my red couch with stockings and my best baby pink BM corset playing Xbox and not really thinking about life, drinking iced water to burn calories : not profound at all. Maybe we’re not as deep as we think we are? Or maybe I’m just slipping into the void, to see what awaits me beyond the rabbit hole.
Either way, I find this stage quite upsetting. People can’t support me in the way that I need them to, because I can’t express what I need – and because I don’t really trust myself to rely on them anyway. Especially my parents. Being in this alone is a test I’m going to remember for the rest of my life, but it’s certainly not something I want my daughter to go through. I promise, she’ll get to study that BA Film & Media if she wants to, and nothing will stop me from helping her.
Turning to God is always what I’ve done, and somehow the signs I’ve received have been more muddled than my DSTV during a thunder storm. I take it as a sign to enjoy the haphazard briyani presentation and come to my own conclusions as the fragments of my life pave the way towards a sunrise.
Sometimes I look at people, just laying on the cement island next to street lights and robots on warm Summer days and I wonder what that must feel like. Ten years ago, I would carry my bright red Tigger mat outside, lay on the cement driveway and look at the clouds. What did I see up there that kept drawing me outside? I can’t quite remember, but what I do hold onto is the profound feeling of completion, where the warmth of the ground flows through my body, and my eyes behold the heavens in all their glory. In this purgatory, where everything is scattered and reforming, before breaking again – I seek completion. They say we’re ultimately born complete, we just need to reconnect with our inner selves through detachment from the circumstances of daily life.
Detachment is a beautiful, difficult and tremendous word. It often leads me to a broody silence. And the broodyness always gets my mother to ask annoying questions, perpetuating the cycle.
Looking in the mirror, I see nothing. I’m finally waking up. And the ground I walk, is hard, grey and ashen. One day, I’ll get to the end of the rainbow. Hours pass.
“Oh don’t fly fast, pilot can you help me, can you make this last? This plane is all I’ve got, so keep it steady now.”
- Jack’s Mannequin, Bruised.
There’s about 3 weeks left until I leave my home, for university and a strange new world. The thought sickens and terrifies me, yet home itself is often intolerable. A slow and steady rope thickens around my neck each day, made of my own soft pink duvet cover and my mother’s castigation. Where do I go? What do I do? Perhaps the only path left is forward; face my future fears to appreciate the roots of home. Part of my reasoning is how healthy being away from my mother should be; theoretically I should grow to miss her, to a point where our bond should grow.
The ground I walk is as treacherous and fickle as a newly formed coat of ice over a lake – friendships I had made out to be a golden investment have begun to rust, my secure place in ‘the system’ sways like the air after an impulsive sneeze and my metaphors are beginning to not make any sense. It’s as if, at this point, my identity is so unstable, that the picture I’ve ultimately painted of myself is me laying on my red couch with stockings and my best baby pink BM corset playing Xbox and not really thinking about life, drinking iced water to burn calories : not profound at all. Maybe we’re not as deep as we think we are? Or maybe I’m just slipping into the void, to see what awaits me beyond the rabbit hole.
Either way, I find this stage quite upsetting. People can’t support me in the way that I need them to, because I can’t express what I need – and because I don’t really trust myself to rely on them anyway. Especially my parents. Being in this alone is a test I’m going to remember for the rest of my life, but it’s certainly not something I want my daughter to go through. I promise, she’ll get to study that BA Film & Media if she wants to, and nothing will stop me from helping her.
Turning to God is always what I’ve done, and somehow the signs I’ve received have been more muddled than my DSTV during a thunder storm. I take it as a sign to enjoy the haphazard briyani presentation and come to my own conclusions as the fragments of my life pave the way towards a sunrise.
Sometimes I look at people, just laying on the cement island next to street lights and robots on warm Summer days and I wonder what that must feel like. Ten years ago, I would carry my bright red Tigger mat outside, lay on the cement driveway and look at the clouds. What did I see up there that kept drawing me outside? I can’t quite remember, but what I do hold onto is the profound feeling of completion, where the warmth of the ground flows through my body, and my eyes behold the heavens in all their glory. In this purgatory, where everything is scattered and reforming, before breaking again – I seek completion. They say we’re ultimately born complete, we just need to reconnect with our inner selves through detachment from the circumstances of daily life.
Detachment is a beautiful, difficult and tremendous word. It often leads me to a broody silence. And the broodyness always gets my mother to ask annoying questions, perpetuating the cycle.
Looking in the mirror, I see nothing. I’m finally waking up. And the ground I walk, is hard, grey and ashen. One day, I’ll get to the end of the rainbow. Hours pass.
“Oh don’t fly fast, pilot can you help me, can you make this last? This plane is all I’ve got, so keep it steady now.”
- Jack’s Mannequin, Bruised.
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