emotion

Move [Part II]

“Annie! Annie, honey, look what you got in the mail!”

“What? Mom? What is it? Come on, give it to me!”

“It’s… The big envelope! You got in! Sweetie, look, you got in! Oh, love, I’m so proud of you.”

“Oh my god! I got in! I can’t believe this! YES! Oh- oh, Mom, don’t cry, please don’t cry. I’ll be back from there every weekend, you know I will.”

“I know, I know. But the house will be so lonely without you. I still don’t love the idea, you know that. I mean, I know it’s a great honor to be able to join this experimental group that the Set have started, and I know it’ll be an amazing thing to put on your college applications in a year, but still…”

“Mom, you know how bored I am at school. You know that I would start college right now if I could. The Set are offering kids like me the opportunity of a lifetime! I can’t pass this up. Mom, tell me you’ll be ok without me…”

“Of course I will, honey. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all. As long as I’ll get to see you once a week, I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll be home every weekend, Mom. Promise.”

Marianne stared blankly at the boulder in front of her. It was still hovering. She moved her eyes, and her concentration, to the right. The boulder moved with her mind. The loudspeaker made a gurgling cackle and the ever-present voice told her that that will do. Marianne let the memory fade away as she shook her head and rubbed her aching, tired eyes. The boulder fell to the floor with a crash as Marianne threw herself on the thin mattress that lay on the floor in the corner. She felt herself crashing into unconsciousness just like the boulder and then knew no more.

A Bit Batty

In front of my apartment building, there is a small lawn, and then some hedges and then the sidewalk. On the lawn, there is a rather large palm tree with a thick trunk and large, swaying branches. The tree is very fertile and well-taken care of and so it is always heavy with the small, light-brown fruit that certain palm-trees seem to bear.

As I arrived home from work the other night, I saw the most beautiful thing, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since then. There are always bats around that tree – they like the fruit on palm trees I believe, or at least this type of bat must do. But that night, as I came home from work later than usual, there were a huge group of bats flying around it. There must have been at least thirty or forty of the beautiful, winged beasts, and they were going absolutely crazy, flying up and down and around the tree, weaving through and around each other, always pulling up in time.

They came so close to me that I could see the light through their wings – I could even see the fur that is spread sparsely on their bodies. I could see the tiny claw at the end of each of their wings. I stood and watched them for at least five minutes, my head just swiveling around and around, following their dizzying movements. Ah, but they are marvelous animals!

Wind

Wind whispers through the small crack between the window and the wall and enters the warmly lit apartment. It skips all over the kitchen chairs, startling the cats, and cackles with merriment as it passes the whirring refrigerator. The wind plays up and down through the whole kitchen, brushing the coffee mugs, the kettle, the toaster. It moves on into the open living room, investigating the television and blowing dust into it and making the leaves of the plants sway slightly as it brushes them.

The wind keeps going and moving and flowing through the house, shying away from the hot heater and making odd noises as it rattles the doors in their frames. It soon reaches the cold bathrooms, and leaps up the walls to fill in the very corners with it’s cool cruelty. It brushes the cold taps and dances across the mirror.

Eventually the wind reaches the only room with any noise in the house, just a second or two after it began its investigation of the place. It cools the face of the teenage girl in her room, reminding her that she is alone in the house, alone apart from the kittens and the wind. The wind ruffles her hair and then escapes through the window behind her. It has learned a mood, a house, a person, a home, all in the space of a few moments, and it will keep darting across the many houses and apartments, and will keep gathering emotions, feelings, sights and sounds.

Sweet Relief – and Some Zombies

I just finished my application for the University of California schools. Meaning three campuses, three schools really. UCLA, Berkeley and Santa-Cruz. The application process was long and grueling, confusing and upsetting, disturbing and tiring and most of all FINISHED. It’s finished.

My brain feels so incredibly fried up and used and dried and broken and exhausted and strange and zombified. But at least I got this done. It’s a wonderful feeling, to have the weight of the first deadline off my mind. True, four down and still fifteen to go, but that’s something nonetheless.

In celebration, and laziness, a haiku to explain the way my head feels:

Zombies ate my brain,
Because zombies don’t eat trees,
Carnivorous swine.

“Innocense”

Left in a meadow where flowers always bloom
A little girl dances forever,
Playing with her dolls and teddy bears and blankies.
She never cries, never sighs, never needs a hug,
She’s perfectly content knowing that everything,
Everything is fine. All is well.
Sometimes she pauses,
Raises her eyes to the heavens,
And tries to grasp at a forgotten memory,
-Or perhaps a vision-
Of a darker girl,
A dangerous, wild and wonderful girl.
But the feeling of something forgotten fades,
And the girl lives on obliviously
In her meadow of innocence.

I wrote this poem… sometime. I don’t actually remember when, but I stumbled across it while going through some of my old poems and I rather liked the imagery, so I thought I’d post it.

Reverent Reverie

Sometimes sleep is the best medicine. No matter what happens, it’s something the body will do naturally, something that can’t be fought or resisted. Sleep tells us things as well – when we don’t sleep well, it’s because we’re worried about something, or something is bothering us without our realizing it. When bad dreams awake us, shaking and sweating, in the middle of the night, more often than not some unknown or unheeded fear is coming to light or finding a way out so as not to worry us anymore.

And when we’re tired – ah! Such a feeling. It can be awful, being tired to the bone. But viewed the right way, it can be wonderful. If you let yourself surrender to it – not even by sleeping, but just by accepting it – you may feel a languor and a calmness steal over your body in a way that is completely unique. When we’re sick, or not feeling well, our body warns us of it by making us weaker, more tired, more in need of sleep. Again, in these situations being tired can feel wonderful, a deep knowledge that crawling into bed now will help, it will rest your body and mind and make you stronger to fight the germs in you.

Truly, sleep is the best medicine.

Insperation in Unlikely Places

Boredom is the best inspiration there is to look around and see things you’d never look at otherwise, things you’d take absolutely no interest in. I discover this time and again when I’m in situations that I think at first I’d rather not be in. Today, as a cashier in my voluntary role at the convention I’ve been at for the past few days, I had one of the moments where I realized this. With nothing better to do, I took to people watching. Ah, the things you see!

A girl sitting on her father’s shoulders, obliviously sucking her thumb and looking curiously and bright-eyed around at people, while her father is fighting with her mother on the phone. A man, looking strangely at a volunteer, going up to her and asking for something and insisting on shaking her hand at the end of their talk, giving her a shifty-eyed look. A woman in a flowing maroon dress walking with her arms linked with those of her two friends, happily conversing and laughing with them, while pausing every now and then to give orders to people- she is one of the supervisors of the volunteers.

So many little stories happening all at once, all so full of emotions – anger, love, happiness, misery and agression. All these things happening in one not-so-large hall, all at the same time, and no one notices. No one will ever know just how many stories and events were going on that day, that minute even, all at the same time.

Sonnet ’49

Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.

I may not be well versed in the works of Shakespeare yet, but believe me, I intend to be one day. I found this sonnet by accident while studying for the SAT subject tests. It was in one of the practice tests I did, and I remember freezing and reading it over and over until I got the intonation and the meaning just right. The humanity and simplicity of the poem just staggers me. It is beautiful, and so typical – just a person, a regular person, being so scared that they’re not worthy of their loved one and sure that they’ll leave them one day. It’s amazing how little humanity changes over the years when it comes down to the day to day emotions and characteristics.