I was reading a book. Its title and pages have power. More than power, it has ancient time in it. Yours and mine. For a moment, it was the perfect timing, something aligned. My eyes drifted to the left of the page, something extraordinary touched my consciousness. The words were flowing, the mind idling, long for the ride. Before I completed formulating the thought “what is..”, I noticed a smell. It’s tart sweet and potent, it gave my nose a sting. Something in me shifted, and I knew there’s no smell, but a sensation coming from myself. It drew my attention to my state of being: I haven’t been afraid for awhile (thanks to you); I read the words “…persistence…time tames…all great powers on earth…”; I feel my posture: feminine and relaxed; I don’t have to pretend; I don’t have to keep reminding myself how others see me; I don’t have to frame myself according to others’ expectations. I am myself and I have time. For the first in a very very long time, for all one whole second, I experienced and know elation. I can smile.
Author: hotsurf
Like to travel, read, play cello etc.
Trees in the dark-part 4.
Favorably now, always favorable, Ming is indulging herself. When the sun fades and the crowd has parted away, packed into their idyllic enclosures, the roads are open and the sky is high. Such a road, a crossroad in the present case, presents yet another exciting refreshment. Crossing it an event. Something unnatural in this otherwise primal night, like a house unfolded and all the occupants fled. It gives Ming a sense of openness and up-side-down-ness that she likes. Especially with the uncounted crystals in the asphalt doing their tricks under the sparse streetlight, mimicking the stars in the sky above. Ming likes to stare at the whole of the scene when she meditatively, very slowly crossing the now deserted crossroad, choosing the long diagonal, stopping now and then to look all around. Sure and not sure what she’s expecting to find in the reaches of the darkness. Something familiar, something reassuring. It does not matter, that something will always be with her anyway.
Lingering glances that bid the congealed form of the night sky behind. It’s a marker to her, something she looks forward coming back to. The little sentiments that she left behind just now will be glowing and beckoning when she comes back. It’s like Ming just left a frozen image of herself where she was, only there’s a fluidity to the presentation of that self in her mind. It grows itself, it gathers more of everything, even things that her mind does not know nor understand. She has those of her in several places, those places she can visit any time she pleases.
It pleases her that she’s in the last neighborhood before reaching the destination: the park with the trees. Her grand aunt lives in that building just over to her right. It’s a two-story building among a dozen of similar buildings, all fit together like a losing game of Tetris. These buildings has more space between and within apartments. Her grand aunt married well, and she has two kids instead of the mandatory one. Not that Ming minds the lacking of siblings in the least. She likes to be alone to be not alone. She likes the stillness. It has everything in it. But she does like their living space. It would be easier to sneak out at night, if there’s less neighbors and just two well-maintained flight of stairs instead of three cluttered ones.
She ponders their family lives as she walks pass. The grassy area before the building is partitioned by low garden fences with simple geometrical design. They look a bit stiff and lonely just then. Now that she thinks about it, she always thinks these fences have some special meaning to them. Every time she lets her gaze rest on these man-made extensions of the earth, without knowing why, she feels the edge of the blue in her. Is it because she’s aware of some boundary that it represents? Or that every time she crosses it (she likes to jump over them, or just swing one leg over, with the other following all the while enjoying the utter tom-boyishness in her clumsiness), it’s like moving from a magical world to a concrete one. The grassy area enclosed is the one being protected after all. It reminds her, unwittingly, of the fragileness of it all. Ming is dimly aware of something inside her that’s too precious to keep. If she only knows where the boundary is.
Are you safe:
Step step
pause for a
cigarette
kindly stretching
the made up
moment
effect apparent.
No applause
darkness can’t
respond
too close
to death
breath
withheld.
Neatly slain
with hope
for
entertainment
scented with
love
more for sale.
Light on me
prayer on you
fits you well
final dance
is mine
swirl stir
home home again.
Surprise harvest.
Just some dead plants in the garden after the nasty weather, forgotten until in the mood for clearing. Drudgery I suppose. Until my hasty fingers grasping for mingering roots encountered something bulky and warm. I know what it is on contact. I could not believe it. It’s just the right time too. All the days that I forgot about what I sown, I don’t deserve it, but earth gives her due.
Ornament.
The light is getting dark, there are crystals in the air. How come they know their times and yet I do not. In the snowy valley everything is in shades of dark and grey, quite an entrance of the night, an exit to me. I wonder the light as the ghost wonders life, the only present mirrors the past, a past that will not come. Most souls do chase after the light, try to outrun the coming night, but I prefer the relief of the passing, the transitioning, the almost caress that is gentle and calm. It says: take your time.
They say life is but a dream. I have fragments of needy emotions conjuring up images to support their fragile nature, distorting memories in the meantime to fit individual taste. What we feel are what to us, the only thing that’s real. I think we are just selfish that way. Holding on to the very last shred of evidence that we exist, that we matter. But I’m here in the valley, where nothing cares, because it’s not expecting anything because nothing is doing any expecting, they just are. No thoughts then, what a relief. Nothing here hurts, so I’m not afraid; nothing here cares; so I’m content; nothing here ponders, so I exist.
The night is chill as a diamond, but we don’t shiver from cold do we, if we have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. We are going where we are going, somewhere in the distance, not yet, just a destination, what can it be. Can’t help but fondling the end. Is it un-natural? Or is it a way to construct the beginning. For everything has a beginning, and the end is but one of those things.
No stars to point the way, yet an inner light is guiding me. The shadows in the dark do not frighten me, but arouse in me an absent-minded curiosity. Are they afraid, what do they see when they look, if they are following me what would happen to their own, everything has its own path, I don’t mind the company for awhile, pitiful things, I hope they find what they seek.
Compassion is felt when one is walking closer to the doom. When we stare down into our own abyss, we finally spare a glance to our un-witty companions and resonate the desperations and a common story. We can help each other; we can share our warmth; we can exchange the stories of our past; we can probe for the doors, the handles, the steps, the vaults to our origin; we can exchange hearts if you don’t mind, would you pass the salt.
Change is coming when the solitary me meet a boundary of a time. The end of the valley where the shadows retreat and hide. The hidden moon now clears a slivery path to the heart of the desert. Still, thorn-covered plants line the long-ago dried-up frozen earth. Nothing to see here, it is an escape. And I take it as if it’s my choice.
Have you heard the sounds of your thoughts, even if you are not thinking of anything, trying to keep your mind as dry and as clear as the night air. SXRCH, SDRCH, XXDRC. Did not know they can be so loud. Everything has ears now as if the sounds create a whole new existence. Me. Not deliberate, not holding back either. Proud and humble as I can be. My steps announce my guilt, my ambition, my pitch and my triumph. I am here.
I do not see any features of my destination, but I know I’m here. My feet won’t carry me any further, my breath catches and grows faster, and my soul stills then stirs, my eyes grow large and water on their own accord. I can see now. The sky is as clear as it has always been, the earth is as giving as the end. I have traveled with a guide that is planted in me. I was afraid, but not any more. Show me. I come to see you. Just as you always see me:
I’m but an ornament, an ornament in your design. No more, no less.
Not gone.
Get it back.
Show us how.
Best of luck.
Enjoy your dance.
Lost.
“I’m yours.”
At first, Qi thinks he might burst out laughing, for surely this is a joke. For more than a mad second, He 100% expects Rev to get up, alive and kicking, bending over with that loud laughter of his, grinning at him with shiny eyes for believing for even a second that he is, indeed, dead. Rev is still, Qi tries to be still too, for him, for them both. So he does not laugh, just as Rev is not able to anymore. Qi is calm, part of him thinks that he knows that this absurd calamity is coming (he blames himself, he blames them all, he blames himself). Another part of him blames that first part of him for even attempting to cope with the fact that his young love is laying on a cold table, cold and dead, and trying to find a rationale behind all of these (he blames himself). He can feel himself desperately trying to come up with a coping method, it does not help. He then automatically starting to look for a coping strategy, it does not hold. He grasps in vain for a coping stratagem, it submerges into the abyss under its own weight. The truth is, Rev died while holding Qi’s heart. It has stopped beating along with his. He is in ruins. He needs to escape. Again. Only this time, he knows that he is lost.
No more talks at all hours.
No more laughing about higher lives.
No more “man, you suck.”
No more “dude, you rock.”
No more toppling society and regimes,
No more aliens bringing about peace.
No more “what you doing tomorrow, next week.”
No more “the rest of our lives, what do you think.”
No more “ahh, do it again.”
No more “what were you thinking, fuck him.”
No more “I miss you, do you miss me.”
No more “wish you are here, I’m high as a kite.”
No more “I love you.”
No more “You are mine.”
Love.
“I love you.” Rev said that so quietly as if he meant it with his heart and soul, not just his breath, as Qi knew that he did. Such statement is not meant to be uttered, between two boys, in public, at least not in such a clear, straight-forward, fucking no-nonsensical way. But that’s just the kinda person Rev is, sensitive yet unreserved, putting his and others heart on his sleeves, not caring at all what others may be charging him with. He lives a life of his own. “It’s a pity,” Qi thinks, “I will need to be more careful handling him from now on. He may be a genius, but also just a child”. For you see, Qi himself is a character for the age or is it ages. He does love like film industry does fantasy novels: tenderly processed and heavily advertised. It’s all for an advantage of course. But he is chasing after something. The only thing that gives him satisfaction is connectedness, if “love” or a version of it can give him more access, then why not. After all, he has nothing to lose. Or so he thinks.
“I love you.” There is nowhere to go. For the first time ever, Qi has to consider what those three words mean. Underneath all that well-developed self-preservation and self-pity, he knows he has something to lose. Something he tries very hard to conceal. A soul so deep, that no light has ever penetrated its surface. And a heart so bleached, he’s afraid it may simply flake off and evaporate into the sunlight. There’s no helping him. All Qi needs is to escape, keep moving. Be a shadow with no shape. But now it’s different. His soul is stirring and his heart, oh boy, his heart is filling in a way he does not yet understand, all these despite the rough handlings by Rev, and perhaps because of it. His whole being is responding to Rev’s sincerity, the intensity of his conviction. He’s humming to it. He’s coming up for air, realizing in amazement that he’s been suffocating himself all this time. Qi does not like this at first. He’s rightfully afraid. He has been played before, for the flower and nectar of his youth. He is the player now, been there for awhile, and yet, this boy is challenging him and is beating him in his own game. Qi is thrilled. He needs a match, even though he did not realize that he did. And Rev surpassed any and all of his expectations to be his equal, or perhaps superior. Qi likes that. That thing he’s chasing after is chasing him, the real him.
“I love you.” How could he? Even with all that he knows? Qi wonders. It could be his accursed good-looks. Again. But Rev himself is commanding enough in his own right. If anyone looks at them, really looks at them, they may think it’s a match made in heaven or hell, or a fairytale. The light and the dark. They match perfectly. Too perfectly. Qi and Rev have known each other for awhile, and Qi always thought Rev as a brilliant and unruly friend. They have such funs together, as mates should. But the way Rev looks at Qi changed, is this just a crush?
“I love you.” Qi knows who himself is. He’s addictive, especially for those eager to have more than just a taste of life. His beauty and attractiveness chiefly lies in the struggle between his spirit and his soul. The former wants to soar above as far as one can go and still further, while the latter patiently await the inevitable crash that comes with going too far, too fast. He’s not used to having someone along for the ride. He has no room for his heart in his wild rides. In fact, he’s trying to outrun it. That is until Rev finds and keeps his heart for him. Now the room is full.
“I love you.” With consequences. Alive.
Trees in the dark-part 3.
Nothing that is really understood by her is taught at her school. She is a quiet and polite child. The kind that the teachers tend to forget and somehow now and again remember with fondness and familiarity. Ming thinks that she understands the teachers, and they understand her. If they are to be informed that Ming is actually this particular child that likes to wander on the street long after nightfall, if indeed they are to see her in her current exuberantly happy alertness, Ming is sure that their reaction to her would be a nod to her as a sign of recognition, not having much of an eye contact, coaching their face to a thoughtful and untroubled outlook like they always do and walk away after this series of rather one-sided exchange. Ming does not know whether she just imagines this, so in actual life (she is the furthest from it now), the adults would stop her progress to the park and escort her back to her parents (she’s the furthest from them also). But somehow she knows they would not stop her. They know her as she knows them. The danger may be real, but the dreamer is the most dangerous of all.
Time and time again, there is this drumming in her heart. She tries to find the source of it. It’s like the whole universe is silent and pulsing at the same time. At this point, or any other points in her current path, she is a moving center of the universe. She has the pleasure of keeping and sensing her own gravitational pull, the leisure to gaze up at the inky class of a heaven to account for her minions: the stars, and her queen: the moon. They are there for her, and she is there for them.
The wind comes and goes, one moment there, the next blends back to the sublime. Caresses with wisdom without source, kindness without bound. Ming thinks, not for the last time that she just might be floating with it. Indeed she is, the only things touching the ground one after the other are her own feet, and they are but a tiny surface compared to the whole of her body, which is dipped in the cool velvety night air along with the celestial hosts inside of it. If she just let go of her feet, why, she is in the air, between the joined embrace of earth and heaven. The drumming is the only thing that exists, she herself is everywhere.
Short on heart.
Some people are born with big heart. Good for them. If you are like me, somewhat raised differently and learned not to trust the heart or feel its sway, then you have to relearn accessing and following your heart. Why do this? Because all good and lasting innovations and explorations come from the same source. The goodness can only be sampled if one has the capacity of an open heart. Learn arts, learn the many aspects of life, don’t let distaste foul your palate, nor disagreement shut off your eyes. See them all, let them in. The pain and the lightness. They will guide you. Nothing else will.
hotsurf_ 