adulting

It’s been ages since I last wrote something. Well something that had depth at least. Blame it on social media, for reducing our thoughts into fodder for our so-called followers. (As if.) Blame it on adulthood, for enveloping days and weeks into a hollow blur of deadlines and bills, chores and responsibilities. Blame it on life, on anyone except me. Haha. Long sigh. For emphasis.

Trying writing out one more time after failing miserably, this time for my own guilty pleasure. We will NOT pick up right where we left off. Yes I am talking to myself. After all no one’s gonna read this pile of horse dung anyway. Today and maybe tomorrow and in the coming days, I will try, to write. I will try to begin. Shed old skin, fresh new page. This is me now. All of it. All of the mess and ugliness and non-sensibility of me. Try not to pry your eyes with a fork while reading. And with your eyes I mean my eyes. Makes sense? No? Exactly.

brand new

One great thing about meeting new people

is that you can be

anyone you want to be

socially inept

overly talkative

quiet oddity

You’re you

but not really

You’re brand new

…temporarily.

11pm

It’s been awhile since I last looked into the mirror

and saw someone I knew,

Or someone I liked, or wanted to get to know.

This is what and how she is:

She’s a shell, hardened by life,

half-dead and all nomadic.

Recently maimed.

Day by day, she dons this uniform, all white and ironed out like a combat strategy,

marching obediently like a soldier ant,

“Yes” and “Yes maam, right away”

taking orders from a loud-mouthed General.

Yes sir, left right left.

Ever ready, grace under pressure, tall orders mean nothing to her,

She’s a well-oiled machine.

But for whom?

And to what end?

This biting coldness she didn’t know she had,

it’s gnawing at her skin, slowly travelling deep within like a foul disease.

Where did it even come from?

Fade.

So if I see myself walking down the street, head bent, a stone, hard and alone,

enslaved with all the trappings of this sad, bitter earth, would I even recognize me?

Or would I walk past, not caring to turn my head around to take a long, lingering look

into the eyes of a broken soul who has used up all of what she is?

 

Rain

I want to be

in an old castle in Romania

enveloped by the winds of winter

sipping warm tea with a strange book

I want to be

in a cabin in the woods

crawling with thick vines

with sparrows resting placidly on branches

But where I am

is underneath a raging storm

with lightning crashing on the horizon

and me with my red umbrella

standing still as the winds carry me off

and all that I remember

as the water washes away

you and your promises

As though they were paper,

soft and weightless.

 

Underneath every you and every me

is a pile of flesh

just bones

organs

ash

meat

lonely

vacant

mechanical

factory-precise perfections

or imperfections

Each writing our own prophecies

Burning down desires

In exchange for a half-existence

Death is such a happy color.

Ghosts

Underneath it all

we are, all of us

just pieces and fragments

waiting for answers

that will never come.

May

I wish my nights consisted
of us riding recklessly behind a pick-up truck
the world swirling past, 
colorful and tragic
while we get drunk in our thoughts
amidst forest trails and wooden bridges,
underneath a canopy of stars 
twinkling, sparkling, burning tiny fires
as the wind gets colder
and conversations become deeper.

Book Review: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

One fine day, a man named Jack Kerouac, compiling journal entries scribbled in several notebooks’ worth of  road travels with his pal Neal Cassidy, began pounding furiously in his typewriter the manuscript of what was soon to become the novel that defined his generation.

Poetic, unapologetic, honest and raw, On The Road chronicles the misadventures of two antagonists named Sal Paradise, whose first person narrative makes readers feel like we are on that very journey balling our way along the promising, hopeful road across the heart and soul of America, and the electric Dean Moriarty, his eccentric, fast-talking companion whom Kerouac describes as a man ‘tremendously excited with life’. These two young hedonists travel cross-country in their quest for true human experience and meaning, and introduces us to the America that was, many decades ago. Their trips paint captivating pictures of America with its thorny wilderness and vast deserts that stretch on, verdant fields, prairie flowers and quiet ghost towns. The duo also come across sneaky, colorful characters who, like themselves are hitchhiking across America with their secret dreams, sleeping, drowsy cities, dizzying, zen-enducing jazz joints, sometimes experimenting with drugs, sex, jazz, and even so far as a Mexican whorehouse.

The book’s power comes alive with the raw spirit of its’ antagonist, trapped in this ‘sad red Earth’ with the mad longing to live life here and now, to be HERE and to be here NOW. On the road, with their beat and battered suitcases and tired wandering souls, Sal and Dean and their team of beat dreamers, have only one destination, to GO. To go where there are no rules, no one dictating one’s purpose, with hope and music beating in their hearts, to find freedom at a time when social conformity was the norm, to pave a path for oneself without apology.

As Kerouac put it poignantly, “We had longer ways to go, but no matter, the road is life”.

Despite its controversial themes and the heavy criticism hurled at Kerouac after this book was published, On The Road’s lasting importance echoes alive and well today, for anyone who has that burning, restless longing to explore the world with all senses flaming. 50 years later in fact, this quintessential book on American hope and freedom continues to invite readers  to drink in the madness of the jazz fluidity of Kerouac’s writing style and his mad thoughts about life, religion, travel, death, spontaneity, adventure,soul-searching, and apple pie, and what it truly means to live and be alive.

Dream, She Said

Tonight I drift to sleep

beneath clouds of rain and whispers and hopelessness

and dream of soft hazes and twilight

and the sun and its blinding hues of orange and yellow

and me twirling forevermore in the colorful shadows of firecrackers exploding

S

Book Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Gabriel Marcielo Marquez spins a mysterious tale of a death seemingly foretold in this enthralling story about honor, romance, intrigue and complicity. In a modest South American coastal town, a man gathers various testimonies from different individuals as he attempts to piece together fragments of an intriguing death that occurred decades ago.

The narrator recalls that fateful night when a beautiful bride by the name of Angela Vicario is returned to her family by her husband on the eve of their wedding day because of the belief that she is no longer a virgin. When the bride utters the name of the man who has violated her, her brothers vow to protect their family’s honor and avenge their sister’s loss of dignity by plotting nefariously for the murder of Santiago Nasar.

Soon, news of Nasar’s imminent death at the hands of the Vicario brothers spread like wildfire throughout the entire town. By 4 o’clock everyone has been made privy to the plot to murder Nasar, but how come no one succeeds in warning him or forestalling his impending death? As the hour of Nasar’s murder draws nearer, readers discover that not only are the Vicario brothers guilty of this man’s demise, but so is each and every member of the community who all failed to warn him beforehand.

The mystery in this captivating tale does not lie in Nasar’s death, but as to why no one was able to prevent it. Are the Vicario brothers wholly to blame? Does the integrity of  the whole town deserve to be questioned? Is everyone guilty? Or ultimately, was it Nasar’s fate and destiny to die as a repercussion for violating the honor of the bride?

Marquez tells this story of a death foretold with bits of magical surrealism, where traditions and roles clash violently with what is rational and humane. The odd sensation of how complicty and fate binds us all as a community will linger in the minds of readers long after they put this book down.