Silhouette of a Rainy Afternoon

On rainy days I wish I could simply spend the day by a window. The rain dripping down makes time go by slower. The atmosphere created by grey reflections on the pavement encourages the self to look into the window of the soul.

In the spring, the baby green leaves sprout and soothe the eyes with life. Living seems more tangible, less translucent, contrasting against shadow. Here, on the wet windowsills, lie reflections on what was and what will be. Perhaps rainy days allow the self to hide within the cocoon of introspection, for tomorrow when one reaches outward and projects, exclaims, dances.

Everything is simplicity in the shades and movements. One is found painting, stretching the canvas for tomorrow... muscle memory working on something intricate, all for something that will happen and become. These contoured lines, charcoal drawings, and shadows are all so exquisite.

"Chasing Ice"

Have been meaning to share this for the past couple of months, but of course was held back by a multitude of mundane things. I had the pleasure of viewing this documentary at the U.N and met the producer/director of the film.

Absolutely stunning, allowing the viewer to recognize how "removed" we are from what is truly happening to our world. Gorgeous time-lapse videos, photographs, and personal stories shed light on the fact that we must be more self-aware of the present, our interconnectedness with this beautiful earth. 

I feel a debris settling on my outer skin

of consciousness.

Is this the solemn reality 

of the coordinates and wheel of fate

that man must embrace,

if not be broken into?

Fragments are softly crushing

my outer skin

of consciousness

where truth lays.

But to live,

a fish must live 

in the water.

The air that concocts this debris

is part of existence.

One must learn how to live 

here.

For there is none elsewhere,

but sterile translucent films 

of nothingness. 

Simplicity

Dear Whimsies,

Attempting to make a habit of this blog writing---as a way to practice my expression. That way the length between my mind and my hands, my convictions, and this keyboard will not be too vast. It is also for discipline, as I find myself allowing my mind to engulf me sometimes, and I get lost in the fascination of its folds.

Yesterday, I went to see a film with a dear friend "A Day In a Life" and I feel like a newly hatched chick, tottering in feeble newness from just a couple of hours in a dark room. I realize that it is just enough being in this world and living this life---perhaps it is even futile to want to grasp and know everything. Because what we DO know, what humanity experiences everyday, is sufficient. The simplicity of being present, in this time and day, typing these words, is in itself a miracle and something to be celebrated. There is so much that we desire to see and try to solve through science, the analytical probes. But perhaps it is enough sometimes sitting in a chair, and simply breathing in the sheer dewiness of a summer evening, or savoring the feeling of cool, sweet water after waking from a nap (as I have in this childhood room of mine).

It is strange, I realize too---how we all seem to be living like hermit crabs or snakes, in the sense that we DO live in layers of consciousness. No matter how wise and thoughtful a being, the context of where one is in life makes all the difference. I remember thinking in high school, how I seemed to be able to grasp almost everything capable of me at the time. And that is true, I was able to. But I was only 16. Now, I am 21 and I realize I have moved into a yet bigger room, a greater skin, and it is all the same---but I am seeing more because of this growing space.

I wonder what I will see in 20 years, and how I will be thinking. But I fear that I will not remember my childhood as brightly, because it is not simply the need to be in touch with something so pure and simple. But the need to have a mind that let's go, that allows one to just live, just live in the moment, feeling the sun on skin, the brilliant blue sky of today and feeling happy just because it is such a beautiful day. But there are pieces of memory that bite within my walls, of a past between childhood and now, that also tinges things with a bit of sorrow. I hope that I will be able to remember, when I have my own children---and not live in the confines of a defined landscape.

Life In a Day Trailer

Duality of Life

Dear Whimsies (my official term for reflective thought that is always flittering around in my head), 

Of recent, I rediscovered this blog and was racked with guilt. I've been reading how a lot of my other friends are keeping up their blogs despite ridiculously busy schedules. I also feel that I should be sharing a lot more here. 

Recently, being enlightened by the activities of the UN, bureaucratic systems, I feel like I'm getting more in touch with the "realities" of life---feeling how close to home humanitarian issues are: issues of hunger, hatred, violence, genocide. The threat of hate is so real in all of our societies. It's futile to repeat once again, the giant echoes that have fallen from Norway of recent. 

It's the HUMAN MIND I realize, the human psyche that has been creating such confusion. Unfortunately from a young age, I've come to terms with the idea that as long as human beings have minds, there will always be those who are tempted, or leaning toward violence, strong ideologies that seem to cut, box, and label so much of humanity. The threads that connect us in humanity seem to be dissolving so quickly, since we are all trying to strive toward a high-quality of living, Westernization (which I realize after reading much of Barthes) that is egocentric and individualistic, rather than understanding the underlying organic systems that connect us all. 

But perhaps this is all a response into a greater universal idea---one of balance and duality. It surely is not a justification, but is rather some way to try and understand why there are those who live such opposite lives of luck and of total deprivation, that there are those who are able to allow their capacities to be fulfilled and those who can never be viewed as a human being with full dignity. 

Budding Thoughts

Being my first time blogging in a long while, I'm at unease at what the "proper" protocols are

to blogging...Often I write in my leather journals, that I have neglected as well these days. But a few friends, whose blogs I have been following have enticed me to explore a new media! 

Through this means of expression, I hope to be able to share others (individuals who I don't know as well) with ideas, thoughts, snippets of ideas that are inspiring. I hope that in this new pursuit, I'll be able to also engage in encouraging my creative juices these days (as I have been neglecting). Let me share my passions,  odd interests, and random explosive realizations with you all. May this little opening of space be a place for  growth in personal ways and in ways that are beyond my imagination---I love the concept of ripples spreading ever wider, and reaching unknown hands. 

But before I skip off to writing a paper for a class, I'll leave you with a poem I have read of late which expresses a thought, a concept that I have been intrigued by for quite a while. 

Tulips

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Cheers~