September 24, 2003
It is a verb, neither positive nor negative but capable of being either. I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife, I take away your virginity, I take your toy away from you. I take you for all that you are and all that you may be. I take you as you are and will cherish you always. You can take what is given or take away what one wants to keep. One word can change your world and bring light or darkness to live inside you.
‘I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take you anymore.’
You rescind what you once promised to cherish and hold and love for what was and what would be. Taking should be done with caution lest you change your mind and take away the promise you once extended.
‘I will take you away from here.’ Also neutral. That may be a wonderful thing as the ‘here’ can be a bad place, a place where one wants to be taken away from. But what if you loved where you were and you were being taken away, kidnapped, never to see your loved ones again? Lost to the rest of the world. Taken and never given back. Taken and losing yourself.
I take this life that I lead and I hold it to me. I am not ready to have it be taken away from me so I will take the first step and swallow my pride. I will take charge of my life and take away the bad , replacing it with the good that I have found nearby.
But sometimes you want to be taken away from a place and have no one to do it for you. What then? You must take yourself away. Like a thief in the night. I take Leita away from here, so that she can be well taken care of by herself. And in order to do that, she must make the first step, and swallow that big pride of hers. In order to take something, you must give something away.
Take, for example, a beer mug full of tea. Earl Grey to be exact. The water has been altered and the tea cannot darken to its fullest as a large chunk of lemon had been added. So the tea remains a light amber, pulp floating inside. I add four cubes of sugar and watch them disintegrate before my eyes. I lose something to gain another. The taste has changed. Earl grey has revealed a different side to me. It is a different step. And not unpleasant.
While rereading some of the writings I have written in the past, I find both a comfort and a horror in them. Most of these thoughts still have a place in my life today. Do we really change so little? Are we really doomed to carry the same feelings throughout our lives until the end? Was there ever a real capacity for change? Summer 1997 Broken Days How dreary a day when nothing is new, And there’s not a damn thing to do. A search begins yet everything remains second best, Mediocre. And the band plays on, The same music loops, A broken record. All familiar surroundings close in on you, And what was once comfortable becomes unbearable. These are the days when life’s got no meaning, But you continue to hope for a sign of otherwise. Diamonds shatter and night is no longer dark, The world’s stopped spinning, And becomes the center of the universe. ‘Cause these are the ways of them broken days, Crazy days, when all is not what it seems. You long for simplicity, The days when all is bright, And you wait for the ease to sink in, But since these are the ways of broken days, You can’t ever make the simple life emerge, Not on broken days, ‘Cause these are humanity’s (yes...my) subconscious ways.
Oh how this still applies!
July 17, 2000
I saw the sun setting on a cluster of mangroves. They turned burning orange, illuminating the turquoise waters surrounding them. And the angel fish rose out of the water, ascending toward the heavens, their iridescent purples and greens blinding me just as love had once done. I fell to my knees then, tears seeping through my closed lids. I was remembering your lips and how softly they touched my cheek. You were a ghost to me even then, your decision made; you leaving me behind. God, and as I think of the setting sun, the mangroves in flames, I can’t help but think of us, extinguished. The sand was rock hard beneath me, everything I saw and felt was unforgiving since you kissed me goodbye. But I no longer wait for your phone call as I finally see the beauty of the angels who rose out of the water that evening, that first day of renewal, that first day of healing.
December 2007
Unison
Connectedness
Fleeting moments I have felt.
One day I will wake up
And I shall feel that
And it will stay with me
Because I will have found
That part of me
The missing piece in my puzzle
Happiness
Which so eludes.
December 2007
Dreams…
There are no limits
Reach out for it
Chase it
Breathe it
It will perhaps not come true
But at least we can say
As we breathe our last breaths
We have tried.
No regrets.
 It was a month, on Sunday. A month since I've seen your face, touched your skin, felt your breath, heard your voice. A month since my life has turned upside down.
The pain is just as real today.
I ache for what we had,
where we could have gone,
what we could have been... together.
It seems you have moved on and I guess I must do the same. But it's hard...to let go of something so beautiful, someone so pure. I miss your child-like laughs when faced with new experiences. I miss your gaze, your mind, your art. I miss your heart.
And I'm not ready to continue this life without you. The future looms in storm clouds, darkening as it approaches. Once upon a time I would have shut myself off and cursed you. Once upon a time I would have seen only black and white. But now, it's just gray. Everything is gray.
I have been torturing myself with hopes of communication. Checking my email, my phone, the mailbox, the door, listening for footsteps in the hallway...Everytime the bell rings my heart skips a beat. Is it you? Have you come to mend our rift? No, it is only the women from the church, seeking new recruits. I can't bring myself to open the door and politely turn them away in my broken Korean. So I turn away and curse myself for my silly hopes. I have laid down my heart and it lays, still, on the ground, gathering dust.
What could have brought you back? I wonder. What could I have done to fix this? I've looked at it from all sides, every angle and as the tears well up in my eyes I can't think. I walk around in this world and try to find grace in the buds opening on spring trees. I inhale the warmth that has arrived, but I am cold inside. I shake like the leaves in Fall. I can't seem to still the motion.
Couldn't we just accept our shortcomings and compromise? Is it really only black and white? Have we been reduced to that?
Four years of rock bottom...
Heart empty
Energy depleted
Hopes on hold
And then a dream
A beautiful world where
I could be real and soft
Giving up pride
Accepting weakness
Adopting hope from another place
Holding it to myself
You did this
Gave me three months of
Possibilities
Courage
Strength and
Best of all Hope.
Now that I am awake
I see..
It was a dream.
Those storm clouds
Held at bay
Return
I am caught: a fishing boat in a roiling ocean
Waiting for capsize
Oh, but what a dream
What a beautiful dream
Thank you for those
Short months.
I wish...
I could have dreamt forever.
Pagan Poetry- Bjork
Oct. 21, 2007
Working Out...an ode to happiness
He is hope, personified
Inhale that vibe, infusions
Of energy that uplift.
An inner smile pushes outwards Until I can feel those muscles
In my face again.
They ache with disuse, but
I carry on, a daily exercise
Easier with time.
It seemed impossible
This meeting, unexpected, perhaps
Unwanted, but I am here
Cloaked in his smell, his clothes
His presence and there is peace
At long last.
December 2007
Trust
Trust.
That I want you in my life.
Trust.
That I care.
My baby steps toward you
May seem too small
But still I’m walking.
Nov. 10, 1998
Part 1
Eat sleep and die life,
Swallow it,
Yummy in the tummy,
Digestive on the most part,
Spoiled at times,
The times,
They are a changing,
Complication becomes commonplace,
The real world looms.
Simplicity becomes a phenomenon,
Felt, oh once in a blue moon,
In a tree, a leaf, a seed.
That side seems shut,
Non-emotional bastard speaks loudly, clearly,
She clears her husky voice,
She sings in all her glory.
Yes, take that life and live it,
Feel-it, hurt-it,
Comp pat a bill-it
If you can…
If you-she can it.
Part 2
Arms twisting upwards,
Gyrating gracefully,
Undulating openly.
Crooked fingers,
Pulling apart those pieces of sky,
Trying, finding and hiding it
For further use.
They dance,
Those arms,
Those fingers,
They dance to my rhythm,
To the music in my intestinal head,
The melodies zip through those tubes,
Like the lightning bolts I just miss,
Those bolts that have to be the most
Beautiful of them all.
They listen,
Those arms and fingers,
To the sounds of the breath of carbon dioxide,
They inhale those particles,
Visible to those strange moving orbs in sockets.
Those particles,
Almost tangible but then gone.
Yes, well,
Life is….
Just that.
I attended a small school in Haiti. There were approximately 360 students from Pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade. It was like a family, in some ways. My French teacher's name was Madeleine Gardinere. Most students disliked her and were afraid of her. She could definitely be scary. She was tough and sometimes mean in her corrections of our French. In a way, she was right. We butchered the language. Grammar was so difficult, I still have trouble with it.
But I liked her. I saw elements beyond her hard exterior. She was always dressed in clean but fussy suits and always over-powdered her face, so that it looked like a ghoul had been pasted on top of her otherwise dark skin. She was not an expert in the makeup department, but it always gave us something to talk about.
She had terrible bunions on her feet and I couldn't help imagining the pain she must have experienced at the mercy of fashionably uncomfortable heels.
It's her history that intrigued me. There was a bitterness in her actions and words; but I saw the deeper sadness sitting at the back of her eyes. A sadness that I think stemmed from her aloneness. She had traveled around the world, seen and done so many exceptional things and I admired and wondered what it would be like to do the things she had done. But she was in her 60s and had never been married, had never had children and I think that this is where that bitterness stemmed from, why the sadness was there.
Perhaps she had regrets. I remember thinking she must have had a great love and she had lost it somehow; I was never to find out who or why or when.
Today I look at my life and the experiences I've had and I think of Mme. Gardinere. I wonder if I'm headed in the same direction. I'm traveling around the world, accumulating experiences that are priceless. They will forever be my own precious jewels that I carry on me. But I, too, am alone and my life seems to follow the same patterns of loss locked in a never-ending loop, like a suffocating necklace.
Mme. Gardinere, I love you and what you taught me. I will always be grateful for what you taught me. But forgive me, I do not want to end up like you. I don't want to expel that stench of bitterness. I don't want what you had.
Can someone explain to me how some people are able to just erase you from their lives as though you had never impacted it? Can you just ignore the past and move on without questioning that blank space left behind?
Sometimes I wish I could just disappear from here and insert myself in a place where no one knows me and I can start anew. But that's not life, is it? Yes, people do it, probably more often than I know, but I cannot. Responsibilities to others and to myself keep me grounded. But sometimes, like these past few weeks, I wish I could say to hell with my responsibilities. Just leave. I will not be missed.
I used to think that if I died tonight, no one would notice for days, or weeks. Now, I know that it is not true. And the only reason I say this is that I have a job and my responsibilities to it. That's all.
In the end, I'm alone. To a certain extent, we all are. When I am stable, it is okay. I'm an expert at being alone, I know how to survive.
I look back on my university writings and the themes are the same. The bitterness of failure keeps coming back. It's never really gone anywhere. It surrounds us.
I wrote this while I studied at Dalhousie University. I find, to a certain extent, it still applies. How sad...:
November. 3, 1998
Mama I’m scared. I saw, I see it before me. It’s Failure. She’s approaching. Blackness, it comes, it wants to envelop me into its world. Oh, god, it’s a cloud above me now, it takes on so many shapes that each time I think it’s gone, it reappears in a different form. Why am I doomed to this? What did I do wrong? Or right? What did I say? Was it something I said? Silence. It’s palpable. I never wanted it to be this way. Never, never. Why now, why here? No, I’m not mad, I’m sad. What’s going on in that head, that head that isn’t mine? What are those thoughts? Why hide from me? It’s just me. Am I so scary, so repulsive, so wrong that I can no longer share the air? Why have I been shut out? I knew there was a door, but it’s been slammed in my face. Hard, really hard. Was that the intention? Was that a craftily set up plan? How could I have opened up my heart? Because now there is a puckering of the muscle, it’s been poisoned. And every time I encounter this other mind, this other presence, my own mind, the ego, laughs at me. At my stupidity. Why did I even try? Why did I open my mouth? Would it have been better otherwise? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I can’t shed the tears that should flow now. I’ve never been able to let the sweet salt touch my lips for one of them. It’s the disappointment that I feel now which stems from the flower of hope. Hope that each time it will be different. Each time it isn’t. It’s a different face, but it’s the same outcome. Short-lived, unpleasant to view when the eyes open after the crash. Fuck the stock market and its crashes. This is what’s important. People. People who surround us constantly. We can’t get away no matter how we try. But was I so wrong that I thought differently about this? Was I disillusioned? Was it all a ploy? I think not. I think not. Bitterness swells inside. Bitterness smiles at me. She’s told me before that this is the way it is. I keep on defying Her, thinking She must be wrong. But has She ever been? No. She hasn’t. Fuck you Bitterness. Fuck You and what You stand for. You make me sick. I never want to see You again. But I know You’ll hold on to me. Your arms, longer than anything I’ve seen, are wrapped around me. I can’t breathe, I see the blackness approaching me. It’s getting closer, You’re squeezing harder. It’s above me. But in the darkness that now surrounds me, that surrounds me fully, I see the lingering smile that You offer me, floating gently in a breeze that I don’t feel. I see it, I see it and I hate it. Forever, I promise You.
At the age of 11 or 12, I realized for the first time that I was not invincible and that I was not loved by all. It was the beginning of a different world. I've been alone ever since.
Since my 12th year, I have become careful about what I say. The words that exit me must reflect the essence of who I am. I can look back on my life and be proud of those words, because I do not set out to hurt others. I'm not naive enough to believe that I haven't hurt, but I take comfort in the fact that when a question is asked of me, I answer with honesty. I have always wanted that in return.
I always explain to my ESL students the difference between 'alone' and 'lonely'. You can be alone without being lonely and you can be lonely without being alone. You can also be alone and lonely all at the same time. I have been in each of those shoes forever, it seems; taking off one pair to put on the other the next day and so on. The best shoes are the 'alone' shoes, those moments when I take myself away from the everyday and experience things that could not have been done with others.
Today... I am alone and lonely and in pain. As I was yesterday and all the days before, for the past month.
I have met those who believe in the ever-lasting theory of love and those who have decided the word means nothing. It is just a word, after all.
But I am a woman of words and they mean the world to me.
I have loved. And I believe I have been loved. Those are memories that I will always hold dear and they are people I will always love. But it's not enough, is it? Your willingness to love and be loved has no bearing on what you will receive and how intentions become twisted with a little time and misguidance.
You want to be careful, you want to protect yourself from the hurt, but in the end you either leave yourself open to it or you shut yourself off from any of the wonder.
What makes some able to make things work? How do they manage to balance the pain and the joy and find a happy medium? I have tried to approach it from different angles, always trying to find the right combination of elements and yet keep falling flat on my face.
This love is no different.
I wanted it to work so badly. I saw things in him I thought would complement me. I saw pieces of me come out that I thought had disappeared in my last great disaster of a love. There was true hope there, a feeling that anything could happen, that we had the strength to work through the kinks. I imagined the respect we had for each other would allow us both to grow.
These are the kinds of failures I can't seem to get over. If I try my best at work and it doesn't succeed, it hurts, but I find other ways to cope. I figure, it is not my calling, it is not my true passion, it should not matter so much. How can you say the same for love? I am not one of those who falls in love and, then a few months later, grows out of it. It sticks, forever.
One will always be loved for his softness and sweetness.
Two will be loved for waking in me sensations I will always cherish and an appreciation and understanding for art I have yet to find anywhere else.
Three... three is loved, purely, still. And it is hard to say goodbye.
Will I ever be able to move on, without the knowledge of what went wrong?
Is this the lesson I must learn this time around?
Is this a foreshadowing of the misunderstandings and the giving ups that are to come?
Will I ever be able to muster up the energy to try it all again? Better yet, do I want to?
|
|
|
