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a day at a time, por favor
Stuck in bed watching Audrey Hepburn transform from awkward to graceful, with the help of a landscape. Just how much magic does the world contain so as to change lives? As much as I believe, I suppose. Buildings, monuments, statues, they're all static, never moving, grounded. But they move us. They move me. How much is out there, why am I here instead of there? "Maybe you don't dig deep enough," one part of my brain says.
"Maybe you're digging too deep," another part says.
"Keep things simple."
"Kala, why do you always have to complicate things?"
The good thing (rather, one of the good things...there are so many in this film! hail to world cinema and Yann Tiersen) about the film Amelie: the ex-metro ticket puncher, who punches holes into his wife's laurel leaves. And if I am already blind to the simple wonders of the world, then I ask for someone to take my elbow and animatedly describe all the little things that should be magnified, quickly, briskly, fast enough so that Im left wondering if something really did happen, and fast enough that it lasts a lifetime.
Disoriented
We can feel disoriented for several reasons, the most common being lack of sleep, and/or fluctuating sleeping habits, setting the biological time clock to something more regular, disoriented due to a shocking experience, a sudden change, lack of foothold and a sudden plunge into darkness.
As for me, I'm disoriented simply because I thought I still had a chocolate bar in my bag, but it turns out I'd already eaten it, and I don't recall unwrapping the alleged candy.
Hum.
An Ode to My Sister
Rewind to years before years when we wore our matching curdoroys, do you remember that? What about your Cabbage Patch doll and my Construction Set? You wrote playwrites about witches and I made sorcerer's hats out of corrugated boxes. I came upon an old notebook you used to have, a little childish slumbook, dated 1986. The question was "Who is your best friend" and I wrote "You". Time really does fly: now you're almost a doctor and I'm still drawing pictures. You're still solving problems methodically and I'm still dreaming of impossible solutions. It doesn't bother me that you were always better at piano than I was. Or the fact that you whistle better than I do. People say you're too serious but to me you're the funnest person I know : no one knows how to sing the "Disco Blanket" song like you do. Even though you've got your Richard and hospital wards, your whole life planned and accounted for, we're still wearing identical shirts on Sunday mornings, you still have a lot of powder carelessly tossed all over your 8-year-old face, and you'll always be the person who walked all the way from your UP Psychology building to my Fine Arts building to have lunch with me when I called your cellphone to say I was feeling blue.
Outside the lines
I am a colouring book criminal. Overstepping lines is my notriety.
My elementary report cards always had the same comments from my Art Teachers: "Ms. Barba has a tendency to be talkative in class. She participates in given activities only when she wants to. Does not submit homework on time. Can be moody and temperamental. Is creative and imaginative in her artworks, but she colours outside the lines."
Sometimes I wish I'd never grow up. And sometimes, I worry that my progress is taking longer than others.
Now, I stop talking when I don't have anything to say. I try to meet my deadlines at work, I finish things I started, even though finishing is always more difficult than beginning. I temper my moods the best I can manage.
If you give me a colouring book, though, I'll still colour outside the lines. I don't think I'll ever be able to do otherwise. Seeing colours seep irresponsibly across lines are beautiful, beautiful accidents, the kind I'd like to be caught in again and again, and most probably forever. Do I believe in accidents? Yes. Accidents exist everywhere except in the chambers of the heart.
Overcolouring is not a mistake : it's just the way I like it. In that part of my report card, I just hope I never improve.
Paradox
Busy afternoons collapse themselves into a little bottle of wine. I hide my cigarettes so I know exactly where to go when temptation strikes. Adorable word: decadent. I use it with every sentence just because I like the way it's spelled. that's a good reason, isn't it? Why is the word "empty" full of meaning? My camera was full of pictures of clouds, but I deleted them when the moon came out. Now, you ask, what's the point of that? The point is that there were clouds stored in my camera when there were clouds in the sky. Illusory projections. Clouds float because if they didn't we wouldn't be able to make up stories and shapes in the sky : we'd just be covered in mist that made no sense ... just blue, blue, blue, empty blue, everywhere.
Kissing Light
kissing light is a lifelong objective
choke
It's almost pointless, useless to explain asphyxiation. The imaginary hands are clammy and wet against your damp neck. Cold inexistent fingers lightly press upon your flesh, marking you wtih their paranoiac fingerprints. The sensation modifies from one second to the other, and you become conscious of every blink your eyes make, or of every drop of rain falling from the rainstorm outside your window. Attention is distracting, but nothing can tear you away from your imagination, which is almost a reality, because you swear there are hands gripping your graceful neck.
Then, it just comes. But it comes, slowly. It makes its entrance like a shy 18 year old debutante walking the red carpet. Asphyxiation dances with a gentle smile, with the laziness of wax slithering down a candle like a transparent snake turning opaque when cooled, or with the halo of a nebulla and supernova remnants. That is why you choke. Suddenly, you become conscious of every breath you draw from your lungs, to your nose, inhale exhale, release, suck in, blow out. Thus breathing becomes a chore, and not an effortless function. Vision of plants refusing oxidation-reduction reactions, the death of photosynthesis. The Death, you could say, of Breathing. Vision of every living thing refusing to exhale in order to prevent you from inhaling. Paranoia sets, and it becomes more complex to breathe.
And then it hits you : I'm choking, you realise sadly, Im choking. And you rush out into the night, imitating the sound of sobs, but you aren't crying because there aren't any tears : just dryness, just emptiness, just confusion, questions, and the search for somekind of elucidation. A mean biological trick.
When choking, you are at science’s apogee; the farthest distance from the center of the earth.
Jul.
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