Keep A Peek

In between pauses of suffocation, there are stolen little glints of ecstasy. There is nothing symbolic about my wanting you to be inside. Really, nothing. I categorically put on various masks of defence, the occasional frown is perhaps the only one you noticed. But there is so much more than that. On the brim of explosion I suddenly recall this one time when we were both right there, on the exact same spot, sipping tea from two cups and sitting 2367 meters from eachother. That picture is sacred to me even then. But 4376 heartbeats later and here we are. The contours of your body threatens to engulf my sanity but all I could do is smirk. And ponder. I am trapped in a mindless quest to find out the sources of my obsession and bemusement, the alpha and omega of this operation seems like a chapter out of a tragicomedy. The beauty of oblique indulgence lies in its expandable possibility of positive reinforcement. The funny thing is I don’t crave anything beyond the dangerous volatility of verbal reassurance. But damn do I love your eyes when you utter those forbidden words. Soft and encrypted, hard and dancing.

Faith - not wanting to know what is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When I think about it carefully, my elation on this tumultuous joyride is, by all standards and diagnosis, unfounded. Holding on stubbornly to the notion that doing it wrong is better than doing nothing? Oh yes. That’s it. For all I know, I might be blinded by faith, confused by temporal remedy, misdiagnosed with intelligence, misled by facts and misguided by optimism. The wind I am feeling in my hair and the adrenaline pumping through my every capillary might be a sign that I am gliding down a slippery slope. But I’d like to think that at the end of the ride, or tunnel, there is always a soft turf of evergreen, or light. I’m inclined to think that twenty seven years of breathing and nurturing counts for something, even if it is founded on impalpable content. The compass of my conscience and the enormity of my existence - if this is not true, what else is?

It was intense.

There are cloudy and confusing days, and then there are days like today. The weather is glittery and warm. On days like this I feel like I own the world. Being alone is a luxury that I could seldom afford nowadays. Claustrophobic antsiness lead me to the lake, into an open space and open sky and a lone seagull. Green grass, kissing couple, roller-blades, colors, photographic moments, scampering kids and all things bright and free. Geneva is beautiful when the weather is kind. So beautiful it makes me sigh. In appreciation and in fear. I sat on the brink of a stone edge and stared into the sky, the wind running through my hair felt like something from my childhood. It’s a perfect day for flying kites, daddy would say and I would grin. It felt almost wrong to be this happy. Dangling knees and a perpetual smile was all I could do. My sensitivity to sensory pleasure is heightened and urgent, almost explosive. I remember once telling a friend about my theory of proportionating happiness. I think today was a day of positive gain. I felt like  dipping my toes into a private pool of elongated serenity, perhaps the ripples will carry me through some harder days to come. I thought of many things. But they all seemed irrelevant to the weather. All roads lead here, it’s queer isn’t it.  I looked up and saw a kite, with a long colorful tail.

I live for days like these.

If I walk the thin line between reality and surreality, I would find myself transported into the default settings of an ancient valley. I would be fighting dinosaurs and drinking blood from a crudely crafted container. I would be ruthlessly defiant of my desires and needs. I would be the recurring nightmare of my nemesis and the conscience of my soul(mate).

And then maybe my conscious choices would be more permissible, and my struggle more comprehensible. And understanding becomes a burden that I could just shrug off.

Let’s talk about everything and nothing.

For the past few weeks I was troubled by a very strange thought. Strange, not because it was outer-spacely nor bizzarely exciting as I am inclined to be attracted to. But because it was very uncharacteristic of me. I realized that I might very well be living the best years of my life. Liberty, friends, love, hobbies, career, money, health - oh hey look, they are balancing peacefully on my happiness scale, for possibly the very first time in my life. And that is a pretty scary thought, isn’t it? That someday they might all go away, that I might not want them as much anymore. That my priorities will be all screwed, and that I might never find myself back in this place again. You know the slippery hand syndrome? I still have it - holding on to things is always difficult for me. And I have never wanted to hold on as much as I do now. But that scares me too.

Narwhals. A predator whale with a long unicorn tusk. Legend has it that the tusk was created when a woman with a harpoon rope tied around her waist was dragged into the ocean after the harpoon had struck a large narwhal.

Nature is amazing. Evolution is mind-boggling. Wickedly so.

I lately became friends with this girl who is incredibly spiky. She’s so different from the usual girls that I meet from my work place. Messy, sharp, funny, kind, playful, unpredictable and alarmingly intelligent. Sometimes she reminds me of myself if I had grew up in an infinitely open-space, in the wild, sans radar detection, without cultural and parental constraints and conventionally defined adjectives. I must admit that I am fascinated and unabashedly attracted. She says I am a closet hippie. I kinda like that.

I’m simultaneously reading a book about objectivism, a book about ants, a book about human trafficking in Japan and a book about Barack Obama (*guffaw*). The point of me saying this is not to let you in to the fact that I have ADD, nor the fact that I am literaturely polygamous, but I do want to remind myself that well, I need a new book shelf. Or maybe two.

“I have trouble catching up with you.” And just like that, he defeated me.

It’s too easy to be condescending when you’re perpetually stuck in your safety zone. From the flimsy pedestal that you’ve placed yourself upon, it is not sympathy, but merely a badly hooded superiority that you are feeling. Do not judge my choice, for you are not qualified to decide my purpose. Do not take my friendly smile as a sign of admission, it is my principle to not engage in fruitless debate. Do not try to charm me, I know more tricks than you’ll ever learn. Do, however, take your own advice and “stop being a donkey”, someday maybe we could even have some fun out of our differences. You know I do not mind mud fights, don’t you?

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.

You are all stardust.

You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode.

So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

- Lawrence Krauss, A universe from nothing.

It was a strange feeling. When I looked into the crowd and was swept over by an immense need to cry. I stood frozen in time, frozen in my sudden urge to reach inside myself and yank out my heart. The thundering beats, the florid lights, the melodic swaying, the sweat and the smell. If I’ve tried I could have captured them. But the missing note will still be missing. The moment felt incomplete, it couldn’t even justify tears. “You can fuck me but you can’t have my soul” The singer bawled and I jumped and yelled along. Stamping on feet and clapping on hair. Arms in the air and eyes wide shut.  The mimicry felt like a mockery but was soothingly so. The little sparks of neon light were accentuated to a point where I could only laugh at their helpless extravagance. Everything was vulnerable and strong, confusing and unraveling, big and small at the same time. I wander the two spaces of my bipolarity and wonder what is it like to be pined down in a singular dimension. Perhaps then lights and sounds could reach inside me. Perhaps then lyrical moments could touch me. Perhaps then being held from behind could disarm me. Perhaps then it’d be easier to cry.