Now with your hollowness folded, pressed into mine. Tell me, Are you still the wistful one?
Untitled 2, a paper bag soliloquy
Category: Stories
Parking some thoughts so they’re not stuck in my mind.
I have devoted every speck of my energy and savings to this last struggle, and my efforts have been rewarded. I have been admitted into this grandiose institution, and all my most ostentatious dreams have come true. Yet here I am, stranded in a strange land trudging customs, bumping clumsily into people I can't understand. … Continue reading Parking some thoughts so they’re not stuck in my mind.
I was reading in bed when they took my neighbours away
And I would (perhaps) feel less shame for my silence then, when the Men took my neighbours away and called a Blessing this unseasonal sorrow under a spring sun.
On grad school, a mid-application rant
US$450 (not incl. travel to a different city) travel for the GRE examUS$600 for test prepUS$ 85 per applicationUS$285 for World Education Services to verify my degree from LSE, plus 30$ to send it out to each school And that’s just to apply to 3 schools in the US. Australia’s next. Touché, global education-industrial complex. … Continue reading On grad school, a mid-application rant
Reveries
But there will be time to cast a tear for the penny rich bones.
On the GREs
Oh, for the love of Montaigne, for the death of nuance, what the actual fuck.
Sunshine Wednesday
Better immured by walls than muffled noises.
Waiting in line at the Monet exhibition
These are the clangs of the clock counting sunless times. These are the lives measured by a painted sunrise.
To that which I held for an instant.
The night rends, Its wounds are clear as dawn.
Petrichor
I used to think that the scent of the air after a storm was more fragrant than a lover's kiss
Untitled, a horsefly soliloquy
In the shattered visage of a thousand eyes, I see your hands cleave with swift wrath, And I die.
This Place
half a dream, half a ruin.
How do you know they are beautiful?
How do you know they are beautiful, with faces behind masks?
London, again. (Pt. 2 of whatever)
People are kind of like plants that way. Once you yank them out at the root, they don’t grow so well.
Nothing
Winter brought pansies to a bloom
and finches sang and sang while worms sleeping between our rooms
dreamed of nothing.
The Spectator
Brittle. hollow boned. And this kaleidoscopic life Seen atop the wall, where raindrops clung to windows like ghosts and dull lights bounced back to the pedestrian lives below. Between the twinkle of the spectacle and the celestial dome was you. You perched atop the wall like a cat, observing, recording the motley crew of midnight … Continue reading The Spectator
Three Identical Strangers
Three Identical Strangers is the most thought provoking documentary I have watched in while. To fully appreciate this story, you ought to start here, with a 1995 New Yorker Article that first features its progenitor, Dr. Peter B. Neubauer. It was the sixties, a set of identical-twin girls came to the attention of the prominent … Continue reading Three Identical Strangers
Mania (revisited)
It will be a spectacular shipwreck. You enter twilight with your heart oozing coffee and single malt, tittering on the edge of aneurysms bursting, bursting riotously to the pulse of stars beating, beating like drums. Returning nightly to a vacant den dining on an expensive takeout meal for one. Mock me if you will. You … Continue reading Mania (revisited)
A Remembrance
But death is a winter whore.
Fuck you, you have nothing on me.
People who go through crisis end up hating themselves It's the start of every redemption story It's the beginning of the descent towards the divine It's the flesh and the bone and the sinew revealed by the brutal and brutalizing lashes of reflection Oh you will see Oh you will see And then you will … Continue reading Fuck you, you have nothing on me.
Not quite a limerick
I'm Windows installed on Macintosh, I'm soup in a shallow dish, I'm shuimo painted on color wash, I'm peanut butter served with fish. I'm a Djinni without a wish.
Eye
This was the first time he laid on an operating table. In the months preceding, he had gradually unraveled. First his mind, then his intellect, his heart, and now his body. It happened on a humdrum Wednesday noon at work, when the sunlight percolated ink-stained shades and made the office sleepy and the light from … Continue reading Eye
The discomfort of first-world poverty
Our world at times has an unfortunate tendency to confuse discomfort with poverty. Absolute poverty – not just the paucity of things but the beggary of hope, and of egress – is stunting. The existence of children who through mere circumstance of birth are deprived of basic nourishments in body and in mind, is the … Continue reading The discomfort of first-world poverty
Unravel – the Metaphor
Those sharp little fangs bit down and drew blood and he knew it was a metaphor. Fast friends, they had met on New Year’s Eve and she was in his life for 175 days. Some days he had felt so close to her that his wings melted and felt his monstrous heart plummet from the … Continue reading Unravel – the Metaphor
My 4-step coping strategy for panic attacks.
It begins with the world closing in and the floors and the desks and the walls and the crowd and the trees and grass and the skies bending, bending towards you with vehement intent and the space around you spinning, spinning into a whirlpool of red, yellow, orange and green then bright, bright light scorching … Continue reading My 4-step coping strategy for panic attacks.
The Guinness Sigh
The sigh that follows a protracted, tantalizing gulp from a fresh, cold pint of Guinness is paradise. That luxurious satin nectar of bitter ecstasy filling around your tongue, your gut, your blood. It's the hard-earned sigh when propping up a stiff foot after a long hard Saturday, where the fifth cup of coffee … Continue reading The Guinness Sigh
On flowers, and artificial grass in a pot
In one surreal moment, Ido was up at five a.m., head bursting with frenetic thoughts that demanded to be committed to word, only to delete the draft by accident with no idea as to what had poured out of him, and spent the day in that hazy, drugged up sentimental way, as if he'd lost … Continue reading On flowers, and artificial grass in a pot
P.N. Setepenre
Is today's sunlight same as yesterday's? Kind of brain-scraping when you think about it. There's nothing intrinsically different, in the sense that they're all made of the same 'stuff' - electromagnetic radiation from the sun. Which would make sunlight truly egalitarian - to kings and beggars, sunshine is sunshine. Life has been shitty lately. Supposedly … Continue reading P.N. Setepenre
On almost burning to death but not quite and now he’s not sure how to react to it all and to the shitstorm that is living.
Ido almost burned to death last night. It’d have been an embarrassing death. His trusty old electric heater got covered by a fallen towel and set itself on fire, while he napped a few steps away. Rest in pieces, iridescent old friend. Many a night of warmth and comfort you have brought to him. Fitting … Continue reading On almost burning to death but not quite and now he’s not sure how to react to it all and to the shitstorm that is living.
Love. Mania.
You construct your life from the tip of a pin. Woe is you. Hope is you. Harsh sun is you. Bitter wind is you. The ones who brought you to this world naked and screaming, they were barely twenty-three. A dark alley blowjob and a motel rump and voila, a child and half a mortgage … Continue reading Love. Mania.
The search for whimsical things. Pt 1.
The family next door has lived here since 1954. The ones upstairs moved in a year later, but when the original owners died, their children had the place stripped and refurbished into a studio, now inhabited by an American or European expat whose only encounter with me is the cacophony of her sex life at … Continue reading The search for whimsical things. Pt 1.
Home
The rebel act of a wayward son.
Oh but it was only sentiment.
It is the knowledge that is comforting. You are surrounded by a motley crew of midnight faces, boys and girls enraptured in the moment. She is there, across the room. She doesn't look at you, and you don’t look at her, but somehow you know she’s there, that there is a secret world shared by … Continue reading Oh but it was only sentiment.
Ugly
I set the ocean ablaze with my own sun.
It was just a cat…
The cold should have killed it. It inched towards the edge of the treeline and curled up there like a fuzzy ball, legs tucked into its body. A grizzly encounter in the past left it limping with a gushing scar that extended from the paws of its hind leg all the way to its back. … Continue reading It was just a cat…
On memories and selfies
The earliest theatrics must have happened in our heads, because our memories are just neat little stories. Some of us battle monsters, some ascend from rags to riches, some embark on heroic quests, some are on a long voyage home. Some live delightful, romantic lives, some come to tragic ends. We all began somewhere and … Continue reading On memories and selfies
Lovestruck continued…
I’ve been quite preoccupied with thoughts of love and intimacy recently. I blame Spring time. ‘Love’ might be overstating it. What’s the word? Affection? A tenderness? The stirring ardor of a wild heart? Dickinthebraintitis? Remember when you met that person for the first time? It might have been a chance encounter in the aisles of … Continue reading Lovestruck continued…
Lovestruck
Oh. That was his thought when he met her. She was pretty, for sure. Frazzled, curly bleached blond hair streaked with strawberry, greyish blue eyes that refused to hold his gaze. She wore a looping white T with black squares. A massive scarf coiled around her and made her look fragile. She had a meandering … Continue reading Lovestruck
Happy Birthday to Baby P.
Frank coiled around his throne of dew. Around him stars bloom and fade. Each of his million arms cradled a bubble, in which new worlds were born and old ones decayed, each filled with billions of souls who lived and loved and dreamed and died. “Hello, child”. His form slithered and looped around Pip, a … Continue reading Happy Birthday to Baby P.
I really can’t think of a title.
He fell to his back, took in a large gulp of air, squeezing it out slowly with clenched chests to silence the wheezing. She rolled over to the side in a waft of thick, dizzying perfume. Their eyes never met. Not even when he leaned over awkwardly to kiss her. “No”, she said. He stopped … Continue reading I really can’t think of a title.
A Christmas Suicide
He died on Christmas Eve, 2016. It began many, many years ago, as the last dead twigs were swept away and a brittle chill filled the air, and the children chattered plans for winter. He joined their anticipation, and made up wonderful plans of noisy family dinners, lavish gifts and the sweet, annoying nag of … Continue reading A Christmas Suicide
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