A Quantum Life

“There’s a lot of stuff you have the right to blame me for, but you can’t believe I chose any of this. We’re both cursed to see stuff that nobody should be allowed to see, but we’re still responsible for our own mistakes. I still don’t regret anything." - Charlie Jane Anders, "Six Months, Three Days"

It feels surreal when you see all these people in photos on Facebook or Multiply or whatever social networking site you own or used to own, and then you remember where they fit in the holes of your self: people you've met once, you've hung out with, you've loved, you've desired, you've slept with, you've kissed in a car outside a funeral, you've held hands under the stars, you've lived a fantasy of vagrancy with, you've cried over, you've laughed with, you've hated to the core of your entire spirit, you've stopped talking one afternoon because of a small word they said and which they didn't mean, you've talked over the phone for hours way back in high school for the most trivial things...

It feels odd, to see your history in the multitude of faces that let you know how far you've gone and how far you'd go, or how close you're capable of wanting to be to another person as if their very existence meant that you would continue to exist. You are a particle weaving in space with other particles, moving faster than the speed of light and covering all emptiness, ensuring all possibilities are exhausted.

How amusing that you've poured yourself into the funnel of the present, but in another world perhaps, in another universe, you could've ended up with that person you held hands with in a blue car one humid Friday evening, or the last face you could've seen was the wide-eyed driver of a ten-wheeler truck who almost hit you when you were a stupid Grade Six student crossing the street with nary a care in the world. You could've died that August while it was raining and you were bleeding alone under the torrential rain, or you could've become a famous writer by 20 like what you promised a college friend while waiting for the sun to rise at Manila Bay one summer night.

Yet what was and what could've been mean nothing to what is and what should be, the present that feels right, the only picture that you'd rather keep looking at: on that bed, holding hands, saying goodnight, in some two-star hotel somewhere in the city, smiling at each other while thinking this is what should last, this is the only thing that should be. This is where the story ends.

Of Course It's Not Easy

"I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while." - "Aeroplane, or, how he talked to himself as if reciting poetry" by Haruki Murakami

Of course it isn't easy. Why are we expecting it to be easy anyway? It's not; it's never going to be. It is as difficult as it is maddening, it is sad, it will be a roller-coaster/spin dryer/grinder of emotions.

It might kill you. Or you just might live to tell the tale.

Maybe I exaggerate. Maybe I want to make it sound more than what it really is. Maybe we idealize what a relationship should be: creating intricate stories, weaving every heartache and laughter to build a world that is but an illusion, a shadow. We are wont to invent fantasies about who we are, about our purpose in this life, but perhaps the truth is hidden beneath all the fiction we make.

Of course it's not easy. Who said it was going to be easy anyway? We are alive and that's it all that matters. It serves is own purpose, like a self-sufficient machine. Life is a big machine in various permutations. 

It is what it is.

And I pile up esoteric lines upon esoteric lines but really achieve nothing, but if there is one truth, perhaps it's this: it's not easy. We all have to pay the price. 

Because I needed to say something profound to go along with the video

What does it mean to love and be swallowed by an eternal fire that threatens to consume the world in a glorious blaze?

The Strangeness of Absence

It isn't that I refuse to feel. It's not that. I don't resist it. I believe I am ready to welcome it, wholeheartedly, like rain after summer. I am ready to welcome it gladly. Every day I wake up and rush to the front door wishing that it would dust its feet on the mat outside and knock, finally, after so long. I want to. I long to. I am mad for it. I am mad like the torrential fire that ravages the forest.

Or so I'd like to think. Maybe I'm not as mad as I think I am. Maybe I am only as mad as the soft dying glow of the spent bonfire. The heart, perhaps, burns only like solid ice. A chunk of cold ice---only frostbite, mistaken for flame. Perhaps, perhaps. I've forgotten already.

This is youth. I see it gallop like a wild horse, away. The rushing river has reached the lake. On the horizon I see the sun as it bids goodbye, leaving this sky for another's. There was something lost; but it came too quietly, this passing. I hardly even noticed it leave. Had everything come abruptly the pain perhaps would've been too unbearable, but the feeling wanes like the aftermath of a storm in the last few hours of its life. I only remember, and what I remember I pine for, but perhaps it's too late. 

Luminous

"I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head."

- "Variations of the Word Sleep", by Margaret Atwood

I want to touch you in your hidden places. When you are sleeping, I will secretly crawl in your dream and whisper behind you. I want to walk my fingers on your skin and feel the landscapes of your iridescent body, to feel your legs and hands entwined with mine in this lazy Sunday morning. 


I want to wake up everyday and see you looking at me that way you look at me when you think I'm not looking, and then I'll stare at you, and you'll ask, "What?" and I'll say, "nothing" and then smile, the hours melting into fluid desire that fills the vessels of our souls to the brim. We are overflowing. Today is illuminated with everything that is plenty.