Just a quick one for Chinese New Year: wishing all a prosperous and joyful Year of the Water Dragon!
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Constellations
- Instead of continents
bejewel the depths a heaven below
star-studding earth’s face, gridlike,
pinpoints in pitch-clarity spelling signs
laid bare in shadows and patterns of manmade light
by dark more seductive
more mysterious and yet more
transparent;
these words and shapes
exposed and undressed
unveiled in patterns incapable of deception and trickery
as steel-and-concrete sirens shrink from twilight,
illuminate instead in geometry
in acute angles and concentric formations
the secrets hidden by daylight behind screens of sunshine
these symptoms of blindness.
The Sky Doesn’t End
I recently was given a book for Xmas: Where the Sky Doesn’t End by Ron Nichols. Now, this fits into the category of YA fiction and I will admit that I had that moment of ‘aren’t I a little past this stage?’ – but a book is a book and I read it all the same, figuring that it would be good for a bit of light reading. Without putting in too much of a spoiler, let me just say the same thing I said to the writer: at several points in this book (which I read in practically one sitting), I found the emotions in these pages of print spilling over with such clarity, I was sitting there going ‘mygosh I’m crying’.
Don’t get me wrong about this. This isn’t so much just a sad, pretty story, as it is an honest, inspiring and beautiful piece of writing. One of my favourite moments in this story makes me tear up simply because it captures the spirit of youth, innocence and sincerity. The style of writing is suitable for all ages because it’s straightforward, communicative and easy to follow, while retaining an impressive amount of detailwork and purposeful direction. I’m certain that a great deal of care and thought went into the creation process, as the storyline remains complex and plot movement relies intensively on character interaction and development.
The one thing I like best about what you’ll encounter in this book is that it’s personal. I took a few chapters to warm up to the characters – but once that was done, they contributed significantly to my reading experience. They have presence and substance, and their individual personalities have a dynamic quality about them that carries weight as the story progresses.They write this story, are right there in your mind’s eye when you read this book, and carry the plot on its way, which I eventually found to be the only path that it could have taken.
So yes. I enjoyed this book much more than I initially thought I would. This read took me right back to that moment when I first started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, when I began to reach for control of this thing I knew as my life, and when I began to discover the value of friendship, integrity, and above all else, dreams.
Where the Sky Doesn’t End is set in Missouri, is centred around the ambitions and thoughts of 13-year-old Brendan and 11-year-old Aria, and can be found on Amazon.
About the snow…
So as you may or may not have surmised, this post is purely to showcase the fact that WordPress has snow on their pages till Jan 4th, as per most years. Yup, I’m writing this purely for the sake of virtual snow. Because I love my virtual snow, okay? ^^
A little anecdote to fill the space here then: have you noticed how, like snow, white things like to be not white? Experiment with this. Take a book and a cup of coffee. Sit down, read, and see if you drip on any page. Unconvinced? Wear a white shirt. Eat spaghetti in any form of tomato sauce, pizza, curry, chocolate ice cream, watermelon, and any other highly coloured food you can think of. Even if your shirt stays white this round, let me assure you that it’s only a matter of time. It happens to the neatest of us. White things just get bored of their own whiteness and want to be seen differently, or want to self-decorate, or want to be less white. It’s the way they are and really nobody can blame them for that. All we can try to do is persuade them that the reason we bought them in the first place is because they’re white and we would like them to stay that way, please.
The other thing we can do is wear non-white things, use non-white things, and let other people deal with the little personality disorder that white things have. However, this attitude is turning out to be catching, and I don’t mean the tendency of pastels or off-white colours to adopt this stand. The other day, my BLACK dress decided it had had enough of being itself for that day. I was eating pasta in a creamy white sauce. I don’t know how this article of clothing developed its version of white-object-syndrome, because I have few enough white things (being unusually prone to giving in when they assert their desire to be non-white), but it apparently has. So. I did the only thing I could.
Laundry.
I also have started wearing white again. Happy New Year.
Ctrl + Z
Unshatter me unscatter me
Un-spill-fluids-and-brain-matter me
Unbleed me unneed me
Unvow unpromise and uncreed me
Untighten me unfrighten me
Unleash unwind and unenlighten me
Unsplit me unknit me
Un-train-to-stand-stay-and-sit me
Unforgive me unbelieve me
Unbless unbury and unreceive me
Unsoothe me unapprove me
Un-guilt-trip unmadden and unmove me
Unmind me unbind me
Unteach undiscover and unfind me
Unscrew me unview me
Undo-all-you’ve-done-unto me.
Retribution
Note: This was written in tandem with and based on a friend’s work (you know who you are). Retribution is a three-part intertwined piece, readable as separate stanzas (do give it a go!). The underlined text is in part I: Vengeance, the text in bold makes up part II: Justice, and the text in italics constitutes part III: Mercy. I’m still revising this entry, so do know that this is likely to have changed the next time you see it ^^
True, this blade, and bitter to the bone
Blinded by duty’s creed and bound by integrity unseeing,
Ageless and faithless, none can hold so fast
to the scarlet core of thirst
uncaring, unfeeling and unflinching,
to the desire for another chance, hope so
unquenchable and flame-forged hatred,
the blade tempered and shaped under the influence of a conscience
chaste, placed, untouchable, beyond the thresholds of pain, and
proud enough to live ten times over;
unbreakable and unshakable, can know not beauty from brutality,
weightless as the distilled essence of innocence –
chaos unsheathed and unleashed
differentiating only black from white, that spectrum of judgement,
before the world shatters all realities with its illusions and falsehoods –
in this crimson-tainted haze, shimmering
so divine and unearthly and unholy all in the same lifetime
gathered from dreams and transparencies
in the hell-raising and heaven-shaking madness
balanced on the tip of a feather, the edge of a breath
subliminal and fleeting as whispers of autumn sunshine
of sins unfurling within sins
ragged with the frenzy of heartbeats forgotten
that fade with each newly cherished taste, scent, touch.
Drink deep, for this cup runneth over with
Impartiality, a shield immune to
Compassion has no shell, only
bloodlust unsatiable, to kill and to be killed by
the evils and wrongs of emotions, reflects
a spirit capable of absolution and commiseration within
the same blade, that same sweet
feeling, void of love and hope,
the condensed understanding of darkness,
anger, rebounding, heart’s-blood-hot and
disowning and transcending mortal boundaries
trusting that providence flickers brightly enough in this life
savage in each stroke unrelenting,
to do that which humanity forbids and refuses to acknowledge
as lodestars for the virtuous and unworthy, together
to overflow the banks and borders of thought
as anything besides a crime; detached from life and religion alike
traversing this dimension to the next,
in manic undercurrents of molten obsession, mindless
on the descent into the eye of the tempest
continually discovering the sanctuary that is concealed
and viciously eternal as the pounding veins in the depths of the world
amidst the symmetry and horror of truth
within the secret depths of each mortal soul.
On labelling
So about stereotypes. It’s a bit late (very late…) and I should probably be in bed or something but I felt this deserved a blog post – if only a short one. Stereotypes right now aren’t my favourite thing to discuss because they pretty much inevitably end up triggering an argument, which is odd considering that I am (again) the minority in the place I’m in and get stereotyped a fair bit myself. I’ve not gotten mad about it, though I’ve put on a mock annoyance front a few times. Mostly I laugh it off.
A stereotype is apparently a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image of something. Wiktionary woot! Stereotypes are generalizations and it’s true that every individual wants to be thought of as unique, so I do appreciate that individuality might get left behind, the same way I realize that many stereotypes are negative.
But look. If someone launches a negative stereotype at me I have several choices regarding my reaction. I can either laugh it off, get offended, or let it go now and show how the negative stereotype doesn’t apply to me. I often laugh it off, and if it’s not applicable to me as an individual, I don’t bother to get offended. If it’s an inaccurate generalization, there’s no point getting offended anyway because people who throw that kind of thing around are either not serious about it or just want to get a reaction and if so, they don’t deserve one. Part of the issue I have is, well, why do people take it so seriously? I do realize that stereotypes and labels can be taken to be offensive, but here’s the deal, the way I see it: you decide, when being ‘labelled’ during a conversation, how you want to take it, or how true that label is.
General labels have perhaps at least an iota of truth in them. Let’s examine the controversial gender stereotypes for a start. Example: guys are lazy. We all know guys who are lazy. We all also know that females are equally prone to be lazy (living proof here). However, if I know more guys than girls who are lazy (and I’m not saying I do), chances are I’m more likely to agree that guys are lazy. If a girl has had a string of lousy relationships, she’s more likely to say that guys are jerks, because from her experience, that stereotype holds true. That doesn’t mean that all guys are jerks; only that many of the guys she knows (or has dated) have disappointed her in some way. If a guy says that girls are manipulative, he’s possibly had experiences with females who are exactly that. Women have been said to be materialistic, men to have massive egos, and the list goes on and on and on.
What about positive stereotypes? It’s sort of true that males have in general better navigational skills than women. Guys just pick up on some things faster, like how an engine works, reading maps and that kind of thing. While it may not be true for all males, it’s been scientifically proven that guys can just get some things in a way that women don’t (and vice versa). So why would anyone complain about that positive image? It’s still a stereotype, bear in mind, because it’s widely held, fixed and oversimplified. There are guys who don’t conform to that, and there are women who can do those ‘masculine’ things better than their male counterparts. That deal about women being more sensitive, also: many women are. Some aren’t. It’s a generalization, and it functions how generalizations are supposed to function by giving a rough estimate or guide to begin with, and in every case there will be exceptions.
So let’s suppose this: someone throws a negative stereotype at you in a casual conversation. You could tell them you don’t appreciate that label. You could decide it’s not worth your time losing your temper over and just let it go. What I feel might speak more powerfully and completely drive the point home, is that you can show them how inaccurate it really is. Go ahead and for that person, be their first exception.
People of the fox
And in the beginning, there was the world
not as we know it but as a world born anew
and brought into being before it was fully whole
void of substance and colour.
And the masters brought also into being
all manner of animals and plants
also creating the wind spirits, to shape the skies and waters
the stone spirits, to raise the mountains and mould the valleys
and the sun spirit, to nourish all creations and reign over them,
and to each spirit, the masters gave a tribe of people.
And the masters created the final spirit, the artist
and bestowed upon her the gift of colour
that the world would be filled with beauty
and the peoples and animals would behold it with joy and wonder.
And as the masters decreed, so it became:
she gave the stones and the earth bold colours
that the peoples and animals would behold their strength.
She dipped her finger into the seas and lakes and rivers
and gave them the colours of their heavenly brother, the sky.
The sun spirit refused, saying
‘I am not of the same substance as the world
and they shall behold me as such.’
And the artist replied
‘As you wish so shall it be that the world
will never behold you fully;
your brightness will blind all who seek to look upon you.’
And she coloured all things then
colouring life with her own scarlet blood;
to animals she gave colours of the earth and fire
to plants she gave colours of the earth and seas
but to her own people she gave the most striking colours
of fire and earth and skies and water together
and she taught them to weave and dye cloths
to colour their bodies and faces for marriages and wars
and to change the colour of clay.
And her people hid these skills from the world
believing them sacred to their people alone;
her altars were more beautiful than all others.
When the masters beheld the world, they were pleased
but the other spirits and their peoples cried out, saying
‘The artist has favoured her people above ours -
she has given them her knowledge of colour
for the sake of her own vanity!’
And the masters grew angry and sought the artist
that they could strip her of powers and knowledge
but she fled in the form of a red fox from their wrath.
And so much did she desire to keep her colour
so that the spirits would not recognize her
she coloured the coat of all foxes red.
And from that day, all artists among our people
are known as people of the fox.
Note: Written in response to a class on mythology and creation myths.
Unwritten
This arrangement eludes me,
so alike that bone-china trickle of
sand though the pelvis
of an hourglass prison
that I find myself baffled,
unable to divine the exact location of each word -
where each one lives before
they are so rudely plucked into inky existence,
killed and pinned to a page for the world to read;
and then, the perfect assymmetry of it all -
to place each syllable
with sniper precision into a verse
into a shape, filling a silhouette,
blossoming, flowerlike, delicate
and above all else, natural
as double helixes and the very marrow of life.
My thoughts are cold-fingered
clumsy as they fumble with the clasp
these intricate pieces that should, can, will
fit with resounding satisfaction, if only,
if only, one knows
just how to fasten it all together.
With these fleeting emotions,
fluttering, insubstantial and
transcendental in their haze of uncertainty
I am unsure of my purpose
struck silent as I search for the right sound,
unable to capture that which I fail to recognize.
And still
I reach again for the tangled yarn of my tongue
that I may set it straight and
dye it multicoloured and brilliant;
that I may set it alight
almost too bright for mere paper to hold
and perhaps, somehow, someday,
tell you just how I feel
and why it matters.
Intermission
A brief interlude to the fishpond project: Artwork in advance for Chinese New Year 2012 (Year of the Dragon)
