When it rains, the world is a swamp
Dark, damp, dreary
Smelling of plant rot
And filled with the incessant buzzing
Of insects:
Niceties (of course I remember)
Promises (we’ll be together forever)
Opinions (we should believe in karma)
Motivations (carpe diem mothafucka)
Generalities (you have to open your heart’s doors)
Advice (the universe is all yours)
At least the water that drowns,
Does not speak
My first blog, which is lingering in a spam reply-filled, update-less limbo, was born during one of my birthdays. From that point on, I resolved to write something whenever my birthday rolled around.
In short, yes, this is around a month late, as it stands.
***
These past few weeks have been particularly hectic, what with work and other people taking up your time. It seems strange, though, that the days just seem to fly by of late: one week you’re attending this, meeting that, eating this, drinking that, getting paid, spending it, and before you know it, the year has passed again, and your alcohol tolerance is all the weaker for it.
***
A busy day, however, is an excuse that brings one down a path I would rather not travel. To be fair, there have been things happening here, just away from the eyes of its readers: stories, poems, essays, some “refrigerated” (to borrow a literature professor’s term), fermenting until their true scents and stenches surface, time sorting out which ones become fine wine and which ones become vinegar.
***
I have been thinking about how some things tend to defy the written word: emotions too deep for any coherent reason or explanation; dreams that fly by so quickly that once you’ve remembered but a glimpse of them, the rest are all gone, like electrons under a light microscope; the complexity of other people, bundles of drives and motivations, thinking their own thoughts and feeling their own feelings; the memories that seem to tell you that who you are depends on how you remember, rather than what.
***
Darkness and the night air are always a beautiful backdrop to those thoughts that are yours and yours alone. You know which ones these are at a glance: these are the ones you’d be ashamed to mention, even actually think of in public, in the amoral, evil recesses of your mind. Perhaps this is why, despite Lucifer, who became Satan, was a being of light, it was the darkness where, for people’s minds, all the evil things lived. Perhaps this is why most of those who have to have to rack their brains for a living prefer to do so in the silence of night. Perhaps this was what brought about the first images of spirits floating around the dark, leading to the ideas of witching hours and other strange awakenings while we are asleep, unperturbed by globalization and technology as we were then.
***
When I started out with writing, keeping a blog used to be something special: it was a place where you invited people from outside–including the occasional online wanderer–to peer into your soul, to see how he and you both made sense of this world. Unfortunately these days, mention “blog” to anyone these days, and people think along its more commodified uses: product placement, shameless plugging. Perhaps it’s due to the industry I move around in, but I’m appalled that some of the blog writers out there even have the nerve to call themselves “writers” in the first place. It’s as if the term “blogger” means less now, drowned as it is under a wave of soulless commercialism.
***
I think this is one of those times when life is happening right before my eyes, yet I miss out on it.
Yet again.
Left Hand, Write Hand 