All the Things That You Are

You smell like
Fridays,
February,
damp asphalt,
morning walks;
you are
cold air.

I'm listing my favorite things because
you
are one of them,
part
of them,
are them.

You are pomegranate juice,
downtown.
A thin head of
foam.
Downtown.

You are a pitcher of Sangria...

not downtown.


You are short film
screenings,
screaming
foreign synonyms,
and
tea
and
you
and
me.

You are every plane ticket,
border I cross,
everyone I walk
by
and past.

You are bicycles in Paris

and bare feet
in the street
in Spain.

You are the words
I read
and
the lines I write,
you  are
the books
I pick
and
the
days I skip
and
lie
in bed.

You are
all the times
I changed/
change
my mind
and waited
I'm waiting
for
someone
else
who would smell
like Fridays
as well.

You are

not

here

anymore


and

I am

fine with that

as long as I have

everything else

to remind me
of
you.

Plastic Bottles

I'm twenty and if I cut my age in half I'd be a whole kid with ten years worth of kid memories. Now, ten years ago, my English teacher warned me not to fill a plastic bottle with water twice because filling plastic bottles with water too many times will do you no good. You see, if the plastic goes bad, the water goes bad, hence, you go bad. What had happened when I was ten was that I completely disregarded my teacher's warning and I've been filling plastic bottles with water too many times ever since. I think I've gone bad. At twelve I thought nobody would ever love me because I used to sweat. A lot. I walked the halls of my school reeking of damp insecurity, with a twist of lime. I started squeezing lemon juice in my water because maybe then the plastic won't go bad and then, maybe I won't go bad. Three years later, nobody loved me still, but I stopped sweating too much. I did, however, start reading and that's when I needed someone to love. Because maybe if I find love I'll find inspiration. You see, I was a James Gatz waiting for a Daisy to turn me into a Gatsby. I was a Mr. Darcy wanting an Elizabeth Bennet to walk up to me and shatter my pride to the ground. I was hopeless and desperate and in need, I was a Holden Caulfield in Manhattan, a Patti Smith in Central park. I was a lost Sputnik. It was when I was fifteen that I realized that I dream at night more than most people do and I dream midday more than most people do too and that's a problem. At fifteen, I cried the way Diane Keaton did in Annie Hall when she missed Alvy, and looked out the window when the car was moving as if there was a whole bunch of people watching me on a theater screen. I lived in a film. I still do. I still wonder whether there lurks a Tyler Durden next to me and I can't see him yet or whether John Steinbeck wrote me off as a Cal or a Lennie. I love Cal. I cried over Lennie. And then I turned sixteen and it didn't feel the way it ought to feel like. That was the disappointment of a lifetime, to say the least. But I did find inspiration in the many days I spent loving a person. The love stopped at nineteen but the inspiration, the idea, the.. the... what was left of it was still there; the feeling lingered. I was still Gatsby. I would forever be Gatsby. At eighteen, I drew a naked woman in Spain in an artist's studio. My lips kissed Dali's grave, I touched the colours of Picasso. I was nineteen and that's when love no longer held meaning. It was just like having to wake up, having to sleep, we don't know why we do it, but everybody does it; everybody sleeps; everybody wakes up; everybody drinks water; everybody pees; everybody loves. I'm not twenty yet but I'm two months short. I fill plastic bottles with water and keep them by my bedside in case I need a sip in the middle of the night and they stay there till morning.

"I can't sleep. I don't think it's insomnia-induced sleeplessness, I just can't sleep because―and you'll make fun of me―but, whenever I shut my eyes I hear this sizzling noise. I can hear the crackling oil; a series of mini-explosions sending invisible, but highly audible, shrapnel flying against the flesh and bones of my head.

I can't sleep.

Maybe that's why I've been...

Look, I don't really remember when I was last a little kid. I mean, I have very vague memories of someone singing me Humpty Dumpty and how he fell off this wall and they couldn't fix him and that's it!

That's all I remember.

And now I feel like I'm just a fallen Humpty Dumpty. But instead of falling off a wall, I just collapsed in my place and I can't get up. I have these terribly flaccid feet that refuse to carry me any longer.

Now, I need to know: Can you fix me? 

You have to! Understand this: I can do nothing, I can be nothing, I can feel nothing. I constantly feel emotionally, mentally, and physically crippled. It's like my body is grounded but everything else that exists within it is floating outside of it. And it's stuck in some fabric and it just... It's like I'm crawling my way to a fast approaching, untimely demise.

We'll meet halfway.

I keep staring at everything I'm supposed to be, but everything is up there and I'm lying here on the ground on my pathetic, defunct feet.

Remember when I used to paint? Now it feels like someone spilled a pitcher of water on all my paintings and yeah, maybe they're not completely ruined and all I have to do is just wait for all the water to dry out. But they'll lose their texture, they'll still get ruined by rough creases. They'll be the same beautiful paintings, alright! But just maybe... slightly... more... imperfect, I guess.


I'm hopelessly lost right now because I don't know what's what...

Does being less imperfect make you almost perfect or does being less perfect make you imperfect or just perfect, but less...?

Hey! Are you listening to me... ?

God, I feel t-"

The Woman Who Carries the Name of a Bird

This is the life of a woman who just hit thirty-five. I'm just guessing numbers here.

She doesn't seem like the type who's ever fallen in love, and yes, there is a type of people who have fallen in love before.

You recognize the trait in their speech and walk, it's like an inaudible lisp or a limp that is barely detectable; with each step they take, their heart goes, "ouch."

Let's get back to the woman I'm telling you about. We used to meet twice a week.

Now, I don't know much about her. I can't tell you her name because I don't think I'm allowed to.

I know that I can tell you that she carries the name of a lovely bird,
endemic in a world of twisted philosophies of dead men like Socrates and Epicurus and Aristotle...

She believes in them more than she believes in God Himself.

I'm also not very sure of this piece of information; I'm making it up. She has never revealed her true opinion of God, but she did speak of him in the most beautiful ways in which one can understand God.

I also know that she doesn't believe in monogamy, or in love for that matter.

The woman who carries the name of a bird--single--believes that anyone could fill the place of a lover and we would still feel the same. A friend can just as well perform the same practices of a lover, and we would still feel the same.

Love is a gruesome act of selfishness.

If your house catches fire, you know that the person you love will always be there to offer you accommodation.

Love is not the fear of being lonely. Love is the fear of being alone.

She believes that there is no difference in taste between a scoop of chocolate ice cream and any other flavor and that we are but fools for taste, forever slaves to our favorite flavor of ice cream.

Yes, you may think that this woman leads a rather bland life. Her wardrobe lacks colour, her spirit lacks thrill.

But when she shares an intimate secret with a stranger, a secret that leaves you absolutely dumbfounded. Just because you'd never expect it of her...

You'd never expect it of her misery.

I told you I don't know much about her, but it's enough that I know that everyday she locks herself up in her bedroom...

She turns the lights off...

And she dances...

Without music.

What We Don't Forget

We don't forget what we're made of, but we pretend to 

because we don't believe that what we're born with is good enough

And what we fail to learn as we grow old--and not up--is that we are nothing

                  but the accumulation of years of being the same person

                                                          waking up to different days

    over and over again

We don't forget how funny it felt to spend the first night out

without our parents in the room adjacent to ours

                                      and suddenly the night didn't feel as safe

                                                                    and we went to sleep with the lights on

                                because when it's dark

the strangest things lurk around

We don't forget how fun it is to stay young

where every and all love is possible

                                                   and to walk and tag a soundtrack along with you 

                                                                          that fits best your nature and reminds you

of how you met them

and how you'll kiss them

and how they'll kiss you

You don't forget them

never

You don't forget how you tried to be everything but who you are 

                                 and how you couldn't sleep because the lights were too bright

                                                        and the first time they left 

and the ache

       it wasn't the end of the world

but back then

when you lived those fears

You didn't know that

the thought would last

and 

by now you should have forgotten

but

you haven't

You won't

 

 

The Man in the Beat-up Jacket

He asks you unnerving questions that would make you sweat to the knees. Any person who fears for the well-being of their sanity would just walk away and forever abandon the thought of such nonsense. What is very intriguing about his inquisition though, is that it is impressively inventive. And what is even more intriguing to me is the incoherent comebacks he comes up with.

I'll call him the man in the beat-up jacket.

An instrumentalist of Romanian origin and absolutely intelligent demeanor.

A worn-out yet clear accent sounds from his mouth.

The man in the beat-up jacket reads a lot; he talked to me about Quantum Physics after an embarrassing mispronunciation of the word from his side, and utterly embarrassing ignorance from mine. One of the first facts about himself that he happened to share with me.

One day, for no reason, the man in the beat-up jacket struck up a conversation with me about questions. He was particularly interested in deciphering the ones which cannot be cracked--a subject that has been discussed countless times. His speculation was that there exist tiny perplexities, concealed and undetectable, fixed inside us; the confusion that radiates from them is overwhelming and... well, it simply drives you nuts.

During the flow of our conversation, he mentions that my superstitious beliefs--which I earlier conveyed--are one form of the perplexities I mentioned before. He said that I am the way I am because of the immense load I carry of unanswered questions.

Confused, I argue with the intelligent man in the beat-up jacket that everyone, every living person, carries a hell of a load of questions that they will never fathom out.

He disagrees.

I reconsidered my initial impressions of him, and began to think that the man in the beat-up jacket is ill, mad, or perhaps very keen.

"Twelve," said the mad man in the beat-up jacket.

Again, confused, I think to myself that my new-found friend is deranged.  

"There are exactly twelve people in the world who have figured out the answer to their questions. You see, they are very clever."

I must warn you in advance that I very often am an uncommonly crazy person. I will chase strangers because I will get an uncanny feeling that will convince me that these are not ordinary strangers, but they are exceptional strangers, and I will probably strike up an impromptu conversation that will just end up getting me terribly humiliated. Nevertheless, I'll just walk back to you and poke your nose and kiss you and just walk and never care again. That's how I met you, if you remember--and of course you do--I just walked up to you and asked whether you agree that Woody Allen is a pretentious prick with a brilliant taste of scenery and a very impressive choice of words. I left for a while after your very confused self responded. I'll ask you about the instruments that make your spine shiver and the music that gets you high and that's all over two glasses of very unpleasant wine on our first date, I'll make my way back to you after my short-lived disappearance. I honestly couldn't stop thinking about you. I will speak to you like a madwoman in languages that I think are beautiful and don't know the first thing about, I'll even write you letters that will most probably make absolutely no sense, but I'll do it because I love you. You'll get to know what this word means to me by time, because I will have developed countless theories about love; the first of which is that we never lack it, not a single moment in our lifetime do we ever lack love because it is there--always. God is love and God is omnipresent, hence love is as well. I'll tell you how I believe in very little, I have faith in only a number of things and that, without my faith, I am lost and confused and scared and empty. I hate feeling empty. My frequent, incessant ravings will definitely make you reconsider loving me because I will wake you up in the middle of the damn night and tell you that life is meaningless, and just like my parents, you will ignore my petty philosophy which will probably have been triggered by a second-long dream. Believe me when I tell you I'm crazy because I will ask you to spend all our money on airline tickets even though we might not have enough of it to feed us, I'll ask you to leave everyone, leave with me, and sleep somewhere else. Somewhere unheard of and we'll make money off your music or art and I'll write about you. I'll write prose and stanzas all about you and the notes you play and the lines you run over a canvas. I love you. At night, you'll read my words and detect a strange familiarity between one page and every other; because like the energy of the universe, what I feel is never lost or gained, it stays the same. I always have the same of everything flowing inside me, it's just that on Sundays I may feel a bit more disconnected from the world while on Tuesdays I may feel slightly less disconnected; the sense of detachment is always there nonetheless. And here I am ranting and vexing you with my delirium. But, honest to God, I am crazy. I'm so crazy that I am actually waiting for someone like you who will have no problem with all of this crazy shit--with me. I'm so fucking crazy that I actually believe that someone like you is waiting for me back. 

How Can They Call it Space

They say that space is mostly just space

But how can they call it space

when millions and billions of cosmic objects leisurely stroll in the vacuum 

How can they call it space 

when I can look up and make patterns out of constellations

that fill all this space

How can they call it space when space just means more room for nothingness 

All this can't be nothing

If all this is space then 

we are lost in the vastness of it all

and that's pretty scary

space is scary

space is quiet

but space isn't empty

because if space is empty 

then we are aimlessly travelling astray 

away from one another

from everything

from nothing 

How can they call it space when 

there are more stars than there are grains of sand on earth

more stars out there than there are grains of sand on our space

Emptiness is infinite 

but it is filled without end

and we are lost in the boundlessness of it all

In other worlds our abstract perception of the end, therefore the beginning, may be incomprehensible or nonexistent even. These worlds, where life is recursive perhaps, may well be parallel to our own, or deep in distant interstellar galaxies, or firm in the mind of a non-believer. Meanwhile, here everything dies.

Nature dictates that everything- every petal, every speck of dirt, human memory, mere habit... Everything withers and decays and crawls its way to eventual demise.

The exhilaration lasts only until the last page of the story, or the final kiss in the film. You sing along until the last lyric and pull the earphones off when the music stops. The sorrow carries on for only so long until you forget about it, until something else distracts you. It's not so late after their death that the air around you filters them out... Until you forget, until something else distracts you, until you get used to it.

Death, sadly, does not only render the tangible intangible; it makes a human-sized fool out of you. Human-sized fools who live by everyday, leashed by their own obedience to impermanence. You love with such force and dedication, until the force becomes brittle and the dedication smooth... Until the love- tangible and intangible- dies.

The people who are wrinkled with years of thought and exasperation and the collection of moments of perfect happiness will one day rot, and those whose faces have very few traces of a past will rot too. Although our lives are short-lived, the feelings that consume us are momentary, and the hopes that fill us to the brim will overflow and dry to nothing... Although we will one day, everything, will become nothing...

Our commitment to this ephemeral lifetime is finite to every second, it fits and survives only every moment of this lifetime... Only.

We are fully aware of that.

And yet, without backing out for even a second, we still love forcefully.

I've long since wondered whether the the empty pages left at the end of a book serve any purpose at all. 

Maybe they were intentionally printed out blank and tempting. Maybe the writer didn't feel like finishing the novel off the way he intended. These pages may well be the unspeaking continuation of an almost finished story, left for you to bring it sound. Left for you to complete.

I'd like to think that these few papers serve as a surface for consolation, on which the devastation the book reminded you of leaks. Damp with flashbacks.

They're more likely there to solicit personal views of the reader. You; your condemnation of what the writer believed in, your itching desire to thank him for the belated revelations he seeded in you.

Why then -- if not just to be there for irretrievable feedback -- why would they leave you so frustrated with this empty space? 

Perhaps it's just there for you. Your very eccentric, beautiful, jumbled, bare self. 

This empty space, held by the cracks of a worn out spine, calling out to you, "spill it all."

Spill it all.

Every word. 

Because what I hold inside is not enough.