# 14 || : wander :: lustish :

#

"I can tell already you think I'm the dragon,
              that would be so like me, but I'm not. I'm not the dragon.
I'm not the princess either.
              Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
     I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow the
glass, but that comes later." -- Richard Siken

How peculiar that you only learn what you really loved about somebody in their absence, from a distance. As is my style, this is not quite the cliché lack of presence making my heart grow fonder - but it is for once knowing the cure to a condition and fixing it ! Everything is going according to plan, the magic is melting into the air and I don't know who you are anymore. Instead of my thoughts being fuelled by dreams de toi, I get by through aesthetic pleasures and plights. It's probably a better way to be. Hani-chérie said it was probably nothing then, but I've thought about it a lot - that is, what instrument could possibly test and measure one's love and lust. 

I've always thought perhaps I don't try nearly hard enough. Through letting go, are you giving up? Because effort expended to push forward what could quite possibly prove to be nothing would be fruitless and silly - but sometimes it doesn't seem that way when it is taking everything you have to move absolutely nowhere. So what are the true determinants of weakness and strength?

And just like that, there are no more sleeps until take-off and when tomorrow finally comes, I will lay my head down and dream Somewhere new. That's the way I have always loved it, and that's the way I want it to be forever. Merci beaucoup, Malaysia et Singapore, for such a marvelous time. Sampai jumpa lagi.

x

# 13 || fever-dreams

I.




II.

It's the little things, like finding the colour nailpolish I want on my fingers and toes for the rest of my adventure. You won't ever see anything properly unless you have a closer look, everything is worth a second glance and a moment's contemplation. It devestates me sometimes that I won't know everybody and everything, for lack of time or interest or pennies or something. The humidity induces the queerest dreams, lately I am waking up not knowing where or who I am, aching with these incredible pangs of nostalgia and uncertainty. But I think I know now, the point of all of this. It's to learn and love solitude, it's to crave fear and the invaluable teachings you learn from being afraid, it's to be vanquish your retrospective tendencies, it's growing up. Someday soon I have got to forget that we ascertain our superpowers at different times, and remember that good things come to those who wait. If I'm stumbling for a little while, eventually when I do level out - it'll be better than ever. Like seeing your family after a really long time, like wine and cheese, like home videos, like McDonald's when you've been driving all day down the h i g h w a y.

  
III.

"I am not mistaken in the emptiness of evenings
serious and unequivocal
he would say
how beautiful is forgetting!
what a relief it would be for the world to lose some of its contents
he rose from his knees blushing more and more deeply in wave after wave of everything
all attempts are transient and easy to dissolve
reducing life is not a sin
it is sometimes necessary" — Tree of Codes
   

 

IV.
It's knowing where and who you are.
It's being able to breathe.
It's a fairytale moment.
It's being real lost.
It's you, just you.
It's amnesia.

x

# 12 || les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs

 Travelling seems to be trying this time around, because I'm not trying, not really, not at all. When I was a little girl and we went away, I would fixate my imagination on the grass that was greener elsewhere and wish I were back in a land of static and familiarity, where perhaps instead of laying in a library somewhere in the north-eastern region of Tasmania or watching a gamelan orchestra in Morocco, I would've be in English class or playing kanga cricket on the school oval. I don't know why I do this, but I've always found it hard to count lucky stars when all I can think about is that damn gorgeous pasture where better beings frolick, and suddenly the airplane high-in-the-sky that I was riding begins to crash down, down, down. I wasn't really ready to leave Melbourne because for once, I actually needed to get away, I needed to clear my head. Wanderlust is wicked when it's a loose wish you didn't reeeally want to come true. The clichés continue to unfold ... Happinessisonlyrealwhenshared, lifeisn'tfair, youcantalwaysgetwhatyouwant, nothingworthhavingevercomeseasy. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it! Because all I seem to be doing is putting Noah and the Whale's Blue Skies on repeat, trying not to cry, and not trying to not be a terrible person.

x