# 19 || you're the glitter in the dark

If you feel like an earful of erratic eclectic melodies while you read, you can listen to this here.
Some of the prettiest songs I've heard since take-off 79 odd sleeps ago.

 

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 I don't know whether you need to experience true discomfort to know what that you've probably been living in the closest thing to a cloud all along. Perspective is ambiguous, an endless debate - like living in the present. I don't like this concept of "being present" that seems to be somewhat en vogue, as of late. When I'm present I lose track of what's really real reality, because when I'm inside the moment I'm trapped deep in my head, drowning in whatever emotion happens to be heightened at the minute. Fear, ecstasy, introversion, euphoria, tragedy -------- it washes over me like a wave and suddenly I'm soaking in my own sentiment and forget what is wonderful or wicked. I forget my cats and my beautiful sister and my autumn-coloured jeans that fit like a glove. Leave me in the intersection where you can wear a sweater if you feel like it but if you forget to grab one as you walk out the door, it doesn't matter. Leave me in a café with a half-finished latte and a notebook with a few blank pages left. Leave me in the sky where you're not sad about take-off anymore and you're not yet excited about landing. 

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In the end you'll write the best stories about how you felt, not what you did. Harlequin adjectives will decorate your journal and make you smile when you read your words days or weeks or years later. You won't need images when they might not come close to matching the rainbow memories in  your mind. I don't know. What am I really trying to say here? I want to tell my great-grandchildren about my pursuit of happiness and the butterflies and the time  I had a really perfect playdate with somebody somewhere at sometime and that feeling of accomplishment and the time everything fell into place. Can you find dreams? Or do you have to make them with your hands and your head?

It's not that the ache skips the door to my heart when she does her rounds, it's just that I don't let her haunt me any longer than she has to, and I do my best to show her the way out when she comes to visit. I can't remember how it goes exactly, but it's something like we spend our whole lives searching for the perfect place to stay forever but that consistency we crave only comes through movement. That's not quite right, but it's a bit like that. I'll rearrange the words and cut and paste a little when it comes to me.

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(by s)

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# 18 || "... and at once I knew, I was not magnificent."

.I.

Some things are too beautiful to recount with mere words, and I'll admit that, because I love words more than fresh croissants and caramelised pear tea served boiling hot. Black letters on a blanc backdrop makes my mouth water, truly. Words with e and a nestled up together (d r ea m , l ea f, s ea, cr ea ture, t ea, f ea r, cr ea te), sentences strung together with salty emotion and paragraphs that take you places you couldn't possibly have imagined ever existed. But really, how do I tell you about the magic? The freedom? The ease? The love? Rosé by the water, we are mermaids. Non, I that's not true. We're a duck and a whale who share with each other the best of both worlds, stories of the sea and the shore. I write because I want to enlighten and be enlightened, I want to remember and forget, I want to savour both the sweet and the sour memories. Here the clouds tell stories, "that-summer-feeling", 5 supermarkets later we found film to remember one of the prettiest days I've ever seen, "home-is-whenever-I'm-with-you", a 2.a.m ice-cream interlude, I never knew my heart could feel that full, and not explode into a billion shards of glitter.

.II.

Coat your heart in your favourite colour to send away the sorrow when it comes a'knocking. (night)Dreams are just dreams, and sadness, like jet-lag is just a figment of your imagination. I don't believe we're here to suffer, the notion is beyond balmy to me. I think melancholia is just a test to see how we rise to the occasion. You know, I'll be wearing my favourite dress, with flowers tangled in my tresses. Freedom comes from the inside, it starts in your tummy and emits from your eyes in lightform -- twinkles and stars. Corny perhaps ... still, one day you'll feel it like the wind in your hair but it's now sweeping through your body.

               I want reality,                          I want to be enraptured all the time. 

Is that a bad thing? 

Will I lose the                  balance & perspective                  that I cherish with all my heart? 

       

          I want to live in a world where every person is a romantic -                               

                             where impossible is nothing 

    and there is always here. 

                             Where people dare to dream 

    and see the light outside their window on a grey morning. 

I'm really happy. Pas toujours, but for the most part. And it's the pure kind of ecstasy, the golden kind, the strong, billiant, shimmery stuff. Make the magic you want to see in the world and everything could be as perfect as you can imagine it. Stop and scrutinise --- I'm sure you're living in at least a fragment of a dream.

.III.

(images by sarah hermans, my phone, etc, etc)

xx

# 17 || "I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again."

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I woke up this morning dreaming of trains and tresses and tea. My novel is going nowhere, it seems all of those lazy summer afternoons I imagined - my figure strategically placed in the semi-sunshine with Lua the laptop and cigarette - will never ever happen. But for lack of anything real to write, here is an excerpt from a story that is so incredibly far from finished . . .
  

"We embrace under the sun and I’m mute because the ecstasy is overwhelming. I could never say that two hundred days apart from her felt like two hundred y e a r s of grey sky. Tiare can comprehend a lot of things but she wouldn’t believe me. Not because she doesn’t know what it feels like to be in lust but she would never think I would say something so unreal. I converse in silence all too much; it’s a lonely covert world sometimes.

The river running through the world reminds me of bluebirds and leaky pipes. Tiare is telling me about a land she encountered once upon a time, in a land over 16,600 kilometres away. It might as well be another reality, because I’ve never been Anywhere. It seems as if Tiare encountered someone or something so magical there I think she might spend the rest of her last eight lives trying to match the same euphoria. I don’t know why she has never mentioned this place before. She says this feeling is like throwing your heart down the rabbit hole and forever waiting for the laws of physics to send it soaring skyward again. Because she believes what goes down must one day fly up and it’s not a theory, she says. It’s candor.

And we both agree that you must hold onto your hope and never let go. Because impossible is nothing, ever, at all, but keeping your dreams alight like fire is a choice not an entitlement. Me, I believe in an imperfect world, where everything would happen as you wished it would. Human beings might walk on cotton wool clouds and bruise black-and-blue if a butterfly comes too close. Everything happens as it should, and we must hold onto ambition because it keeps us on the solid side of the cliff. Dreams aren’t easy concepts to carry, but do so with every shred of strength and I promise  you will thank me later. Because lately I don’t know what to wish for, it’s white noise from the moment I awake. And believe me, it’s far worse than disappointment."

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Sometimes I am surprised at how exceptionally precious and involved we are. Sleep on a stone floor under your great-aun'ts bed for 3 nights in a row, wake up in a hotel room with white walls / without windows, dream on a creaky bed with a lifeless cockroach inches from your eyelashes. Get caught out in the rain, swim in an eerie lake and forget to bring a towel, eat a supermarket salad on a damp bench with everything you treasure in a canvas bag that is slipping down your shoulder. And smile because your alterego on the other side of the piazza thinks you look just fine, - perhaps a little spooked - nobody can see the fear trembling your heart.

I write to remember and savour and romanticise everything so it glitters. You'll see how when you focus on the details everything seems a little more luxe. The roof over your heard, the time you loved something, the fact you can see these letters and make words with your mind. But if you like you can focus on the tears and the grief and the aching and remember how glorious all the times were when you felt free ! Remember the thousand deep breaths that saved you from screaming and strangling. My heart glows and the void ebbs and flows.

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It's not that everything is falling into place, it's just that I am falling into some kind of rhythm that keeps one foot in front of the other always, I'm moving and mastering. Or rather I am just realising that 'there is always here', and I'm exactly where I am which, by coincidence, is just where I need to be. What does wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time mean if I wouldn't have known and seen everything I am, if I hadn't been where I was? It's simple, it's present and it's free(dom). And I don't know, it's not coping, per se. It's locating the sparkle and igniting something inside of it. It's not a silver lining but it's the antidote to terror and quelling the ghosts. It's just a phase, a rut, a dream, a nightmare.

and truly,

    x