# 43 || " christmas night: it clutched the light, the hallow bright "

Lately life seems like a labyrinth of patience-infused barricades, with the final shreds of my sanity resting solely on the frustration of not knowing what is around the corner and the curiousity of wondering what is. One day I won’t be as young as you say I am now, and the fear pinned to that “one day” is excruciating. Fear is so isolating, isn’t it? Maybe it could be comparable to the terror of snakes and spiders, but no, it feels like so much more. Because the simplicity of an aversion to tangible things is that you can avoid what you’re scared of. It’s easier to steer clear of something you can see.

But something like the future, something so vast and volatile like life and everything it encompasses … … what do you do when you’re frightened? I’m scared not of what is around the corner waiting to pounce, but that this maze could be everlasting, that around every corner lays only another corner, and I’ll be running faster and faster just to spin around in circles until it’s all over. At some point of each extreme, insanity and sanity overlap to form a limbo that I’ve been lingering within for as long as I can remember. I wish I knew the antidote to this perpetual vertigo, because I don’t want to cascade anymore.

x

christmas wish-list:

an epiphany

lots and lots of glitter

a really warm summer

to explore

# 42 || Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?

Over time I feel like I am forgetting where I have come from and where I am going. Not even metaphorically, but sometimes I'll wander into the kitchen and not remember the hallway. Or I'll step on the train and wonder if I remembered to put my keys in my pocket before closing the front door. But maybe that is a metaphor for everything, for this fear of being too earnest, too childish, too reckless, too real. Where did the last hour go? How did I get here? How did October slip away into the dungeon of my subconscious? Recent and remembered events remind me that you never know who you have the potential to be, whether that be positive potential ou pas. Emotions are too fickle, they can transfigure you into something, somebody, you never thought you could ever be. Perhaps I'm doing this all wrong, that instead of settling for being the star in my own storybook, I crave cameos in the chronicles of others. For better or for worse, your grass is greener than mine and I remember every moment other than this one. But if past presents the future, I think I'll be stagnant until I figure it out but I don't even know where to begin.

My adolescent urgency to know everything and everybody and everywhere seems to have passed and been replaced with a frightening sort of apathy that is sometimes comforting, but mostly terrifying. Because I've always thought to care, to care about something so deeply you almost forget why, is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. Passion gets you out of bed, passion kindles the hope that keeps you alive, passion reminds you what love and life are all about. I guess I can never reiterate often enough how when you've got something wonderful, you have to hold it tight because beauty is a bird that can so easily fly away. Inspiration, understanding, euphoria, composure and ambition are not infinite, they're a privilege that you should never surrender. But like I said a few moments ago, change is also a privilege and erraticism doesn't apply only to the good things, but the sad things too. Melancholia, uncertainty and disorder are not everlasting either. I hope promise.

 

Mmmmm, seulement parfois.

x

# 41 || "" honey & the moon ""

These are supposed to be the halcyon years, but in a minute I feel like I've regressed and rewound time to an era I never ever wanted to relive. Maybe these moments are necessary, to remind you that everything is transitory and metamorphose is actually the mercy of something more divine and sometimes beyond our control. So whether or not you and I are convinced that everything is going to be okay in the end, even that belief might be evanescent, forever subject to change. An effort needs to be made to remember that a glass half empty is inarguably half full, and something will always be more than nothing and even if you've lost all that you held dear, it means once upon a time you did have, and nobody can ever take the reality of an infinite moment away from your pocket full of treasured memories. 

Maybe that's why I write, for what it's worth, it commits to an unbiased platform an opinion that really did happen. So one day when my offhand recollection fails to remind me how lucky we were, which, if you have the capacity to translate it into something more gladdening, you can interpret every stroke of luck, every virtue, every bounty, every win, into some form of everlasting gratitude. PS. It's easier said than done, I know, I know, I know.

Dear words, please stay with me and even stray from me but don't forget to come back to visit me on a sombre Sunday like today when the weather can't make its mind. I don't know who or how to apologise specifically, but it's taking a little longer to fix my frame of mind than I anticipated. It's never the right time and it's never your fault, but you can only ever clamber over the fence knowing that when you're up and over, you can see you have the strength in you to do it again and again and again. I get it now, maybe I won't tonight or tomorrow and maybe I didn't yesterday but for now I believe we'll all float on okay. Love, A.

PPS. Je vous aime, d'accord?

x

# 40 || clarity : lucidité, clarté, luminosité

*

It's still early days, but I think the ghosts are waking up again. At night they tiptoe around the edges of my pillowcase, their footsteps echoing in the hollow of my semi-conscious mind. It never fails to fascinate me how loud that echo could be inside every individual, how an ache in another heart might not ever throb as strong as a friend in need / a friend in pain. Amplify your own melancholy by the population of the world and try to breathe, wait no, just imagine the waterfall of synchronised sorrow all around the globe and then breathe. I can't, you can't, it doesn't seem possible. 

There is comfort not in that everything will be okay in the end, but that one day this will all be a reflection, a story, perhaps even some kind of nostalgia. Maybe you’ll even laugh about it. Isn’t it strange how melancholia could be comical moments or minutes or months later, it's like the sweat and tears dry up to make pages of a fairytale that won’t even seem real.  

Lately I've been getting a little bit funny about time. It seems surreal that a concept existed, with nothing to monitor it but a hand that was forever falling clockwise through gravity or a teeny tiny battery or something stronger beyond my control. I get antsy knowing where I will be in fifteen minutes or an hour or more, what I will be doing, wondering how I will get from A to B to C and so on through to the night until it's time to close my eyes and dream. 

Humility will try you, quietly but consciously. Can you go half a conversation without revolving the focus back to yourself? I tried once and tripped over at every hurdle that egocentrism threw towards me. It’s not justifying your actions per se, but reassuring me that your intensions are the very best. Sometimes desires get the better of me and their seeming importance is almost intoxicating – I get lost in the bouquet of impulse and preference and forget what is more real than the self-regarding thoughts that swim and swirl inside my skull. Imminence doesn’t necessarily dovetail with importance. Sometimes when I’m the only voice inside my head, I start to deplore myself in all my apparent self-importance; ruinous trait by ruinous trait. 

What would it mean to make yourself somebody you yourself would miss dearly? I believe that high-quality company is inspired not inherent. Sometimes I forget that it's not who you were, nor who you're becoming but the certainty that you are indeed, becoming. That you're living and learning and loving and laughing and everything in-between. 

( PS. you are what you love, kid, not who loves you back )

x

# 39 || سعادة تكمل بلا حرية

if it weren't a cloudy day, i imagine everything would be different / maybe the sunlight wouldn't mean anything magnificent, and maybe the never-ending rain wouldn't seem so menacing . . . / you can take the flower out of the wild but you can't take the wild out of the flower. / do you agree that the best feelings are irrational, / that the best way to be is golden and indescribable? /curiousity and two handguns: / one interlocked between my fingers, the other pressed against my temple. / tell me what is important ( to you ) and why, / "but don't say it with words". 

           

there are nights and mornings that i forget where i left my wings, and there are days and nights where you fall between through the sky -/ fragments of a whole, scattered all around this sometimes soulless city that lulls about / half-asleep. // is it terrible to wish a lot of things were just how they were at the beginning - / shiny bright and new? / take or make a dream, / kiss it better / raconte-moi une histoire / re-and-re-assure me it's fine to want anything and everything and nothing forever and always.

Once upon a time it was l'automne and I think I tiptoed around a rabbit hole. 

Curiosity killed the kittycat that I can be, and in another moment . . .

        Just like an indefinite dream, I don't remember how it all began. And if it ended, 

if I lived happily ever after. Maybe I'm still caught into the middle of it without even realising. 

Maybe winter took me by surprise. oh, Coucou, printemps.     

I've lost my words and I feel like the sky lately. That is, the sky when it's blue and the sky when it's
 clear and the sky when it's all clouds and the sky when it rains and the sky when it's thunderstorms
 for day and days. In the sky, it's me and the sun. It's not hopeless, it's a fresh start.

x

# 38 || in a world you've grown / ( a world of my own )

          Chéré Lua,

In another moment, it seems, you can fall or fly How does physics come to play in the midst of the (e)motions of every day? To control that - and one's ego - would be such an admirable thing. I wonder, though, if it's nature or nurture or practice or patience. I used to believe that it would fall (or fly) into place with time and the wisdom that I thought accompanied age and maturity. Though lately I'm doubting whether the two are interrelated at all.

Perhaps. But I think self-control and the desire and intention to control one's whims and ego is necessary but at the same time, it's only half of the story. Maybe I just don't want it enough. But oh, if only you knew how badly I want to be a good person, one of the best. Then, isn't that ego aussi? How very fine is the line between self-improvement and self-importance?

Tell me a story about gravity and extremity and sincerity and every other kind of -tea. Does bravery last forever? Why are some things easier to articulate than others? And why, when you are actually able to string together a sentence that could say how it seems, that it's often said so silently that the notion could've been your imagination.

( above image by Emma )

What happens when you jump off a freight train of thought? Do you die for a moment before you're reincarnated? An upgrade, a newer model, the best version of yourself you've ever seen. Sometimes I want to stop-the-world, sometimes I want to get off . . .  ( but not forever, only for a minute while I try to put this puzzle together, while I try to make it fit, while I try to make sense of the scatter and sadness and lack of certainty, while listening to Retrograde on repeat. ) - "be the girl you love(d) / ignore everybody else / show me where you fit".




                                                                                         kisses, A.

# 37 || [ if less is more, nothing is everything. (2001) ]

It's not so much the weather anymore, because I think there's a tinge of romanticism in every season. Winter takes me two and a half years ago when I would always turn home to get the forgotten gloves on the kitchen table. Spring reminds me that the sky doesn't ever stay grey forever. Summer somehow both blurs and magnifies every emotion under its sweltering sun, and Autumn is a dream come true. It's a satisfying three-month state of longing. Dear Rain, with or without an umbrella, you can't touch me.

Though lately I do take a little fright that attaching myself to nothing and nowhere and no-one might consequence in a terrible sensation of being displaced forever, with no real sense of belonging. But with words, wings and this winter, why shouldn't I translate loneliness into liberty?    If I understood it first, if I could only tell you about a rock-bottom that I haven't ever seen, if I only knew how deep it was, if I knew all that I could do - I'd tell you everything. But all I can say is that movement is movement, and your velocity doesn't matter in the slightest.

Sometimes there is melancholy when I realise there are moments passed that I'll never be able to recreate. But life is an climbing curve and there is hope in knowing all those beautiful days are not unlike dress rehearsals for The Most Beautiful Day in your life. You'll live fast then, so walk slow now. You got it right, Fitzgerald - you can't repeat the past and it's not just Carraway who can feel within and without.

Anyway, thank-you forever lucky stars that I'm starting to think in fairytales again, I am grateful beyond words.

All my love, A. x


"I'm up in the woods,
I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still,
To slow down the time."
- Justin Vernon


post-script:
Because it's been awhile, here is a little modernised mix-tape for you. It's magic.

# 36 || そ し て 全 て が 夢 だ と 僕 を 笑 っ た ( and then everything became a dream and laughed at me )

“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

- F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 

i.

It's so perfect that humidity tastes the same all over South-East Asia, because le temps always trigger nostalgique tendencies. I feel right at home here in a shiny strange city. Bangkok, you're pretty and kind -- actually, you're pretty kind. Merci beaucoup. This week the goal is to seize the lime and and the light and drop them out the window and over the ocean. I want to forget about time and the accompanying reality that clockhands don't ever stop ticking. Not even when water turns to ice and the wind is still and silent and you can't hear a single sound. 

ii.

I'm here and I'm now and I'm half-awake and half-asleep and I'm happy and I feel for and with you, when and even if nothing makes sense. Hey you, Meditation-Nation, where's your imagination? Often I feel the borders of this state of longing confine me, they design and define me. Like life and love and lessons will forever be a pursuit with an intangible endpoint. The finale is ethereal, like beauty and beliefs and joy and devotion. In this life I am going to learn the essence of everything, and then I am going to write about it when I've drunk all the lattes I could ever want and wake up in the morning with no lustish aches but lots of love. 

 3.
maybe we hold onto hope without realising its weight
following thoughts over the hills and far away
then trace them back to remember who we are
and where we came from
and just how magnificent

you & i
& now
really are

iv.

When thoughts find a voice or ink or something that makes them ten thousand times more real, things can feel a little more chancy, don't you think? Tangible terrors and solid fancies - the temptation of being able to touch what was once just an idea, there lies the potential for all the obsession and infatuation and passion that I've forever found myself prone to. How do you curb it? Contain all the fervor of life and its emotions into the palm of a hand, and then what? Save the blues for the sky and the sea and do what you will and what you want. There aren't enough seconds or spirit to squander time doing anything else.   

5. (once upon a time . . .)
somebody told me she thought she was born to be a sea creature
and i thought it was a peculiar idea, how was a personbe
born to be anything?
you're not who you're born to be, you're who you yearn to be
desire is half of it, i swear
the other half is whatever you wish

somebody told me she thought i was going to be great
and i thought, great isn't really symmetrical/synonomous with success
good is better than great
i want to be a good person
and (i hope) you're not born to be a good person
(i think) you choose to be

x

# 35 || " she forgot her wings again and gravity never forgets "

Maybe you never know when an eternal-seeming haze has lifted, maybe it never does, or maybe it was forever a figment. These days when my mood matches the sky and my dreams match the moon, there are half-circle and crescent thoughts that wake me up in the middle of the night. I don't remember who I am, or  I used to want to be. Incessant fretting and winteresque winds make my hands shake, but it wasn't always like this. Vivid daydreams save the day, they counterbalance the burden of the substandard existence that I didn't even believe in before today, but it hasn't really been the best of seasons.

I've never been very good at distinguishing between reality and fantasy, but when it's a concept that is a little more elusive than what is real (what IS real, anyway?) and what isn't, I imagine my skill to discern differences would fall even further south. Perhaps it's because I have felt less and less like myself every day this week, or maybe it is because for the first time I am questioning my character in the most objective way I ever have. Or maybe I have woken up the ghosts. Or maybe I just know myself too well, and that absence of innocence in understanding oneself might be posing more problems than profit (putain, ma hyperverbosité !).

But when folks become faceless and fairytales become fragments of something I used to fancy, then what of it? I close my eyes and see this rush of grey. Abracadabra, c'est analysis paralysis ! But amid the doubt-driven silence, my freight-train of thought is eradicating every splinter of naiveté from anything worth saying. There's this peculiar sensation not dissimilar to guilt that has filled me right up, it's a Franny Glass kind of day. Mania insania, it's released through my fingers walking and twitching toes. And sometimes, all of a sudden I'm scared of my shadow all over again.

You know what else though, the golden lining is knowing in your heart of hearts everybody who loves you, and, better yet, the wish and faculty to love right them right back. But there come nights and days when you feel things more intensely than you thought you ever could and it is moments like these when all you can do is hold onto the rails as tight as you can, and don't even dare fall into that rabbit hole again and again and again and again.

"My dear, 
here we must run 
as fast as we can, 
just to stay in place. 
And if you wish 
to go anywhere 
you must run 
twice as fast 
as that.”

( some old parisian footage from 2011, just to emphasise the nostalgic nuance of late late automne )

x

# 34 || make our escape, you're my own papillon

"My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all.
Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover."

— Charles Bukowski

From the deepest, most honest place in my heart, I believe that opportunities do not and will not arise unless you are moving. Wisdom says that things are continually changing, and remember that you can't pause time, you can only pause yourself. Sometimes, no, often I fret that I will live my entire life tightrope-walking across an everlasting thread of foolish hope. But then if I never fall, what does it matter if I never finish? Compare this contemplation to life, and see that there are three options: i) you could look down and live in fear; ii) you could look ahead and see Eden at the finish line; or iii) you could look up and see how much closer you are to the stars.

Walking tightropes is dangerous, and it takes courage. Life too, is dangerous. Life too, takes courage. It's perfectly alright to live in a perpetual state of nostalgia, of curiosity, of ambition, of wonder, of gratitude --- and if anything, I think it is a fine way to live. Take a moment and remind yourself of what an admirable person you are. Celebrate your education, your kindness, your bravery, your family, your friends, your talents, your efforts, your travels, your uniqueness and applaud yourself at how fucking far you've come.

I'm forever fascinated by the simultaneous unity and distance I feel with other people. Emotion, physicality and basic needs tie me to every other living creature on this earth, but often I feel I fail to comprehend the underlying trigger that lingers at the bottom of everything. Every day I unlace my shoes and step inside yours, in an unbounded attempt to understand. For I thought and believe, that we are not one single person, either over time or at a particular moment. We are what is left after the impressions of any given moment shape our mood and character. The way to change our lies is not to change our external circumstances, but to change how we react to them. Change your life by changing how you respond to what is around you. 

Sometimes people forget their alternatives, and don't remember how exciting it is to actively acknowledge that you are en route to becoming everything you've ever wanted, that you are consciously making your dreams come true, that you are throwing fantasy and reality into a blender and whisking them together until you can't discern one from the other. How magical.

Don't forget that being simple does not mean that it is easy. I wish, always, that there were some way I could hover around the pinnacle of the earth and tell you how proud I am that "me, you and everyone we know", are all in this together.

postscript: Tell me,

x

# 33 || it's you & me, amplified

I can't quite describe my affinity, fascination and curiosity for life and the billions of other living souls who exist in harmony with me every single day. While it isn't always written all over my face, it is written all over my fingertips and the forefront of my mind as I move from place to place. Do you too, feel the indescribable (and inevitable) connection with others? I want to stand on top of the world and set it on fire while I scream, "Dear universe, I know how you feel, and I care from the deepest darkest bottom of my fucking heart! Love, Afifa."

Monotony is a wicked figment of your imagination, so employ your mind to keep dreaming while you're half-awake, and remember what you're lucky enough to love. Despair is a temptation that I am forever too proud to admit that I surrender to, every other hour it seems. Intention is everything, keep it pure white gold and earn respect despite anything and everything. Love what you love and be judgemental. Keep your time precious for those who you believe deserve your love and your understanding. Curb your expectations and convert them into ambition, but above all don't forget for a moment that your life is a storybook worth sharing.

My hands and heart shake with tiny tremors from the imminent earthquake of excitement that the coming years will contain, I just know it. When I forget for a minute how much promise prevails in every second, when I start to get squirrelly, I listen to some of these songs. I hope you love them as much as I do. (PS. The title of my novel-on-the-horizon is hidden somewhere in this playlist below, hip hip hooray!)

you & me, amplified

With so much love,

A. xo

# 32 || un enfant de la lune

( listen, if you like )

I.
Two worlds collide when the sky turns white and I exhale smoke with or without a cigarette between my fingers. When the weather can't decide between l'été or l'hiver, it falls into l'automne and the leaves look like a sunrise, je l'adore. But I would be lying if I said the last few weeks haven't been unsettling, you know when your heart coaxes you into so many different headspaces, until you feel like you're about to p0p?!

At the bottom of everything, we are only fragile minds in a - somewhat -  rugged shell. A thousand thoughts at once but you can only ever speak one idea at a time, and on this occasion often you don't even think about what it is you're uttering - take that notion and try to comprehend the world in its majesty and detail and make an effort to exercise some compassion and understanding.


II.
Have you ever felt limitless? Like your happiness and sadness have no boundaries and you could keep flying and falling forever and ever and ever? It's hard to illustrate the word in the depth that it distresses me. Limitless is insatiable, it's wolfish, it's uncontrollable and you're forever starving for something that doesn't even exist. Limitless thieves all acclaim, it stomps over the magic and your heart turns to rubber - everything reflects with little impression. Logic fails the limitless, it bewilders a person to everything necessitating gratitude and gives you itchy feet and cabin fever and an achy breaky heart.




III.
"Darling, you seem restless."
Oui chérie, can you see my hands that won't stay still? Everything needs to be simulated so it is as daydreamlike as possible, or else. Or else things like missing the train and being late for work and feeling sad in the morning or the nighttime or the afternoon won't be as romantic if I don't feel like I'm somewhere else all the time. It's mania in its most dreary form, but what is anything without nostalgia, imagination and a little curiosity? What is the present when I need plans prospect to calm me down?

It's when you seek normality like other people seek thrills. Take a step back and see that your life is a foreign film to at least one of the 7 billion souls walking the earth au même temps que vous. Once upon a time when I didn't feel inexhaustible, I was late to class ( POLS2100 Genocide - Post 1945 ) and feeling both breathless and unprepared, skimmed a passage by Annie Dillard that would later change everything about the way I wanted to live. 

"There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply it by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it." -- Annie Dillard

Open your minds, open your hearts. I believe, avec tout mon cœur, that kindness will be what rescues me and then we'll live happily ever after.

x