Sometimes you just need to let things melt together.
The expression you could alternate with that is "blur together," but that isn't as encouraging of a story. Then everything is blurry. Here's what happened when I let things melt together today.
Actually, they didn't. They just melted without me. "They" being the butter cookies with a layer of chocolate on top of them that my host mother bought and left in the kitchen, and probably in some bag before that. They're just cheap supermarket cookies that I will probably be buying a whole lot of before I go back.
They melted together. And then at first I tried to separate each cookie with a knife, but it didn't really work. It was as though each section separated by plastic of 3 cookies were meant to be 1 big cookie. I ended up eating the big evolved (think Pokemon) version of the cookie after separating the 1st cookie awkwardly from the other 2, so I guess that's only ⅔ (don't you love how that's a character? I had to look it up on Wikipedia so I guess there's no numpad code for it, if there is one I've forgotten it). But it tasted... like heaven. It tasted like a s'more. Without the awkward marshmallow that disturbs your mouth with a sense of buoyancy. Incredible. I want more.
If life gives you a s'more, though, should you deconstruct it in your head and then figure out that you should just go out and buy butter cookies (or graham crackers) and a chocolate bar and voilà? No, not always... there's not always enough time for that. But it's cool to have the idea.
Hey, I was just listening to ABBA (not everything in life has to have a transition either) and it's a song that they recorded but ended up as one of their least known unreleased tracks because whoever wrote it in the group decided to take an idea out of it for a song that later became a single and that's quite different and more uptempo, "Under Attack," but with a message not really more upbeat. Anyway the track is called "Just Like That," and it goes like this:
Just like that
As though he'd only stopped awhile for a chat
But my secrets he learned
Leaving no stone unturned
Or you could write it as prose, like this:
Just like that, as though he'd only stopped awhile for a chat, but my secrets he learned, leaving no stone unturned
It sounds familiar. It sounds like I'm more willing to play with things now, though. If that's one thing I've learned from Paris it's a good thing. I mean if there's one good thing I've learned from Paris it's that. Look at me, playing around with freewrites again...
Well, someday the sun will dawn for me. You know, that expression. That one. I think freewriting needs a Filipino emphasis de-notation. Wow, I can't write. Berry good. Berry an ah ah ah
A freewrite at least doesn't really need a conclusion...
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Thursday, 7 May 2009
And it occurs to me...
And it occurs to me that high school might have given me a fear of being alone. Or maybe this is just how nature makes us, how things are. "Nobody wants to be alone" is a phrase I've often heard, and which I believe was repeated to me in sympathy for my recent situation. But I know, or at least it seems to me, that a lot of people operate very well for very long amounts of time being alone. I don't, and not even for short amounts of time. It's a Thursday night, the day before a national holiday, and part of me is complaining that my housemates didn't tell me they were going out, because I happened to have my door closed for 20 minutes or so because one of my housemates' tobacco scent was wafting down the hall from his room to mine and that was annoying so I closed the door. Wow, what a great sentence. But you see, I am also complaining in my mind that none of my (almost entirely female) friends are out doing something tonight. In Japan they almost always would be or at least I'd know why if they weren't. Communication isn't as fluid here; there's no real good central hang-out spot where everybody meets and talks, no great meeting place for a small community. Here it's very much unlike Japan; I think my Paris program's designed that way. And I think it backfired, because a lot of the people here aren't that happy with it or at least seem that way. That's what happens when you don't adequately prepare social events when you know there's going to be a massive strike that will last forever.
And yet I'm not sure whether this is me or what, the person who doesn't like to be alone at all. Who likes to stick out but doesn't want to be left out of the bunch, or left without a fellow comrade outcast. But just now I got cheery for a couple of seconds about being alone and said to myself, hey, they're all working on something, I'll work on something too, and enjoy it! Because when I work I generally never enjoy it. So I decided I'd work on a DDR file. Looked for graphics, then when the time came to pick one of the images, got tired. Went and did something else. Started doing Japanese, which I'm not afraid of doing and is generally a fast process (it was very much so in Japan, at least... haha)... got tired of that. Looked at an art history book, got tired of the thought of how boring reading books in French about old stuff is (no matter what level of "masterpiece" the said stuff is), stopped that. Thought about reading Nerval, got annoyed at the stricken nature of the class and how I'm way behind in it even though it's not really in session, didn't do that. In short, I got tired really quickly of the individual work in each case and stopped and started wanting to do something fun--with other people.
This might mean that whenever I do work, I overwork myself. In other words, my brain wants to do more work than, uh, my brain can take. So it starts and, uh, shorts. I think maybe there's something to that. My brain might be out of shape. In other words, fully capable, but only in short bursts. Short bursts are generally what's required in this world of soundbytes, though. So it wouldn't be any wonder if that's just how it turned out that way.
But that's why, when I go to museums like the museum of Gustave Moreau, I just don't feel in touch with it at all. By "it," I guess I mean the general spirit. Gustave Moreau was a painter who made a museum out of his house for his close to 500 paintings (I think 500) and even more drawings and sketches as the final project of his life. I definitely was down with Moreau for how he left the majority of what he did unfinished; I can understand that for sure (my DDR box is filled with unconstructed Legos, so to speak). But with the general nonstop focus, determination, and work ethic? No! Why didn't he ever go outside? (Well, I mean, more often.) Where was the fun in his life? The doubt? If there was doubt, why did he just work through it? That's a funny question, actually, but it's probably what the one my subconscious wants to ask. How can you just ignore doubt with things like, am I spending my life all right if I spend this much time doing what I'm doing?
Maybe he just really loved it. And still I wonder how I could become or whether I should ever be that impassioned. And I'm back to an earlier question again, an earlier doubt.
No wonder he worked on. Leave your doubts behind you, pave the way.
And yet I'm not sure whether this is me or what, the person who doesn't like to be alone at all. Who likes to stick out but doesn't want to be left out of the bunch, or left without a fellow comrade outcast. But just now I got cheery for a couple of seconds about being alone and said to myself, hey, they're all working on something, I'll work on something too, and enjoy it! Because when I work I generally never enjoy it. So I decided I'd work on a DDR file. Looked for graphics, then when the time came to pick one of the images, got tired. Went and did something else. Started doing Japanese, which I'm not afraid of doing and is generally a fast process (it was very much so in Japan, at least... haha)... got tired of that. Looked at an art history book, got tired of the thought of how boring reading books in French about old stuff is (no matter what level of "masterpiece" the said stuff is), stopped that. Thought about reading Nerval, got annoyed at the stricken nature of the class and how I'm way behind in it even though it's not really in session, didn't do that. In short, I got tired really quickly of the individual work in each case and stopped and started wanting to do something fun--with other people.
This might mean that whenever I do work, I overwork myself. In other words, my brain wants to do more work than, uh, my brain can take. So it starts and, uh, shorts. I think maybe there's something to that. My brain might be out of shape. In other words, fully capable, but only in short bursts. Short bursts are generally what's required in this world of soundbytes, though. So it wouldn't be any wonder if that's just how it turned out that way.
But that's why, when I go to museums like the museum of Gustave Moreau, I just don't feel in touch with it at all. By "it," I guess I mean the general spirit. Gustave Moreau was a painter who made a museum out of his house for his close to 500 paintings (I think 500) and even more drawings and sketches as the final project of his life. I definitely was down with Moreau for how he left the majority of what he did unfinished; I can understand that for sure (my DDR box is filled with unconstructed Legos, so to speak). But with the general nonstop focus, determination, and work ethic? No! Why didn't he ever go outside? (Well, I mean, more often.) Where was the fun in his life? The doubt? If there was doubt, why did he just work through it? That's a funny question, actually, but it's probably what the one my subconscious wants to ask. How can you just ignore doubt with things like, am I spending my life all right if I spend this much time doing what I'm doing?
Maybe he just really loved it. And still I wonder how I could become or whether I should ever be that impassioned. And I'm back to an earlier question again, an earlier doubt.
No wonder he worked on. Leave your doubts behind you, pave the way.
Sunday, 3 May 2009
The sunday
The back of the room is passively lighted by a round globe lamp, supposedly Japanese style, hanging at the top of the room, too distant to illuminate anything important. The fingers on this laptop do the work of the unworked brain, tapping away as the small thing of Japanese perfumed hand cream does not sit flat on the table, slightly elevated by a piece of plastic with no apparent use. An umbrella hangs from the table, nothing to do. Another lamp, silver and this one perched on the ground, stares blankly into a blank wall with an invisible expression of blankness, nothing apparent of issue. Two sneakers that could be hugging the wall are instead positioned as though they were ready to run into the desk in front of it. Atop this desk sits the laptop.
It is a Sunday, very late. 10:15 PM. Any much later and it's bedtime, a time less silent than this, when the sound of the Paris subway train can be heard rumbling through the floorboards, onto the soundboard of the bed with no headboard. Nobody is around. If people are alive and nobody is there to see it, well, yeah. And how easy is it to trust other people's viewpoints?
Sound enters from somewhere. A door opens, another closes. In Germany arguments are in session, doubtless unfriendly ones. In Paris the city sleeps, dreaming about an end to all strikes and to all of Sarkozy and his enemies. Supposedly university students have done work on this day, the pre-ordained Sabbath. No evidence of this can be found on the Internet, although everything else displays itself in glittering charm or simplicity. It all claims to save time while it ticks precious moments away. Actually, sometimes it makes precious moments happen. Either way, the thought of the Internet being a time-saver is irrelevant now in this room.
A white box. Black hieroglyphics upon it. Illumination from half-white light. A scene of doubt. A scene of hidden trepidation, perhaps? From one eye, a scene of boredom. From another, a scene of the desperate unknown.
This is every Sunday in Paris.
(Luckily, there are 6 other days in the week.)
It is a Sunday, very late. 10:15 PM. Any much later and it's bedtime, a time less silent than this, when the sound of the Paris subway train can be heard rumbling through the floorboards, onto the soundboard of the bed with no headboard. Nobody is around. If people are alive and nobody is there to see it, well, yeah. And how easy is it to trust other people's viewpoints?
Sound enters from somewhere. A door opens, another closes. In Germany arguments are in session, doubtless unfriendly ones. In Paris the city sleeps, dreaming about an end to all strikes and to all of Sarkozy and his enemies. Supposedly university students have done work on this day, the pre-ordained Sabbath. No evidence of this can be found on the Internet, although everything else displays itself in glittering charm or simplicity. It all claims to save time while it ticks precious moments away. Actually, sometimes it makes precious moments happen. Either way, the thought of the Internet being a time-saver is irrelevant now in this room.
A white box. Black hieroglyphics upon it. Illumination from half-white light. A scene of doubt. A scene of hidden trepidation, perhaps? From one eye, a scene of boredom. From another, a scene of the desperate unknown.
This is every Sunday in Paris.
(Luckily, there are 6 other days in the week.)
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