lovers

lovers meet and part on a daily basis, with a frightening sort of continuity. just go to any airport and witness firsthand the many comings and goings of people in our lives. airplanes fly off overhead, and i never cease wondering if anyone i know, if anyone i've loved is sitting upon the clouds, hurtling slowly out of my grasp.

sometimes, it's because they've quarrelled. other times it is simply because time has made them grow weary of one another. it can be their circumstances - he has to leave, or she sees him only on the weekend. sometimes, they are still in love, but too stubborn to admit it. one of them (or both) may be trying to selfishly save him/herself from an eventual broken heart.

that new car smell

as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road connecting him to the rest of the town, he suddenly smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. the car was new, a bright and shiny black suv, guzzling gas unapologetically and looking like every third car on the road, smelling that dizzying new car smell. the car was so new in fact, that it didn't have a license plate.

she and him

he liked her small movements, those tiny things only he noticed about her and which he was sure no one else knew. they were his closely guarded secrets in the moments he spent watching her. he knew that those hidden movements defined her personality.

the way she leaned her hip slightly to the left, propping open the refrigerator door with the curve of her leg and wrinkling her brow: her indecision. the way she rapidly pushed her hair up to the crown of her head, twisted, shaped, and packaged it with a rubberband, only to take it down two minutes later: her impetuosity. the way she showed anger not in her words, but in her eyes, which flashed and hardened, glittered dangerously as she spoke: a cold, controlled tempest of emotion. the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear when she was nervous and tugged at it when she was thinking: introspective.

writer's block

it was blocked. no matter how she twisted and turned, no matter how she wiggled and tried to nudge it, to pry it free, it was blocked. there was a cold slab of marble remorse, of ivory sadness and opal resignation resting upon her head. worms became lodged underneath smooth stones in much the same way her writing was being smothered by the thousand emotions cluttering her mind.

"mostly harmless" meet "slightly different"

when she came back, sometime during that long descent from paradise back to earth, she thought of all the pictures she hadn't taken. she had, for instance, a picture of her with jan, a picture of her with judith, a picture of jan and judith, but no picture of the three of them. it was like a memory that had been stolen, a hole left in place of something precious.

contortions of a chameleon tongue

the children of immigrants are like chameleons - either that, or schizophrenics. maybe god gave them the gift of adaptability. maybe they can meld and morph into any situation, twist their tongues easily around any language, all because god is trying to compensate for something. for taking them away perhaps. the extra gift of belonging anywhere enables them to land on their feet like cats, in any situation, to make up for the instability of their legs in the first place.

but unknowingly, god created more problems. when you belong everywhere, you tend to feel like you belong nowhere - like you're stuck being the bridge, belonging just as much (or just as little) in one place as you do in another. it messes with your head, this walking the tightrope ALL THE TIME. but maybe schizophrenia is the side effect for just the first generation, and maybe a bit of the second. after that, it sort of melts away...

wanderlust begun

"i'm writing you to
catch you up on places i've been
and you...have this letter
prob'ly got excited
but there's nothin' else inside it
didn't have a camera by my side this time
hopin' i would see the world through
both my eyes
maybe i will tell you all about it when
i'm in the mood
to lose
my
way
with words..."

- "3x5" by john mayer

mostly, she was surrounded by friends. she would walk through the town and never fail to see someone she knew - dear friends, acquaintances, people she didn't know at all but who knew her. this tiny hamlet in the valley had given her a new family, and new eyes with which to see the world.