Size Does Matter

STUDIES have determined that the size of your plate determines the size of your appetite. If you have little food but a plate small enough to be full once that little amount of food has been put on it, you'll feel satisfied at the end of it because you finished an entire plate. The human perception of relativity should come into play to prevent that misconception really, but honestly, sometimes it's better just to not know.

Don't keep asking for more. Beg for enough then be satisfied. There are people out there who don't even dare to hold out their plates for their share of the world.

Crystalline

ALWAYS heard them tell me to call my glass half full and not half empty.

What if your glass isn't even half full?
Then be glad you've got any water at all.

What if your glass doesn't have any water in it?
Then be glad that you have a glass at all.

And what if you don't even have a glass?
Well then be glad that you have been gifted a duty, a duty to yourself, for yourself: to go out there and get a glass for yourself!

The March: of Rain and Reminisce

HEAD bent down, forced down, she heads out into the war of the rain versus the humans, the straggling, soaked-to-the-bones souls caught in the sudden downpour. At first she attempts to wipe the tentative few drops away. Then she realizes her foolishness; there will only be another 100 for every 10 she managed to wipe away.
And halfway down the path she stops beneath a tree which offers her some degree of shelter from the pelter even though it mean the occasional collated droplet tended to hit the top of her head with an almost resounding sound in the silence beneath the leaves of that tree. All around everything is loud and violent and yet vibrant, full of sound and life and all that other good stuff. She takes a breather, sensing a slight pause, a small period when the storm seems to grow fickle of its pouring and raging, and relent a little. But she doubted she would be able to wait it out. And besides, there was something so deliciously forbidden and wild to feeling the drops raining down her arms and her hair gradually getting so soaked she could practically wring it out. With a flourish she tore off her scrunchie, letting the curly locks dangle appeasingly around her ears. And she sets off again, into the rain. With a smile on her face and a chuckle petering down the air, a church bell rung amateurly just a little off rhythm, yet tri-tone and lilting.
Later she slings her bag to the flow and realizes she is almost dripping water. She wonders if she should take a picture of her exhausted face now, or if her shaking limbs would make it all blurry. Normally cameras would be a taboo but now it was different. Suddenly she was a portrait, measuring 5"6 by happy by water.

This is what they meant by that old word.

Emancipation.

Titillate

played the strings of my heart like it were a harp
that doesn't make you an angel

War

WHY should the little people have to suffer for what they wanted?

Details In The Fabric

Calm down
Deep breaths
And get yourself dressed
Instead of running around
And pulling all your threads
And breaking yourself up

If it's a broken part, replace it
If it's a broken arm then brace it
If it's a broken heart then face it

And hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way

Hold your own
Know your own name
And go your own way
And everything will be fine

Hang on
Help is on the way
And stay strong
I'm doing everything

Hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way

Hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way

And everything
Everything, it will be fine
Everything

All the details in the fabric?
Are the things that make you panic?
Are your thoughts results of static cling?

Are the things that make you blow?
Hell, no reason, go on and scream
If you're shocked it's just the fault
Of faulty manufacturing

Everything will be fine
Everything in no time at all
Everything

Hold your own
Know your name
Go your own way

Hold your own
(Are the details in the fabric?)
Know your name
(Are the things that make you panic?)
Go your own way
(Are your thoughts results of static cling?)

Hold your own
(Are the details in the fabric?)
Know your name
(Are the things that make you panic?)
Go your own way
(Is it Mother Nature's sewing machine?)

Hold your own
(Are the things that make you blow?)
Know your name
(Hell, no reason, go on and scream)
Go your own way
(You're shocked it's just the fault of faulty manufacturing)

Everything it will be fine
Everything in no time at all
Hearts will hold

- Jason Mraz and James Morrison

More Than Words

LET the walking do the talking.

The Third: Pressure

SIMPLY force over area? Physicists must have calculated it wrongly. At times it does not divide, nor add or subtract; it multiplies into higher orders and forces your head down when all the others say is to hold your chin up.
And yet it is this pressure that forces them together. Particle theory. They are forced, pressurized closer together, some forced to bond and rely upon others they still have not fully learned to trust yet.

Clear

TODAY I took off my glasses and marvelled at the ephemeral existence of the spaces, and not the words, that nobody will ever read.

Ends Meet

The inevitable end of human life is death.
The inevitable end of human death is life.

Narrow

OH please. I think I've grown enough to know from experience that water only ever flows in one direction. It follows the pioneers leading the rest and never stops to take a look at the other places it could go.

All Around

Tell me, because I think I forgot the difference when your name rankled or echoes in my mind.

Pinkies

GOT a papercut today, on my pinky finger. Almost wanted to say sorry, though I didn't know to who. You make promises with pinky fingers. I don't want to know what you break them with.

Did I Get It Right, or You All Wrong?

rainy day call
you changed your number
but didn't tell me

The Old Attic

glances
up from the page
glasses clinging on for dear life
off the cliff of her nose

of course,
miscomprehension
lack of comprehension

of course,
teasing and laughter
that suddenly stops
she couldn't actually remember
the words anymore

of course,
a strange longing to become the
Mother
take her little grown up child
by the hand, nice and
tight and
warm

and drag her through a labyrinth
of the castle in the kingdom
of far away words

Poetry In Motion

these volumes,
these
ancient rhymes
chants and
pastimes

whisper
their words

secrets for everyone to
hear
if they would only
listen

Grip

THE little things that surround us and make us only seem to begin really nattering when they're not there anymore.
Like you don't thank the humble light bulb for staying on throughout the day until it blows because it can take the task no more. Then you curse at it for making you have to get out the ladder and dig out a new one before removing it and throwing it disgracingly into the trash.
Like you don't whisper sorry to your dinner plate when your knife finally and painfully scrapes across its much scarred surface once you get through that tough piece of meat you've been sawing at. Then you grimace or laugh with your family at the screeching, fingers on blackboard sound it makes.
Like you don't pat your computer on its overheated back for staying working for hours on end while you rush out your geography assignment the day before its due. You only use profanities and obscenities nobody wants to hear on it, hurling abuse at it for crashing when really, even machines have limits.

Even if humans try to rush through all there is to be done in life, they will never win a race like this. Once you finish your homework, and you have hours to go before your conscience can safely call it a productive, decent day (or night), you start pulling out your textbook to do some extra work, get ahead a little while you've got some time to spare. And you give so much you don't even realize you no longer have anything to give. Nothing left to give of your childhood.

Childhood?

Yes, such a thing does still exist in the world.

Things To Do Before You Die 5

WATCH the waves crest and fall - simplicity, because the world remembers how it used to love.

Things To Do Before You Die 4

LISTEN to the sound of children laughing in the playground as they run around in circles trying to chase their shadows and the light that holds even those back.

Sepia Footprints 4

IMAGES that stick in my mind's eye like band aids for wounds of old times and past tense. 

Four. A rainbow of all the seven colors they always told me were there for me to find myself. Like a bridge of some brand of light that seemed almost afraid of fading too fast, it clings on to the edge of existence and begins to resemble, in the eyes of a carbon atom watching so intently it would seem her life depended on the fragile thing, a bridge not of light, but of life and death and everything in between. It came from over the mountains behind which the sun hid the previous night. It came from all sorts of places and the dreams of people who might well wake into nightmares but believe, even just for a moment, that they should enjoy this time, of peace.

Peripheral Vision

THE aim of the exercise, this new coach - a voice actor currently working for Cartoon Network - said, was to help us focus.
Here's what you do:
Pair up with someone in the group you aren't too familiar with and stand face to face with her. Between the two of you pick someone to begin moving (any part of his or her body) very slowly, so slowly that you'll only notice movement after say, 2-3 seconds. In the meantime both of you must hold a gaze, but the other person must detect which part of her partner's body is moving and mirror that.

Consider that peripheral vision is a powerful tool. Not only must you look straight through your eyes, towards the front, but you must also focus on those little things sitting on the sidelines and bleachers, awaiting the fateful moment when a single pair of eyes - they will
not ask much - will land upon them and stay there and whisper somehow, without any words, that they are important and loved and enjoyed, regardless of their size or looks.
Perhaps if we all took a step back and eyed the entire world instead of only what we wanted, we would really focus and see what was really important.

Memory

AMAZING. It seems almost amazing how one thing can encompass so much, so much so that she is afraid of forgetting.

Sense

IT perhaps started out as a random statement.
We have eyes but do not see.
We have ears but do not listen.
We have minds but do not think.
We have hearts but do not feel.
We have love but do not live.

The Rules of Umbrella-Sharing

HE carries it, wrapping his arm around her offering her maximum protection from the cold daggers dropped carelessly from the sky to strike all the unfortunate souls below, without discrimination or bias. She grudgingly has agreed but only because of the Rule for sharing an umbrella - the taller one does it.
He sees her disgruntlement and steps and chuckles, proffering a small, sad but somehow proud smile. He accompanies the tiny action with a few tinier words:
Someday you'll get to carry the umbrella.

Pumps

HOW is it a couple extra inches on the bottom of their feet makes them feel tall enough to think they're all grown up?

For All Those Who

AFTER listening to the story, told by some gossiper in the seat in front of me, of a girl and a boy who I did not know, I have only one thing to say, one thing to comment to their story.
Please, oh please, realize that twenty-one is only two years older than nineteen.

Tears From Water

SOME rainy days I find myself gazing out the car window letting my daydreams mingle with the puddles on the ground and wonder if anybody would notice and/or care whether the streams running down my face were really rain at all.

Slow Dance

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly' s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift.....
Thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

- someone out there blessed with cancer

Ear-Whispered Words of a Friend

Looks like this is a day for violating rules, huh?

Keep Coming Back For More

CHASING the tides like they were chariots of her Majesty, the underwater queen, and I longed to join them in number, hush up the world as I rushed forward to kiss the feet of her brother beach, occasionally rattlesnake-hissing as the particles of my barely contained anger at humans for impurifying my mistress with their filth, add in their on kind of sound to the occasion.
Standing knee-deep in the waters and ignoring my sopping shorts, I let the small currents toss and squabble over my bare legs. Unconcsciously, as the hours hobble on, I make a slow way up the beach again, feet still submerged but the water level dropping with each pulled-out-of-the-sand step I took. Finally I reach the point where only the white crests of foam stretch to lick your toes, tintillating you with the last breaths of the sea, the mother.
It is there that I pause, pesky sand particles clutching to my wet legs and feet. I wait for the last tide to wash over my feet again, removing all the tiny parasites. Of course as soon as I take a step closer to the vast body of water, stretching to meet the boats waiting, as if in ambush, on the horizon, I am drawn back into her and end up back in her outskirts, thirsting for the feel of her loving hands clasping against me, gentle and sometimes abrasive, stronger and ephemerally hotheaded, but always managing to hold me in a vise, thick and strong.
It is this day that I look at the sea and stare something unpredictable and beautiful in the eye without flinching and without backing off. It is this day that I infiltrated the soil beyond sight with my toes, pushing deeper and deeper in to see if I could maybe bury my fears. It is this day that I held the water and felt and knew and saw that nothing else in the world would ever feel the same.

Just Like Riding A Bicycle

EYEING the contraption, I shake my head slowly, side to side, even as I feel my self-control slipping away, evaporating into the humid air. I inform them, straight out, that there was no freaking way they were getting me onto the bike.
Five minutes later, I'm sitting on a tandem bike behind the unfortunate soul who has been tasked to be my training wheels. A compromise had been reached. I ride for one hour - therapy against my phobia of bikes, they called it - and they would call it off and let me go back to sitting and moping around back at the bench we'd occupied/invaded.
Only of course, riding is not that simple. At least not for me. Do you have any idea how much courage it takes to lift both feet off the ground entrust your entire body onto two wheels whose width can't be much more than that of your thumbnail?
The big philosophy of bike-riding, as they told me, was that you had to let go. Put one foot on the pedal, press down for your first step then lift up the other foot and 'just' keep the momentum going. Just. As if it was an entirely natural process.
After maybe half an hour of attempting to get me to glue my feet to the pedals, they decided on a second course of action.
They would ride ahead and stop at every pit stop to wait for me. But I would have to ride there myself.
I have to admit that at some times coming down and going up slopes, turning corners and swerving around other bikers, my heart dropped into my stomach and seemed to sit there being digested by the pure fear that slammed itself into my brain - you're going to lose balance. You're going to fall and hurt yourself badly and they'll be too far away to hear so you'll just sit here and depreciate, or something.
I just kept pedalling, even though the sun was stinging my skin tomato-red and my sweat mingled with black oil stains off the pedals and wires.
With the wind on my face and my fear out back, I was beginning to believe I could fly.

Lunch

THE soup or the bread?
The soup, but only if its consistency is thick, rich, and its temperature toasty warm.
The bread, but only if it is still crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.
The mind need be fresh and new as well to make decisions.

Which Would You Like To Hear First?

THE bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you're the pilot.

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

- Billy Collins

Cut Short

SIX words of something more
Scribbled upon a broken door

For Sale: Baby's Shoes, Never Worn.

The Times

WHAT IS LIFE?
Some people say that life's a race. Everybody has their eyes on their prize, their ulimate goal of a finish line somewhere in paradise. And these people will spend their lives put of breath, puffing and panting but pushing on towards a place they will find impossible to reach.
Some people say that life's a journey. As soon as you arrive here in this big, big world you will start this journey. And some people will travel the world and the seven seas witnessing every mountain and every molehill, losing their roots and adapting wings on their tired and shaking arms. And some people will remain gazing up at a tiny patch of sky that they at least can call their own, as they are imprisoned by the manacles that ground them and are their life's foundation.
Some people say that life's a dream. An episode of a summer fantasy lost amongst the shadows of trees and someone's expensive suit collection somewhere, where everything that happens won't make a difference because well, it never really happened.
And some people say that life's a story. And you're the Inkweaver who will put down those threads and tales that come together and amass and form this amazing, living-breathing YOU.
Some people write their tragedies and triumphs, their tears of joy mixing with their sweat and various contemplations of suicides and the tiny golden moments they want and need to keep locked up in a glass jar to be stored, lock and key, within the decomposing cabinet of the door to memory lane. Some people write about how many times they have had the limelight - or was it the gaze of all the green-eyed monsters ambushing in the audience - splashed upon themselves like rich robes in old cotton; and their story would be written in squiggly, shaky handwriting they hoped no one could really decipher. Some people live a boring life, day in and day out, sun rise and sun set. Some people hear that life is a stage and end up playing so many different roles even when the camera's not even rolling anymore. Everyone trying to be in the entertainment industry so pretty soon there'll be no audience, just a bunch of monkeys on stage dancing.
It's your story to write; it's your words that will keep you and free you.

Dismissal

1.20 p.m.,
And it snows dead snowflakes of
Yellowed raintree leaves

Dancer, oh Dancer

ODE to the dancer

your tutu skirt
is swimming
amongst currents and currants
and around my head
and your sashays
and your smiles
are spinning away
and I need you to stop now
because
this has gone on long enough
I need you to stop now
because
you make my world rotate
primary axis
of evolutionary delight
and you make me
feel
yeah you make me
feel
you make me

Doors

SAW a little girl playing with the glass swing doors, her mother occasionally calling her back to the table for another mouthful of fast-turning cold food. People wait patiently outside while she has her fun to come in. There's a big old sign reading 'Push' only of course she can't read yet. She can't even force the doors open wide enough for her tiny frame to pass through at this age. Anyway she's pulling in the wrong direction, pulling it towards herself and yanking rather desperately, putting the whole of her rather meager weight into the effort, basically hanging off the metal hook where her hands have planted themselves. But it won't budge and as people come in pulling the door towards themselves, she's amazed that it won't work for her. Steps to take would be to pull, not push. That's what they did, right?

SEE so many doors so much that after a while maybe I get sick of it. I don't want to read te big old sign with instructions on the door, telling me what to do and how to do it. I want it fast and furious and oh so perfect. I want the doors to swing open for me without me having to yank or shove or stick my foot into the closing gap of that mouth of a doorway to the point where I hurt myself just trying to maneuver through and past. Into what's behind the door.

Smile and get up and pass by. Gently wait, a patient mother almost, for her to let me through, then slowly push the door away from me. Pushing doesn't make it go any further away. Pushing yourself to do more is in fact equivalent to pulling the door towards you. Only tired peope trying to go back through the door ever pull it towards them instead of pushing themselves forward to reach. They think they are entering something new but really it's just something, some kind of memory they left behind somewhere while running one day. They might find it in the lost and found section though. The dusty little place in the back of their minds where a little child lurks and pretends to be just like all these people who pass her by and know what to do.

Words rising to my mouth a lot. I wanted to tell her so much about beauty and benevolence, and some things I thought were as close to a definition of beauty and ugly, as I had realized so far. I wanted to whisper in her ear all the things she was going to have to look in the eye and laugh and scorn at, even if at home later she cried. I wanted to tell her that she would know so
much someday, someday very soon, if she would just work out how to open that door.

One LOVE. Live it.

SOMETIMES the title says it all.

Crossings

SOME substances will react together when they're exposed to heat. Some light, some electricity.
Friends will sometimes become friends when they're put to the test. When someone has to give more and trust the other and the other has to trust that someone to find it in herself, to be brave enough to care enough.
Friends will sometimes become friends in a sudden revelation, a blinding light truth that eases that burdens off their shoulders and humbly puts it upon his own.
Friends will sometimes become more than just friends in a bolt of something powerful, something more than them, that courses through their veins and seems to beat their hearts from that moment on.