old friends, new friends

why is it so hard to have new friends these days? all the people we meet now in this age are all so fleeting and temporary, we don't really take the time to know them anymore, it's not like high school friends or college friends or friends from your first work where you spent at least 4 years, where it's so easy to pick up from where you last left. now it's all hi, hello, what did you do last weekend, what are you doing next weekend, that's great, have fun, drive safely. and that's the end of it. the next day will be the same questions like you never answered them before, so automatic, so thoughtless, so heartless. this is what we've become - walking spheres that don't intersect, we just bounce off each other and move on to the next direction. 

is it our age? is it our generation? is it the natural progression of time? is it evolution? do we somehow lose this capacity to care for someone new in our lives after a certain age? when did we stop asking questions like: you look sad, do you want to talk about it? can i help you with something? do you want to just hang out? - when did we stop reaching out? when did we become so selfish and self absorbed? 

in the city that never wakes

Restless. This city leaves me yearning for more. I can't stay too long, I feel like crawling out of this skin. This is not home, these strange people are like characters of a play that was written long before my time and now I am here, totally out of place, without meaning, without sense. I have too much time to think. Too much time to feel.

And the ghosts of my past are restless, wanting to come alive and wreak havoc. I need to gain control before it overtakes me. I can hear it sneaking up on me when my guard is down and I have too much time, too much time to not be me.

Tonight I walked to the skytrain while the weight of autumn gazed at my back and all these voices they keep screaming. I can't make them stop. I need to be with people who stay grounded. I need these pointless conversations to make me stay sane. And yet I have to stay away. I can always blame the season, the gray that comes too soon. My head was heavy with unreasonable thoughts and I hopped on the train towards the wrong direction. Two stations passed before I woke up to realize that I should get off and go the other way.

I am restless. This city leaves me restless. These people have no faces and they never mean what they say or say what they mean. They keep forgetting and I have to go away. I have to stay away. It's for my own good. It's for their own good.

Tomorrow I will stay away.

can't carry a tune

music is the way kindred souls communicate to each other. you can tell a lot about your friends by their playlists.. each melody represents an era, a feeling, a memory, each word carries with it a pain, a person, a whole other lifetime lived not so long ago.

i have punctuated my life with songs, sometimes when i hear one playing on the radio, a certain year comes to mind, a moment freeze framed and slowly flashing like an old movie on replay. often these hymns are so powerful that they bring me back to a place that used to hurt - a place i've covered with cobblestones to hide the bruises. but one tune, one lousy refrain and walls tumble to give in to longing.

memories could be a gift, or a curse, depending on which kind you wish to bring back from the dead. but i know one fact.. never listen to crappy songs on vday =) happy hearts day everyone!

mush mush

Once upon a time I fell in love - the mad, blind, irrational and passionate kind. It happened unexpectedly as all great loves do. I didnt look for it, it just found me while I was busy with the mundanities of living.

I never really knew what it was until it was staring right in front of me. I tried to deny it, push it away, paint it with stripes hoping to make the hippopotamus look like a zebra. But it just washed itself, shook its head and stubbornly stayed. Nothing made sense until I admitted that I was in love.

We kissed then lightning crashed on that damp rainy night, and that's how I knew that as much as I wanted to keep this feeling, this high, this heaven, I didnt want to risk losing the person that brings it. Friendship survives holocausts, other relationships crumble. I had to let it go.

So I went away, I made excuses, it was crushing, it broke my heart into a million tiny pieces that will never heal no matter how many centuries it took. It was stupid, but it was the right thing to do. At rare times when I allow myself to feel, the wound still hurts,

That was 5 years ago, I coasted through life since then and made myself believe that I was fine. Found new people who entrusted their hearts to me but I never kept them. The spark never came back, something was always missing.

Sometimes when all is quiet I would weep and look back at the path I chose, then I would blink the tears away and reassure myself that I made the right decision.

Tonight the ghosts rose from the grave to haunt me, and taunt me and tell me what I would have otherwise missed if I had stayed. But I am too far down the road and I have learned to live with the pain for as long as I can remember that it doesnt seem to matter anymore. I have become contented with the role I chose to play in your life.

I feel a twinge as I read your words - of a new found love, of the same old feeling - but you have become nothing more than my idea of heaven, that place where dreams are made of, I know that's the best we can ever be - kindred souls. The half that makes me whole.

I will always love you M, and I will always let you go. I hope she makes you happy, I would never wish anything less for you.

I miss you, I miss the way my hand fit yours, and for me, that has always been enough in this lifetime.

Goodbye. Hello ;)

random voices

Last night I dreamt I was alive again, I felt I was tasting life for the first time; the feel of rain on the tip of my tongue was so real, so delicate, so tragic. I walked in and around my dream wondering where my imagination ended and reality began, but I could never really tell.

That's when I saw the shadow of a kindred soul lying on its back, right on the same mound of sand where I buried my star. My eyes saw red; I felt it was sacrilege for this trespasser to desecrate the grave of my dear friend. I quietly approached the resting soul and said: "why do you lie here when the sand is so vast and you can have your pick anywhere else but here?" I waited long for a response since it pretended not to hear me, but finally, when it realized I would hold my ground until it let out an explanation, it said in a slow indifferent drawl: "And why not? This mound provides a good pillow for my head, and besides, from this view I can see all the rest of the skies"

"What a proud creature you are, do you not know that this is the grave of my star and you have shown no amount of concern nor respect for it!" I uttered in indignation.

"A star you say?" it said with mild interest "those tiny drops of light belong to the skies not here on this barren sand, why did you choose to bury it here?"

"Because I don't know how to take it back where it came from," I said in frustration "I don't have tools to build me anything that wil l carry me to that place"

"Come here, sit beside me," the kindred soul invited "You don't need to build a great ship nor climb a tall ladder in order to reach the heavens, that is foolishness, nor should you lie here waiting for the heavens to come down to you, that is madness. There is only one way"

"And what is that?"

"To die."

"Are you implying that I should go now and take my life in order to reach heaven? That is the most absurd thing I ever heard."

"Who said anything about taking your own life? That is the farthest path to heaven. All you have to do is go about doing your own business and wait. Wait for that ultimate moment when Death finally decides to take you"

"I cannot wait that long, I need to leave this place now. I need to be in a place with no darkness nor sadness nor bitter choices, a place where I no longer have to wait for things that will never come"

"Ah, but that is your biggest fault, heaven is not a place. It is a decision. It is a commitment, and until you have not made one, you will never get there" For a moment, I wanted to believe that the kindred soul had gone mad, but something inside me churned so I stayed silent.

I closed my eyes in confusion. I envy my star whose time has come, and who is probably happy now beside its family of bright twinkling envoys of light. Why has death not chosen to take me with it too? Why do I have to go on with this madness?

These are the voices that visit me every night.