there's something about tsetse

oh, the tsetse in the office. it be so cheery when i walk in. 'din-din' at someplace cool and posh.

almost like i were the trigger to show off. haha

bluebottle against the windowpane. rather amusing. hahaha

a friend in need

i read in an email from a friend, five days too late, that she's facing some trouble in a foreign land. it's not work trouble, that's easy to solve. it's not exactly money issues, that's still alright-ish. not friendships, she's an affable person - it's familial.

anyone who's not an orphan probably would have witnessed - or worse, tasted - the sting of family politics. hers, is probably the best and the worst position to be at the same time. now. the said friend is a sassy young lady with smarts and a sense of justice. she speaks her mind, has opinions, is strong mentally, emotionally. package that with a likeable character and a pretty face and you will begin to see how it might be if you were to meet her.

from what i gathered, she is, as i said, in the best and worst position to be in in family politics.

no, she's not directly involved but rather she had to witness the injustices carried out right before her eyes. for fifteen years she had endured that and hadn't said a word about it. now that she's facing it full in the face, being stuck as a student overseas where her family businesses are, it got worse.

she still isn't saying anything about it. or maybe she did and had gotten stung in return. one thing's for sure, is that she's now keeping it all in and i know it's killing her, changing her; as mine had killed me, is killing me, is changing me.

i don't know how such human ugliness transpired into a monster such as this exactly but i do know this is not an environment i want to forge with my future family, friendships, etc.

thus... i beseech anyone who reads this: if you dislike someone, please, do not oust that someone. if you must, remove yourself civilly. if you do not deem it possible for you to move or that the other person should move out instead, well, do what you need to but please do not allow others to get caught up in YOUR web.

because it is YOUR web and no one else's. keep it that way.

oh, dear

that ole achy-breaky feeling that so often accompanies being in a relationship is back.

f*.

the toy

the toy that someone inevitably picks up because it looks pretty gets picked up often. it gets loved, gets attention. but then comes a time when something else beckons - like work, or family, whatnot.

that's when the toy is left.


not to say that the toy isn't important - the toy's role is quite crucial in times of crisis. it's a symbol of safety, of normalcy, if i may. it is something some may cling to as a token of the past, or an ideal, or maybe even a dream of an idea of how a person may be.


..toys.

they can be dreams. however real or unreal, there are the things that you hold to yourself each night when you go to sleep, because 'everything else' can't be trusted. just like a certain cousin of mine said: i love walt disney's productions. they're so beautiful. and yes i believe in the romance in those productions. that's what you can hold on to when you go to bed at night.

..and he, in typical fashion, said that it is not possible in real life in the following breath.


"that's why i love walt disney's," he would say, "because that's the ideal. my kinda ideal."


...by and by, i'm beginning to see how he sees it.

and i wonder, if it's such a bad/good thing being a toy.

tribute

so sometimes right, you discover that you'd stepped into a hole and had been walking in the same hole for some time now, and when you finally realise that you're in a hole and you're getting out - you also realise that there is the mud and funky twigs and whatnot sticking to your socks and legs and the damn mud's trying to steal your shoe.

then you work it out, without calling for help, thinking that it's alright, things are okay, you can get out of this alone - when you realise that that trudge out of the said hole is not that easy-peasy as you thought it was, and that it had cost you more than you thought you would expend. not that it's a whole lot more but the fact that the 'getting out of hole' episode caused you more trouble than what you thought it should - well - does have a tendency to surprise you.


that's when you get friends out to have a good dinner, a nice game of ball, a gung-ho few round of drinks. and then the world seems right again, without you having to say anything. mud, twigs, lost shoe -

it just seems right again. because there are them friends around.


that's right. because there are them friends around.

love, actually is a puppy

once again.

love. it's arrived at my doorstep in a basket and blankie. knocked on my door and tucked itself back in so it can stare at me with its big googly eyes when i open the door.


...i don't think i survived that gaze attack.

no, no, no.

no.

this is not the way to do it.


...no.

when it comes

it all comes.

when it comes it all comes. you get pounded you break you bend you behave like a rounded rubber block of red - you get body-slammed into a wall you stick you break you explode you slide onto the floor you fly right back at them.

and when it all comes you realise you're getting slammed no matter what and breaking bending sliding exploding aren't options open to you.

if you're going to get fucked, let your response not be that of a loser's.


no sticking or sliding allowed.

none.

when it all gets too much

and sometimes it all gets too much to handle, too hard to take, too tough to swallow.

and all we can do is go on. and if you're lucky — maybe, just maybe - you get a call from a friend asking if everything's alright, if you need any company and/or help.

not that you need any of that. but because it's always good to know that you're not going it alone. and no, you're not alone.

i want you to know that.

fatigue

i hate my job.

how can it be?

it's amazing.

how sometimes what others tell you about you when you've known yourself foryour entire lifetime reveals what you hadn't noticed about yourself.

i have amazing friends, an amazing life, and even more amazing friends.

i am lucky.


...nay. i am blessed. thank YOU, for being in my life. sincerely.


thank you.

neither is this a story

jane listened to the heaving sounds just behind the door.


the door rattled periodically, punctuated by breathless moans.

swallowing, she decided that this isn't the best time to call on lynn. as she turned to go, she noticed lynn's roguishly handsome neighbour hanson leaning on his door frame, watching her. she blushed and hastily tugged on her luggage to hurry down the corridor to the lift.

but before she could walk five steps hanson called out to her: "in trouble?"


too embarrassed to say anything, she kept walking. he must've seen the tear tracks on her face. damn not having a mirror handy at a time like this! her mascara must've been so smudged she KNOWS she looks like a racoon. yeah. a racoon with red puffy eyes.

"i have a spare bed," he called after her.


she kept walking.

"in the other room," he added.

she stopped. even though she's not in the right frame of mind - who'd be in the right frame of mind when your step-father's told you to get out after he couldn't get you to do what your ma did to earn the monies for him? - she knew she needed a roof over her head, for tonight at least. hanson, seeing her pause, called out again, his own hesitation echoing hers.

"you can stay here until tomorrow when lynnette's in a better - position - to house you properly."


jane started to tear. she hung her head and blinked quickly, pinching the part of the bridge of her nose where the corners of her eyes were with her free hand. that's where tears flowed from, she read in a book somewhere.

"don't cry," she thought, "you're tougher than this. you know how it is, you know it. you knew it all along that he would eventually kick you out and she won't even stop him or or help you in any way. what you knew all along can't hurt you, can it? don't give them the triumph of crying again. don't."

suddenly hanson was beside her, taking the handle of her luggage from her hand. she started, the urgency of tears fled, if only for a moment, and involuntarily looked at hanson.

the gentle kindness on his face broke whatever resolve she had not to cry and she began to sob ugly, racking sobs that robbed her of breath. hanson, taking pity on the girl, held her head to his chest and let her cry, saying "there, there" awkwardly.

as time passed he hoped she wouldn't notice the rattling of the door had grown more urgent and had developed into a steady pounding, the moans replaced by soft shrieks. so he steered her gently and slowly, with her head still firmly on his chest, to his place. she went with him meekly, not seeing and clinging to him as if he were the only lifeline she had, her eyes burning the dryness of his shirt away the whole time. he hoped they would make it to his place in time. goodness knew he winced as they walked past lynn's door.

just as he was about to close the door of his own apartment behind him, he heard a shriek followed by a triumphant cry.


hanson rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.

happiness

..he said sorry.


and aaaall's well again.

what a surprise.

not a story.

laiye treaded softly towards that gilded door, the one that marks it as the Master's. it was late, the white silvery moon casting a delicate veil of spidery light throughout the estate, outlining it in a patina of magic. though it was warm and humid, as this pixie-forsaken place is wont to be, all year round, she rubbed bare arms to ward of the chill that the cool morning was capable of inflicting. she had never gotten used to the weather here.

by the look of the undisturbed line of moon-cast luminance under the sturdy door, the Master seems asleep.

"as his bed-companion should be, most probably," she thought, with a bit more acid than a servant girl should have.

she lingered just a little away from the door, keen to be near her Master, yet holding back, for she knew where the wards would be. she would be shielded from the effects, but the Master would know if anyone's there and she certainly couldn't well make it to any hiding place in time should he choose to awaken and come to the door.

he would punish her, as he did others who attempted to spy on him: serrated hooks were inserted into hips and jaws and strung, like spiders on a fisherman's thread, just outside of the estate. and he would, before he hangs them up like so much linen, take their glowing life essences to put into a jar, so they wouldn't die.

if he were kind, he would allow a day for the hapless offenders to get used to the idea of eternal suspension. if he weren't, he would start the critters on them. it depended on his mood, mostly. it was worse when he chose to host festivals in the forests near them. the merry-making, the scent of roast and pies and ale -


oh, he wasn't all bad, for that was how things worked. you come into the estate you swear fealty to him. and if you were to be a spy - oho! that's what happens to you: suspension. you always knew what you were headed for with the Master; he was not just the maker of the law, he WAS the law.

a story

i am going to write a story about a society wherein people get so pompous that rudeness is condoned, as long as you do it with style and panache. and i'm going to throw in a magic doorknob that listens to all this pomp, and laughs about this to itself.

wherein warlocks are common, witches are aplenty and where gold is no longer of much value because anyone can make it. the currency, therefore, is glamour, sold in little sachets like little packets of SK II; where barter trade owns the society and where laughter is the food of all beings.

yes, laughter is food.

and the little doorknob has it, only nobody knows it laughs, or that it has an awareness, or that it even has an intelligence.


nobody knows about this little knob, until one day...

dreams

i've had dreams fo being someone prominent before. y'know, like a singer, actor, smart and witty and gorgeous to boot - talented, yes: talented. the kind of talent and/or beauty that will turn heads anywhere and the ability to raise awareness for some god-forsaken and human-forgotten country just by doing a walk there.

i'm still having them dreams now by the way, but that doesn't mean that it's any easier to acheive. on the contrary, now that i'm looking at it, it looks like it's one big mountain to climb.

everyone hopes for someone who happened to think that they're heaven's gift to theatre/music/whatnot but truth be told, just how many temperamental gay directors do they expect to think that they're JUST what they need in their newest movie? ...okay maybe i was being judgemental about prominent/influential people being gay.

but truly, do you really expect proud, established, confident people with track records to GROVEL for your esteemed presence? (oh please)


thus. having no such illusions about my humble self, i can only strive to be the best that i can be, be it simply being a person pleasant enough to be around or being a conscientious worker in the office or giving it your best shot when it comes to the lessons you sign up for and not treat it like a joke. have fun while at it, but don't treat it like a joke.

there's a distinct difference there.


ergo. i had dreams. i still have dreams. and the purpose of the dream is so i can make others' lives easier and better. let me have my dream, so i may do the proverbial walk in human-forgotten countries.

because where i tread, i want to leave it better than it originally was.

and i shan't talk about it.

no, i shan't talk about it.

whatever happened today, however unpleasant it was, what i did in the moments of being left in the wake of life's little dance steps - i won't mention it.

and that's it. time out.

gah

ohkay now that was a yell-out-loud adoration post.

golly.

Lord, i want it to be You

i want it to be You, my Lord, the person who tucks me in at night, a goodnight kiss before You turn off the light.

i want it to be You, my Lord, One i can respect and adore. gentle, sweet, understanding, deep. has a sense of humour and sensitive to my needs. maybe that's why You're You. for You gave me two best Gifts.

first you gave You to me, then you gave me to me.

thank You, o Lord. thank you, for the gifts you give to me. bless You, Father, bless you.

in Jesus's name i pray. Amen.

freedom of speak (spee-ack)

what's scary about "free will" is having to make the "right" decision and coming out smelling like roses each and ever time.

no, really.


"free will" is not what you want unless you understand, completely, how you are responsible for your moves. truly. nobody "made" you do anything anymore. you did it.

the end.


...

take free will and fate. Fate, if you prefer. if everything were preordained, then why do we struggle with these decisions? i mean, if it were, doesn't it mean that whatever we did it's meant to be? whatever we had lost or whatever it is that we had gained - doesn't that mean we're meant to have them that way?


people keep talking about free speech. free will. free this free that, in a celebration - so to speak - of individualism and the "freedom" of choice.

i won't rehatch the arguments that had been done to death - i'm sure you've heard them all before; you say what you want, you think what you will. the only true shackling of any freedom is when your thoughts have been conditioned to flow one particular way by someone else. like how it's important to not shut yer yap and get your pretty arse thrown into jail for being stupid. like insulting a powerful someone in a manner that may not be ignored; in the name of "protest" and "the right way" of doing things, so your voice too, can be heard.

now THAT's called shackled. and the best bit? you won't be unhappy about it.


maybe you'll even call it freedom. yeah. freedom of speech, when all you really are, is noisy.