when the paintbrush is dripping

Then here I am having a reflection. I was moving up the escalator at Bayview Station the other day and I thought to myself, how wonderful if I have the ability to name everything in this world, how wonderful if I can label and pinpoint the exact word for every object I see before me, or how about being able to capture every swobbling of the slightest tilt of emotion inside of me with the exact phrase, how wonderful would that be? I buried myself in the Cortazar book I bought at Indigo, finished reading the first two stories before I got off the train. At night, there were thumping sounds coming out of my basement. I thought there were ghosts in my home. I looked outside the window and saw my people moving things into the house next door. Why move things so late at night?

Then I thought about the matter about being heard. Being heard and wanting to be heard and thinking of a way (and doing it) but yes, having to think it first, of a way, a way, for my message to get through the people. Part of this process that a writer like me might get blinded about is the idea that when I tell something I need to tell it from the other people's perspectives. I want to tell for people or do I not want to tell for people or is it valid to only tell for myself? My train of thoughts is broken. It might come back and it might not. So it's best I let it go and get back on to what I need to do.

a reflection

He talks and puffs away like he's in a boxing ring. He puffs and puffs away and from way far in the back I can't see his face, but his presence is big and it comes through to me in the deep and course sounds of his voice the way he tells about the death of his sons. How he shot himself in the mouth and died... addicted to heroine... then a few days later his other son dies... his wife dies... and he remembers it like yesterday, the exact details, his wife dying on the bed where his son had died two days ago... the son hugging the toilet bowl and vomiting and excrements down his body and underpants, no, nobody wants to die, nobody wants to die that way, nobody should want to die like that, not when the son said he would turn around and be good, but still he went out of jail and died two days later. The way this man is able to tell all of this with precision, the numbers...

all white outside

All white outside. Now just me and my gray sweater on my bed. The folds make caves and shadows under the light. The snow gives the sky a pink glow. I'm all to myself.

the unflying bed

To worry about not having enough time in this lifetime to do everything I want to do is but a destructive sentiment and I am not about to let it grip me. It is as if I make this statement to the world so that I can put myself to bed a little more easily. It's difficult when it's difficult to get into bed only to find it more difficult to get out of it.

shapes and strings

Distractions. In a shopping mall with many walking lanes in grids and glass cubicles at every corner. In the boutiques that sell girls clothing they like to dangle heart shapes and star shapes strung together like beads off the ceiling. A woman is dressing her mannequin. She steps out of the glass cubicle a few times to check that her mannequin is wearing her clothes properly. The scarf looks better when it drapes over the right shoulder a little bit. Undo the top button. Fold the sleeve out just a bit. Perfect.

rain day song

Driving in a car on a rainy day the sky is blue blue blue like waterpaint and now the blue is spreading all over my shirt. But the car keeps driving and the water splashes and skids and up and all over like a sort of tears. Just when I felt everything had faded a little bit. And here I am pretending to be in this sort of journey, only to find myself running into a gray wall that isn't a wall at all, but a cloud of grayness, and I think I can go through it but I trip like an electric guitar suddenly unplugged. Then I'm in my car again. Ok. Focus this picture. See how the wheels are just a little off the ground? I made it that way. Nice. Don't you think? But here I am or this person whom I think is me crying! And away he drives as the windshield wipers go left and right and left and in the rear view mirror the rain drips down the glass like tears tears tears... And you are a stranger to all of this and you wonder when exactly you can go home. In the deep deep rain. The lonely heart hosts a party. The wind sends home this stranger. Sad rain surrounds a drifty heart. The same story occurs again and again and we never tire.

the word of god vs my drunken heart

A cold night. A boy comes to my door to spread the word of God. "I'm sorry," I said, "I can't quite talk at the moment. I'm having dinner now." Then he talks to me in Chinese. I did not expect this blond-haired boy to speak Chinese. "Your Chinese is very good," I said. "Your English is very good too," he said to me. He left me a booklet with Jesus on the cover, and away he went to the next door.

A glass of cognac pouring slowly as this dark and clear liquid slowly fills up what I see before me. I turn off the music and it becomes clear again, clear as in things begin to look like things. A bed looks like a bed. A pencil case looks like a pencil case. Even these letters I see on the screen before me begins to look like they actually make sense. Sometimes I think it all sounds better with music on. But this glass-of-cognac-pouring-all-over-the-screen sort of sensation can be a bit too much, almost distracting at times. The drunken heart is better saved for something else.

My ability to tap into my drunkenness at any time puts me a step above them slouch-backs at them pubs and night clubs.

(i kind of want you to) read this (and tell me what you think)

There was a time when we enjoyed cup noodles very much. The ones with the rather tall and narrow cups and yellowish wrapper indicating curry flavour. We ate them while sitting on the hardwood corridor. At the end of the corridor, a balcony. Beyond the balcony, a post office with its lights on even during its closing hours. But back to the corridor, here, in this dormitory we enjoyed our cup noodles and the song we loved to play was Inoue Yosui's shonen jidai... I knew well the meaning of the song but never really experienced it for real. I suppose I knew at the time that one day I would long to go back to that day of our eating cup noodles together, but memory is a funny thing, or rather, our being in a time that we knew we would soon come to miss and yet being unable to carry anything to contain the slipping away of time is pitiable, or rather, our effort to even try to contain anything is pitiable. But as always, when one is having the time of one's life, one thinks not of ways to contain it. No, one wouldn't think that. It would spoil it... Had I been thinking so much of containing the moment, I would have lost the moment itself. I would not have noticed the smoke that went up and up past my face as I tasted the noodles and how, so curiously, through the window of my friend's room another window of another friend's room from the other corridor shone through like...

And if you look all over this city at night, you'd find many windows looming brightly and how cozy would it be if I could hover through each of these glass dividers and find out what coziness was happening. Who the characters were. What they were thinking.

S--- writes that she is beginning to think about the future again, about life. Her friends are getting married and having babies and she thinks to herself, "Where exactly does that put me?" And here I am, halfway across the planet, pondering about how my friends are getting married and buying houses and I think to myself, "Where exactly does that put me?" And if S--- were here right now I'd say, "Let's walk and talk." And we'd walk. Perhaps it'd be night so the lampposts would skew my vision of the streets a bit. Soon we'd be tired of walking and one of us (probably me) would suggest that we sit down and rest. We would be overcome by a kind of mysterious fatigue, the kind that doesn't make you sleepy, but rather, it feels like a fog hovering on the back of your head, compounded with this burst of something in your chest, and we'd feel as though we were feeling something way beyond ourselves, that nobody, none of these citizens walking the streets this evening would even come close to having ever felt what we were feeling right now, and we'd feel (but not say) "We're on top of the world." Funny thing is the moment such a phrase is formulated in our minds, we began to laugh at our fickleness and realize, hey, really, we were only two directionless people walking around the city seemingly to be talking, discussing a point, seemingly to be coming closer to a conclusion, seemingly to be resting looking as though we would at any moment get up and keep walking. No. Let's not walk anymore. It's nice here, isn't it? You say. Or I say. Yes, it's quite nice here indeed. Let's sit here until the train station closes and watch poor little souls arrive at the station just as the last train has gone (since there were always bound to be a few of these unlucky souls). But this idea for excitement... How absurd! Let's watch people miss trains so we could miss trains ourselves!? The absurdity. The pretentious thinkingness one puts on amidst a drifty night! But I swear, there must be one god up above who have a sensitivity toward souls like us, and I swear this god is up there somewhere watching this and saying, they are truly truly good kids, but really, this show is getting a bit boring. Next channel.

Dear dear. Let's walk again tomorrow night, shall we? Let's meet here outside the station. And don't think about where we're going to walk or what we're going to talk about. That would defeat the purpose. Ok? See you tomorrow.