The Daughter of the Moon

A cold white light illuminates my tragic path. I was greeted by the crooning of angelic voices. My feelings were a mix of anxiety and of excitement. I saw you at church today, I was seated beside you. I can somehow hear your silent prayers. Licking your erubescent lips each time you pause before falling into a deep chasm of divinity. I close my eyes to listen to your heart’s beating. My soul gravitates around you, pulling me towards the ravine hidden between this painful reality and pristine romantic possibilities. Your gasps for air became more inviting; soon I am consumed by a familiar longing. I wait for the sun to drown in the crimsoning seas marking the start of my forbidden love affair with you. It is only when darkness covers the skies that I can have you – hiding behind the swollen shadows of sinners.

The same verse over and over again. Never mind if it was three in the morning or that she had to be practically dragged by her mother to the emergency room. It was clear that she was here not simply because of a minor ailment such as a rising fever or an annoying sore throat. She was brought in because she had been acting strange the entire week.

The mother claimed that her daughter was convinced that their neighbours were talking about her and spreading wild lies to ruin her reputation. She had stopped eating, functioning basically, living and kept herself locked inside her room, sometimes wailing.

Earlier that night, she was restlessly pacing the floor, refusing to sleep and muttering to herself as if tormented by some unseen demon. She took a shower with her clothes on and stared, pacing the floor again, leaving tiny pools of water in her wake. Then she left the house, leaving the front door open and climbed onto a parked car. There she managed to squeeze herself under the backseat. She had to be pulled out kicking and screaming before being brought to the hospital.

I asked her why she left the house. After about a million years, she looked at me from the corner of her eyes and whispered, “They think they’ve won, but I’m smarter.”

“Who exactly are the people you’re referring to?” I asked, suppressing a yawn.

I stared into her eyes and inexplicably, sirens started to sound in my head.

“You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?” she screamed. “I and the shadow are one. The chair is one of us. It’s in the air – the poison is in the air.”

She pointed an accusing finger at me and my heart jumped to my throat. There was a deafening silence, followed by a litany of expletives that bounced of the walls of the emergency room.

This is not a figment of my imagination. It really happened. In fact, it happens almost every day when I come face to face with another citizen from the other dimension, where fish have wings and trees grow teeth, where colours are heard and voices can be seen. She was one of them, children of the moon.

She wasn’t always disturbing. Often times I catch her dancing in front her mirror and singing, wearing her tiara and throwing confetti in the air.

“Have you been visiting the chapel again?” I asked, as I checked her badly bruised knees.

“Yes, I’ve been praying a lot lately. Every time I pray it rains and when I open my closet there are more coloured confetti in it.”

“I tell Him all my secrets. My dog died along with my secrets. She left me too.”

“Mommy said she will allow me to ride the plane if I get well. I will be well soon.”

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Let me tell you the story about this someone who saw through all my madness and instability. He who brought certain equilibrium into my life, amidst the chaos and the demons I valiantly fought. One chance I had stepped into, what I thought was something real. Story of my one love among a sea of sharks and de-boned sea horses.

He’s a pirate. A fearless one. The one who navigates bodies of seas as stormy and perilous as I am, not out of curiosity but for the sake of conquest, for something new, for something foreign, for something extraordinary.

He came with boldness borne out of his spirit and strength. He saw with keenness of his one eye the need to shield this and understand my mystery. And then he guided me to the safety of understanding, tenderness, devotion and esteem.

Only when my coast was teeming with life and vitality did he deign to venture to other lands. The better to know if I really could weather life’s tempests and floods. And for me to find out if I would be able to stay afloat.

It has been a torturous fortnight since I was cast into this sea of solitude and despair. My brave pirate is gone, along with him went my sense of time and my sanity. The realisation of my greatest predicament dawns.

When will you learn? A woman of that sort talks without speaking. She looks without seeing. She hears without listening. She cries without weeping. She seeks the company of no one but herself and the ghost of her long lost someone. At night, she converses animatedly with divine voices, for they alone can give her the solace she’s looking for. And the very same things she made light of, her incessant blahblahs, she can enunciates clearly in her mind: love, commitment, devotion, trust, promise…she can go on and on, if only she doesn’t fall asleep with a tear on her cheek and a sigh on her lips. Devoid of any rouge, I could swear she looks like me.

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Weeks later, a gentle tap prompted me to glance backward. I saw a familiar face smiling at me. I asked her how she was doing. She said she was fine and was about to leave the psychiatry ward.

“Have you been talking to yourself again?” She asked.

“I don’t know. I was talking to this girl in the mirror.” I replied.

“I heard you’ve been singing again.” she said. “It makes me smile whenever I hear you sing.”

“Thank you. Have you seen my suitcase? I have coloured confetti again. Mommy said some fairy put it there.”

“When’s the next blue moon?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope it will be this month or this year so I can see him twice.”

“I told everyone that I saw him riding a boat to the moon that night, I never had the chance to say goodbye.”

“It makes me sad. I’ll show him to you. You’ll see; he’s real.”

“It’s time to take your medicine again. You promised you will try to get better. You don’t want to miss your flight now, do you?” She asked.

“Okay.” I responded.

“I feel sleepy; I’ll sing myself to sleep alright.”

“I’d rather live in his world, than live without him in mine. This world, is his, his and hers alone.”

“Doctor, my knees hurt.”

SATELLITE BOY

I have always considered myself to be rather conventional. So I guess in this age of computers and the internet, I would be running true to form if I were to say I was involved in a cyber love affair.

Liaisons have been known to start with an exchange of glances across the crowded room. Mine started with a meeting of minds across a crowded chat room full of computer generated nuisances and perverts. I first saw the love of my cyber existence as two lines amid the sea of lines. A sensible thought caught between extremely opposite sentiments of derision and adulation, he should have looked incongruous. And yet, he appeared perfectly comfortable. As a matter fact, he looked rather attractive: not a single punctuation out of place, nary a preposition hanging, not a rule of grammar broken and more importantly, he had ideas which were perfectly in sync with mine.

It wasn't love at first read, but something about him intrigued me. He wrote with such sense and humor, I soon found myself blushing and smiling at his innocuous come backs from my heinous taunting. Ours was a relationship that sprung from common interests, but I don't think it would ever have flourished had it not been for the providential but pathologically engrossing cyber phenomenon called THE CHAT. My entire internet experience changed because of it. I have always wondered why apparently sane individuals have been reported to go crazy chatting on the net, and now I know why. Cyber chat is so appealing because it gives you the freedom to be anything you want to be, something I am deprived of since I grew up with strict oriental "values" and rules. (As they love to call it). It allows you to say things you would never have the nerve to say in a society ruled by convention. Because of it, I have been able to shed my tiresome inhibitions and to be the shameless flirt I never before dared to be. It has become my comfort zone - A place where I can subject anyone to my ruthless taunting without feeling even a single thread of guilt. The anonymity it offers is a sweet temptation for anyone who wants to seek solace away from those condescending eyes.

We all get our kinks from something. It can be taking off your clothes, smearing yourself with peanut butter whilst shaking your arse in your Nan's knickers. It can also be strapping yourself, wearing a tacky lacey red thong whilst desperately trying not to swallow a gag ball. I mean, whatever floats your boat right? As for me, I get a real kick out of …laughing at desperados around the internet and making them do things close to jumping off a bridge. Appalling isn't it? It is my game and i love every bit of it. It is my secret perversity.

Let me be clear about this, I didn't set out to be some cyber hussy (or did I?). As a matter of fact, I was quite reticent with my cyber Romeo at first. But whatever reticence I initially had was no match for his disarming candor and wicked wit. Before I knew it, I was spending late afternoons in front of the computer, exchanging innuendoes with him, looking like a tad crazy idiot, laughing by myself as I typed, with the monitor bearing the evidence that I shared that laughter with him.

Even as I was doing all this, I was aware that I was becoming a cyber cliché, a chat addict talking for hours with a complete stranger who could be a psycho or a big time loser. But insight does not always modify behavior and talking with him had become a sweet addiction. So I dealt with this habit, not by abandoning it but by rationalizing it. I reassured myself that this was all in the spirit of fun. Nothing serious or heavy would come out of it.

Feeling complacent, we agreed to swap pictures. I was eager to see him (praying he's not some fat and hairy fifty-year old), to finally put a face on a once stranger made out of zeros and ones. Surprisingly, he turned out to be really attractive. He wasn't terribly good-looking, but when I saw him, I just find him, for want of a more appropriate description…so cute. I guess, even a Neanderthal would look cute if you're infatuated with him. I never thought I'd be stupid enough to let this happen to me. I've done a lot of silly things in my life but this one tops it all. When I realized it had, I manage to convince myself that native intelligence had nothing to do with it, that it was meant to happen and that fate had everything to do with it. I refuse to accept what's going on so I did what any normal person would do-DRINK-eh-opt for a reality check and realized that it was the perfect time for me to come to my senses.

Now I am back to waking up each morning with a firm resolution not to think of him, that this is my game and I refuse to accept defeat. With this in mind, I still find myself glued to the computer by early evening, waiting for him to log-on. His sweet nonsense every time we talk is probably just meaningless banter to him, but it crushed my resolve. If only he would stop saying that he misses me whenever we don't talk. If only he would stop being so funny and sweet and sensitive. Against my better judgment, I find myself wishing he means every word he says and hoping I could take him seriously. But, deep inside, I know I couldn't and I shouldn't. All his terms of endearment are given in the context of a virtual world where one can kiss by popping some annoying icon just like those animated smileys.

I don't know what brought me into this state, wallowing in cyber angst, asking what distorted psyche could have led me to this predicament. On the one hand, my not-yet-fully-suppressed inferiority complex is leading me to think that it probably has something to do with my being almost twenty-five and having a lifetime record of lousy dates, two lesbian relationships, a boyfriend who used to slap me and a fiancé who ran off with some mountain woman. On the other hand, my hard-earned sense of self-worth is reassuring me that that probably has nothing to do with it. For, though I may have sounded a little pathetic, I know I am definitely not unattractive. I have been told that I have a certain charm and I am intelligent. Sure I aint drop dead gorgeous and is still suffering from the absence of hips but I know I'm way too far from being considered a freak.

So what is it? Is all this angst due to desperation or is it because of a compulsive but destined attraction? Hopeless romantic that I am, I still believe it is the latter. My heart aches and I'm still in the state of confusion, but I take solace in the conviction that like all my other delusions, this too shall pass. I'll get over him somehow. Like what I said, this is my game. I am in-charge and though things suddenly take a different turn, I will soon laugh it off. Just like that line from a severely cheesy song…"I started a joke which started the whole world laughing…but damn it I didn't see…that the joke was on me….least for now".

The question is: when is he logging on?

Only the lizard knows the unspoken

It Rains When Seasons Change

The room lay in a state of shabby repose. Quiet. Unresponsive. Only the dust motes disturbed the stillness in the room. They where dancing everywhere – on the small table propped up with upturned books, on the shelves, on the drawing board, on the notepads, on the scattered papers and rumpled sheets. Some kept moving while one or two would settle and stay on the surface of things. They went around, making rounds, marking everything in place, in places, in all places. Like skin, concealing everything, nerves, blood, even pain – until pain was only a memory of blood.

I was on the floor, by the side of the bed, facing the heat of the fireplace. From where I was, I could see the single window in the room from the corner of my eyes. Closed, panes sealed tighter than a coffin's lid, I remember the last time I went outside. It was a week ago. Snow was already melting, a blessing of spring. I just finished ridding the driveway of it when an urge to stretch my legs touched me. Although the stance of my body already admitted the tiredness in my limbs, I decided to go since winter was already leaving. There was a chill in the air, despite the close arrival of spring. The trees looked worn, with drooping, scraggly branches, even the sun looked sick. The melting snow looked more grey than white. Snow is never quite whiter than the first time it falls. After that, dirt and other things come into it and the white is lost forever, at least until the next time it snows.

I turned into to catch the sight of doves, fighting too fiercely over a crumbled piece of bread. How could I have known the place would feel so much like a stranger?

I walked from the park unhurriedly – because he used to say I walked too fast. I saw a young man sitting on the bench by the sidewalk. He didn't look familiar. Thinking then, I was sure I had never seen him before in the neighbourhood. A stranger. I looked him in the eyes, trying to walk past him a little faster. He smiled.

I stumbled. His smile was fluid unbroken by any hesitation or reservation he might have felt for a fellow stranger. Envy came into my blood, for the ease with which he displayed. The mind usually keeps with it memories of what it no longer has, and the opposite of it, this absence of ease was mine.

I hurried home then, no longer caring if I walked too fast or not. After stepping over the threshold and into the house, I stopped. What was I hurrying about when there was only nothing to come back to? But there were things that needed my attention. I've wasted a week already. There were letters to send, bills to pay, chequebook to balance.

But when I sat down, motionless on my seat, I tried to imagine, to remember. But whenever an image slid into my head, it assumed the shape of my beloved's face. I closed my eyes tighter, concentrating on the image of that young man and his smile, trying to see myself with my mind's eye wearing the same smile. But my face would become his, and the smile on it was pure …

I met him on a rainy day just before autumn in some bus stop on my way to meet some friends for coffee. I had a slight hung over from last night's meeting with a client and I was yet again late for my scheduled appointment. How could I forget to wear a watch? I saw him, loitering at the edge of clustered people, outside their circle. A fellow stranger. We ended up talking to each other. Sharing conversation while we both stared at the people on the other side of a thick glass window, trying to avoid unnecessary eye contact as possible. We continued looking at the strangers that pass us by, exchanging thoughts, cards. Conflicting schedules, friends we didn't want to see – all these we had to take into consideration. We settled for what we could only have – rare phone calls and emails. As days pass, the letters became obscure, filled with various inscriptions. When confronted every time. I tried looking for an escape, any other topic to fill the sudden silence that consumed me. I was unprepared for his invitation. For this. Absurdly, I thought, somewhere in those inscriptions – if I could just understand it – was my answer. Like the whole world was reduced to an inscription that someone had denied me the meaning. It could have helped me decide about the side of the world that I was then entering into.

As loony as it was, I knew I was kidding myself, no signs lay there. Nothing to return to. His eyes asked me to take it. Maybe, if there were signs, I could say I wasn't entirely at fault. That there were signs that told me, that seemed to make it right, at that time. Or it could be, there were signs, but they weren't exactly that obvious and they were badly lit. Now, as I think back, I don't think I would have blamed anyone after all. But that was only me then, me, him and the glass.

"Have you told anyone?"

"Yes"

"Why?"

"Why not?"

The pattern was repeated. While we go live in our normal lives, we somehow managed to slide into our clandestine world. I stole time like sand from an hourglass. And each time we're together- we were lost. I always felt the sand sift through my fingers like water, falling onto the ground, unheeded. It would slip under the slide of my toes, the sides of it. When time would come and make me remember. And I, unmoved, would pretend ignorance of its passing.

"I have to leave soon. I need to be up early for work.'

"Stay a little longer."

Time was an enemy. It would always come between us, always there with us. Time and circumstance. I remember that night; we were probably both drunk- least I know for sure I was, whilst trying to take the piss at each other.

"My friends asked me about you?"

"What did you tell them?"

"Well, what do you want me to tell them?"

"The same thing I often tell you. This is only a fantasy."

I turned my face away to hide the pain that flashed into my eyes. Something that keen, that potent had to show, somehow. When I was sure my eyes were clear once more, I tried thinking of something cheeky to say. But he wouldn't let me get away this time.

The word fantasy seemed to incite in me a sense of panic and at the same time relief. Back then, I know that was the appropriate term to use. And I persisted. I insisted. Until we got nearer to the end.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"We have to end this. It is futile and we both know that."

"I don't know how!"

"You will learn."

"Is that what you want?"

"No, but it is for the best."

"Trying to convince yourself?'

That night I started packing. Gathering everything, stuffing everything that I own and throwing things that would remind me of him. I kept on talking and talking to myself, convincing the creature in me to stop holding onto the longing and memories.

"I've always told him not let me get under his skin."

"It's easy to take it back. I could just apologise. People do it all the time."

"I'm not most people. This is not me. It's not real."

"Why can't you just accept it's probably real? He's probably real?"

I left. This was how defeat met me. Once again I sat with him- staring at the glass mirror.

"Look for me."

"Where?"

And I left the answer to him.

I am sitting here still, on the floor by the bed. I've been sitting here for weeks, searching for something that I might have that would remind me of him. I've gone through the park, endlessly looked in every bench, bus stop and seaside. This mad hope sustains me. But I find nothing more, only dust motes in play.

Three years have passed. I never forget, though I wish that every time seasons change and the sky would often cry before it changes, it will wash away every hope that I keep inside my heart.

"To wish back for something already lost," Amy Tan says, that is despair. To write about an experience that means so much but is gone, is insanity. But perhaps one needs to be insane to write, especially on dark night like this when remembering opens up a wound. And I have to face countless of such night. I write anyhow. Because now I remember in a haze. And although it is painful and fearsome to remember, it is by far more painful and fearsome to forget. When it rains, I am reminded of him. Wonder what he was doing every time seasons change.

March, 2009

The Tea Party

It’s late in the afternoon. As I walk finding my through the deconstructed fog that surrounds the usually busy streets. It’s a bit cold, I told myself; could there be something out there for me to find? Strangely though, the air smells of newly trimmed grass as if the gray sky is not threatening to pour rain. My hair, harassed by the wind, is trying to shroud my face, as if it was trying to hide something for me to see.

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I took a few carefully measured steps before finally stopping about two feet from where he was seated. I stood there motionless for a couple of seconds as I felt my brain staging another battle for the opposing factions inside my mind. The tension had been slowly but steadily rising, and since I knew very well how those inner conflicts could render me dysfunctional, I quickly tried to snap myself out of it and leave indecision behind for awhile.

I ran my finger along my lower lip, somehow absent-mindedly, and felt for the lip-balm inside my coat pocket, noticing how badly chapped my lips had been from the cold weather. In a sudden change of mind, I decided to simply wet them with my tongue---probably afraid that too much unnecessary movement would spoil my concentration. I rubbed the palms of my hands briskly against each other, as if to liquidate the nervousness that was starting to get the best of me. After what seemed like a hundred years, I managed to gather all my courage and sat beside him. My feet shuffled underneath- so frantic that I could hear his every breath. Somehow, I contrived a way on how to get his attention.

“Excuse me, do you happen to know what time is it?” He looked at me and responded. “No, I don’t have the time.” He stared back at the glass. I do not know what that look meant, but perhaps, upon realizing that I wasn’t the person whom he hoped to be sitting there right at that moment, the expression on his face and the tone of his voice was like that ones of disappointment. He was probably waiting for someone.

There was silence for awhile. I decided to chat him up for a bit but all I got was a blank stare and some sort of a forced smile. I tried to catch a glimpse of his eyes cunningly. I was like a thief, trying not to get caught. I wonder what he was thinking that day.

I noticed he was tapping his feet repeatedly on the pools of water that have gathered around his shoes, causing ripples to traverse their surfaces and disappear within seconds as they reach the circumference ---only to be replaced by new ones that were helplessly chasing, but never catching, those that precede them.

“The weather’s not so good to be outside isn’t it? Aren’t you cold?” I asked him. He didn’t even bother to look at me or answer.

“Have you been sitting here all this time? What are you doing on such a cold, rainy day?” I asked as I watched him decorate the puddles with concentric semicircles.

“Are you waiting for the bus?” He looked at me and I tried to avoid his eyes by looking at my shoes, desperately fighting back the blossoming red of a blush around my cheeks.

“Yes.” He responded.

There was silence again. The wind blew a cold harsh breeze; I felt it burnt my lips. I reached for my pocket and pull out my lip-balm when I heard something fell. I tried to check what it was. It was 50 pence. I pulled my sleeves up to pick it up.

Alas, to my surprise, I was wearing a watch after all.

HIS STORY, YOUR STORY, HER STORY

HIS STORY, YOUR STORY, HER STORY

You woke up a little pass six o’ clock in the morning with a naked girl in your arms. You tried desperately not to wake her up. A familiar scene, you carefully looking for your clothes under the sheets among the pile of other clothing maintaining your balance as you once again did the predictable and went overboard.

Yes that same old feeling, severe hang over from last night’s drinking. The girl that you met at a party or a pub, driving her to her place, staying over for the night, sneaking out before she wakes up, checking if you’re missing something, trying to remember her name and praying you won’t bump into her the next time you’re out to fish again.

It’s about another expedition again, you’re out with your buddies, and you armed with brilliant and new pick-up lines, eyeing the first pretty piece of ass that caught your eye, waiting for your “perfect timing” to walk up to her, ask her if she wanted to talk when all the while you concoct a very different talk in mind.

It’s about you and your ex; seeing her again, wondering how great she looks now that you’re not together; wondering if making her reminisce your past would make her agree to sleep with you again…and it did work. You find yourself in bed with her again. Free from all drama, the commitment and the obligation to call her later that afternoon.

Just another night at the bar. It’s all about you and your game. Finding the right girl, asking her for her digits, exchanging phone calls, emails and whatnots; showering her with sweet nothings, pulling out quotes from some dead author praying she’ll dig it, all the while thinking she better be a good lay because what you’re doing is making you nauseous, then after getting what you want, finding ways to get her off your back and reverse the procedure.

Of course, there was your girlfriend. Yes, the one who caught you cheating? The one you had to let go because apparently, her friend is much more fun than her. The one you lied to almost everyday. The one you pretended to cry over for months, lied about licking your wounds whilst all along someone was doing the job for you and more.

It’s about another night with your boys. Drinking all night and partying, playing with the girls, practicing your wit and humour, from dusk till dawn, finding yourself in a stranger’s room again, with her in your arms, having the worst hang over, kissing her goodbye, telling her you’ll call but you can’t even remember her name, leaving and realising as you take that much needed shower, it is a cycle. It is your life.

It is about that one night; when almost all your friends bailed out on you. You find yourself drinking in solitude. Your world moving in spiral and you can’t breathe, for some reason your heart somehow stopped. You look at yourself in the mirror and you see reflection of someone you don’t know. You kept thinking of your best buddy. How or what made him take a raincheck. What entered his mind or why he gave you an unimaginable excuse that he had to spend time with his girl and you wonder who’s more insane you or him.

Is the game over for you? But you’re living the perfect life. You try to convince yourself now, even writing on a piece of paper the privileges you now enjoy, but no matter how you try, to put everything in a different equation you always end up with the word empty.

What you need is to find someone who can make you look forward to another day. Someone who, when you think about her, never fails to put a smile on your face. Someone to fill the space in your heart. Someone who holds the missing piece of puzzle that could finally complete you.

Before, when you used to wake up in the morning and find somebody in your arms, your first thought was how you could get rid of her without hurting her feelings. But now, what you need is a girl who makes you want to think of reasons and ways to let her stay in your arms. Because when she's right there beside you, it is as if everything's okay. That nothing else matters but you and her.

You need someone who will make you miss her so much that you start staring at her picture every night and talking about her to your friends all the time. Someone whose thoughts will make you wake up in the middle of the night and grab hold of your phone just to text her you miss her and you love her very much.

You need somebody who makes your heart skip a beat when she smiles at you. Who makes you feel so comfortable and safe that you pour out your heart to her, unburdening secrets that you've kept for a long time. And having her tell you that it's okay, you have a new slate now, that you can leave everything where it belongs, in the past, and concentrate on what lies ahead of you.

You need someone who makes you listen more to love songs on the radio. Someone whom you pray for at night before you sleep. Someone you wish you'd dream about, for even while you sleep, you still want to be with her.

Someone whom you can finally look in the eye, without all the guilt and deceit, and tell her you love her. And you get this mushy feeling inside that tells you it's true. You want to shout over the rooftops, you love her, and she loves you! There's no better feeling in the world

Finally finding that somebody, being down on your knee, holding her hand, trying to hold the tears from falling, gathering every courage you have, asking that someone “will you marry me?”

That’s what you need. That’s what I think he needs. You asked why I always sit by the window, fiddling with my sketchpad, drinking a bottle or two, looking out as if I’m waiting for someone. WE all do. I’m waiting for him to pick me.