A place for my projects - which basically involve me messing around with pencils & paint-based markers - and my favourite excerpts from books I've just read, and occasional random musings.
I am twenty one.
After much groping around in the darkness for my spectacles and mobile phone, I eventually learn that it is four hours into the morning of the 5th of May. I place the phone back onto the bedside table and begin to engage the ceiling(supposedly, because even the darkness is bound by the confines of this cold, empty room) in a staring contest of sorts; it is now man against the blackness of the room; to keep myself from losing the bout, I try to keep my mind occupied with happy thoughts but I cannot quite seem to summon any.
I begin to realise that the darkness, in all its vast emptiness, is quite blinding in itself; it is a deep chasm of nothingness into which you throw your thoughts, and they never come back. My slow but eventual defeat against the darkness leads me to close my eyes once more and my brain, now fatigued from all that thought-summoning, is going all auto-pilot on me as my mind takes a little road trip of its own into the past; nothing much has changed; growing older hasn’t done much to me; I am still the same bumbling idiot that I used to be - socially awkward, the follower(at times, the unwilling leader), the one who raises his hand to ask the dumb questions, the doubting Thomas, the ass clown who always gets his ass handed to him, and yeah, the list goes. After all, people have often told me that my life has always been a really accurate representation of that old adage, “Growing old is compulsory while growing up isn’t.”
The road trip comes to an abrupt halt as Carlos Spencer and his mighty All Blacks start chanting the Haka at precisely 6.45am; by then, the room starts to brighten with each passing moment as little beams of sunlight escape through the little gap between the curtains. The sudden realisation that I am 21 today is too overwhelming; I don’t know what to expect of it - this significant moment that society has now deemed as the benchmark of “adulthood”. I don’t feel any different as I take a quick shower, brush my teeth and slip into a new set of clothes for the day. Other activities start to occupy my mind and the realisation of being 21 soon takes a backseat.
Several hours later, the room is dark and everyone is singing and soon, a cluster of candlelights emerges from the doorway; it is a cake, a big, round mango cake topped with a big mango - I make my wishes, blow the candles out and the cake is cut. Everyone gets a slice; mine with the big piece of mango, of course - perks of being the birthday boy. We make the most of the rest of the day by taking happy pictures and making merry memories while we still can. Games of pool and a soccer match(we were spectators, of course) soon follow after - quite the way to end the night.
As I retreat into the cool embrace of the thick sheets, I spend a few quiet moments to think about how else I could have spent the day; nothing comes to mind - simply because there wouldn’t have been a better way around it.
And so I turned twenty one.
Despite the long day, I must say that it was an interesting birthday spent away from home and in the company of people who I have (slowly) learnt to open myself up to; people who I now trust with my life; the kind you, for the lack of a better analogy, want on speed-dial when shit hits the ceiling fan. It’s been one helluva journey and it’s sad to know that some of us are leaving - goodbyes are always sad, but I guess everyone has to leave someday, sooner or later. So for all that it’s worth, I just want to thank everyone for being such great companions on this journey; may we never forget all the times we shared and the moments that we had - above all, I pray that you’ll remember me as I remember you; and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able hang out again sometime. Even if it’s just for a little while.
“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
Nothing in particular.
As I lie awake in the early hours of the morning, I slowly move towards a conclusion of sorts to my pre-morning thinking routine; that it is a certain fate that we will all have to go someday, simply because no one lives forever.
And since we’re already on the topic of death, I think that when it comes to appropriateness with dealing with death, there is nothing more appropriate than a military funeral. It is a captivating scene; the wet berets & peak caps, the long coats adorned with badges of every kind - for honour, for valour, for bravery & service to the highest degree - bright and shiny eyes welling up with tears for a brother, a father & husband - lost and gone forever, the precision of the guns, the quick and crisp salutes that cut right through the humid mid-August air, the the clinical accuracy of the state flag draped across the coffin, the solemnity of the very moment when his rank is hammered down with his badges - a purple heart for bravery, a proud pair of silver wings for countless jumps in the cover of darkness & etc.
The whole spectacle reminds me that when I die, everyone will see my life in its entirety; like the soldier’s rank and all his assorted badges ironed and pinned to his uniform; from all the big things to all the little ones. Yes, even the little things. And for every badge on his uniform, there is a story, a tale to tell, a recount that someone will undoubtedly still remember, and years after, still laugh about and share with everyone, a brief reminder about a short period of your life that was part of mine; like lines that intersect at a specific point, for that short moment in time, only to diverge later and never meet again.
(Source: kari-shma, via flyingfishcakes)
(via cherlockholmes)
Then one day I said something I should not have said, was expelled from the party, and had to leave the ring dance.
That is when I understood the magical meaning of the circle. If you go away from a row, you can still come back into it. A row is an open formation. But a circle closes up, and if you go away from it, there is no way back. It is not by chance that the planets move in circles and that a rock coming loose from one of them goes inexorably away, carried off by centrifugal force. Like a meteorite broken off from a planet, I left the circle and have not yet stopped falling. Some people are granted their death as they are whirling around, and others are smashed at the end of their fall. And these others(I am one of them) always retain a kind of faint yearning for that lost ring dance, because we are all inhabitants of a universe where everything turns in circles.
I think that’s one of the worst things to see. Seeing someone who has a smile on their face, but sadness in their eyes. Watching someone try to be so strong and pretending to be happy, but for what? Because they’re so insecure that they’re afraid no one cares? Is it something so bad that it could ruin a person? Because they don’t want anyone to know of their problems? Or is it just that they’re the type of person who’s been hurt so much that they know no one can help anyways? There could be a million different reasons that could hide behind two eyes, and the sad part is no one will probably ever really know.
(Source: nanananikii, via cherlockholmes)
